Library conferences get better and better each time I go. Even with a blizzard on the Sunday and catching a cold halfway through, it was such a worthwhile conference for me. I reconnected with some old colleagues from Syracuse, met some new friends from all over the country and I was inspired by the many speakers and presenters that I saw.
I would be lying if I said that meeting LeVar Burton wasn’t the opportunity that pushed me over the edge when I was teetering on the decision of whether or not to go. Chicago in January is a rather difficult sell after all, and Chicago did not hold back. The very day that LeVar Burton was scheduled to speak there was a full on blizzard in the city. Librarians are not deterred by the weather and the shuttle drivers showed a truly heroic effort in taking us back and forth from hotel to venue safely. It is important to remember all of the people who make these events possible.
The celebrity appearances surpassed all expectations, but there were some surprise highlights for me as well. Several Ignite sessions focused on diversity in our collections and librarians spoke powerfully about their experiences and their book suggestions. The Women in Geekdom panel blew me away, and turned me on to several new obsessions: The Brain Scoop YouTube channel with the ebullient Emily Graslie, who spoke on the panel, is an incredible natural science resource. I watched every video on the channel upon returning home and it is not only accessible and fun to watch, but it is incredibly informative and inspiring to see a young woman pursue her passion in science so creatively and pro-actively. I’ve been telling everyone I know about the channel and I can’t wait for more videos to come out. The Nerdette Podcast made it on my to-listen list. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but Chicago public radio host, Tricia Bobeda, spoke passionately about her love of outer space and how she makes the podcast for free. All of the incredible women on the panel spoke so encouragingly about encouraging women to take ownership of STEM fields and urging everyone to include men in that conversation. At the end of the session many of the attendees got up to speak about their experiences with programming STEM activities or “geeky” activities, so I got up my courage to speak about the technology tutoring program I run for seniors in my public library. Most of my students are women and they are being proactively techy too! I got a new Twitter follower for my courage.
I firmly believe in making time to see more than just the venue when I am at a conference in another city and I was lucky to be at the conference with a colleague who feels the same way. Together my friend and I explored the truly excellent Field Museum — Chicago’s museum of natural history. We only had time to visit the taxidermy and fossil collections, but both exhibits were detailed and engaging. One thing that caught our attention were the phylogenic tree illustrations in the Evolving Planet exhibition. They were simple, yet informative diagrams that showed how each species in each exhibit evolved. Even as pretty hard core natural history museum enthusiasts, we learned a few new things…including the word “phylogenic.”
Delayed flights on the last day of the conference meant that I also had time to visit the Shedd aquarium, which is also very good, though my friend and I opted not to buy the expensive tickets to go see the sharks and penguins, so that led our visit to be a little underwhelming when compared with our experience at the Field Museum. Ultimately I came away from Chicago having learned a lot, acquired more books than was strictly necessary, and I did a lot of very useful and exciting networking. A success all around.
Ruth A. Quiles 