Taking a leaf out of LiberryDwarf’s blog (figuratively speaking anyway).
One Good Thing: Going to Melbourne and meeting up with some of my favourite tweeps. Lovely to catch up with you all!
The reason for the trip was a library leadership conference, and so I also got to meet a number of library managers from around Australia and New Zealand, including a number of Big WigsUniversity Librarians. (For those who may not know, those of us who work in university libraries aren’t necessarily university librarians. In fact the term is a title and usually refers to the Uber Boss of the university library. The rest of us are usually just plain academic librarians.) It was good to hear that many of the issues I am working on in my role are common to other university libraries, and definitely good to swap stories, tips and compare our practices. A few of us amused ourselves by bumping iPhones (and Androids) to share our contacts.
One Bad Thing: The Melbourne trip was very short, and I spent most of my time in and around the hotel where the conference was held. This meant no book shopping at all!
On the other hand, I had my iPad and managed to do quite a bit of reading in the evenings between and after meals and social events. Because there was no wi-fi (pfft) in the hotel I didn’t have any other distractions.
One Thing I Learned: If there was a theme to the conference, it was this: the (university) library is in a state of transition. This was expressed in a number of different ways by the speakers: 1) we need to break the boundaries of the library, 2) the comfortable times are over, and 3) we need to keep our eyes open, and be ready for opportunities to stay relevant. This wasn’t news to me, but I’ve come away from the conference with lots to think about.
Picture shows the scene from my hotel room. Inner-city Melbourne. It was cold and wet while I was there.