Brushes with Fame

It really is exciting to be at such a huge national conference.  I’m seeing people from everywhere!  This morning I started my day off right J with a run around the Disneyland Park accompanied by a librarian from Minnesota who used to serve on the CYPD board with me!  It was a great fun and we did about 4 miles. 

Took the shuttle to the Convention Center and ran into my Washington friends.  We all decided that it is probably just as easy to walk as to take the shuttle.  It doesn’t really save you any time and the weather has always been great here so walking is a treat.

I did a bit of session hopping this morning.  First up was a session about eBooks.  I was a little late, so I don’t know if they covered this, but I was really hoping to hear how quickly they think eBooks will take over, but mostly they talked about the nuts and bolts of eBooks…how to find money in your budget, streaming vs. downloading, and platforms available.  They really encouraged getting the records into your catalog. 

After that, I scooted over to a session that talked about marketing tools available on the internet.  I just caught the tail end of their discussion, but they were talking about a tool that I think a library created called Gimme.  I believe it is a Reader’s Advisory tool.  They also talked about Goodreads and how they feed that directly onto Twitter and a tool called Hootsuite that gives you a platform to tie all your social media together so you can update them all on the same page.  Some other ideas for connecting readers to books...put a staff review box in your staff lounge and input reviews later, have a copmputer station set up right there for staff to use on their break to review a quick book, make it personal. 

After that, on a whim I visited Houghton Mifflin’s Book Buzz and learned about some new titles including (drumroll please) Lois Lowry’s new book Son, the last book in The Giver quartet.  And guess who now has a free Advanced Reading Copy of said book!  Me!  I’m so excited!  Today was a good ARC day.  I got several freebies that I’m pretty excited about!

My last session before lunch was about programs that were funded with LSTA grants.  They gave some tips for getting the grants but mostly described their programs.  One was a great video project called Rhyme Time that was directed towards parents of emerging readers and another project concerned a product called Brain Boxes.  The second part of the session focused on making your space work for your patrons, especially your spaces for young children.   I was introduced to Family Place Libraries and am really looking forward to learning more about them. 

I attended a luncheon today honoring the great Susan Cooper for winning the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Young Adult fiction.  We each got a copy of one of her books, but the really exciting thing for me was that I randomly got to sit next to the Newbery Award Winning Author, Susan Patron!  She was lovely to talk to and even let me take my picture with her and Sammy.   Susan Cooper’s talk was touching, evocative, and entertaining.  It was wonderful to get to be there for that event. 

It was really a star-studded day.  After that I stopped by Jack Gantos’ book signing area.  I didn’t have any books to get signed but I said hi and reminded him of the time I picked him up from the airport.  He said he remembered my cautious driving and gave me a huge stack of bookplates to put into books.  He squeezed my hand and I was off to yet another heart stopping moment with famous people.  Yes, this time it was Nancy Pearl!  She was sitting in a booth and I just went right up to her and told her that my mother and I heard her speak in Indianapolis and thanked her for being wonderful.  She was great and said she’s be in Indy again soon for the ALSC Conference!

Oh, but the brushes with fame didn’t stop there. I headed upstairs and hung out in a line to get front row seats for Chris Colfer’s talk. I met a real live mover and shaker (hi Renee!) and managed to get front row seats for Chris! He was just darling and funny and so charismatic. And to top it all off, we got free ARCs of his book. Amazing.

One last session to wrap up the day…I attended one about marketing based on libraries that have won the John Cotton Dana Award.  I was a little late for that session as well (things are just so far apart and it’s really easy to get caught up in the exhibit hall) but heard all about the Como Public Library and their successful marketing campaign to draw attention to their unique music materials related to their blues history.  They created a DVD and and had a DVD release party!  Great idea!  Very powerful stuff. 

Some other notes from that session included some ideas for swag to give away (maginfiers, post-it notes, generic business cards, magnets) and they also stressed the idea of focus groups as well.  I'm starting to see informal focus groups walking around my library everywhere!  I just want to grab those people and be like, "would you like to spend 10 minutes talking about the library?  I'll give you a Diet Coke..."  Because you can get really really good info that way. 

Some notes on applying for the award (which we should do because we had a really good marketing plan for our 100 Year Celebration including a new website...coming soon...a new logo...see below...a butterfly release, a new tag line:  "You're Very Welcome!"  and, my favorite, dancing through the ages)...they said to find out what makes your community YOUR community and focus on that.  Also, they said to put all the infomation on one file instead of several little ones all linked together, and here is an idea that came out of this session that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.  You want to get your staff engaged more with your databases?  Offer a quick award for the first staff member to answer a question using the databases.  Don't know where that idea came from but it's in my notes!

It was a long day, so I headed back to the hotel and wound down in front of the pool with Susan Cooper’s book for a while and now I’m being a loser and staying in just to plan out the next couple of days and to update you all on what’s going on.  Oh well.  Sometimes it’s fun to be a loser.  J

Here’s a bit of knowledge I learned at some session today but can’t remember which one:  Don’t go after non-library users right off the bat. Go after casual library users and make them into power users. They will then tell their friends how great the library is and voila!  Word will spread and you will have non-users become casual users and the cycle starts all over again until everyone in your community is a card-carrying member of the library community!  So, something to think about.  Tired.  Good night!