Monday and Tuesday I was in Boston at the New England Journal of Medicine Library Advisory Board Meeting. This was my final board meeting, my three year term has come to an end. It was a very wonderful and illuminating experience and I feel honored and lucky to serve. While on the board I got to work with other librarians and with the fine folks at NEJM discussing issues, trends, technologies, etc. that both librarians and publishers face.
Unfortunately, I have now been playing catch up at home and work since my return and have had little time to blog. Next week I am off to Seattle as a co-chair of the 2012 NPC to visit the hotel, conference center and to discuss things. This will be a turn and burn kind of trip. I get in Tuesday afternoon and leave Wednesday afternoon. Since I will be there only a very short time, I want to know from you what you want to see at the Seattle meeting.
What should we do that you have been dying for MLA to do? Is there something that you keep writing on the feedback forms for MLA to do and we haven’t done it yet? Let me know. I can’t promise you anything but I can look into it.
What sort of fun activities would you like to see us do at the meeting? I firmly believe that we get the most from these meetings by socializing and networking with other librarians. Discovering that so and so at such and such library is doing exactly what you have been trying to do in your library. Even though I think librarians in general are a pretty nice lot, willing to share their success and oops stories it can still be intimidating to approach somebody out of the blue. That is why I think some fun icebreaker mingle type events are great at getting the networking mojo going. So in keeping with the Growing Opportunities: Changing Our Game baseball type theme, what do you type of social events do think might be fun?
What did you like at the last meeting that you think we should repeat again at this meeting? Same question in reverse, what do you think we shouldn’t do?
Finally, for those of you who attend the e-conference and those who are plugged in at the conference… What would you like to see on the MLA Conference home page during the meeting. In the past we have had a Conference Community web page but it has kind of been buried and a little difficult to access during the conference while the main conference page remained static with information that was necessary prior to the conference but unnecessary during the actual conference days. What do you think needs to be featured prominently and what would help your overall experience and increase your connectivity for both e-conference participants and wired in person participants?
Comment back, I look forward to reading them.