Tuesday, April 03, 2007

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Nathan--good info. Glad you took the opportunity to network with the Rock Star--I've heard rave reviews of him before. SEC Suzanne

Anonymous said...

Nathan, that was great to here from you - right out of OKC. Glad you found the guy enlightening. My, you had the opportunity chat with him and pick his brain! You rock.
Hope the rest of the afternoon went well too and that you have a safe trip home.
Gisele