When the Title Does Not Fit the Presentation …
March 29th, 2008 by Bonnie McNairAs a part time library school student and full time reference worker, I understand the value of evaluating print sources. Sometimes what is written is not what you get. I have been to eight presentations in the past two days. Three of the presenters commented on the title of their presentations (what was printed in the official program) were not necessarily what they had originally proposed nor did it accurately reflect what they covered. While I think you can almost always find “nuggets” of wisdom no matter the topic, I now know to be more critical when determining what sessions to attend.
A tip I learned, to help lighten the load you carry, is to rip out the pages from the official program that apply to that day’s sessions and bring those pages only with you. Leave the rest of the program at the hotel.
It is great to attend this conference with coworkers because it allows you to “divide and conquer”. We can attend different sessions and give mini-reports to each other prior to the next session. It also allows me to immediately share ideas that I think are of value for my library with fellow employees rather than waiting until next Monday.
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March 31st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I wholeheartedly agree that some session titles and summaries didn’t adequately convey the actual content and focus. I skipped some sessions based on their title and the brief description only to have them turn out to be wonderful. The converse was true as well. I’d go to ones that sounded great but that ended up being not very informative. Whatever PLA can do to get presenters to be specific and to have their own conference staff title and describe appropriately, the more helpful it will be for attendees and presenters alike.