OLA recap

Oklahoma Library Association

1907-2007

100 Years and New Frontiers

I would have posted this from OLA yesterday, but I had a few issues with the wireless connection (only available in certain places, being 'timed out' and not being able to publish a post I had spent 10 minutes on, etc.)- such is life.

I'm back in Tulsa now, and am letting everything from yesterday soak in. The vendors, the workshops, the people I met, the state's 100th birthday.

Some of the awards and aknowledgements at OLA:

• a Presbyterian group in Chickasha awarded for Food and Fun program
• the marketing committee for the Read Y'All posters campaign
• Jennifer Kidney for the "Let's Talk About It Oklahoma" program
• Jennifer Paustenbaugh for the "Oklahoma Library Legends" program
• Rosemary Moran for her dedicated service to the Sequoyah Book Awards
• the endowment committee was recognized for raising $120,000 toward the goal of 0ne million dollars
• Senator Mike Morgan was recognized as being a Library Champion

After the awards Stephen Abram spoke, and some of the things he said are here summarized (my thoughts are in italics):

Library 2.0 is here- are you ready? You've gotta be in it to learn it. Don't study to death- instead Pilot and Play

What can librarians do that Google can't? Have you ever seen a child enter the library, run across the floor and give Google a big hug? (Keep up those) childrens' story times

People are still reading quite a bit- stop trying to protect the book. Start protecting the library and the staff

We have been teaching Boolean for over 20 years and we failed. We need to integrate Boolean in the searches, behind the scenes

In 30 minutes of Google, the same amount of questions are answered that it would take 8 years of all librarians in the world to answer. Read that again and let it sink in

Google does WHO WHAT WHEN and WHERE, and they do it very well- let them. We need to be doing the HOW and WHY

Britannica and Wikipedia- both have errors, but Britannica has only 5% of the content of Wikipedia. (We are delusional if we think students are going to stop using this resource)

85% of the newspapers in the US are owned by 5 (Republican) families (I need to verify this...)

Google will be soon able to charge 4 times as much per ad because they will know your GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION when you type in a search

The OCLC perceptions report states that 95% of respondents value libraries, but they also value online search. The 'library' word is a brand. How will we differentiate ourselves?

Library Thing is the 4th largest library in the US- and it is all people at home cataloging their books!

The 'magic sauce' is the social web- let people talk to each other. Let them tag books and post comments on your site about their reading and research experiences.

Put your content where the users are- brand yourself

Karen Schneider says the User is Not Broken

Finally, if you want to know where you can start learning about some of these social networking tools, go to the page that tells you about the Learning 2.0 project at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. You can get 'up to speed' in 9 weeks, for only 15 minutes a day! (sounds like an excercise infomercial :-))