Internet Librarian 2009 Pre-conference Thoughts

Today was a great warm-up for the next several day's worth of library geek-out at Internet Librarian 2009! First I attended LibCamp Monterey at the Monterey Public Library and then a workshop on time management with Bobbi Newman and Brenda Hough. I also got to meet some cool people face to face (like Bobbi) who I've "known" via Twitter and Facebook but with whom now I'm enjoying the opportunity to actually get to know a little better. In fact, I also met several interesting folks for the first time today; I hope the rest of the conference is filled with as many interesting new people!

While I heard many thought provoking ideas and comments today, maybe my favorite take away from the day's sessions was a rather prosaic one. I think it was Brenda in my second workshop today who mentioned that there are three "stages" to time management:

1. Planning
   
2. In the Moment
   
3. Reflection
   

I like very much the idea of consciously including reflection as part of the process of any project, task, or experience. Perhaps this idea is attractive because it articulates for me something I already do but about which I wasn't aware. I think the reason I've taken to blogging in general is because it provides an impetus for me to reflect on ideas that interest me in some way. As I think through these ideas to the degree necessary to write a few coherent paragraphs, it helps me to internalize what I've learned. And I think taking the time to reflect on what I experience at professional conferences is the only way to really ensure I take something back to my job with me when I return (though I'd be happy to stay right here in Monterey if there were any way I could manage it!). So count a new dedication to be more thoughtful about my experiences as a first Internet Librarian benefit.

There were a few other tidbits from Bobbi and Brenda's session that I'm looking forward to trying out when I get home as methods for increasing my productivity, too. A potentially big one for me is the concept of just completely shutting down my beloved Outlook but for a two or three designated times a day. The idea here is that the little bell alerting me to a new incoming email will cease to pull my attention away from whatever project on which I'm working. But here's the problem: I love the little bell. I'm seriously like Pavlov's dog about the little bell. It isn't rare that I'll be walking away from my desk, here the little bell, and sit right back down to read whatever "urgent" message has just arrived. Seriously, I can see the point of the suggestion that I eliminate this distraction from my attention and I want to give it a try. I can already tell it won't be easy though; as I write this post, every time a Tweetdeck pop-up appears on my screen telling me that a new #IL2009 tweet was posted, I'm switching over to see what somebody had to say. If this post seems a little disjointed, now you know why. I guess that ought to be a lesson for me?

Bobbi said something else in the workshop that I found very interesting. As part of discussion about the merits of social networking in the workplace (not everyone in the session was convinced of the positive aspects of this), she said, essentially, that when you hire someone today, you're also hiring the collective expertise of everyone in their social network. In short, the argument I heard Bobbi making was that being part of a robust social network of professionals increases our value to our organizations as individuals. That's a really interesting concept that I need to think about a little more.

LibCamp Monterey, too, was a great time. Basically, it was just about twenty librarians (from all manner of libraries – public, academic, corporate, medical, law) having a conversation that flowed from one topic to the next for three hours. We touched on the idea of emerging technology librarians (shouldn't we *all* be following emerging technologies?), customers' expectation of librarians versus our perceptions of ourselves and the roles of different library employees, libraries as community "living rooms", concepts of roving reference, and the importance of being as transparent as possible in decision-making both to our users and to the members of the organization. That wasn't all of it but really just a sample. Perhaps one of the more striking comments from that session was that, as different as libraries are from one another (a corporate library is very much not a public library), we shared remarkably similar concerns, interests, etc.

Right now, as I should at a professional conference, I feel very energized about my profession and am looking forward to building on that enthusiasm over the next several days.