Thoughts from PLA Symposium 2009

I had the opportunity to attend the PLA Spring Symposium this year and have attended the "Libraries Connect in the 21st Century" workshop.  The presenters were Meg Canada - Web Services Librarian from Hennepin County Library (MN) and Leonard Souza who is from the New Media Marketing arena.  The presentation was good and had lots of good nuggets about new technologies mostly focused on Social Networking and how to manage and monitor your organization's place and image in the new Social Media world.  Presentations can be found at: www.pla09.tumblr.com  

Specifically some tools I've found interesting:

• tumbler.com (a new hybrid blogger somewhere between Twitter and a traditional Blog)
  
• vimeo.com (kind of like YouTube but less "cluttered" and works with tumbler.
  
• Yahoo Pipes
  
• Pandora Radio (Web based radio service that tailors songs to your taste)
  
• imeem (Web based radio where you pick the songs)
  
• Jing.com (A free screencasting recording service - built by Camtasia but with few editing options)
• Some extremely funny short YouTube videos from Allen County Public Library (IN) : youtube.com/user/askacpl (look for the ones that are titled "iACPL X.0")

Meg also mentioned a regional "phenom" called Social Media Breakfast which she described as Rotary for Social Media "Geeks".  They are free and in many cities in America.  I'll have to check out if there is one in Indianapolis...

I know Kim Bolan (my wife) was also presenting next door.  She was involved in a Libraries Design for the 21st Century.  I'm not sure yet of the address for their presentation but I'm sure she'll post it at indielibrarian.blogspot.com which is her blog.

Claudia and I both head to the SirsiDynix CODI/UUGI conference which starts on Monday April 6th.  We'll be doing a first unveiling of the new GoLibrary - Materials Vending solutions at this conference.  Once we return we'll be doing our more general launch but basic information is now posted on our website (click our logo on the right).