Librarians Rock!

I say this with as much enthusiasm as I can possibly muster-librarians rock! Yes, it's true and going to a library conference of any kind is an excellent learning experience. My last post was solely about David Silver and his presentation, but there were other speakers at the ACRL conference. Lynn Connaway from OCLC discussed statistics based research and gave user "quotes" answering the question, Why not libraries? The answers were very mixed but the unifying theme appeared to be that the library is not user friendly, like Google.
Well, I believe librarians love Google as much as our users, but we also understand the necessity to catalog and organize information and yes, we do want it to be user friendly. Which is why the presenter, Anne Prestamo from OSU, showing off their new BOSS catalog was so cool. It is powered by the giant AquaBrowser and they have what I think is a "Google like" interface. It has one search box, spelling suggestions, alternative words and subject suggestions, book covers with summary and table of contents and it is very easy to use. AquaBrowser is one of the finest catalog systems I have seen and it is going to be very interesting to watch and see how widespread it is used.
The last speaker I will mention was Adri Edwards from Norman Public Library. She gave us a fast paced breakout session on blogging. Not how to set up a blog or make it look good, but on the rules, regulations, copyright and avoiding trouble. In addition, Adri showed us how to set up open source tracking software to view user visits. It was very cool and she did a great job with her presentation.
So, the conference was cool. If you haven't been to one lately, go for it!