Highlights:

• Katherine Howard’s (Royal Society for the Blind, SA) Is it Possible to be a “DILL” and still get and International Masters Degree in LIS?
• Geoff Strempel’s (State Library of SA) Customer-centric Community Languages purchasing – is your library ready?
• Rose Holley’s (NLA) Trove: More than a Treasure? How finding information just became easier
• LibraryCamp breakout What I didn’t learn at library school
• My Little Pony Christmas DVD!
• Meeting loads of lovely library people

Katherine Howard’s presentation on the International Masters in DILL was exciting! I had never heard of the program and I was pleased to see that it’s something I could do even though I’m not an Australian citizen–that’s a first. The best part of her talk was that she was so encouraging. There are many awesome programs out there, but I think those of us who are new to the library industry oftentimes pass them over, assuming that we haven’t got a chance of being accepted.

In fact, something I took away from most of the talks in the New Grads stream on Thursday was that I shouldn’t give up before I’ve started. That’s something that is easy to type/say, but having just graduated, feeling completely under prepared and overwhelmed with my choices (or lack of them), it’s a good message to remind myself of.

I had no idea Geoff Stremple’s talk was going to be about. Honestly the word ‘purchasing’ made me think the whole thing was going to be incredibly dull. Lucky for me, Geoff was an excellent speaker and his presentation was equally good. I had no idea about the cost involved in providing LOTE resources (probably because I had never thought about it). His library’s strategy of collection development based on customer requests is promising. Do other library’s do this? Geoff also mentioned the cost associated with submitting imported films to to be classified. Grr! I think I need to address this anger I have towards Australian classification laws. Maybe another time.

I also enjoyed the Trove presentation by Rose Holley. I had used Trove already, but it’s always nice to get a tour from an ‘insider’. She also mentioned that it they have very low usage among school children. Why is this?! I think I’ll need to start being a Trove advocate at work. So much of the English/SOSE assessment is based on Australian themes, it would be invaluable for the teachers and students.

A vendor gave me a My Little Pony Christmas DVD. How incredibly wonderfully random is that? Very.

Despite being stupidly shy and awkward, I managed to meet and talk to quite a few new people. I worry that my shyness might come off as aloofness or snobbery, but I really just have no idea how to walk up to people and start talking! I did much better after I plopped myself down on a bean bag. Maybe next time will be easier.

Lowlights

• Constant and sometimes oppressive Apple advertisements
• Aggressive questions/comments from delegates

Walking, talking Apple advertisements everywhere! I don’t mind that you use a particular product, and I think it’s fine if you feel the need to say “I really like X”, but the constant chatter about it got old after about 5 seconds. Yawn.

There were a few moments at LibraryCamp where a delegate got rather…aggressive/snippy/grumpy (not at me). I guess some passion is expected when people are discussing things that are close to their hearts, but I wasn’t prepared for the ranty or the attacky.

Overall I had a good first conference experience. And I liked the bean bags.

That’s Kate (right) and I on the bean bags. Just a thanks to Kate for inviting me to talk and being so supportive!