Debriefing & Sharing: 3 Library Conferences

Library Conference Debrief

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/sets/276674/

This afternoon was totally cool! There have been three big conferences recently so we had a group “debrief” for staff who attendded and other interested staff. Our Staff Development Librarian could not be here today so she asked me to facillitate. We had 15 folks who had attended either PLA Symposium, Computers in Libraries or the Indiana Library Federation State meeting.

We began by going around the room, with each participant sharing top trends/learning/issues/thoughts from their conference. I wrote them on the whiteboard. By the end we had 25 different points.

Equity of Access- The digital divide
Info/Tech literacy for patrons
Serving ALL of our users
User-Centered Services and Planning
Colaboration Staff and Users
Jybe
IM- Internal Communication
How do we serve millenials
How do we work with millenials
RSS and Push- as they want it
Tons of inviting space and study rooms
PEW Internet studies as tool
Training offered from vendors and Indiana legal services
Tablet PCs and Roving Ref
Games and Gamers (How do we serve them)
Making decisions for managers
Mentoring/Job Awareness
Look at Normative Data and Stories
Making the library discoverable
Reader?s Advisory
Examining and sharing our roots and core values
Emergent literacy and skills
Examine Web Statistics
Wikis- How can we use them?
Intellectual Freedom

Then I asked the crowd to vote for their top 5. Those were listed — and 5 became 6!! — and we did some brainstorming of those. I must say it was HOT times 3!

Our Top Six:
Emergent Literacy
Reader’s Advisory
Collaboration/ Communication
User Centered Services and Discovery
Millenials and Gamers
Mentoring

From this, we are putting together a document for sharing with the staff and for looking at action items. The cool thing is many of these things are being discussed at the admin level as well as in departments. Check out the Top 6… this was totally a collaborative effort. How does it jive with your library?

Marianne took the photos and Sarah and Maire transcripted the session!