Kieran’s notes from the back room :
So, a few of the staff went to the Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) Conference this week. It was up in Denver. There were three days of workshops and a myriad of librarians from all over Colorado. The workshops were educational, and the opportunity to share ideas and stories with other librarians was invaluable. Meeting with colleagues helps us figure out better ways to do things in our library. The staff all picked different workshops to go to so we could bring back the most information possible. I am currently attempting to coerce them into jotting down some of their observations for this column. Hopefully next week around this time you will be reading about all the new and exciting ideas they are going to try. I think it is important for our library staff to be active in the larger library world. Shoot, you never know when a good idea or two might present itself or leap out from under a rug. I had won a scholarship to attend this conference from the CAL board. To thank CAL for my scholarship, I volunteered one day to help with the tech set-up. Truth be told, I mainly carried a bunch of things to and fro and tried to look like I knew what I was doing while attempting to hook up laptops to projectors and the hotel internet network. I was also accepted to speak at this conference, and got up in front of a roomful of folks to talk about the great 2.0 technology we use at the John C. and how we get’er done with free and low-cost software and applications. If you want to hear in greater detail what I spoke about at the conference come by the back room and I will bore your socks off… I mean… wow your socks off with library tech things, or you can just say hi and I will restrain myself from my usual geek speak.