MLA Report # 17

From Nancy Maxwell of the Virginia Public Library:

Thank you to the NCLC Board for funding to help make going to MLA this year possible for me.

Sharon Lerner Lecture: Everything I need to know I learned from a children's book

Author Anita Silvey contacted many noted celebrities to talk about what children's book influence their lives and compiled a book of their essays. In this workshop, Ms. Silvey explained how she did it and how public libraries could do the same with local community "celebrities" for a One Book, One Community event that models reading at all ages. This is a program we could very easily do at Virginia Public Library.

Trustee Subunit Meeting

It was nice to see the number of interested community members that participated in this business meeting. Also interesting were the success stories shared by various Friends groups when the Friends subunit joined the Trustees group.

E-books: What's all the EXCITEMENT About?

It was interesting to learn how other libraries around the state are handling e-books, what types of readers the libraries are providing (or not providing) to patrons and what types of formats they offer and their take on e-book collection development.

Things in a Flash: The Latest Web 2.0 Tools

This was a fun, fast paced overview of marketing tools for libraries and personal use. I was most impressed with the ease of making and using QR codes using Bitly. Get Glue, a social network for entertainment and Wunderlist, a tool for note-taking were of less interest to me. A number of other tools presented were just not anything that I would probably use.

50 in 60 Book Blast

Always my favorite workshop at any MLA conference. It's fun to hear what other people like to read and to get new leads on books in genres I don't usually consider such as Nordic mysteries, contemporary women's fiction, fantasy and science fiction and horror.

Overall, I thought it was a nice conference. the sessions and speakers were of quality. There were not as many exhibitors as there are when the conference in in the Cities. There were a lot of sessions that I would have like to attend but it seemed they were all scheduled in big blocks of time. I thought there was too much time in between sessions. I guess you just can't get to everything. I enjoyed networking with colleagues.