Reaching Forward Conference for Library Staff

I am presenting today at the Reaching Forward Conference in Rosemont, Illinois on business and job resources at the Library where I work. Reaching Forward is a one day conference for library staff and is an excellent opportunity for learning and networking in the profession. If you are interested in business and career resources at libraries please contact me at livelylibrarian at gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at @LivelyLibrarian


Photo: Co-presenters, Emily Kornak and Shannon Scanlan, Business Librarians at public libraries near Chicago

5 Hotel Rooms in 1 Week

As much as I would like to say that I've been around the world and stayed in 5 hotels in exotic locations over the past week, alas the reality is much different. Last Monday I went to Peoria Illinois for the annual Illinois Library Association Conference, 3 days of programs, vendors and socializing for Illinois librarians. I have blogged about the ILA Conference before in 2008 and 2009.

Thoughts on ILA 2009-Peoria 
ILA Conference at Navy Pier 2008

Last year the conference was held in Rosemont Illinois and I presented a program on Screencasting for Librarians. This year I am serving on the Illinois Library Association Awards committee and the winners and sponsors were honored at a luncheon on the first day of the conference. I truly enjoy the conferences, the sessions are informative and inspiring and it is always good to socialize and network with librarians from around the State. However, the conference accomodations were not good, but it does make for a good story.

First night in Peoria. Arrived after a 3 hour drive with a colleague and located an Indian restaurant near Bradley University, the major college in Peoria. Sat down, ordered, watched a roach run across the table, left immediately and found a pizza restaurant favored by students. Finally found my hotel, a good 10 minute drive from the conference center and was given a room near the elevator and laundry units. I won't stay in hotel rooms near laundry or elevators. I learned this the hard way in Las Vegas. Got another room, went to bed.

2nd day in Peoria. Woke up, turned on the shower, the handle fell apart in my hands, streaming scalding hot water all over the bathroom with no way to turn it off. Called the front desk. Hotels are frequently staffed with students since Peoria is a college town. She had no idea what to do since maintenance was not at the hotel so I asked for another room immediately. She brings me to a room with a free standing jacuzzi tub right next to the bed. I looked at her and said, "Are you kidding me?" So we went to another room, a suite with a separate room with a kitchen and living room. About time.

Got home to Chicago on Thursday night after 4 days in Peoria, was home for 24 hours and left to tailgate at Indiana University on Saturday. My son's best friend Peyton (#59) is a starter on the IU football team so I went down with friends to tailgate, IU against Ohio State. Being an Ohio University alumnae, I like the opportunity to watch any team give OSU a run and IU had a great game against the Buckeyes.

Friends and I (4 women) stayed at the Motel 6 in Bloomington that is within walking distance to the IU Memorial Stadium. Being a motel this place is tailgate central for parents and friends visiting for games. Lots of pickup trucks pulled up directly to the rooms, doors open and tailgating in the parking lot. Who needs more than a bed and a sink when visiting a college? Well that's about all we got. The bed was so concave it was like sleeping in an egg. But hey tailgating was super fun and partying with the football players until 3 am reminded my why I'm glad my college years are over. Picture below is Peyton and I after the game.

So I am home. Finally. No more hotels for me for at least 2 weeks? :)

October Update

Hi readers. As it's my birthday today and I've got a busy day planned this is going to be a short update. I wanted to share with you a video I created for the ILA Video Shootout. For more information on the Video Shootout, check the Facebook page and video submissions on the YouTube page.

As a present to myself I bought the new 11 inch MacBook Air. This beautiful little laptop weighs less than 2 pounds, is as thin as a magazine and is the perfect computer for traveling. For the ILA Video Shootout I had about 10 minutes to capture video on my iPhone and then about 30 minutes to learn iMovie on my new Mac and create a video. What you see below if my first iMovie.

So I'm signing off readers to start enjoying my birthday. Thoughts on the last year...I started my 40th with a trip to Paris, went scuba diving in the Virgin Islands, spent Christmas with my family in Florida, visited my sister and her family in Denver, bought a new house, started a new job, fell in love and finished my 40th year off with a trip to Spain and Africa. How will I top that at 41? Starting with a lovely weekend, my parents are visiting and we will go antique shopping, relax at home, enjoy Chicago and hang out with my son and my partner Paul. Happiness is the greatest gift of all.

Do You Podcast and/or Videocast?

While at ILA I attended a program on podcasting which is a technology I have been playing with for a year or so at my own library. Podcasting makes the audio recording of events, programs, book reviews etc easy to stream over the web via simple RSS feeds. Podcasting has been used successfully at many libraries including at my alma matter Ohio University. For a listen check out OU's podcasts through the University's Alden Library here. The selection of podcasts range from short clips highlighting their map collection to a Chinese language tour of the library.

Videocasting (or vodcast)works in a similar style with the combination of audio and video recording. These "on-demand" videos can be distributed via a file or RSS feed and viewed at the viewers convenience. The website of the Orange County Library System in Florida has a virtual library where you can watch online tutorials on topics such as their catalog and technology or take virtual classes. You can check it out here.

Have you visited Ted? Known as "Ted Talks" the website TED: Ideas Worth Spreading is a video site featuring videotaped talks on entertainment, technology and design. Filmed at Ted's annual conferences in Long Beach, CA and Oxford in England these videos will inspire you, move you and hopefully create more ideas worth sharing.

Looking for a quick book review then check out The One Minute Critic here. This "vlog" is a video blog featuring...you guessed it...1 minute book reviews. Created by the Fort Vancouver Regional Library this is an excellent way to use simple video technology to reach viewers on the web.

Are you interested in taking online courses? In my opinion there is no limit to one's life long learning and at Academicearth, you can take a variety of courses through major universities like Yale, Harvard, MIT and Princeton.

Let me know if you have any podcasts/videocast/vlog or other sites to share.

Thoughts on ILA 2009-Peoria

Now that my 3 days at the Illinois Library Association 2009 Conference in Peoria are over I have time to reflect on the experience. Here are a few thoughts:

1. Peoria. The largest city on the Illinois River has a nice but small conference center in the middle of the downtown district that is accessible to larger hotels like the Hotel Pere Marquette and smaller hotels like Days Inn. There is very little to recommend Peoria. Options for dining are either fast food chains like Panera and McDonald's, sit down fast food like Chili's and Hooters or a few "Irish" novelty pubs near the riverfront. There is no charm to Peoria and the downtown district is very depressed. After talking to a few Illinois Library employees I found out the ILA Conference jumps between 3 locations, Springfield, Peoria and Chicago. Last year I attended the conference at Navy Pier in Chicago and the attendance was good, the programs were full and of course the options for what to do when not at an ILA event were endless. I was told this years attendance was half what was expected, somewhere in the range of 600 attendees. With such low participation I don't see how ILA can continue to hold a conference anywhere outside Chicago where numbers were much higher.

2. Programs. I attended 2-3 programs each day as well as an author/awards breakfast (which was the highlight of my conference experience) and the Fashion from the Stacks dinner/cocktail hour and fashion show (which was the lowpoint). Most presenters presented in groups of 2-3. At almost every one of the programs I attended there would be 1 very good, dynamic presenter and 1 presenter who was either not a good public speaker (lots of ummms, pauses, loss of thought etc) or not prepared. At one particular program the first female presenter was terrific, lively, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. The woman who presented 2nd was a good public speaker but would go off on tangents and was really just not interesting. After she finally stopped speaking half the room emptied and unfortunately there were very little people left to hear the 3rd presenter. Awkward.

3. Bang for your Buck. Hmmm, that's a tough one. The conference is not really expensive to begin with and considering my extremely nice accommodations (I did NOT stay at a conference hotel and booked the room on my own, see post below)rather a bargain as conferences go. Definitely more affordable than an ALA conference but based on the quality and variety of programs and special events not really worth the money. For example, I attended the Fashion from the Stacks Fashion Hour and dinner on Thursday night. Last year during the ILA Conference at Navy Pier this was one of the most popular events of the week. Great participation, great press, lots of fun and a terrific opportunity for networking. This year, and I'm assuming because of the location of the conference in Peoria, this event was a very nice disaster. Lovely room at the grandest hotel in town, plenty of food served buffet style and what should have been a fun cocktail party with dinner and dancing after with ample opportunity for networking and meeting new librarians. Ya..no. There were 2, count them 2 librarians who walked the runway. Apparently another librarian had been in a fender bender and she would have presented an additional 2 designs for a total of 4. How you can have a fashion show with 4 designs I have no idea. (The fashion show highlights creative costumes/outfits created from items found in the library like a dress made out of DVDs or a jacket made from paperback book covers) Picture is of one of the 2 outfits this year.
However probably to make up for the lack of participation, a library director had her teenage staff model fashion through the decades which was fun although had little to do with anything library related. All in all for the $45 cost it was not worth it.

4. Highlight. One of the best programs I attended was the Youth Services Author Breakfast organized by the Youth Services Forum. My Synergy teammate Patricia was on the Forum and another teammate Elsie receieved one of the 2 awards presented at the breakfast. This event was perfectly organized, well set up, and a great way to network with other Illinois librarians. The featured guest speaker was Jill Thompson the most widely regarded female comic book artist working in the profession today. She is the author and illustrator of the Scary Godmother and Magic Trixie series. She also was an artist on my favorite graphic novel of all time, The Sandman series. Jill did a drawing demonstration and passed around her artwork while explaining the process of creating a comic book. Absolutely fascinating. You can see a video of Jill drawing on my Facebook page.

Overall I do plan on attending next years ILA Conference when they return to Chicago. I can only imagine when held in one of the world's greatest cities the conference will be a larger success not only with participation and quality but with increased opportunities to learn, network and be inspired by those in our excellent profession.

Librarian Shoes

I'm in between events on my 2nd day of the ILA Conference and enjoying a glass of wine while waiting for the cocktail party/dinner/fashion show Style from the Stacks to begin later this evening. In the name of style I thought I would blog about a particular area of the library professional that drives me a wee bit insane. Librarians and their footwear.

This afternoon while sitting in a rather boring session about reorganizing your workflow, I started to glance at the ground and thus found it hard to avoid the overwhelming display of bad shoes. Now librarians are not known for their sense of style, the hard to break image of the middle age librarian with her hair in a bun, her oversize sweater, practical skirt and non nonsense shoes is alive and well and most likely helping patrons at your neighborhood library. However many librarians, (like myself, rewatch my librarian fashion show video) are trying to change that image. Unfortunately based on the shoe parade down here in Peoria, we have a long way to go.

Here is a sampling of some of the more awful shoes women are walking around in. Don't even get me started on those with runs in their pantyhose (AKA nylons for those of you who've never had the pleasure of sliding flesh colored stretch material over your entire leg) If you have anything REMOTELY like a pair of the shoes pictured below, give them to Goodwill. Yes I know they are comfortable but there are excellent shoe companies that make attractive AND comfortable shoes. Try Clarks, you'll thank me.





If you haven't seen the hysterical and painfully accurate video March of the Librarians, check it out below. Note their shoes and welcome to my world.

Back in the Saddle

Got sick about a week ago, was in bed for a couple of days and worked the weekend but am now back at work for a day. Tomorrow I leave for the Illinois Library Association Conference in Peoria for the remainder of the week. I'm looking forward to the conference, it's always nice to attend as an attendee instead of an employee. The years I worked for ALA, the conferences were long hard days so it's nice to be a librarian at a library event instead of a scheduler-planner-walkee-talkee-holding-monitor. While I am there I will be blogging about the conference and if you are going to be there, drop me an email and we will meet up!

Here are a few things I meant to blog about last week and didn't get too.

This unusual but excellently named website offers unique and quirky necklaces. I've seen them on celebrities and in fashion magazines and they are beautiful and "green" being made from reused vintage pieces. Check out Dirty Librarian Chains here.

Those of you who used to follow my Talking Beagle Blog know that I have a fictionally named dog. My beagle Eloise is named after the precocious Eloise from the popular and timeless children's book Eloise at the Plaza by Kay Thompson. A few years ago the famous luxury hotel The Plaza in New York City got bought out and remodeled with residential condos, commercial space and new hotel suites. Well now, thanks to designer Betsey Johnson you can stay in Eloise's suite. For more info go here. Hopefully they didn't remove the wonderful painting of Eloise in the hotel's lobby.

Here is an interesting article via the Telegraph in Britain titled, "50 Things that are being killed by the Internet." An interesting read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6133903/50-things-that-are-being-killed-by-the-internet.html

ILA Conference at Navy Pier

Yesterday was Day 2 of the Illinois Library Association's 3 day conference held at Navy Pier in Chicago. I attended and thoroughly enjoyed each of the 3 sessions I participated in. After years of employment at the American Library Association and working conferences in San Diego, Seattle, Orlando, Boston and Chicago it was nice to attend a Library Conference as a participant and not as an employee.
The sessions I chose to attend were really very good, particularly the Library 2.0 session with speakers from the Schaumburg, Skokie, Arlington Heights and Park Ridge libraries. I also sat in on a Learning Lab session (how to create an experiential learning environment within your library using Green technology and ideas) and a session on weeding your reference collection.
Like most conferences the rooms are rarely adequate for the attendees who show up, the rooms are either too small or too large, too cold or too warm, too noisy or with too many distractions. Like most PLA sessions I scheduled rooms for at ALA conferences getting the right room for the right program is almost impossible with the exception of opening and closing sessions when you know you will need the largest rooms.
What surprised me the most as an attendee in the sessions was not about the inadequacy of the facility but more the inappropriate behavior of other attendees! In my first session there was the constant stream of late arrivers who entered through the loudest and heaviest doors on 2 sides of the room. Or the attendees who after a few minutes decide they don't want to stay and get up from a seat in the middle of a row of 15-20 people and have to scooch by with multiple bags (free vendor handouts I am sure) full of free books, bottles of water, lunch bags etc. that smack each person they squeeze by.
In my 2nd session there was the woman sitting next to me in a packed overly small room who constantly fanned through the edges of her magazine for 60 minutes, zphhhhhhhhhhhhhh, zphhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Or my personal favorite the woman in my 3rd session with the snorting and clearing of her nasal passages every 1 minute. Seriously it's appalling when people are so clueless of their distracting behavior.
All in all the sessions were excellent, the speakers were well chosen and well spoken and the lovely setting of Navy Pier was a bonus. In between each session it was lovely to step outside and gaze upon the Chicago skyline while watching the boats sail in.