Comments on: Computers in Libraries: some initial reflections

By: Llyfrgellydd » Conferences: it’s a personal thing?

Llyfrgellydd » Conferences: it’s a personal thing? — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:23:47 +0000

[...] of these discussions, I’ve found myself reflecting on a blog post I wrote several months ago – the one in which I wrote about bringing something back from conferences. I wrote that we tend to [...]

By: See Also… » What we are bringing back

See Also… » What we are bringing back — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:23:18 +0000

[...] Harris asks some good questions about conference attendance in her post Computers in Libraries: some initial reflections. As she points out , she’s picking up a bit on what Ryan Deschamps was getting at in November [...]

By: Ryan Deschamps

Ryan Deschamps — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:18:42 +0000

Although I agree that conference attendance is probably worthwhile, I do not think we can take this assumption lightly. When I wrote the original post, the question was not whether strengthening social ties was important, but whether spending thousands of $$$ to do it was really necessary anymore. In other words, we need to consider the differential between the strength of social ties made on Twitter and those made during a brief stay at a conference. Today, I think there is enough of a differential to justify the cost (both in economic and environmental terms), but the marginal rate of return of that “something” is declining very very rapidly.

Locality is another concern I have. I worry about what libraries and librarians do to increase status on the global scale, sometimes at the expense of the local. How can we spend alot of coin promoting ourselves and our libraries to other libraries and librarians, but at the same time complain about how our customers do not know enough about what we do? Again, remembering that cross-pollination of ideas and networking can happen increasingly through social media, why shouldn’t we put some of that “we want to promote our library” conference money into a local campaign that will ultimately serve users?

Then there is just the other question of equity. Should I be let out of the fun of conferences on ethical terms simply because I am proficient with technology?

Thanks for bringing this up again. I think its an important assumption that constantly needs to be challenged in this century.

By: Iris

Iris — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:46:36 +0000

Hear hear! Like you, I think solidifying a network is an excellent reason for going to a conference. Like you, I also think that bringing “something” back is a good idea.

But I think the kind of “something” also depends on your workplace. If your library believes in funding “professional development,” and if they make that clear to you, then I think inspiration and network solidification may be justification enough. Still… you wouldn’t want socialization to be the only goal.

By: Mike Harris

Mike Harris — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:39:08 +0000

Although my position isn’t in the library field and attending conferences is not an attribute of my job, I think that an employer does benefit from an employee strengthening emotional relationships with other people in the field.

I would, for example, exaggerate the issue to see if the logic holds. Exaggerate the benefits by pretending that the other person is a relatively famous person amongst geeks (Feynmann, Neil Gaiman, etc.). Would a library benefit from an employee enjoying themselves in a socializing setting with that individual?

If so (and I would argue the answer is yes), you can then scale it downward to we “small folk,” normal humanity. By strengthening emotional relationships with colleagues in the same field, looking at it from a coldly pragmatic perspective, you increase the resources and knowledge available to you — and thus to your employer. Simply by virtue of an opinion, if you have adopted a personal work goal of, say, adopting a new help desk interface, you have more social resources available to you as a person to gather opinions, get warnings on lemons, etc. Such a situation can only then help your employer.