Oklahoma Library Association conference

OK- here I am at OLA. I woke up this morning at 4:50 AM to drive from Tulsa to Oklahoma City (had I not been invited to EBSCO's invitation breakfast I could have slept a full hour long- the things we do for free food and networking!)

My first observation is that Stephen Abram is a rock star. He delivered the general session speech, and gave a rousing talk on "Technoschism: Library 2.0- Threats and Opportunities in a Googlemanic world." I can only hope that the 700+ attendees at the conference can take what he had to say and apply it to their daily situations. Later I had coffee and lunch with the man, and tried to pick his brain as much as possible about as much as I could.

My second observation is that there is no wireless connectivity in the presentation rooms or lobby of the Cox Convention Center- I have to sit at an alcove to get a signal. ARGH. And when I do get the signal there is a default tool that 'can't find' the websites I have for my home pages. Seriously, it says "Can't find http://www.cnet.com" and then when you scroll down the page there are links it has found and guess what- on is http://www.cnet.com! BUT, you have to scroll past the ads to find it. Does Cox communications think I am stupid?

Mr. Abram took up that issue- Google and its advertisers skewing the results of searches- and encouraged us to study up and tell people exactly how search engines work. They are bias. Of course, so are libraries. We are biased towards high quality, filtered information. :-)

More later about some of the special awards given by OLA, as well as tidbits from the presentations I attended.