Put just under 10,000 librarians in a convention center and you’ve got yourself some highly classified and neatly-arranged pandemonium. That was the case last week in Minneapolis at the Public Library Association convention.
It’s an opportunity to learn techniques from professionals who fight the good fight in larger operations and different states. We attended meetings such as “Working with Difficult Patrons” and (for our upcoming Eastern Avenue branch) “Libraries as Greenbuildings”.
There are hundreds of vendors (like the party people from Bowker above) vying for the library’s attention, specializing in the items we check out to you folks, as well as the technology we use behind the scenes. One of these vendors brought in renowned mystery novelist C.J. Box to talk in their booth (in the picture on the right).
In addition to learning about the awesome reverse discrimination in men’s restroom lines at a library convention, I learned these folks aren’t too shy with the free snacks and tschotkes.
Next time, some cool Minneapolis Public Library hardware and views of the Twin Cities.
When thousands of computer guys and gals put their competitive spirit into an effort, you benefit and companies suffer. Here is a greatly abbreviated list of some excellent programs you can install on your computer for free, thanks to their efforts testing and writing code to one-up one another. Depending who you ask, some folks find them better than their paid equivalents.
The Davenport Public Library is happy to announce the creation of our own weekly-ish podcast. The intent of the program is to focus on the Quad-Cities community and library issues in general.