Saturday -- Jessi

I went to the Exhibits in the morning. It wasn't too crowded, going right at 9, and I got a few good books to read and add to my uncatalogued collection. I spent more time there than I meant to and I ended up running late to Public Computing in a Library 2.0 World. It was out at the Hyatt, which was quite a trek.

Public Computing was not what I was expecting. It really focused on individual libraries in rural areas and how to get funding and what services their patrons needed. I really realized it didn't pertain to me when the speaker started talking about how patrons brought their towers in for her to fix...yes, the CPU for their personal home computers. I can't see doing that. Besides the privacy issues, what about liability?

I found Dave during the break and he introduced me to Georgia, director of the Pierce County Library System. We sat and chatted about we had seen so far, then we all ran off to our next sessions.

I attended two different sessions during the next time frame. I started off in Social Software Showcase, which was really interesting. Each of the online presenters gave a brief description of their project, then broke up into groups so that we could ask questions and see demonstrations. There website is here, and has all their presentations listed.

After they broke up into groups, I headed out to attend Teens in Your Branch Library. Unfortunately it was all information I had heard before. They had 4 speakers from very busy urban libraries that had a lot of behavior problems, and gave tips on how to manage the behavior, help staff understand teens better and how to get teens to invest in their libraries. I am sure it was very useful to others present, but I found myself wishing I had stayed in the Social Software Showcase.