Sunday Storytime Challenge #4

I got a chance to spend last week at two separate conferences which means I spent a lot of time sharing ideas with fellow youth services librarians.  I spent Sunday – Wednesday at our state conference – PaLA.  I got the chance to present an elementary school age program that occurs once a month and I spent a lot of time with peers from librarians around the state.  It’s been a few years going to conferences and this year was the first time I felt like I really knew a number of librarians and I was comfortable enough to talk to people for four days.  I’m an introvert, so small talk and networking is difficult for me, but this year was a lot easier than it has been in the past.  I believe it’s partially because I’m part of a committee for the state library where I’ve been meeting with librarians from around the state twice a year for the past few years, which gives me an automatic connection at the conference.
I then traveled home Wednesday afternoon, worked Wednesday evening and Thursday and got up very early on Friday to travel to Baltimore for KidLitCon.  This was a different group of people – some librarians, but others are booksellers, authors, and more.  The conference itself is a 2-day conference for children and young adult book bloggers.  I got to meet a lot of people that I’ve interacted with online, but have never met in the real world.  It was a long couple of days, but I learned a lot about a variety of issues relating to book blogging and got the chance to meet some awesome people.
And as for sharing ideas, I love this idea because I’m the type of person to share my own ideas, but to also find out about programs from other libraries that I can adapt for my own, which is one the greatest things about being a librarian – we are all willing to share what we know!