The second day of the conference was a different day for me as I had the opportunity to present my poster session with Meghan Eccelstone. I also got to learn about other new projects being undertaken by librarians across the country working in different contexts including designing information resources for people with HIV/AIDS, building resources for visible minority users and more. Though I am a bit biased as a poster session, I would certainly recommend this session to future attendees. You can learn a lot in a very short time and it is also a good way to find out about works in progress.
The first session I went to today was given by Hansel Cook, a librarian at St. Mary’s University which looked at “Libraries in wartime.” It reminded me very strongly of an article that I wrote earlier this year. I’m happy to see that others in the profession are looking at the difficult topic of how war affects libraries. The second session I went to was a rapid fire delivery of talks on “what’s cool at your library.” With nine presentations, there’s too much to report on. One specific idea that struck me as great was suggested by Nicole Eva, a librarian at the University of Lethbridge. The idea is to use computer screensavers to display library information (e.g. advertise reference services). They also regularly rotate and refresh these screensavers. It had never occurred me to me to that. There was also a memorable quote on service by presenters from McGill University: I do not care what you know until I know you care. My view is that most (if not all) in the profession care a great deal, but perhaps we need to emphasize that fact more. I rounded out the day by dinner with some friends and attending the annual general meeting of CASLIS.
I haven’t blogged about the many vendors and exhibitors at CLA yet, so I’ll do some of that here. The Privacy Commission of Canada (they use Twitter, YouTube and have a blog – a rare thing in government, but something I hope to see more of) had a booth about their public education efforts.I think they do well in this effort. On the vendor front, I had a look at the new products offered by PlayAway which is all about delivering audio books on custom made players. In schools (and libraries to some degree), these are very popular in the United States to give students other means of accessing content. The company also puts best-sellers and fiction on the devices. The library model at play is that you have the device (physically, it is similar in size to an iPod), plug a standard AA battery into it and then ear phones and away you go. The recording cannot be modified by the end-user (which is apparently a plus for school libraries in the US…). I think there is much merit to providing audio for students. Finally, I also checked out the offerings by Adam Matthew Digital. I has a look at their Grand Tour research tool and was quite impressed with it. The content is stylishly presented, fully integrates social media sharing and combines original content (they commissioned a photographer to travel around Europe documenting sights for the product), original sources and more.
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