Friday, October 06, 2006

...back again

Well, D and I made it safely back to Boise so that was nice. We had a really good time at the ILA conference - it was the majority of our conversation for 6 hours!

I really enjoyed being at ILA not just as an attendee but as a member of SPLAT (Special Projects Library Action Team). It was great to talk to other librarians about IM, RSS, Blogs Readers/Aggregators, MySpace, and Facebook. I'd say I pushed Blogs and Readers (Google Reader is my fav btw) the hardest. As much as I'd love for Idaho librarians to explore the potential that IM holds, I'd rather they waited a bit to do that and started reading blogs right away. Blogs are one of the key ways to learn about, and stay on top of, what's going on in the profession right now, which is why they are such an integral part of the ongoing conversation we're having about how to keep libraries relevant. I want other librarians to read blogs, learn about the concepts and technologies discussed therein, get excited, and put those things into practice. You don't have to wait for the next conference, or to listen to a really great speaker, to get all that shocking, important, useful information. You can find it in the blogs. Don't just listen to Stephen Abram, read him. Don't just wait for Michael Sauers to come do a training session, read him. Don't just wait for the information come to you, be proactive - go to it.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

ILA here I come

Well, in a scant 30 minutes I'll be tackling the scary, windy, puke-inducing experience that is HWY 55. D and I are headed up to Moscow for SPLAT and ILA. I'm really looking forward to getting to meet with the SPLAT folks and the discussions we're bound to have. ILA should be great. I'm not sure how many actual sessions I'll be able to attend though.

If you're up that way come check out the SPLAT area and let us hook you up with a Meebo accountm, a Google Reader, and maybe stay to play a video game with us. We'd also love to hear your take on the strides the library community is making and your experience with it.

And we're off!