Hello everyone,
Year after year the OLA offers great and innovative sessions. This year I had the opportunity to attend the Thursday workshops and found them all inspiring and stimulating.
Placemaking: Turning Your Library into a First Rate Destination was one of my favourite workshops. Anne Murphy from Mississauga Public Library and Gil Penalosa from the City of Mississauga did a great job presenting many ideas (some relatively simple, others a lot more complex) to help position the library within the community and turn the library into an important destination for its citizens. This workshop encouraged all participants to examine their libraries not just in terms of their physical locations (there is not much we can do to move a library to a more desired place), but also in terms of the physical layout. We often get trapped in seeing the layout of our collections and furniture set up as it has been for years and often fail to recognize what can be done to improve/enhance the space and make it more user friendly.
Stephen Heppell's session was truly a treat! Talking to a full house of conference delegates, I know Stephen blew my mind with his ideas and concepts for creativity and innovation.
Overall, the message I took away from this year's OLA had all to do with change in the workplace and within the organization. Many of us find change difficult to handle, however in order to make our libraries, collections and services more attractive, we must stay competitive and innovative, and strive to offer leading-edge services to our customers.
As always, OLA is a great place to network including seeing old friends and making new ones. I had the pleasure of running into some people which I remembered from my days at the Library School and previous co-workers.
Although it's sill very early, I'm already looking forward to the OLA Conference in 2008!
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