Ohio Library Council Northeast Chapter Conference

I attended the Ohio Library Council 2008 Northeast Chapter Conference on 19 March 2008. I think by far this was the best chapter conference I've attended.

The first workshop that I attended was the Many Genres of Christian Fiction that was presented by: Claudia Zimmerman, Holmes County District Public Library. There were many handouts for this workshop. The genres that were discussed were: chick lit, mom lit, lad lit, lady lit, contemporary fiction, fantasy & science fiction, suspense, legal thrillers and Anabaptist fiction, romance, westerns, historical and end of times/apocalyptic and biblical fiction. Since Hudson has a strong Inspirational section and I am unfamiliar with many Christian authors, I appreciated attending this workshop.

The second workshop that I attended, Under the Radar: Great Books that didn’t Make the Bestseller List, was absolutely amazing. The speakers were phenomenal and the handouts were comprehensive. The speakers gave impressive and quick book talks for a number of books. The subjects were Whodunnit? (Suspense/mystery books that were sure to keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat), It’s All About the Girl (female protagonists), Crazy Family Tree (quirky family stories), and Don’t Label Me! (books that really didn’t fall into any particular category). I got a lot of great ideas for book displays as well as handouts.
One of their handouts was a very small booklet that was made up of bookmarks folded over. It would end up using three pages of paper for each booklet. They asked everyone at their library for a list of their ten favorite books. I would like to do this if at all possible. It would be a neat thing to do amongst the staff and could be paired with the staff picks display downstairs. This was one of the best RA workshop that I have attended. This was presented by Carol O’Keefe and Stacey Hayman, Rocky River Public Library.

The third workshop I attended was Using WordPress for Internet Publishing (Laura Solomon, OPLIN) I appreciated observing a WordPress installation and configuration. If the Library would ever want to delve back into the blogging sphere, WordPress would be a great avenue. We could host it ourselves and not have to rely on any other company to host it. If anything, I learned a lot about the backend of WordPress.

The last workshop I attended was Writing and Crafting Your Virtual Library. It looked at how one presents their library on the Internet, ie. the face of the library is the library website. This was presented by Kathy Schnell, Cuyahoga County Public Library. Website usability and natural language (non jargon) can assist in creating a tool that can be informative and enhance the desirability of the library as an organization. Since I know that the Hudson Library is contemplating a website upgrade/update/overhaul, I felt this was very timely.

I obtained the handouts for Multigenerational Gaming @ Your Library. This seemed like a great program for Teen librarians and those that would like to plan cross generational programming involving gaming. I liked that the handouts included budget breakdowns for different funding levels and his proposal to the board.
I think Wii golf or bowling tournaments would be a hit for older patrons and would love to try it out.

I also got the handouts for Catch the Reading Bug: Update on Statewide Summer Reading Program in hopes of sharing this information with the Children’s Department. While this does not apply to my area, I was primarily hoping to grab information that would be useful for other departments.

The Northeast Chapter Conference continually has amazing workshops and I often find myself scrambling to grab handouts for those workshops that I’m interested in attending but can’t attend since I can’t be in two places at once.