The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Literary Portland
So this isn’t expressly related to the conference, except that it was located in Portland, so of course I had to visit the Multnomah County Public Library and Powell’s Books. I’d heard great things about Multnomah County Library and actually just been to a great program on storytelling sponsored in part by librarians who worked [...]
I’ve been a bad, bad blogger….
So, when I signed up to blog for the PLA, I fully expected to be posting at least every day, with all of the exciting new insights I would gather as a library student at his first professional conference. Between school, volunteering and work (and much to the chagrin of some of my library friends) [...]
“It Wasn’t Reading, It Was Learning.” Children’s Author Luncheon with Kadir Nelson
(sorry it’s taken me so long to post this, I wanted to do justice to this amazing event!) Kadir Nelson, award-winning author and illustrator, had the crowd laughing at pictures he drew at five and learning from research he spent years on during his interesting and engaging talk at the PLA Children’s Author Luncheon on [...]
Tweeting at the conference
Everyone’s been doing such a lovely job of recapping sessions they attended, so I wanted to get a little meta on you guys and talk about how Twitter was used at PLA this year. For a little context, the way I was keeping up with PLA happenings on Twitter was partly though the people I [...]
New Buildings and Innovative Library Design
The very last session I attended at PLA was: New Buildings and Innovative Library Design: Reflecting Communities in our Buildings Presenters: Carolyn Robertson – Christchurch City Libraries Su Scott – Waitakere Library and Information Services Mirla Edmundson – Manukau City Council The presenters described themselves as “two hobbits and an elf” and that we’d see [...]
Using Organizational Culture to Improve Library Services
By Saturday morning, this middle-aged librarian was starting to wear down, but my first session of the day perked me up and gave me food for thought: Using Organizational Culture to Improve Library Services Handouts Slides – http://www.placonference.org/handouts/1560_Smith_Kirstaine_143728_Feb15_2010_Time_121337PM.pdf Worksheet – http://www.placonference.org/handouts/1560_Smith_Kirstaine_143728_Feb15_2010_Time_120709PM.doc Speaker Kirstaine (Kirsty) Smith – Great River Regional Library Kirstaine started her talk by [...]
Data Driven Library
The last session on Friday gave me a lot to think about and was titled: The Data-Driven Library Presenters Greg Edwards – Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Paula Brehm-Heeger – Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County The presenters opened their session with a quote by Sherlock Holmes, “It is a capital mistake [...]
Reorganizing the Organization
After I finished lunch on Friday, I attended: Reorganizing the Organization Presenters: Ann Cress – Jefferson County Public Library Marcellus “MT” Turner – Jefferson County Public Library Paula Kiely – Milwaukee Public Library Additional presenters were scheduled to attend from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, but were unable to make to PLA. [...]
And the award goes to …
by Michael C. Steffens Now that I’ve returned home to Indianapolis, the time I got to spend at the PLA conference in Portland almost seems unreal. Far more than in library school, I got to learn more about my profession almost every minute of every day I was there. Others have written beautifully on sessions [...]
Talk Table: Supervising Volunteers
My second session on Friday was a talk table called Supervising Volunteers and was facilitated by June Bass and Sherry Braga. Maybe it’s because I was frustrated with group work back in grad school, but I’m not normally a fan of talk tables. But my library is trying to make better use of volunteers and [...]
