On my way home from my PVAAL meeting...

Oops. On my way home, I was so excited about library stuff that I ran a red light and got stopped by a cop. So, He asks me for my license and reg and asks me: "Where are you coming from?" And I say: "Do I really have to tell you, you're gonna laugh at me". And he says: "Well, no, not if you don't want to". And so I told him: "Well, I was at a meeting of Academic Librarians." and in fact he did laugh. So I proceed to tell him that I was so sorry for running the red light and I'm usually very careful, but I was so excited about some stuff that I heard at the meeting that I must have just missed seeing the light. And by this time he was laughing so hard at my honesty routine that he let me off with a warning.

Truthfully, I knew he'd let me off. Who would ticket a librarian driving home from a meeting?! It was pretty funny though.

PVAAL meeting

I am so psyched! I went to a PVAAL (Pioneer Valley Academic Librarians) meeting tonight and I feel so energized. I talked to a lot of librarians and got so many ideas. It was totally great. I think I haven't been so excited by new ideas in a while. G. told me about how he's using libguides to do instruction in his library. I heard a great talk about adjunct faculty, publishing and, generally, being excited about reference and stuff we do in libraries by one of my favorite professors from Library school. Here's a link to her talk

It was so nice to be around librarians who are excited about what they do and who come up with new ideas and thoughts about how to get our services to people. It was really refreshing and it made me realize that it's totally nice to get out in the world and talk to other librarians, not about the piddly politics in our libraries or how much work we have, but about what excites us about librarianship and how we can use new technologies to reach people...
not to mention, older 'technology' or no tech at all. I was talking to two librarians after the shindig and I mentioned that I created a del.icio.us account for one of my departments, and I emailed it to them with instructions on how to log in and add resources, etc. and they didn't respond to my email. And (duh) my librarian pals said (in much nicer terms): "get off your ass and go to them. Make a connection. Have lunch and discuss it". Now why didn't I think of that?!