PLA Blog

Meg Canada, who works as Librarian as well as in Assistive Technology & Teen Services Online for the Hennepin County Library (I hope I got your title right!), and is also a lovely friend of mine, graciously took the time on Thursday, March 27 to give me an epic-yet-whirlwind tour of not only the Hennepin County Library system headquarters in Ridgedale, but also a quick run around the Central Library. Both libraries are wonderful, and everyone is doing such impressively progressive things, the whole tour was a treat.

The Ridgedale Library building not only houses the library, system headquarters, and centralized technical services processing of books, but also an office of motor vehicle services, local courts, a coffee shop, and a library book store. From the very entrance of the library, you can tell that the children’s librarian values early literacy, starting with the counting steps (apparently, you hear kids count those steps every time they come in), and carrying through to the rest of the library:

It was really good for me to see how their self-checkout stations are set up, one for adults, one for kids, since we’re planning on launching a similar self-checkout setup at my library in July. As for check-in processes, I got an inside look at their “high I.Q.” Automated Materials Handling (AMH) system (my apologies for the shake on the video!):

After meeting more of the staff and seeing more interesting behind the scenes workings at the Headquarters and the Ridgedale branch, we were off, heading back downtown to the Central Library. I must say, if you’ve heard anything about the wondrousness Hennepin County Library Minneapolis Central, it’s all true.The architecture is beautiful, all that light wood and glass. This was the truly whirlwind part of my tour (I was playing hookey, trying to get back in time to host the Virtual Happy Hour for the Virtual Conference), so I didn’t get to visually document everything that was cool. Like, say, the elevators that, as they go up and down, form words and letters in lights that spell out the titles of recently checked out books. Or how each floor has a uniquely-designed fireplace, complete with art (the giant “burned matches” were my favorite). Or even the beautiful lighting on the different media shelves, and the interactive touch-screen map systems that help people find things. The even have an ATM machine, not far from the coffee shop and book store. Make the trip to Minneapolis to see it in its full splendor, it’s worth it.

I did, however, get a comprehensive-yet-quick tour of Teen Central. Teens from all over the city were involved very early on in the development process, so the entire space is customized to the audience. Teens said they wanted a space of their own that didn’t look like the rest of the library, where they could eat, drink, hang out, listen to music, meet. As a result, Teen Central is a completely enclosed area within the library, complete with a meeting room that has dry-erase board wallpaper, cool flat speakers installed in the ceiling hooked up to a sound system that supports iPods but also plays CDs, excellent comfy seating near the windows, and vending machines (in the only area of the library where food is allowed). And the red-dyed wood for the shelves is *gorgeous*.

Next time I’m in Minneapolis, I’ll spend *way* more time at the library ;). Thank you so much to Meg and all of the staff at the Hennepin County Libraries for your hospitality!

Nearly 200 people are registered to attend the PLA 2008 Virtual Conference (everyone who attends the PLA 2008 conference in Minneapolis can also log in now to participate, or later to gain access to the archives), and so far, everyone seems to be really happy with it. I was recruited to “host” the conference, which really means a cheerful welcome message at the beginning of the day and chatting with the attendees during the “Virtual Happy Hour” at the end of the day (sans cocktails, sadly). It’s been a hoot so far. The Learning Times crew has been doing an excellent job of keeping everything together and moving!

The Adobe Connect interface that the attendees see isn’t much different from the interface that the presenters see (click on the screenshots for a larger view complete with interface notes):

Here you mostly see the areas for slides and chat, but normally you could also see a floating list of attendees. Live, on-the-fly polling, white boards, co-browsing and desktop sharing is possible with the interface, so it really adds to the interactivity of the experience. So far, getting the presenters ready for their sessions has been really easy: put on the headsets, show them the interfaces, and off they go. We’ve had a few problems with streaming audio and video simultaneously, but I think that might actually be an internet connection problem in this case.

Speaking of interactivity, one of the best examples is the Inside the Author’s Studio sessions. Yesterday, Nancy Pearl donned a headset and spoke directly with Virtual Conference attendees for a full hour, taking questions directly from the audience and answering them.

Since the Adobe Connect interface can be altered on the fly to meet the needs of the presenter, Learning Times set her up with a a “Questions for Nancy Pearl” chat box that was separate from the General Chat. That way, attendees could still talk amongst themselves, and Learning Times could pass along links related to Nancy’s comments — for example, she mentions an author, they go out and find the URL of the author’s site, and post it to the chat — and Nancy could focus directly on what people were asking her.

It’s really a nice setup.

Today’s session was especially interesting, because we experienced a typical conference problem: a presenter who doesn’t/can’t show. I still haven’t heard what happened with those presenters, or what the plan is, but in a pinch they needed someone to fill a slot. Since I had mentioned the PLA 2008 Twitter experiment to the Virtual Conferencees, hoping they would also share their thoughts using the #pla08 hashtag, and there were many librarians who instantly had questions, I was called in to pinch hit with an impromptu presentation about Twitter. Overall it was really interesting, and I think most attendees got something out of it. I know I got about 12 new Followers on Twitter for my time :). It also led to a really interesting chat discussion about using Twitter and Meebo for reference, the idea of roving reference, single service points, and more, and I’m glad we recorded all of it for the archive. Who knows, maybe you’ll all see me as a future PLA presenter at some point.

Virtual Conference attendees: be sure to sound off in the comments here!

If you want to see more of my time at PLA than I have posted here, you can check out my flickr photo set for more pictures and snippets!

I was a bit leery when I read the course description for this workshop. I just didn’t believe there was any way to get the children at my library off the computer and excited about reading. I thought I had tried it all.

I’m happy to say, I think I was wrong. The Global Reading Challenge is another of those “infectiously inspiring” nuggets that this conference seems to be full of this year. Who would have ever thought you could turn reading into a sport? Not me, that’s for sure! But that is exactly what the Global Reading Challenge has done.

Working within a core set of rules, but infinitely malleable, the Global Reading Challenge gives teams of children a set of books to read and then pits them against each other to answer questions pertaining to the stories. The highest scoring teams advance, culminating in a tournament for the Global Reading Challenge trophy.  And there is always cookies and juice.

I was gobsmacked by the videos of children clamoring to be involved.  One presenter even said that Global Reading Challenge was more popular than Summer Reading Program!  Many schools have even incorporated the Challenge into their curriculum — reading one or more of the selections in the classroom.

I’m extremely excited to get home and try and figure out how this program could work for us.  We are small, but we are mighty and I’m always up for a good game!

Please pardon my lack of posting yesterday; I couldn’t get my login to work. I promise to make up for it tonight with a series of posts about my first two days at PLA. I have to say, that I’m definitely filling the “way too excited about everything” niche.

Wednesday, after our Party Bus arrived, I stood amongst the other librarians milling about, wondering what I could expect and what anyone could possibly want to talk to me about for two and a half hours. Once we were finally allowed to funnel into the dark hall — why was it so dark, anyway? No house lights? — I began to feel flutters of anticipation, but I still had no idea what inspiration there was in store.

“He had me at hello” was made for men like Jon Wood. I swear, 5 minutes in to his presentation, I was all teary. And then I figured out why the room was so dark — so people like me could hide and not feel quite so goofy about the premature tears.

Room to Read is one of those monumental efforts that could be daunting, but is, instead, exhilarating. It was only 10 minutes in when I dug through my bag, searching for a notebook and pen.  I wrote down two things: the url for the Room to Read website, and “What can I do to help?” Because Mr. Wood shows you just how easy it can be.

Every year during Summer Reading Program, we have our children work on a service project to see the importance of giving back. It wasn’t 15 minutes before I knew that Room to Read would be our project this year. We have a wishing well that the children can put their pocket money in and I’m going to approach a few local businesses about matching the childrens’ donations. At $1 a book, I think even my small town can make an impact.

Others have already given great overviews of the opening session with John Wood, so I won’t go into that.  I did want to share some of my personal gleanings that I plan to share with my library.  Much of what he says can translate into how we can/could/should ? serve the poor in our local neighborhoods.  I’m from Columbus, Ohio, but I’m sure many of you deal with similar situations.

Points I gleaned: 

• He strives to have “the heart of Mother Theresa and the scaleability of Starbucks” - great tagline!
• Education is a hand up, not a hand out.
• Involve local people, especially parents, to increase the likelyhood that your work will continue after you’ve moved on. You can only help people who want to help themselves. Have you read Bridges Out of Poverty yet?
• Literacy is a long-arc proposition
• We need to find a way to get beyond the “they should do something about that” mentality.
• Have an intense focus on results - GSD - Get . . . you know . . . Stuff Done - what gets measured gets done
• Dream big - go big or go back home

Oh, and did I mention how great a job he does at telling the story? The story of mothers walking down a 2 mile mountain to carry 110 bags of concrete on their backs. Stories of children mashing the “stage” when he opened the boxes of books. Stories of children who are helping to write some of the very first pictures book (ever!) in their local language.

Leaves me thinking “Daddy, will you help me buy a yak?” But seriously, I think our yak is our service, and with nearly 73% of Cols City School children on free or reduced lunch, we have our own huge gulf to cross (and sometimes our own rickety bridges). He’s got some great BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals).

And what about the Big Hairy Audacious Questions? Here are mine:

• What can we do to really get our local parents or teachers or community leaders involved in leading Ready to Read workshops?
• What barriers do we still have that keep us from GSDing, and how do we break them down?
• And, because it’s been a long day and I didn’t really get much dinner, when is my delivery guy going to arrive with my Mostaccioli?