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I just got back last night from the OLC Convention and Expo, where I got to present about changes in technology and education, and their impact on libraries.

This was a great trip, not only because of the awesome crowd at my session, but also because I got to see several friends (including Evan Struble, who helped organize the event, and David Lee King who was delivering the keynote speech).  Big thanks are due to Jamie Mason of Rocky River Public Library for helping make it possible for me to be there.

As a side bonus, I got to hang out with my friend Darrin who I’ve known for ten years, and finally got to meet in person — that’s the power of the internet, people!

If you’re interested in some of the cool things the GSU Library is doing to reach out to the Millennials, check out the presentation I did with the awesome Sarah Steiner.  We presented at the Teaching With Tech two-day conference here at GSU: Connecting with Millennials: How the University Library is Responding to Today’s Students (requires iTunes, unfortunately).  You can also check out  Jason Puckett presenting on Zotero, and Joe Hurley present with Christopher Pell on using demographic data and visualization for teaching and research.

I was also lucky enough to present at the Your Library, Your Community conference hosted by OCLC.  I really enjoyed listening to the keynote speaker Elisabeth Doucett talk about keeping an eye on trends, as well as the telecast of author Marilyn Johnson giving librarians a great pep talk and a lot of hope for the future! They’ve got pictures up from the event, and I’m told that video may be following shortly.  Until then, you can check out my slides:

I had a great time this year at COMO, the Georgia library conference.  I was insane lucky enough to present three times!

First up was “A View from the Trenches: Using GIL-FIND in Instruction, Reference and Marketing,” where I co-presented alongside Lori Critz, Rebecca Drummond and Claudia Shorr, fellow members on the GIL-OPAC committee.  We talked about using GIL-Find, Georgia’s instance of the VuFind open source catalog interface.  We had a great crowd and some excellent questions from the audience.

Next was a great panel presentation on starting up a texting/SMS reference service.  It was a loose, conversational panel presentation with Casey Long, Sarah Steiner, James Stephens, Jeff Gallant and myself.  Again, we had a wonderful group of folks in the audience and some interesting dialogue–it’s always interesting to see what other folks are doing!

Last, I got to take part in the closing keynote!  We got off to a late start (partly my fault for getting my laptops confused!), but Tim Daniels and Buffy Hamilton did a great job.  We all talked about the future directions and possibilities that lay before libraries, and it was very heartening to see that all three of us came to the same general conclusions (we didn’t even share notes, I swear!).

It was a great conference! I got to hang out with old friends and make some news ones. Thanks again, everyone, for making a great COMO!