lower east side librarian

Yesterday I went to Library Camp, an unconference held at Baruch College, and it was good. Perhaps the best library conference I've ever attended, in fact.

This is a way long post, so I'm going to split it up into three additional sections: blogging and microblogging, effect change, and green librarianship. This is the overview.

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The last session I attended at Library Camp was "Green librarianship: recycle, reuse, both print and e-tools, paper alternatives, green leadership in our inst., collaborate with publishers, hardware vendors." It was conceived and facilitated by Brita Servaes. I was thrilled that the topic was even proposed, and that the discussion was attended by at least 20 people (which is about the same as the other sessions I went to--20 out of 150 people when there were 8 sessions to choose from).

Read more, or you might want to read my overview of the whole day first.

I led this session, so I don't have particularly good notes from it. Andrea's notes should be up on the Library Camp page soon, though.

I came up with the idea for this session that morning, having originally planned on pitching my standard zine librarianship and/or Radical Reference talks. Somehow I figured out in time that Library Camp sessions should be broader than that--and more conducive to an equal discussion, and I hit on "Effecting change at your library: develop a collection (e.g., zines) a program, whatever."

Read more. You might want to read my overview of the whole day first.

I went to Blogging and Microblogging since I'm a bit curious about Twitter. It turns out there's another microblogging tool called Pownce that was also discussed. After the session, I remain curious but unconvinced. One attendee said that Twitter, rather than sucking up more time, as I fear it would, helps you do things faster (e.g. takes away the pressure to write loooong blog posts like this one).

Read more. You might want to read my overview of the whole day first, though.