CIL- thoughts after day one

CIL- First day of presentations completed. Whew! What a day… there are lots of people here…lots! I think I heard that there were like 3,000 plus… if not that many it feels it! Sessions are almost back-to-back so we are getting lots of information. What’s hot? The rooms that are overflowing seem to be those that are talking about implementing all the new social programs into our webs. We know how to blog, know wikis- now how do we get ourselves out of blogger and onto our websites.

The pursuit of teens continues but the gaming presentation by Jenny Levine didn’t fill the room. Not that her talk wasn’t wonderful, it was. Bt people were too busy trying to get into the web design presentation by Elllyssa Kroski .Of course Michael Stevens had ID’d it as a not to miss program but still gaming is the next big thing with all age groups…..this group might already be there. It’ll be interesting to see if gaming gains more attention at ALA.

I like a phrase being used, “working in the white space”. As marketers in libraries, that is where we usually are anyway. You’ll hear me use it more often for sure. I can’t say there were any “blow me away” moments yesterday. Interesting information but I think we are kind of at the same place with last year the year of blogs and wikie really exploding on the scene and this year we are all just struggling to figure out the mechanics of time and implementation. Still, a great conference so far, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still searching for the “OMG I’ve GOT to do this now!” moment….

I loved hearing about the new tools that allow us to present our information in a browsable form- Django that Derek Willis spoke about. That came very close to my "OMG moment” . People (okay teens) are creating their own content, they want to mash and mod it , they want it personal.

Here’s my contribution…. We (libraries) need to create a library widget that people can post on their personal web pages and myspaces. Go a step further- we need to create the skins and templates and music that kids want to post- cool stuff. One idea is to have a widget with great lines from graphic novels, updated daily of source and linking to njlibraires.org . For older groups quotes of the day, first line to novels, interesting facts about authors….anything. We are libraries, keepers of information.. time to get the information out and use t as our marketing tool…. The idea is not to ask people to link to our libraries but to give them the type of information they want and let them link.

More thoughts later….