Day 2: Lust and love in the library

Day 2 arrived and the author was much more at ease with the early wake-up, getting to Hatfield trainstation without missing the turn-off, and finding a good seat on the train. Once in Sandton, I saw Yvonne Halland (an ex-manager at the CSIR) right in front of my and we ended up walking to the conference venue together.

Elmi had reserved a part of the second row of the venue for the social reporters; a very convenient place as most of us were also interested in taking photographs of the speakers in action. The keynote speaker of the morning was Stephen Abram....during his talk I had twitter duty and am once again proud to state that we managed to end up trending with #saoim!

After teabreak I thoroughly enjoyed the talk by Pavlinka Kovatcheva discussing the embedded librarian or as her subtitle blatantly stated : how to get in bed with your users. I had first heard Pavlinka speak as Dr Google at the 2010 SAOIM meeting and apart of having me in stitches with her spontaneous comments, quirps and remarks, I was mesmerized by her lively presenting style, her obvious enthusiasm for the job as well as the extra mile she is walking in her quest to be a topnotch information specialist.

Another interesting talk later in the day was by Liezl Ball titled "If love is in the air....will students put more effort in information seeking?". She discussed challenging second year students to search online for articles about love, with the intention of seeing whether the topic of love as well as the reward of teddy-bear (but no rewards/credit towards exam results) would have an influence on the participation and effort of students involved.

The remainder of the day, although initially hampered by iffy web-connectivity and issues relating to bad acoustics, included many interesting talks and eye-opening information sharing. All in all busy day 2 of the conference and a glimpse into the trending online issues faced by the library profession.

                                     

On the social reporting side I had participated in a twitter feed during the keynote talk, written a blogpost on Michael Stephens' workshop, updated my own blog, played the role of photographer, attended a social reporter meeting, and attended all the presentations. It was becoming clear to me that I might have bitten off more than I was able to chew.....blogging, taking photos, tweeting profusely, absorbing presentation content, travelling to and from Sandton from Pretoria, while still trying to follow the Roland Garros tennis action......I was not quite delivering what I had initially promised.....