LITA Forum 2007 Summary and Thoughts

LITA Forum 2007 was extremely interesting. David Lee King and Jeremy Frumkin’s keynotes were both thought provoking.
A big thumbs up on the no bits of paper to carry around. Every year I go to Annual I weep over the trees killed. A future conference planning chair said that she and several others missed the paper schedule, to which I said “okay, so can’t we have an opt out of paper box on the registration form? That way both groups (paperful and paperless) can have it their way.”

Free wireless in the hotel everywhere except the conference sessions was a semi-debacle. LITA bloggers were out in full force and Griffey with the help of a Mac and the right cords made sure the keynotes were captured and podcast to the world.

The best presentations I attended where Jennifer Ward’s presentation on University of Washingtons’ implementation of WorldCat Local and the first half of University of Rochester’s presentation on User-Centered Research and Library Technology, which discussed how to do user-needs assessment in ways I hadn’t conceived of before. I really need to get my hands on the book Studying Students : The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester that talks about their research. Not so much for their results but their methods which interest me a great deal.

But probably the best part of the conference for me was just getting the chance to talk to colleagues at different institutions. I learn more from interacting with people than hearing them talk sometimes and I really appreciate the time that some of my colleagues gave me at Forum to chat and let me ask them questions.