KLA Recap

The Kansas Library Association Conference was held last week in Wichita.  This year’s theme was “I Geek Kansas Libraries”.

This year’s conference was packed full of excellent sessions and speakers.  One of this year’s highlights was the Opening Keynote by R. David Lankes.  The keynote was entitled:  World Domination Through Librarianship.    The keynote was both inspirational and humorous.  The confernce described the keynote like this:

In an era of battling walled content gardens, disruptive change, social media-enabled revolutions, and truthiness there has never been a greater need for librarians. Sorting through mountains of data, ensuring a civil discourse, repairing the fragmenting commons are vital for our country, and librarians are the right profession to lead the way. However, this is not a simple matter of declaring ourselves prepared, it will take new skills and a new librarianship not focused on buildings and artifacts. This talk lays out a foundation for this new librarianship, and a call to action to save the world.

Lankes is also author of a book entitled The Atlas of New Librarianship, which SWKLS has in its professional collection.

If you missed his talk or want to relive it, Lankes posted slides as well as audio from his talk on his blog,  www.davidlankes.org.

Sharon Moreland from the Northeast Kansas Library System wrote an excellent summary of it on her blog.  Sharon also wrote excellent notes from all of the sessions she attended.  They are all on her blog, http://lybrarian.wordpress.com/.   All of the posts related to KLA can be found on her blog under the tag, #kla2012.

Technology was a hot topic this year at conference and some of my favorite sessions were about eReaders and handheld devices.  One of these sessions was Technology Changes Everything: How People with Disabilities Use Technology by Ann Pearce from Manhattan Public Library in Kansas.  Ann’s library has an Assistive Technology Center where disabled community members and their advocates can come and learn how to use technology to help them in their everyday lives.

Important Conference Links:
Conference 2012 Session Handouts
Kansas Library Association Facebook Page (several pictures from conference have been posted here)

What was your favorite thing about conference?