PLA Blog

I am posting this belatedly, I seemed to have picked up the flu on this trip. I wanted to list my top three sessions that I went to and I think are the most important. These are the ones that I recommend going to the PLA website, downloading them, and then talking about them at your library. All of them, I believe are relevant and can be done at any size library and with any size budget. I also think these are the most important to how we reach our patrons in the next 2 to 3 years.

My top suggestion is : Community Building through Your Website: Library Blogs and RSS feeds. This one program exemplified everything we are trying for reaching a 100% of our patrons, getting them involved, and making the library relevant for them.

My second suggestion is: The New Branch? What is the Role of the Library Web Site?.

This program talked about how you can create a website as a destination just like a branch. The website can be developed to aim at different audiences, get the community involved, and reach the public that does not want to come into your physically library but would use your electronic resources.

My third suggestion is: Reader’’s Maps: Blending Fiction and Nonfiction Reader’’s Advisory through Reading Itineraries. This is really a subset of the New Branch but it looks at going beyond the normally readers’’ advisory and creating a website that reflects how people actually read. I really liked something about this book and I want to read more. This something could be the writer’s’ style, the character, the location of the book, or the time frame. These new reader’’s maps touch on these and works well webpage.

There are others I that I enjoyed. I raved about John Beck’’s presentation but I think you can get more from reading his book Got Game than downloading his presentation.

Well it is back to work for me. I will give the conference planners an A- for the conference. I loved what I learned and I never got shut out of the session. My only one comment is- have the exhibit hall opened an hour past the last session. My recommendation is see you in 2008.

Tags: conferences, PLA, PLA2006

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.