cpd23: Real-life Networks

It dawned on me over the weekend that I did not post a blog about the real-life or in-person networks I am apart of for Thing 7. You will have to excuse me, I spent most of last week working on my annual report. This is the first one I have had to write, and well it is consuming a lot more time than I anticipated.

I am a member of the America Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the New Members Round Table (NMRT), and the Virginia Library Association. Unfortunately, I have yet to attend one of their conferences. This is something I hope to rectify in the near future. (I'm planning on attending the VLA conference this October.) I am a former member of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and I did have the opportunity to attend one of their bi-annual conferences. In my opinion, in-person networking is more rewarding than online networking. I also had the opportunity of attending the 2009 conference of the American Association of School Library (AASL). I was there volunteering, helping out the professor that I was a graduate assistant for. Even though I was not going into school libraries, I found the conference experience to be most helpful. I was able to meet a lot of wonderful people and I felt I learned a great deal about librarianship during the week of the conference. I would love the opportunity to volunteer at a national conference again. It is very informative to see what goes on behind the scenes.

I am also involved in the Library Exchange Observation (LEO) program. LEO is a group of instruction librarians from the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley area of Virginia. We meet twice a year for mini conferences, where we exchange ideas about instruction, offer feedback and discuss what works and what doesn't in our instruction classes. We also have the opportunity to observe other instruction librarians who are members of LEO. I had two librarians observe me during the Spring 2011 semester and I found their feedback on my classes to be invaluable. I hope to do some observing of my own during the Fall 2011 semester.