Last day!!

Weird. I'm home in Indy and it's 10:19 AM meaning in Portland it's 7:20 AM. This will take a little getting used to.

Yesterday I had two pre-conferences, one on Teen Volunteering and one on Save Your A. S. S. (After School Sanity). I came up with one idea on changing the way I "hire" and train my teen volunteers that I'm really excited about. I'm thinking about having quarterly training sessions that you have to attend if you want to be a volunteer. It could be a day long or 1/2 day long workshop on a Saturday and it would encompass having a big tour of the library, learning lots of different tasks that volunteers do, doing one big volunteer project if we have things to do (counting newsletters, anyone?), and then giving them time to write 100 words on why they want to volunteer and why they'd be good. I could have individual meetings with each kid while everyone else is working on the big task and I'd get to know how the kids act in a group, one on one, and whether or not they are serious about volunteering. I'd give them a service hour for doing the one big task and after the workshop they could apply to be a volunteer. I could also make it a competitive process and let them know by letter or phone call whether or not they "made it." Kind of excited about this.

Save Your After School Sanity was pretty darn good. It was all about learning to handle teens in your building during that 3-5 time slot when they all come over from the schools. There were some common sense things like using simple phrases when encountering teens, keeping expectations clear, not getting emotional or unprofessional ever when communicating your needs as far as the library and other patrons go, and not smiling when you are correcting their behavior (don't send mixed messages). They had a great speaker from a youth serving organization in Minnesota that wasn't a library and how his organization worked with the library to coordinate their efforts in this area. They also talked about staff training, being consistent throughout the building in your procedures, and sharing the responsibilities of doing regular library patrols during your busiest times. Another good thought they had involved looking at the layout of the library. We have a huge open space right in front of our circulation desk. We have teens that run through there and congregate there and know what? If we just put some displays there it might provide a sort of physical barrier to that kind of behavior. Also we could install some kind of sound dampening dome over our vending area and then the noise from that area of the library might not be so distracting. All in all it was a neat session. I was also thinking of trying to produce an After School Guide for teens in our community listing all the organizations that offer services to teens during that 3-5 or 6 time period. Then we could really coordinate our efforts to serve teens more effectively.

After those two sessions I had to hop on the train, board the plane, and get my behind back to Indy. SO sad about missing Sarah Vowell speak. I am pretty sure though that I got to see Mount St. Helen from the plane. Took about a million pictures.

This will probably be my last post about PLA-Portland. I had a great conference. I wanted to thank the Indiana Youth Institute for awarding me a professional development grant to help me go. I had a wonderful time, met great new friends, and came back to my library with two major ideas to hold onto in the future: Be More of a Leader, and Coordinate with my Community.

Really looking forward to implementing all I've learned into my library!

Thanks for reading!

Indiana Youth Institute
Sarah Vowell
Mt. St. Helen

Cramming it all in...

Today was my last full day in Portland. It was another full conference day and I'm so very excited to get back to the library and start working with more technology, weeding things that aren't working, and reaching out to more patrons! Can you tell I've been surrounded by librarians for a week?

My first session was about reaching out to pregnant and parenting teens. The presenter gave us many great suggestions for outreach to these parents starting with the very simple idea of doing a brochure explaining what we have for teen parents (collection, baby programs, and even teen programs...they need entertainment and creative outlets for their teen side as well as resources for their parent side) and leading to the more complex idea of offering regular parenting classes, especially ECRR, for this group. I was reminded again of the 40 Developmental Assets and will link to them as a reminder to brush up on my teen developmental knowledge.

My second session I did something a little different and joined a Talk Table focusing on having Teen Services without a Teen Librarian. Since we just have me and Meg and I'm split between little ones and teens and Meg is split between adults and teens, we truly do not have a dedicated person in our building who is focusing all their efforts on Teen Services. However, through this conversation I learned that we are a lot more fortunate than some. We have a great teen space, a fabulous teen collection, just one high school and one middle school to think about, and a GREAT Teen Council who actually supports teen programs through writing grants. So, I was able to share a lot about what we do and get some ideas for passive teen programs, ways to get more help from other staff members, and ways to update your space quickly, easily, and most importantly, cheaply.

Lunch was a PLA luncheon with illustrator Kadir Nelson. What a neat man. He gave a great talk illustrated by lots of pictures he's drawn, painted, or collaged and left us with some great quotes like this one: "Beauty defies negativity." This very talented man illustrated and wrote We Are the Ship and he illustrated Ellington Was Not a Street among others. Very nice speaker...will have to keep him in mind for CYPD.

My next session introduced me to some interesting Open Source tools like Scratch, Comic Life, and of course Audacity. Scratch was really cool and I'm almost afraid to share it with Bill from work. He'll be producing full length movies in no time.

Stopped by the AWE Booth to beg them to put chess on their computers. Please AWE...put chess on your PCs!!

My last session of the day was all about Marketing as a Conversation. GREAT presentation all about using tools like Blogs, Flikr, Facebook, and Twitter to really market your library and high-light your library's services as well as developing meaningful relationships with your patrons. I'm all ready to develop a Web Presence Team when I get back so look out MPL!

The day was over and it wasn't until I walked out of the convention center that I noticed I was no longer carrying a jacket. I could picture myself putting it on the back of my chair during my first session but I couldn't remember anything after that. After getting lost trying to find the Lost and Found (who does that?) I was able to pick it up from the temporary PLA office. YAY!

Okay, so here's the social aspect of my day and of course I'm ready to perish from exhaustion so it will have to be quick. Here's a top 10 of the Best Things that Happened to Me Between 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM today:

10. Wrote some emails for work.

9. Thought about packing.

8. Ignored my suitcases.

7. Didn't get lost at all walking around Portland.

6. Was given a PLA tee-shirt from my great Director, Diane.

5. Bought a pair of Doc Martens. Yay.

4. Ate an amazing food I've never eaten at the Everett Street Bistro. I can't remember what it was called but it had cheese in it. (Polenta! Remembered it in the morning!)

3. Learned two new phrases: "Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner" and "Peace Out, Boyscout." As least, I think those were the phrases.

2. Bought large quantities of chocolate.

And the number 1 Thing Happened to Me Between 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM today:

Saw a man walking around with a cat on his head (not kidding...yes it was real.)

Going to bed. Pictures and links tomorrow.

It's tomorrow! Here are some links:

Everett Street Bistro
Cacoa
Kadir Nelson
Doc Martens
40 Developmental Assets
Scratch
AWE PCs

Conference, conference, conference...

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

Beautiful Afternoon in Portland...

So I ended up not doing any of the things I mentioned in the below post because it turned out to be much too nice a day to spend inside. I ended up having lunch on a Portland Street at one of the many food carts that are popular and prevalent here. Had a yummy, yummy, gyro all wrapped up in foil that was piping hot when it was served to me complete with fork and napkin. I sat on a bench and listened to a couple fight behind me (I mean they were right behind me) about someone’s in-law. Fascinating! Called my friend Susan and explained how she really needed to move to Portland because she’d love it so and then I started making my way to Little China. On the way I stumbled across another bookstore! Can’t remember the name of it now, but it is totally used books and it starts with a C. Floor to ceiling books…heaven.

Made it to little China and took in the sites and the smells. This city is so fascinating, all the little nooks that may only encompass a street but seem to be chock-full of meaning and worth. After a slight unplanned detour to get a tad (teeny tiny bit) lost, I did find the beautiful Chinese Garden. So peaceful and amazingly beautiful…but I wasn’t too sure of my future. It said something like “Beware of an envious friend.” So if there are any envy-ers out there you should come forward now. Diane even met me there and we were able to experience this lovely piece of serenity together. We wanted to do tea at the tea house but they were just closing, but we did manage to get to the little gift shop where I bought a few things for some special people!

We walked back towards our hotel by way of the River Walk which was gorgeous. This was a simply amazing day.

From there we ate dinner at an Irish restaurant called Kells and made plans to come back there later for drinks and to listen to the live Irish Music!

And back we did come! We were there right around 9 and enjoyed Pat Buckley playing such favorites as Dirty Old Town, Spancill Hill, Irish Rover, Tim Finnigan’s Wake (at my request) and that Scottish song about how you should take the high road and I’ll take the low road…We even met someone from the conference and not a librarian! Kay is in audiobooks and was relaxing after a taxing evening of stuffing goodie bags. One unique thing about this bar was all the quarters wrapped in dollar bills stuck to the ceiling. We got to see a bar-tender do this trick but we never figured out if the collar had gum on it or what. Pat was really fun and he even had a friend come up and accompany him on the Irish Drum.

It started to rain while we were in the bar and it filled the whole place with a scent that was earthy and fresh and green all at once. I was glad I stowed my umbrella in my purse. Must not forget it tomorrow…We left and realized we’d have to run to get our train which we did and we got “home” safely.

Having a wonderful time bashing around the city but really looking forward to learning more during the conference. (And what ever happened to the Chocolate? Anna, we may have to figure that out sometime tomorrow…)

Pictures and links coming tomorrow...it's almost 3 my time so I have to go to sleep!!

PS: Diane says I should add that I've been carded twice since we've been here! ;)

Chinese Garden
Kells
Portland Food Carts
Cameron's Books

Day 3! Preconference and CHOCOLATE!

So today I again headed to the Convention Center by myself for the preconference on gaming. What a great session! I've been doing "drop-in" gaming on Fridays with the Wii for a couple of years now, but I'm realizing we really need to beef up our gaming presence. Thinking about doing a gaming tournament each month or have a season like Ann Arbor does. We could target different audiences for different events and have food and prizes and really make it a big cool thing. Our presenters seemed to advocate for a Go Big or Go Home approach to this and I think that's been my problem. Our gaming has gotten just too casual. So now I really have something to work on once I get back to good old MPL.

Saw my new bud Anna there and I even got to play a funny Wii game called Big Brain Academy where you solve a series of "problems" very quickly and you are up against someone.

Am now going to explore Portland since it's such a gorgeous day!! Thinking about maybe the Art Museum, definately going to find some chocolate places, and maybe the food carts!! I'll let you know what I discover later!

Ann Arbor Public Library
Mooresville Public Library

Day 2! Preconferences!

Ah the Preconferences. What a fun time to delve into a topic and really get deep into the nuts and bolts of a thing. Today Diane had the pleasure of starting her preconference with a breakfast at 7:30. I was the lucky one whose preconference didn't start until 8:30, so she left first and I followed later. I left the hotel around 7:30 and went next door to have a quick breakfast at Starbucks. From then it was a short walk to the MAX and I arrived at the convention center without any problems (Yes Joe. I took the train by myself and I'm still among the living).

My session was about Advocating for Teens. What a great topic! I'm not going to bore you all with the details but suffice it to say that I learned a great deal about tools to use to help you in your advocating, the purpose of advocating, and the difference between advocating and marketing. Some technical tools we learned about include Google Forms, Twitter Search, and Google Search...all really neat tools that can be used to learn more about your community and therefore make you a better advocate. We talked about collaboration, partnerships, and even were pretty much forced (although for most of us it wasn't too bad) to develop a partnership with someone in the room. I met a great gal from Iowa named Anna - a teen librarian who is just 10 months on the job! We even had lunch together at a fun Portland restaurant called Burgerville. They had some items made from local produce and rosemary french fries and I threw all Lenten Resolutions into the breeze and had a Cherry Chocolate Smoothie. SO good.

While at lunch we met Douglas, a really interesting CELEBRITY who writes for the New York Times Book Review! He was at the conference presenting on Graphic Novels and was a wealth of information. He joined us for lunch and even let me get my picture with him! (After looking at his blog...he went to a Magnetic Fields show...I wonder if he likes them? I myself am a fan!)

Afterwards Anna and I went back to our preconference where we finished our afternoon learning about telling the Advocacy Story for your library and we also swapped emails with another woman, Angie also from Iowa (but across the whole state from Anna).

I texted Diane and we found each other and after a short pow-wow we decided we'd try to find Historic Irvington! Portland style, that is!

And find it we did. After just about 15-20 minutes of walking we found a Historic Irvington sign, American Four Square homes, Bungalows, Queen Anne houses, and even a quirky resident who raised chickens and thought it was great that we were having a little adventure finding a true "sister neighborhood" to our beloved Irvington. Did you all know that I live in the neighborhood where Diane grew up? I do and it's called Irvington!

Walked back to the MAX and hopped on planning to go back to the hotel, but I happened to see a Nordstrom Rack and hustled Diane off the train so we could shop at this Nordstrom Outlet. Bought a new spring jacket and started my Christmas shopping! Yeah for great deals! Back to the hotel to get rid of our bags and consult our maps and call out husbands and we were back on the town where we walked a little over 1/2 mile to a fun pizza place called Hotlips! Yum yum pesto breadsticks!

Oh yeah! One of the neatest things we saw today was Mount Hood! We saw it plainly from the MAX and it was a beautiful site to be able to see it so perfectly from our train. Really loving the walkable city of Portland!

Burgerville
Yalsa
Google Alerts
Portland Irvington
Indianapolis Irvington
Hotlips
Douglas Wolk
Magnetic Fields and Other Stuff

Arriving in Portland...

March 22, 2010

Well, Diane and I arrived in Portland without any major mishaps. Aside from Diane being a tad bit late at the airport this morning (Joe kept texting me: "Call her!") and me leaving my jacket on the plane (tried to get back on the plane and was stopped by a very "on-it" flight attendant who probably thought I was a terrorist...she had to go retrieve it for me) we made it here! We got to see Mt. Hood from the plane which was absolutely INCREDIBLE. Diane was like "Look!" and I was like "It's so high!" which was really a pretty dumb thing to say about a mountain that is over 2 miles tall.

We collected our luggage (my tiny toiletry bag and Diane's Godzilla bag) and made our way over to the greeting table where we were given free rail passes to travel on MAX, the light rail system here. Thank you PLA! Everyone was very friendly and helpful as we made our way to the rail and validated our passes (definitely got that done after being told literally a thousand times to do it). Our ride on the rail was about 30-40 minutes and we took in the sites of blooming flowers and glimpses of sun through the clouds as we chatted with other librarians from Michigan and Illinois who were also here for the conference.

We followed our maps, our directions, and the advice of the MAX rail attendant and walked the 5 short blocks to our hotel. Downtown Portland is indeed very walkable. We got checked in and discovered that our room only had one bed! I told Diane that it was cool! I grew up with sisters afterall, but we decided to try for some other solution and settled on a roll-away bed which Diane graciously decided to take leaving me with a giant king-sized bed and my Button Cat who always travels with me (see www.sasuzanne.blogspot.com).

We were starving by then, seeing as it was about 5:00 in the evening at home, even though it was only 2:00 here so we headed over to an Italian restaurant and had our fill of good pasta, tea, and sparkling blackberry flavored water. :) Over our meal we decided to see the Main Branch of the Portland next. When we asked the waiter how close we were he was like "um...it's right over there." And once we started walking it was very close.

So the Main Library was amazing. They had a rare books room, a balcony, a glassed in dome, many very nice librarians, an exhibit about China, and guess what famous Children's Author is from here? Thinking...thinking...

Beverly Clearly! They had a statue about her in the Children's section! The Children's section also had a very cool wrought iron tree as well as these neat miniature shadow boxes full of tiny little people...one was the alphabet and had little mini things for each letter. Too cool. The librarian also told us they have little statues of Ramona in a park somewhere in Portland.

The rest of the library was very traditional and grand with the old card catalogs still intact and globes of planets and wood paneling and big roses designed into the carpet. They had large curved windows that let in all kinds of light as well. Here are some things we learned about Portland while in the library:

1. Portland blocks are only 200 feet, so 10 of them roughly make a mile.
2. Portland is a city of many bridges and one nice librarian will show you a bridge book from the reference collection without you even having to leave your driver's licence!
3. Irvington is indeed a historical neighborhood here, which is really cool, since I grew up in Irvington, only my Irvington is in Indiana.

After the library we walked over to Powell's Books. OMG. Amazing. People, it was a mecca for librarians! Half-Priced Books can eat their hearts out because Powell's was like them a little bit but on major steroids. I bought a NOEL STREATFIELD book that I haven't even read yet called Party Shoes and I bought a journal to take notes in during my conference sessions so I don't forget any words of wisdom during our time here. I can't say enough about Powells. SO MUCH FUN!

After that we walked to "The Big Pink"...The US Bancorp Tower known for it's pink hue and had drinks and bruchetta at their happy hour (recommended by a fabulously fun librarian at the Main Branch). I got some pics of the view and we both had a drink and chatted about very important work related things like how much my niece looks like Ramona Quimby and how David, Diane's grandson should "give peas a chance."

It was getting dark so we walked back to the hotel (only getting turned around for just a block) stopped at Payless so Diane could get some new kicks, we both called our hubbies and now I'm writing a PLA blog (which you are reading! How cool is that) and Diane is reading about Brew Festivals and writing postcards. See you tomorrow!

PLA Conference
Portland's Libraries
Beverly Cleary
Mt. Hood
Powell's Books