MLA Three Ways

[social]

This was my second year attending MLA, but my first year attending both days of the conference.  Last year I only attended Day One, had way too many nerves, and didn’t partake in what is essentially the whole point of going to conferences—networking.  I hid behind the sessions and stuffed my face at lunch to avoid small talk.  This time, I convinced myself, I’ll be at MLA for two days, so I’ll be able to get past the anxiety of being surrounded by a million people I don’t know and actually talk to a couple of them. 

My social experience at MLA was completely different than anticipated, though.  My library network has massively grown since last MLA, so I attended sessions with classmates and met people organically—friends of friends.  It is so much easier to grow a relationship when you actually have something invested in the person.  It is also easier to network when you have a comfortable job that you’re happy at—every person you meet is not a potential employer (although they could be, some day) which makes the whole experience a lot less stressful. 

I spent a lot of time hanging out with my coworkers the evening of the first day.  It was so nice to hang out, get some drinks, and just talk about stuff.  It isn’t often that life lends a nice casual environment to get to know your new coworkers—even work lunches have a sense of formality that a hotel bar doesn’t evoke.

[educational]

            I love conference schedules.  Or just schedules in general.  I love planning my day and writing down when I’m going to be where.  Whenever I go to a library conference, I try to balance sessions that are pertinent to my job (i.e., the people paying for me to go to the thing) and the sessions that just look cool.  I am currently the serialist for the Bethel University Library, so I sought out Tech Services sessions to try and gain some nugget of knowledge that I could bring back to show my supervisor. Here was my schedule for the day and what I learned from each session.

Planting Seeds, Growing Collaboration : Duluth Public Library’s presentation on their Seed Library

·         My dream job would be Seed Librarian.

·         Government sucks and should not make awful rules about sharing seeds.

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy: A session exploring a new method of instructional design for reference librarians.

·         I had a hard time staying focused in this session.  They seemed to walk us through ACRL and offered up a few suggestions as to what each of the components could mean, which is very similar to what I’m currently doing in my Information Literacy session, anyway.

Tech Services Time Travel: Examining workflow of the materials services process

·         This session was such a waste of time, and I lamented every minute of it because all the cool kids were at the customer service session taught by my St. Kates advisor.

·         Basically this lady recently became the cataloger at a school where they hadn’t had a cataloger for a while, and developed a “new way” of handling items, which basically just meant changing the order of a few things.  I really should have gotten up and left, but I felt guilty because there aren’t many tech services sessions at MLA and I felt like I had to go to them.

[day 2]

MILE and ALA Emerging Leaders: Why Leadership programs matter

·         Maybe April Youngblood 1-2 years ago would have been super inspired to sign up for every leadership program under the sun, but listening to these people talk about the leadership programs and the applications and such made me feel burnt out and tired.  It might be because I am completing my MLIS at what feels like Warp Speed, lending little to no time for freedom, or the fact that my world has basically become saturated by libraries and the thought of filling what little time I have with more libraries sounds exhausting.  I might revisit these leadership programs after I graduate and have some sanity again.

Putting the “Tech” in Tech Services

·         In this meeting they literally showed us 5-6 different videos of tech services librarians walking around their libraries showing us how they process books when they come in.  It was the second failed tech service presentation and made me feel angry again.

How to Host a How-to Festival

·         Although this was public-libraries focused, it really inspired Erica and I to discover professor’s hidden talents and have a how-to festival in our own academic library!  It was a great end to my day, partially influenced by the fact that they were continuously passing around candy the whole time.

[tech]

            My main tech takeaway was my first experience live-tweeting a conference.  I set up a Twitter account a couple months ago and have enjoyed using it for personal stuff and a few professional articles here and there, but was excited to be a part of the hashtag conference culture. 

            How was it?  Exhausting!  Maybe it’s because my very first session (Plant Library) was spent trying to keep up with Kaia and Tony that I felt really overwhelmed by the experience.  Maybe I would get used to tweeting during sessions in the future, but right now I don’t think it’s for me.  It’s crazy-hard to multitask in that way and still glean something from the speaker in front of you.  Tweeting is harder than just taking notes.  Not only are you adding to the conversation, but you’re retweeting and following the conversations that everyone else is having at the conference and in your sessions, too. It made life feel like Eggers’ The Circle and made my brain feel fuzzy.  I think next time I go to a conference I will just try and send the occasional tweet between sessions.  Keeping up with everything is just not worth it!