Alice Henderson, SELCO - PLA Scholarship Recipient
Plainview Public Library

I had 2 top-of-my-list presenters at PLA this year. The first was Beth Galloway with her Gamers in the Stacks presentation. She is an independent consultant for child and young adult services in libraries. She advocates for games in libraries saying that they are the medium of choice for millennials (as TV may have been for their parents or radio for their grandparents); they meet the developmental needs of teens; they are literary; and they reinforce new literacies (such as Internet ethics). While her focus was on games for youth, it was also be noted that the average age of a gamer is 33 (which incidentally is also the age of the Atari console). Games can be used to reach all ages, and I’ve seen this firsthand in my library. Each time I implement a new program, whether it’s a Super Smash brothers tournament for ages 10 and up or an adult Dungeons & Dragons group, our library gains new users. They may never check out a book (though some do) but they are still utilizing their library and finding value in what we have to offer.

The second top-of-my-list presenter was Michael Stephens, along with Jen Maney and John Blyberg in The Cutting Edge: The Latest Information on Web 2.0. Jen started with her experiences experimenting with Web 2.0 technologies at Pima County Public Library in AZ. She emphasized that the things you want to try need to fit your library’s mission and that if something does not work, it does not indicate failure. Every library is different. You have to learn as you go and that is okay. Michael talked about the messages librarians send. What are we saying when we post a sign saying that cell phones aren’t welcome? What are we saying when we block MySpace and Facebook? He encourages us to put the heart back into libraries. His slides are supposed to be posted to his Tame the Web site but as of this writing, they are not yet posted. John Blyberg spent some time answering the concerns that some have about Web 2.0. His slides can be downloaded at http://www.blyberg.net/downloads/PLA-032808.pdf.

My last session for the day was Mission Impossible-Build Your Own ILS. They had representatives from the Georgia Public Library System who are up and running on Evergreen, along with a representative from Evergreen. They also had representatives from the Howard County Library in MD who are in the process of migrating to LibLime’s Koha ILS, as well as a representative from LibLime. Koha and Evergreen are open source solutions which means that you do not have to pay for the programs themselves but you do pay if you require support on the product. The thing that catches my eye about this model is that you are not stuck with one vendor. There are many companies that support each of these products and they are competition with each other. You have choices in who you work with and how that will look.