It's late people...this one will probably be short (famous last words). This morning Diane and I grabbed Starbucks and Maxed over to the Convention Center following the stream of other orange baggers (librarians carrying our signature convention bag). My first session was great! All you MPLers better get ready because I'm going to plan the best In-Service ever known to humankind! Virginia, we will need to meet ASAP because I got so many ideas from these people: some of which involve dressing up in costumes and some of which involve wearing super-hero capes.
My second session was all about trends in Teen Services. Happy to report that we are doing okay in this department but we really need to start live-action-filming...we don't even have to have great equipment to just start doing something as simple as interviewing a patron once a week and throwing it on the website. Oh yeah, and monthly teen book displays. We should probably start doing this. Oh, and let's weed all those books that have been on display in the Teen Area for over and year and haven't circulated. That would be good and would help our space issues!
Joined many librarians to hear Virginia Ewer Wolff speak. She was darling...such a trooper as she was sick but did her whole talk anyway. She spoke a bit about her pride in Oregon (she is from here) and spoke a lot about the innovative aspects of teen literature and read the opening lines from several teen novels. (Hey! I just heard the bell of some kind of public transport outside...I don't know if it was the Max or the trolley car thing, which they also have here. Don't know why I'm telling you about that bell...) One neat thing she said about Portland is something the natives say about Mount Hood...they say, "is the mountain out today?" meaning, can you see it? Well, good old Hood was definitely not out today. Cold and rainy all day (thank goodness we were in the conference all day).
My next session was kind of a dud so I left after about 15 minutes and headed over to the vendors. Wow. Some of these "booths" we bigger than my first apartment and had more amenities as well. They were giving away lots of ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) and I got so weighted down with free books, brochures, and catalogs that I went ahead and shipped a box home!
My last session was all about Every Child Ready to Read and the future of that program. Such a great session with some fun debate on why ECRR isn't mentioned or taught in some graduate programs. The session in general kind of inspired me to maybe schedule a new training session at least with our daycare people.
Okay, I know this was going to be short and it's late and I have a full day tomorrow, so here's the last bit (not going to do my fun night any bit of justice)...
Anna, John and I met about 100 librarians out for drinks at the YALSA round table. We stood in line in the rain to eat donuts shaped like voodoo dolls complete with pretzel pins stuck into their raspberry flavored hearts. We walked in the rain for 1/2 hour looking for a restaurant and ended up eating at the Asian restaurant in my hotel. Bonded over the seriousness of contemplating parenthood and relished in the joy of making new friends.
So tomorrow is Friday. Just two more conference days! Really starting to miss my Joey. (You may all collectively puke now.)
Anna's Library
Every Child Ready to Read Wiki
Every Child Ready to Read Site
Voodoo Doughnuts
Virginia Euwer Wolff
No comments:
Post a Comment