I didn't anticipate the Saturday programs being as good as they were. "Librarians are the interior decorators of structured serendipity" declared Joann Sparks from Sloan Kettering. She showed several cool things that they're doing and one of them was to show an image from a publication of a Sloan Kettering researcher on the library's website. The image changes all the time. I think that's a wonderful idea and seems like something very doable for us here at Penn State. That would be a great thing to show on our plasma screens too, wouldn't it? The next two speakers talked about ways in which to foster innovation in libraries, be it infused throughout the organization or centered in a "skunkworks" type of atmosphere. Finally, Lynn Connaway from OCLC talked about the research her group conducted on peoples perceptions of libraries. As my friend Barbara Winters used to say, "there is no end to the good work we have to do here."
I left Charleston with some perceptions. First, the conference is so different than it was fifteen years ago. This time it was about users, and uses of libraries, assessment, books, ebooks but all geared towards engaging our users and facilitating their work. Gone forever, really, are the days of public and technical services being different -- we all have the same goal. I also am excited about the creativity of our profession. We are doing some amazing things regarding reaching out to our students in social networking environments to creating new open source library systems, to our digitization efforts. There are lots of cool things going on. It was fitting that I spent 45 minutes at the airport talking to my daughter about her assignments at GSLIS at U of I. Doing things like brushing up on SQL, creating programs to examine search transaction logs to see how users are searching, learning about the economics of information, and possibly going to Sao Tome to create a computing lab. Whoa, what amazing graduate school experience she's having. Talking to her, and listening to the programs at Charleston, and finally getting excited about my own research agenda was well worth the trip.
Hopefully my luggage will join me at home today.