Day 4 of the conference started with another great keynote: a panel of two high school students and one college student talking about how they view technology, education, and their own research habits. Some of my favorite sessions happened on the last day. I loved some of the comments that the teen panel made, particularly when the guy from high school said that in the future technology will make our leaves easier [and better], but ONLY if we use it in the right way. I got to attend my first Pecha Kucha session, too, which was neat (20 slides per presenter, 6 minutes and 40 seconds to present).

• Keynote: Growing and Grown-Up Digital: Net-Gen Speaks
  Facilitated by Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix
• Mashups for Library Data
  Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Solutions, ByWater Solutions
• Technology: The Engine Driving Pop Culture-Savvy Libraries or Source of Overload?
  Elizabeth Burns, Pop Goes the Library ; Sarah Houghton-Jan, LibrarianInBlack.net
• Pecha Kucha: Innovative Practices
  Amy Affelt, Nicole Hennig, Steve Harris, Matt Hamilton

Other IL posts: Index | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Full session notes available after the cut.

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Day three started off with a funny and interesting keynote with Paul Holdengraber (who had interviewed Vint Cerf the previous day), and continued in good form with some great sessions. Paul talked a lot about the Live from the NYPL series they do and as opposed to doing straight author readings. They record these sessions and they are available on the website, so you should check some of them out.

Sessions on Day 3 include:

• Keynote: Libraries of the Future: Places of Desire
  Paul Holdengraber, Director of Public Programs, New York Public Library
• Making Virtual Reference Multidimensional
  William Breitbach & Mike Demars, California State University @ Fullerton
  Linda Bedwell, Dalhousie University Libraries
• Web 2.0 for Tough Times
  Jaye Lapachet, Camille Reynolds, Kendra K. Levine
• Library Website Improvement Face-Off
  David Lee King, Frank Cervone, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Aaron Schmidt, Jeff Wisniewski

Other IL posts: Index | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Full session notes available after the cut.

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Vint Cerf started the day, and the beginning of the actual conference, with an amazing keynote. The interchange between Vint and Paul Holdengraber, his interview, was oftentimes hilarious as well as poignant. Vint talks some about the history of the internet, and taking off from there, where the internet may be heading. He touches on important topics like bit rot, privacy and user rights with e-materials, mobile technology, and the neutrality of the net. After the keynote, my day was pretty social networking heavy, but covers some interesting topics.

Sessions attended on Day 2 include:

• Opening Keynote: Digital Publishing, Preservation, and Practices
  Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangalist, Google
• iGoogling with the Library: Customized Omnipresent Homepages
  Jason Clark and Timothy Donahue, Montana State University Libraries
• Creating Connections and Social Reference in Libraries
  Margaret Smith, Physical Sciences Librarian, New York University
• Cloud Computing in Practice: Creating Digital Services and Collections
  Laura Harris, Kendra Levine, Amy Buckland, Jason Clark
• 2.0 Too: Web Services for Underfunded Libraries
  Sarah Houghton-Jan, LibrarianinBlack.net
• Evaluating, Recommending, and Justifying 2.0 Tools
  Marydee Ojala, editor for Online Magazine, Information Today, Inc.

Other IL posts: Index | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Full session notes after the cut.

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Technically a pre-conference, Sunday was well-spent attending the Searcher’s Academy. A number of speakers covered a number of topics, all relating to searching, and many of them very useful. Tons of useful resources are mentioned (and noted below), so read carefully!

Speakers and topics covered include:

• Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, SearchEngineLand.com
• Mary Ellen Bates, Owner, Bates Information Service
  “Digging into the Deep Web”
• Mary Ellen Bates
  “Searching the Collaborative Web”
• Marcy Phelps, Principal, Phelps Research
  “Cost-Effective Searching: Online Strategies for Tough Times”
• Mary Ellen Bates
  “Hidden Tools and Features of the Major Search Engines”
• Marcy Phelps
  “Business 2.0″
• Doris Small Helfer (writes for Searcher magazine)
  “Sensational Science Sites”
• Marcy Phelps
  “U.S. Government Sources”
• Gary Price, Publisher, ResourceShelf.com
  “Legal Resources”
• Gary Price
  “Ready Reference”

Other IL posts: Index | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Complete note for Searcher’s Academy available after the cut.

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I just returned from the Internet Librarian Conference (and sunny Monterey, CA) yesterday, and my brain is definitely still trying to absorb new ideas, concepts, and nifty web tools. All the same, it’s safe to say that it was the best conference I’ve attended so far in my young library career. Luckily for those who couldn’t attend this year, there are numerous options for viewing content online (and my own extensive notes will follow after the cut).

First off, a lot of the slides are available on the Information Today site. Use IL2009 to get in.

Elise Brown, who I got to meet and chat with at the Searcher’s Academy pre-conference, was the official vlogger covering IL2009, and she took some cool video that you can check out via YouTube.

Some of the best moments of the conference were also covered live via UStream (and now available to watch at your convenience). Check out the keynote speakers, for sure. Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, was amazing (as was his interviewer, Paul Holdengraber). On day two, Paul Holdengraber (Director of Public Programs at the NYPL) had the tables turned on him and was in turn interviewed. My notes from both sessions are included below. One of my other favorite events was the Battle Decks, in which librarians have to try and create a cohesive presentation within a tough time limit and with slides they’ve never seen before. Some of the slides were crazy, but all the Battle Deck contestants did a great job, and many were hilarious!

For a more text-based approach, check out the bloggers who planned to write about their experiences via the Infotoday Blog. I know the Librarian In Black did quite a bit of blogging, many of which are excellent synopses of the sessions she attended.

Finally, for some pictures of the event, check out photos on Flickr tagged IL2009 (there are lots of them).

Some highlights and favorite ideas / quotes from throughout the conference:

The long wow: customer satisfaction is good, but what you really want is customer loyalty.

Use events networks like Eventful, Upcoming.org, Going.com, and Craigslist to create awareness of library events.

Let your users comment on any and every part of your site it is possible to comment on, even the director’s bio!

Put chat windows on your website where you know your patrons get frustrated.

Pandia Powersearch, an up-to-date directory of specialized search tools.

OneRiot: real-time social search engine, returns the websites people link to, not the individuals tweets, Diggs, etc.

“Even people who don’t use the web have figured out Facebook.” – Mary Ellen Bates

“Our culture is tending towards abstraction and brevity.” – Vint Cerf

Other IL posts: Index | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Complete session notes are available in their own posts, separated by day. Days and sessions are indexed after the cut.

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Volume 5, October 15, 2009 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) FREE TRAINING FROM WSL

2) ALASKA-YUKON-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 1909 – 2009

3) TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT COURSE FROM PLA

4) DISASTER READINESS FROM WEBJUNCTION

5) GRANTS FOR YOUTH-LED LITERACY PROJECTS

6) SUCCESSFUL FUNDRAISING IN A TOUGH ECONOMY

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What: Ref22: “Using Screencasts in Virtual Reference”
When: Tuesday, October 13th, 8:30 – 9:30 am PST
Where: Wimba WA_TrainingRoom1

Tuesday, October 13th, we will host our very first webinar in what will be a monthly series called Ref22 (it’s “22” because it’s the 2nd Tuesday of every month). Ref22 is meant for reference and virtual reference librarians in particular, and will cover a variety of interesting and practical topics.

This month we are happy to feature Lauren Ray, Educational Outreach Services Librarian at the University of Washington Libraries, who will present on “Using Screencasts in Virtual Reference”.

The webinar will begin at 8:30am, and will last approximately one hour (including time for questions). It will take place via Wimba, and an archived version will be available if you can’t make the live session.

Instructions for Wimba are here: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/library/libraries/training/wimba.aspx.

If you have speakers or topics you’d like covered in future sessions, please get in touch. In the meantime, hope to see you there!

The Eighth Annual Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference will be held September 17th-18th 2009 at Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus. The early registration and scholarship application deadline for the Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference is next Tuesday, September 1.

Designed for staff in libraries of all types and sizes, this conference aims to help you streamline processing, utilize new tools and solve problems. Attendees will discuss how individuals and groups can improve missions, goals, codes and standards through technology, policies, practices and people. Attendees will:

• Discuss the future of resource sharing and ILL
• Obtain practical information for a variety of resource sharing operations
• Discuss issues and solutions with colleagues from the Northwest and beyond
• See demonstrations of resource sharing tools, including free resources

For more information about the conference, visit http://nwill.org. Online registration is available. Also, please direct any questions to the conference Chair: Chelle Batchelor, mbatchelor@uwb.edu.

DISCLAIMER: The State Library regularly highlights third-party events and online resources as a way to alert the library community to training and resource opportunities.  By doing so, we are not endorsing the content of the event, nor promoting any specific product, but merely providing this information as an FYI to librarians who must then decide what is right for them.

ALA Librarians Need Coffee to Survive

Thanks to the Friends of the Washington State Library and the Washington Library Association, I was the lone staff-person at the Washington State Library who got to sneak off to Chicago last week for the American Library Association Annual conference. Attendance was pretty good at the event (I think even more than last year), but I imagine these were mostly east-coast attendees and less folks from Washington State.  As such, I thought I would share my notes (pardon their lack of organization) and general impressions.

I liked Chicago a lot more than I thought I would. I’d built up a bias against it from travelling through it, but had never stopped and looked around inside the city proper. There was a lot to do, plenty of excellent food and interesting sights, and I walked until my feet issued a proclamation that if I didn’t stop walking they would be writing up their two weeks notice. I saw quite a few Segway tours, which I found amusing but had to admit were actually pretty sensible.

The conference itself was a bit of a mixed bag. I was mainly there for my Emerging Leader work (which was the only reason I got to go in the first place), and that was interesting and fulfilling and all things good. The other sessions I squeezed into my schedule were hit or miss, and the only thing that kept my awake at certain points was sneaking peeks at ALASecrets and ALASecrets2009 on my netbook. It should be noted that this was perhaps one of the more interesting things to happen during the conference. Not only did a secret back-channel ALA conference gossip rag pop out of nowhere and blossom (200 followers within a couple hours); but it was subsequently censored, and presumably by a librarian. That it was replaced within an hour with a non-censorable but equally accessible alternative speaks volumes for the ingenuity of people in our profession and, in general, the total lameness of censorship.

But we all knew that already. Right?

I enjoyed the conference in the end, though I always think there should be something more, like I’m missing something. I definitely enjoyed Chicago, and would recommend it to anyone who likes an active vacation in the big city.

Detailed “session” notes after the break.

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Check out these free training opportunities coming up in July.

Free WSL online trainings:
First Tuesdays: Safety in Small Libraries
July 7, 9:00-10:00 a.m.

Designed as a continuing-education opportunity for all library staff in Washington State, this free web presentation from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., on the first Tuesday of the month lets attendees share their skills and successes and learn about new topics. The special-subject presentations, lasting about 30 minutes, are recorded so that others may listen at their own convenience. Presented by Kate Laughlin, Library Consultant, and Matt Berube, Walla Walla County Rural Library District.

Sign in information

Tools for the Reference Desk: Amigos Online Course
July 9 and 16 (2 part course); 8:30-10:30 a.m.

Do you want to learn how to implement Web technologies in your reference desk? This course explores a variety of online tools, from blogs, wikis, to free chat software and web-based platforms from which you can engage your users at the reference desk. Come learn how to utilize several free online tools in your reference activities.
Register here: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/library/libraries/training/trainingView.aspx?event=483&audience=state
Libraries Helping Job Seekers in Hard Times: BCR Online
July 28 & 30; 8:00-10:00 a.m.

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