Keeping Your Head...

Today George and I presented "Keeping Your Head While Serving the Community" at the Association for Small and Rural Libraries Conference in Gatlinburg, TN. Play our slides if you'd like, though they may lose some context without the audio.

Keeping Your Head...

View more presentations from Chrystie Hill.

This conference has been a big boost for my spirits. I've been serving on the ARSL board since February as an ex-officio member from WebJunction, and even that didn't prepare me for this wonderful conference. I learned that Kansas librarians arrived by bus, having driven the 16 hours to Gatlinburg from their home state (I'm sure some of them traveled longer). Further, I have to say, Kansas really represented the social networking scene by being the biggest contributors to the #ARSL2009 hash tag! I forgot to add the tag most of the time I was there, so, that was sort of lame of me, but Go Kansas!

It was also really good for me to have the opportunity to present with George; an honor. I think it's fair to say that I was a little bit slammed with work-related things before this conference and so I didn't have the time to collaborate as much as I would have liked before the presentation. But I thought our content went together very well and I really enjoyed doing the presentation overall. If you by chance saw us, please tell me what you thought of our talk (a dose of my own "evaluation" medicine, so to speak ... so that I too can iterate!).

My favorite presentation of the day introduced me to Give Em the Pickle a customer service slogan from Mr. Farrell (of Farrell's restaurants -- it may look totally cheesy, but this guy is hilarous and has great advice for serving our patrons well). My favorite interactive session of the day was from the State Library of North Carolina on "getting your community back to work". I have more to say about that, but it will have to wait for another day...

Finally, I had amazing conversations with colleagues all weekend either working in small and rural libraries, or working in state libraries to support small and rural libraries. It has been too long since I've been out and about. Cindi Hickey, thank you for giving me the encouragement I needed about the presentation! I tell ya, it really helps me to remember why we do the things we do back at the office.

London Online 2007

A shout out to those of you at London Online this week. Not a whole lot of chatter about it yet around here...I am sure that will change soon enough.

Saw a Jimmy photo on Flickr. He was the keynote. There's a Q and A in the Guardian insert (PDF). The article starts on page 10.

Here's the most interesting bit, from the perspective of the world's largest library cooperative:

Where do you see Wikipedia in ten
years?
JW: When I think about Wikipedia in ten years I
mostly have been focussing my attention on the
growth of the languages of the developing world.
So I’ve been to South Africa twice this year so far.
I’m going again in November and again in March.
I’m really trying to promote the growth in the
languages of Africa because right now we don’t
have a lot of content there. One of the things I
look at when I look at long term trends is there’s
about a billion people online now and we expect
to see another billion coming online in the next 10
years or so. Not from the US or Japan or places like
that- we’re already online for the most part. It’s
coming from the next stage- South America, India,
Africa. All joining the global conversation.

But it's also important, for that matter, to the neighborhood branch librarian. That's the beauty of what you (we) do, as librarians: you bring the world to people!!

Al Gore at SLA

If you're headed to Denver next week, you're in luck!

Al Gore opens the general session on Sunday, and Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) closes it on Wednesday. (Watch the Al Gore video from TED on SLA's site for a warm-up.) Lots of great sessions and conversations planned for in between those presentations too, I am sure.
The marketing and advertising division has events going on through Wednesday, as well. Check them out--it makes me wish I was going.

Speaking of conference events, make sure you've got the Blog Salon at Annual on your dance card for DC! Remember, it's at the Congressional Suite at the Grand Hyatt on Sunday, June 24, 2007 , right after Robert F. Kennedy (5:45pm - 8pm).

With all these political names appearing at library conferences of late--at least in the US, you'd think there was a movement afoot to align the profession with some powerful forces for national change...same movement going on globally?

Question about ALA conferences

I just read an interesting article in the online Chronicle about childcare at academic/industry conferences. I must admit, the thought of this issue has never crossed my mind before. Even though I have plenty of colleagues and librarian friends with children. So let me ask the floor--> Is there a big need for onsite childcare at large library conferences, such as ALA or ALA MW? (What about small ones, like OCLC Members Council meetings?)

I guess I had always assumed that if you had young kids, you left them with a trusted spouse, parent, family member, etc. and came anyway. With today's phone conferencing, video and podcasting options, you can worst case attend remotely if the conference organizers know you are interested and they're willing to work with you.

Still, I'd be curious to know what libraryland thinks of this issue. Do we as an industry need to consider childcare at our conferences?

Good night, sweet princess...

Indulge me. This message isn't about libraries or information overload or perceptions of anything but sadness. Molly Ivins died tonight.

I only met her twice: once at a book signing in Chicago, once when she spoke at a Public Library Association national conference (more on that later). But she was a national treasure, and I think of a lot of us who knew her mainly through her work are grieving tonight.

She wrote with wit and love, delightfully skewering the rich and providing solace (and the occasional kick in the butt) to the less fortunate. She was our most acute observer of George W. Bush, at least from the president's left; she had known him for decades and understood him well. If we missed her for nothing else, we would miss her insights into the man she dubbed "Shrub."

About that PLA conference: I was director of PLA in the mid-1990s, the guy who kept the seat warm between Joey Rodger and Greta Southard. At our conference in Atlanta in 1996, Molly was the closing speaker. She was supposed to fly in that Saturday morning on an early flight from Austin. A car and driver would meet her at the airport and bring her to the convention center where she'd meet a few of us for coffee, and then speak at noon. Now remember, almost no one had cell phones then. We waited and waited. No Molly, no car, no way to find out what the hell had happened. By 11:30, I was nearly comatose---there were 2000 people in the room already, and I had no one to speak. My friend Jim McPeak, who was keeping vigil with me, offered to find me a size 26 dress and a wig so that I could do the talk in drag. At 11:50, the driver showed up, full of apologies. The flight had arrived, he was at the gate with his little "Ivins" sign, but no one approached him. My heart sunk. Had she missed the plane?

Traffic was backed up for blocks around the convention center. Jim took off for Lane Bryant. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a taxi pulled up, and out jumped the unmistakable figure of Molly Ivins. "Do y'all know where the librarians are meetin'?" she drawled. "Ms. Ivins, please come with me," I answered through clenched teeth. She had some half-baked excuse for why she didn't make connections with her driver, and she had only one question: "Where can I grab a smoke before this shindig starts?" We found a lounge, she wiped out a cigarette, and we made it into the ballroom with minutes to spare. And then she delivered an absolutely flawless address.

Y'know, in August 1977, Groucho Marx died three days after Elvis Presley. Dick Cavett said that it was the only time in his life that Groucho's timing had been bad. I feel the same way about Molly Ivins' passing: we only have 720 days of the Bush administration left. How are we going to really understand them without Molly there to interpret for us?