State Conference Update

A couple of months ago, my mother offered to pay for my trip to the state library conference as a professional investment for me. I signed up, got a hotel room, etc. Then, I received invitations to interview for my position at my college. I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to attend the state conference, as it started the week after I began work. When I inquired about the situation during the interview, the Dean and the woman from national were both very excited that I was attending the conference, and they said I would still be able to attend.

I am now at the said conference, and I am very glad that I have attended. The first two years out of graduate school, I was unable to participate in the state library organization due to financial reasons. I was unable to network, get continuing education, etc. Now that I see what I've been missing, I am VERY sad that I missed out before but am overjoyed that I now have many opportunities before me. Over the past two days I have made several professional connections, several vendor connections, gotten advice on being mentored, on work study students, and on building up my collection. I've also seen library friends that I had not seen in about two years, and I've had a hell of a good time.

I was inducted into Beta Phi Mu, the library honors organization, and I was promptly elected secretary for the state organization. I'm also going to e-mail the ALLA president (past-president as of tomorrow morning), and she will help me get involved with the state library organization.

I've learned that I need to start up a policy and procedure wiki for my library. Circulation automation is REALLY COOL (but probably won't ever be needed at my small college).

I now have contact information for a couple of librarians at "proprietary" colleges (apparently the preferred term), so I will have some contacts, which is awesome.

A high level guy at the state department of education offered to help solve my [state database resources network] problem for me. Apparently I'm just going to have to get an access card for each computer since the [state organization] now utilizes geo location technology and we get our internet through corporate. The woman last Monday wasn't very helpful, but this guy was. I haven't made entries in a few days (my bad), but this was partly responsible for the large bottle of  Excedrin that now sits in my desk. Plus the two classes of library introduction and the grilling I received from one of them (which wasn't necessarily a bad thing).

I have an alumni mixer to attend tonight and will attend the transition workshop tomorrow morning, then I will head home from the beach with my mother. My fiance will be SO HAPPY. She has missed me greatly, and I have missed her as well.

I forgot to write down the web portal for my work email, so I'll have a huge stack of the stuff to go through when I get back. Also, I haven't had time to work at all on my comprehensive collection development policy so there will be that as well. I will receive some training on Monday so that I can set up my library website.