Hi! My name is Steve Butzel, and I am head of the reference department and the library webmaster at the Nashua Public Library in Nashua, NH. I am also the coordinator of our library’s reference desk blog. This is my first time attending ALA Midwinter, and all I can say is that I have been completely overwhelmed. Actually, I am glad to say that after floundering for the past few days I am beginning to feel like a competent conference attendee after all.

I’ve been attending a mixture of different events, some PLA-related and others not. When attending a non-PLA event, I am consistently greeted with great enthusiasm when the librarians discover that I work at a public library and am interested in getting involved. Perhaps some of us public librarians should think about expanding our reach beyond PLA groups. Just a thought from a newbie.

Some of the meetings I’ve been to include the “Podcast U” pre-conference, the newly formed LITA technology for public libraries interest group and the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) meeting today on the topic of working with millenials. By the way, I joined some of the LIRT officers yesterday for lunch and had a great time. I highly recommend taking advantage of such structured/pre-planned opportunities to meet new colleagues. It takes a lot of the discomfort out of meeting new people.

More thoughts later…