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

Thursday, April 2

My first session is “Reach Beyond Library Walls: Meeting Consumer Information Needs.” The presenter is Richard Alderman, known locally in Houston as “The People’s Lawyer.” His website is here. In addition to being the associate dean at UH’s Law School, he also writes regular columns on consumer rights for the Houston Chronicle. The thing that really piques my interest is that he runs something called the People’s Law School, which is a free program focused on sharing information with the public about their legal rights and the role these rights play in their daily lives. The program is completely free and the instructors include judges, lawyers and professors. Alderman says during the course of the presentation that they would like to take the People’s Law School to other parts of Texas, so I decide to give his contact info to Cynthia so we can see about bringing it to the Panhandle. The handouts for the session itself can be found here.

Next on my schedule is “This Little Piggy Went to the Job Market: Building Employment Resources for Your Community,” given by two librarians from Irving Public. They describe their Job Center, which includes a job search kiosk and print/nonprint resources on resume writing, career planning, etc. Other components of their Job Center project are seminars for the public, a webpage dedicated to online resources for job seekers, and quarterly job fairs, which are held at the main library. In the Job Center section of the library itself, they also provide a literature rack containing sample resumes, flyers for the library-sponsored seminars, and a list of temp agencies in Irving. I get writer’s cramp from scribbling down all the good ideas they share.

After “This Little Piggy” is “T4: Top Technology Trends for Libraries.” The presenter shares the results of a technology survey sent out to earlier in the year to Texas libraries of all stripes. Thirty-six percent of the respondents to the survey are from public libraries, and they are most concerned/intrigued by Web 2.0, eBooks, and RFID, or radio frequency identification. RFID basically is a barcode/security strip on steroids that allows staff members to scan an item without opening it up—it also facilitates inventorying, since you can just scan a whole shelf of books at one time instead of pulling out each one individually and scanning the barcode. RFID is used on patron self-check systems as well. I end up feeling a bit sorry for the guy giving the talk, as his presentation depends heavily on YouTube snippets. Since I arrived to the session early, I know he had carefully tested each one to make sure it worked and downloaded quickly. However, I think he forgot to take into account what would happen to the bandwidth once all of the other presentations got going at noon. So several people leave in a huff because we have to wait for things to download. The entire handout for this session is not yet available, but here is one funny snippet he shared. I think we’ve all had patrons like this…not so good with the listening, are they? Just a reminder—totally wigging out on a patron (no matter how annoying) is generally considered to be a bad career move. Remember your breathing exercises and keep smiling!

Okay, so now I’m debating about whether I should have lunch. The reason for this is that I know in three short hours Melody and I will be going on stage during General Session II to accept the Highsmith Award for the Amarillo READS project. Donna overlooked my repeated hints that it would be ever so much better if she flew into Houston for the day to accept the award herself. Faced with the prospect of making it across the stage without somehow humiliating myself (and Melody) in front of thousands of people, my anxiety level has been steadily ratcheting up throughout the day the closer the time approaches. What to do? Lose my lunch on stage or pass out from hunger in front of everybody? Can the choices get any better? After being told by a school librarian that the food from the BBQ stand is ice cold, I decide to risk another pizza, as I have arrived in the Exhibits Hall late and all of the salads and deli sandwiches are long gone.

After forcing down a few bites of pizza, I finish walking all the aisles that I didn’t get to yesterday. While an exhibitor has another librarian cornered at his booth, I employ a brilliant and sneaky maneuver of “snatch and run," scoring a brochure on a product called Chili Fresh, which allows your patrons to post book reviews to your website. Moderated reviews, of course—because allowing patrons to post whatever they like on the library’s website? Bad idea!

Just like it was a bad idea to eat the pizza, though it did seem a little fresher today—perhaps a creation from the Reagan Administration this time? It really starts doing flip flops in my stomach as I sit down for the 2:00 presentation on “The Librarian in Black’s Strategies for Staying on Top of the World.” Or perhaps my stomach is doing flip flops because I am so pumped about seeing the Librarian in Black. I’ve been following her blog for years now—she provides really good leads on all the latest tools to make your job easier and to enhance the library experience for patrons. Melody sits next to me, and we are both just total dweebs in our excitement to be here in LiB’s presence. However, shortly before 3 pm, Melody suddenly gets up and leaves. After ten minutes, I begin to worry. We’re supposed to report to the Green Room at 3:30 to get briefed on how to proceed with the award acceptance. At 3:15, I am sitting here thinking, “Oh she DID NOT just desert me!” But all of her stuff is still there, so I don’t progress to full-blown panic yet. A couple of minutes later, she ducks back into the room and sits down. “I won an iPod Touch in a drawing at the Mango booth!!!” she whispers excitedly. I begin making plans for a new T-shirt: “I went to TLA 2009, and all I got was this stinking Badge of Power with streamers. Melody got an iPod.” Seriously though, I am really happy for her. And thrilled that I will have company on the stage in half an hour!

So do I take a nosedive in front of 5,000 people? Tune in tomorrow to find out!!!