TLA Conference

OMG! I just realized how incredibly long it has been since my last post! I am sorry I have let my readership down! I will try to remember to write more often, even when I feel I have nothing to say.

Anyway, I went to the Tennessee Library Association Conference this week (it was held in Nashville, TN this year) and I would like to talk a bit about that today. I have to say that it was a great experience. I met lots of great people, learned lots of new things.

I think the most interesting lecture that I attended was the Intellectual Freedom Breakfast on Thursday morning. It was SUPER early (I had to leave at 6:00am to get there) but the food was great and the lecture was interesting. Angela Maycock, the Assistant Director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual freedom, spoke about censorship and challenged books. Apparently the two most common reasons for a book to be challenged are sexuality (especially homosexuality) and religious reasons. This really isn't surprising, but it is still crazy to hear it confirmed by an expert. She also revealed this year's most challenged books, but I can't tell you about those yet, because I don't think that the list has been officially released yet. However, I did write some of the titles down for my own benefit. (I find that when someone tells me I can't read something it only makes me want to read it more.)

Another really helpful session that I attended was about screencasts. I believe the session was called "Casting for patrons" and was taught by two librarians from the Brentwood Library named Maria Sochor and Wendy Cornelisen. These two ladies spoke of their experiences creating screencasts for their patrons and staff. I have been interested in doing this myself, especially right now when I am working on a couple of projects for school where it would be helpful to have a visual record of what I am doing. It seemed, from what they said, that it would be a much more complicated process than I originally assumed. They said their first time using the technology took them about 10 hours to make a five minute video!!! However, I still think it would be useful for my project purposes because I wouldn't have to have anything quite so fancy as the one they did (and I wouldn't have the money to purchase the software that they used anyway).

The best poster session is a tie in my mind. There were two posters that really stood out to me (thought to be fair I don't think that I saw all of the posters). The first poster that stood out to me was about cookbooks and cooking events in libraries. I believe Maria Sochor was the presenter and she had some excellent suggestions for programs in the library such as cooking showcases from local restaurants and the like. I was very impressed, additionally, with the way that her poster was organized and put together. The second poster that I think really stood out was that of Sarah Searles and Sarah Copeland (two fellow UT SIS students). They were presenting a readers advisory sort of network that would allow you to find similar books and follow book trails (in fact, I believe that the network was called "Reading Trails"). Kudos to these two presentations. :)

I think that the lectures and posters discussed here were probably the best at this conference...or maybe I should say that these were the ones that I found to be the most useful in my situation. Of course, I attended many other sessions because I was "session monitor" for most of them, but these were the ones that I found most helpful at the moment.

Oh, and I bought a somewhat dorky librarian jacket that says "Read" on it (I couldn't resist). And I won a free book for sticking around til the end of the conference. Those things were pretty cool as well.