Being the Faithful Account of a TLA Conference Attendee, Part II (Amanda)

Wednesday, April 1

Dressed more sensibly today in lace-up oxfords and a longer sleeved shirt, I follow Melody and Angela into Convention Center auditorium on Wednesday morning. There, we and 5,000 of our closest friends will see Paula Poundstone, who surprisingly is the national spokesperson for the Friends of the Library USA in addition to being a stand-up comedienne and author. To be honest, she doesn’t talk about libraries or librarians that much, except to riff on the fact that we don’t like patrons to reshelve items. Mostly, she singles out people in the audience and pokes good-natured fun at them. I am glad to be seated in the nose-bleed seats.

After General Session I, I proceed to “Hot Topics Slam for Texas CE Providers,” which provides five presenters about 5-7 minutes apiece to showcase one of the topics on which they offer workshops. Christine Peterson from AMIGOS describes the “TAG” method of helping patrons understand whether an email is legitimate or not. Next, Jennifer Patterson from CTLS talks about team-building. Dawn Vogler from the Texas State Library follows her, telling us about a super cool tool called VoiceThread, which is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in 5 ways—using voice (with a mic or phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). I think this would be a fantastic way for our TAG group to produce content for the Teen part of our website, once we get one—Emily, check it out! Next up is perennial TLA favorite Pat Wagner, who discusses how nonverbal messages can make or break customer service. And last is Sandy Farmer from Houston Public Library, who describes for us how they have developed a workshop for teachers in HISD explaining all the tools the library offers to support their curriculum (subscription databases, Tumblebooks, etc). I am happy to see that several of the things that Houston Public offers are available through APL and HLC as well.

After the Hot Topics Slam, I get my first crack at the Exhibits Hall. For those of you have not been to TLA Conference, the Exhibits Hall allows library vendors, book publishers, library schools and associations, and performers to hawk their wares. You can access a list of the ones who came to Houston here. As you can see, there was a big honking amount of booths in that hall. I learned at my first Conference (Dallas, 1995) that the key to actually making it all the way through the Exhibits Hall is to stride purposefully and NOT TO MAKE DIRECT EYE CONTACT with any exhibitors. Really. Even the ones who look lonely and dejected. Otherwise, they reel you in like an albacore tuna and talk for the next 20 minutes without pausing for breath about how you and your library cannot possibly live without their product or service. And that’s 20 minutes of your life that you will never get back. Not making eye contact with people (especially lonely, dejected ones) is in direct contradiction to how I was raised, which was to smile at people and acknowledge them. So I have to admit that I am sucked into the vortex of an exhibitor’s booth more often than I would like. However, since the majority of people who come to Conference are school librarians and the exhibitors tend to offer goods that are meant for them, I have found that when I am pulled aside, simply blurting out, “I’m not a school librarian, nor do I work directly with children!!!” nine times out of ten will cause them to quickly relinquish me. I’m thinking of having a cap and T-shirt made with this slogan prominently displayed to save myself time. Maybe I could even sell them in a booth at a future Conference. I know for sure the academic librarians would buy them.

After choking down a personal cheese pizza lovingly made for my enjoyment during the Nixon Administration (I told you the Convention Center food was horrid in my email for Staff Picks), I hoof it over to a meeting on “Transforming Interlibrary Loan in Texas.” I really don’t feel that much is accomplished during this session by the panelists other than providing a history of the ILL Task Force and asking for input, but perhaps I am just being crabby because the pizza I ate at lunch is trying to claw its way back out of my stomach at this point.

Next, my case of indigestion and I proceed to the presentation “Rettig on Reference: Changing Relationships Between Librarians and Readers.” James Rettig is the current president of the American Library Association and is the University Librarian for the University of Richmond, VA. In fact, Paula Poundstone had picked on him earlier, telling him that he needed to “get out!” because “haven’t we already established that this Conference is for TEXAS librarians???” His presentation sketches the evolution of reference services from the day of the printed index (Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, anyone?) to today’s world of Web-based databases. He shares an amusing example of an entry from a precursor to Wikipedia, before user-generated entries were moderated and edited: “Shrimp. Shrimp is neat. It comes in three sizes: popcorn, medium, and jumbo. Prawns are also shrimp. Shrimp is mmm-mm good.” Boy, I’d love to see the research paper based on that information!

Next is supposed to be the Book Cart Drill Team Challenge, but only one team has entered this year (how sad!), so I call it a day.