LILAC Conference (1)

I've just been attending the Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC) at the University of Leeds, UK. In fact I feel a bit guilty that I've not been blogging it properly as it happened. Especially when I look at the Computers In Libraries 2006 "unofficial wiki" http://cil2006.pbwiki.com/ which includes a big list of people who blogged the CIL conference. It includes Amanda Etches Johnson (http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/), who I'll mention because I've actually met her (at last year's WILU conference in Guelph, Canada), but also to pick up on something she said, namely:

"Blogging a conference makes the experience better. It just does. It certainly was a lot more work to summarize the sessions and add the linkage after the fact, but I’m glad I did it. It gave me a chance to check out the stuff the speakers pointed out as well as reflect upon what I’d heard. I feel like I really engaged with the content rather than having it simply wash over me. I hope you got something out of it too. "

It's interesting. Certainly I've found that blogging helps me to focus on key points, means I record then in a (semi-)coherent way, means I'm more likely to follow up on interesting things I heard about, and I'm more likely pull thoughts and ideas together in the effort to make blog entries that other people might find interesting. Unlike in a library situation there isn't really any pressure on me (as an academic) to report back to colleagues otherwise. So I'm going to be blogging retrospectively over the next few days, but ...

..on the other hand, I have found a conflict between being-at-the-conference and blogging the conference. Perhaps it would be different if I was at a conference where loads of people were blogging, also it might make a difference if I could blog from my hotel room (I don't actually use my laptop for the internet) as I probably would have fired off something late at night, whereas I didn't fancy going down to the hotel lobby to blog at 1am. Anyway, at LILAC I decided that I'd spend my time talking to people and going to all the sessions and the evening events (which were jolly good).

So, I will actually talk about the conference (rather than talking about not blogging it) tomorrow ;-)
In the meantime, the LILAC conference website is at http://www.cilip.org.uk/specialinterestgroups/
bysubject/informationliteracy/lilac/lilac2006

Photo by Sheila Webber: Splendid light fitting hanging in the dome of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. The Parkinson Building, which it is in, was built in the 1930s-50s.