SDLA 2010

I'm about to leave for the 2010 South Dakota Library Association conference, where I, along with a co-worker, will be doing a presentation on setting up library policies and procedures. In addition, we will be facilitating a panel discussion on building library websites. It will be a great conference this year with the Unshelved Guys www.unshelved.com, the Awful Library Books bloggers http://awfullibrarybooks.net, and Vicki Myron, author of Dewey www.deweyreadmorebooks.com.

Reference Renaissance 2010

Reference Renaissance 2010: Inventing the Future was held August 8-10 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center.

By attending RefRen 2010, I hoped to hear great speakers on an international level, and get ideas on the future of library reference work. After the first day, I was ready to implement some of what I’d learned. Keynote speaker Andrew Walsh from the UK started the conference with a prediction that the smartphone will be what the future will build around and that desktops, laptops, and handheld computers will be used less and less in favor of the smartphone. He also talked about QR Codes and how these are becoming more used as technology advances. Walsh encouraged librarians to change their signs at the door: toss the sign that basically says ‘no cell phone use’ and replace it with a sign that says ‘cell phone use allowed; please turn sound to silent’.

I learned a lot about web based reference statistics, LibGuides, library services and generational research. Did you know that those born between 1988-1994 (the youngest of the millenials) are also being referred to as the 'screenagers'? Marie L. Radford surmises that the future of reference work will include a lot of merging services, work shifting, outreach, and working from places that are not your traditional library setting. It won't be so much "go to your library", but "go to your librarian" and your librarian could be 'virtually' anywhere.

There were 318 attendees from 39 states, as well as many from Canada. Attending a national conference is so important for obtaining ideas and making contacts that one cannot do at a state conference. Reference Renaissance was a wonderful opportunity to do just that, and was worth paying my own way and taking the time to go. I am hopeful that the conference will continue to exist as BCR (the major sponsor) is closing operations. The organizers are looking for a new host, and I hope they find one, as I will plan to attend the next RefRen conference and will highly recommend it to other librarians in South Dakota.

The value of one on one training

Training is imperative in almost any professsion, and finding a venue for learning in which everyone can benefit is sometimes the biggest challenge. Training opportunities exist via many different avenues: webinars, conferences, large or small group hands-on, large or small group lecture style, or one on one. Although one benefits regardless of the type of training by gaining information that they did not have previously, I always appreciate the added value of one on one training.

A colleague and I just returned from such an opportunity and it was great! Being able to sit with one or two others, watch someone go through the material, and be able to ask questions whenever one popped into our heads was a great way for us to gain knowledge. As one librarian pointed out, it is harder to ask questions in a larger group setting for fear that everyone else in the room knows the answer except for you. Even though there is no such thing as a dumb question, it is much easier to ask those questions when there are fewer ears and eyes in the room.

We are happy to have had the opportunity to travel to Brookings, visit with the SDSU librarians, tour the university library, and tour the public library as well. It was time well spent!

This book is overdue!

I recently started reading This book is overdue: how librarians and cybrarians can save us all by Marilyn Johnson. Being in SD, I particularly enjoyed the description of the Deadwood PL at the beginning. It is also nice to know that library consortiums in other states have had nightmare experiences when migrating to a new system. I've only just finished chapter 3, but I can tell this book will be worth my wait in the hold queue.

Wrap-Up

Great wrap-up, ERC's! Way to highlight all of the extra goodies on the SDSL website. Librarians don't need to create handouts, etc, because you guys have done it all for them!

I would have to say my biggest discovery were the resources that I have not used before (ArchiveGrid and CAMIO) and also being able to get a little more practice with the Gale Virtual Reference Library. I think sometimes patrons get so overwhelmed with the number of databases out there that it's hard to remember what there is to search. If I can't find it here, then I can always try there. I can only imagine the number of databases large academic librarians have to keep track of. I think the SDSL offers a good number of databases covering a nice variety of areas.

I've already had a chance to plug Learning Express Library to a patron, and am planning on plugging the rest of the databases covered in the challenge and more when I visit the Capital University Center classes this fall. When I give an overall presentation to state agency employees, I include a large variety of our databases to highlight. Even though state employees may not necessarily use World Book or Learning Express in their daily jobs, I can usually catch their interest when I ask if they've got kids in grade school, high school, or college. There really is something for everyone.

Ancestry etc.

1. I found myself via my maiden name in the U.S. Phone and Address Directories, but I do not exist in the census records via maiden or married names.

2. Found my paternal grandfather in the death index and right underneath that was the record of my grandparents marriage, so that was cool. I made a copy for my dad.

3. Lots of neat digitized images of people, places, and pages from books that mention South Dakota

4. It took a while of playing around, but I finally got some interesting hits when I did a search for Fort Pierre in the places section. Doane Robinson's encyclopedia of South Dakota as well as his A brief history of South Dakota are both full text in Heritage Quest.

5. I am starting to recognize some of the old buildings in Pierre, but probably not enough to pinpoint what they are now to what they were back in 1884. On one of the 1927 Pierre maps, the HWY 14/34 bridge that now crosses the river next to the railroad bridge was called the Wagaon Bridge. It is interesting to see how cities grow over the years by starting with the first year available and then checking the last year available. When I worked at RC Public Library, we had a lot of people come in to look at the Deadwood Sanborn maps as they were researching historic preservation areas and the old Chinese laundry buildings.

Learning Express Library

This database is one I've used a lot and I think it is one of the most amazing resources around. People are always floored to hear of the variety of tests, learning activities, and skill building Learning Express offers. I actually had a few tests already set up for myself, as I was using them for training purposes. As I was continuing one of the math tests I started a while back for this activity, I was thinking how useful this database would also be for those who just want to give their brains some exercise. The push is to keep brains active to fight off alzheimers, so this would be a great resource. I play Brain Games on the Nintendo DS at home to keep from becoming a slug, but LEX tests would work for that too. It is nice that the results give one not just the correct answer, but also an explanation or detailed diagram of how the correct answer was calculated.

Ebooks - Back in one of those "what do I want to do with my life" times, I thought about doing a major career switch and going into real estate. I still think it would have been fun for a variety of reasons. The info in Learning Express ebooks would have been useful to me at that time. Books with info on why choose a real estate career, do you have what it takes, educational preparation required, how much it would cost someone starting out etc are very valuable to someone looking into this field. Read the books in the ebook section, then practice the exams in the jobs and careers section, and you'll get a really good idea if real estate is a career option.