So I have been back to reality after the ARLIS conference for a week now. You may ask why I say back to reality, I have a young son, and after spending three great days in picture perfect surroundings, returning home to a little man who wakes me up twice a night, is a bit of a shock to the system.
As for the conference it was great, ARLIS Rising to the challenge, and it really did cover a lot of the challenges facing art librarians today. This is the first time I have attended an ARLIS event and would do again, it was well organized and not as rushed or as busy a CILIP umbrella, though I do understand they are pitching at difference audiences.
Each day was had great speakers, plus there were relevant workshops, that I struggled to choose which one to attend. I opted for the negotiation workshop, which was really interesting practical session, based on the side of personality types and when negotiating you need to think about the types of people you are dealing with to get the best result. I'll definitely use this next time I have to, not only negotiate with others but also delegating, to team members. The other workshop was increasing your online personality. Another very interesting topic, it might have taken a week to even start putting it in to practice, but at least I am trying.
On the first day there were also a series of visits, I choose the theater collection, I was expecting to see just a load of costumes, but it was so much more, the amount of content they had was outstanding. Books and play script with images drawing in them from the head costume designer and other really special objects with a fabulous history and social story to tell.
Overall the conference was excellent, there was a really interesting session on augmented reality and the use of QR codes, plus a session from The Hive in Worcestershire, which is a one stop shop for all library and council needs combined with the cities university library. The idea is complex but excellent, every decision needs to be taken for the good of everyone, not an easy task, when the public and the university students have very different needs. Or as it was explained, very similar needs, just said in different words. Plus a session on open source resources, such as ItunesU.
Great conference, now I need to write up one of the session for ARLIS newsletter.
One of the other things that really impressed me was that at the moment there are loads of Gromits (from Wallace and Gromit) around the city of Bristol, painted and decorated to look amazing, I manged to see quite a few, we at least I thought it was quite until I found out there was 85 in the city, my rather lame 6 weren't really worth mentioning.
