In my first PLA Blog guest entry, I mentioned my plans for the conference. How did I do?

I plan to talk to Tim Spalding about his ideas for revamping classification, because Dewey may not be the best choice for everyone. And to colleagues who are implementing faceted interfaces for their catalogs (Collingswood will be rolling out a Scriblio-powered website in the next couple of weeks).

I had a very good meeting with Tim, and I look forward to continuing our conversation via email in the near future.

I was also invited to join the folks from Darien Library for drinks and dinner. Quoting Kate Sheehan, they’re “an incredible group of people who are building not only a stunning new library but also the future of libraries and librarianship.” Or, as Darien’s John Blyberg wrote, “From rethinking our entire classification system to planning how to use a building that is wired to the hilt, to an RFID conversion, to a major web redesign, to some other things yet-to-be-announced, we’re about to enter a period of serious metamorphosis.” It was a wonderful evening. Their patrons are fortunate to have such warm and talented people working in their behalf.

I want to talk to the folks at LibLime and those who are using Koha to see how it might help us deliver better customer service.

I attended a meeting of the nascent Koha user group, led by Meadville Public Library’s John Brice and LibLime’s Josh Ferraro. Koha is making great strides, and I look forward to working with the software and the community in the near future.

I definitely plan to talk to OCLC about exposing our records in WorldCat.

Is it rude to collar Andrew Pace and Roy Tennant when they’re drink-in-hand? Because I did it to each of them. I got Roy at the WebJunction party, Andrew at the OCLC blogger salon. There’s no question in my mind that both of them would genuinely love to have small libraries’ collections in WorldCat, and, as both pointed out, Karen Calhoun has already written about this very thing. They hear us; they’re working on it. They need to hear from more of us; they need to make it a higher priority.

Some other thoughts:

Why is it so difficult to get a vegetarian meal in Anaheim?

LITA’s Top Tech Trends needs an overhaul. It managed to be interesting at Midwinter in spite of its use of technology. But, at least for me, the brilliance of last Sunday’s panelists and moderator couldn’t overcome the myriad problems introduced by trying to include virtual panelists and Meebo/Twitter-based audience participation.

LAMA (soon to be LLAMA) 101 was interesting. It’s a welcoming group, and I look forward to joining in the fun. One bit of strangeness: no one sat in the first several rows of seats. That’s pretty typical for library conferences in general, but I thought it would be different among leaders, administrators, and managers. I guess it’s all relative.

ACRL President, Jule Todaro, and keynote speaker, Dan Ariely, did a fantastic job at Monday’s President’s Program, as did my fellow panelists. Everyone involved was kind and brilliant and a joy to work with and get to know. I’m very excited about PLA and L(L)AMA and the folks who have become colleagues now that I’m working at Collingswood Public Library. But I’m going to miss having a formal relationship with ACRL.