Day two of PaLA has been fun and educational! For my morning session, I attended What’s New in Library School, and was inspired by the presenters. It’s only been four years since my own library school experience, but there have been a lot of changes in a short time. Most useful here was the description of what it’s like to take classes online; most inspiring was the brief discussion of information ethics. Employers seeking librarians will have a talented, intelligent crop from which to pick!
Today’s poster sessions included one from fellow Emerging Leader Erin Dorney, who blogs at Library Scenester. Her library is a combination academic-public one, which is intruging, and her poster was about her efforts to promote her library in her capacity as Outreach Librarian. Very cool!
This afternoon’s pick was difficult: Bary Trott and reader’s advisory, or more Web 2.0? Given that there will be a second RA session tomorrow, specifically focusing on non-fiction, I opted for the Web 2.0 option (it’s okay to fangirl fellow librarians – stalking, however, is not cool. 
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At any rate, Three Approaches to Web 2.0 Teaching sounded promising, and was. The evaluation of Web 2.0 tools for creating subject guides, in particular, was helpful for those of us just beginning to explore this area. Given that many of our own patrons require instruction, though, the entire session inspired me to think of different ways to design and teach courses that would help everyone in my service area, staff and patrons alike, develop some new skills.
I was especially intrigued that wikis trumped blogs at Cabrini College for instruction delivery. The presenter pointed out that their blog didn’t receive many comments, which only fuels my ongoing philosophical debate over whether blogs really facilitate conversations or provide entertainment / enlightenment. Is anyone studying this? Hm.
So, here I sit, contemplating dinner and thinking about all the great people I’ve met today, between sessions, and at lunch, etc. There are so many different ways to be of service as a librarian! Listening and gathering information will, I hope, help me be an effective contributor to the Emerging Leaders project to which I’ve been assigned: we’ll be continuing the work done by a prior year’s workgroup, revisiting the marketing plan for LibraryCareers.org. Given my track record for recruiting people to the profession (one more, and I think I get steak knives from Pitt), I think it’s a good project fit. People just don’t know how amazing and diverse librarians and library work really are. It might not be very “traditional,” but anything I can do to help ameliorate that definitely strikes me as worthwhile.
Tomorrow will be an early-start, action-packed session-fest, so stay tuned…
