Conference Take-Aways
Yesterday our library hosted the SEPLA Annual Conference with the keynote address given by Becky Spratford, author of the popular Reader’s Advisory Blog – RA For All. Becky gave a great speech filled with some amazing ideas about how to bridge the divide between the physical and virtual library worlds. So many libraries jump into technology before figuring out the best way to navigate or even use the technology to reach out to patrons, but Becky’s presentation gave some wonderful ideas that I’m excited to think about even more!
Becky pointed out that so many library’s have a web presence, but one that is very disconnected from their physical building, when in reality, patrons should be able to navigate between the two rather seamlessly. She stressed the importance of trying just one thing at a time, mastering the skills and then moving forward, rather than jumping into multiple platforms simultaneously. Her presentation was quite long, but simple places to begin include, form-based reader’s advisory such as at Seattle Public Library, Skokie Public Library, and Williamsburg Regional Library, displays (who would have thought to make virtual displays as well as physical displays!), book talks, blogs, and social media. This can all be very overwhelming, but I’m really excited about the potential that these suggestions offer me. Sometimes at conferences you hear great suggestions that will never work in your library (for any number of reasons), but Becky was able to give concrete suggestions that almost any library could try.
We’ve been talking at my library about our website and how difficult it is to navigate, this conference has given me some great ideas as to how to make the library’s website more user friendly and more in sync with the physical library. The library’s book displays are available to patrons in the library, it’s easy to add a display of books on the library website as well.
Becky is by nature a Reader’s Advisory librarian so the focus of the conference was on reader’s advisory for adults, teens, and kids. And a few of the take-aways I really got from this aspect was that staff needs to read! I know I’ve spent this year in particular with my nose constantly in a book, and I feel as though I’ve really kept up with a lot of the literature being published this year, but many of the people working in libraries are uninterested or don’t have time to read (especially things outside their interest), but reading is so important to providing a great experience for the patrons. We need to know our collection and be able to offer suggestions that someone may not know are available. We’re talking about adding a “book club” idea to our monthly meetings, this idea has been discussed on Abby the Librarian’s blog. I think it’s a great idea that allows non-readers (or less interested readers) read only one book, but be able to hear about 10-15 books on a specific genre. I don’t think asking to read one book a month is too much for a group of people working in a library! I’ll be interested to see if this is something that will be discussed at our next meeting.