Report from the beach... FLA Conference

The 2008 Florida Library Association Annual Conference that I went to last week was really good. Not nearly as much “conference fatigue” as I experience at some of them! Of course, just being at the beach helped :-) The theme for this year’s conference was leadership.

I attended the following sessions and can post more details, if anyone is interested. I also have handouts from most of the presentations and a few presenters provided links to online versions of the PPT. Just let me know…
• The Future of Academic Libraries
• “Pls hury it up thanks!!!” Interpersonal Communication in Virtual Reference
• Dealing with non-productive staff! How to train, transfer or terminate ‘em!
• Beyond the Basics- being a leader in providing customized research services for faculty and students
• Technology is easy, people are hard: leading technology shifts in libraries
• Going the distance, meeting the need: using video teaching and teleconferencing technology to enhance library instruction services

My poster session went well (IMO). Unfortunately, they didn’t advertise where we would be- but we did get quite a bit of traffic for mine on Thursday. I marketed more like a vendor- borrowed a Ras table cover from Admissions, free pens & pencils, and CANDY, in addition to my handouts. A lot of people asked “Where’s Rasmussen College?” which gave me the opportunity to talk about the college, library system, and the CD/faculty collaboration experiment I started (emailing the program-specific lists & the form to try and increase input/documentation). I also had the opportunity to talk to a few library students, which I like always find fun.

The exhibits were alright. Stopped by Polaris for another look at the staff end; didn’t get a chance to get over to TLC but we know we like them :-) I have flyers for Wilson Web’s Current Issues in Health and Ovid’s Nursing FT Plus. The Wilson database looked very user-friendly in terms of the interface and results- particularly for 2 yr students.