Wednesday PM

Well -- the wireless connection kept cutting out on me last night, so here's a belated report from yesterday afternoon and evening.

After lunch, I attended Paula Ganyard's fun (and informative) program, "Browser Wars," all about the differences and similarities among the major web browsers. She gave a brief history -- it's amazing to think that Mosaic was just 12 years ago. I remember how much fun it was to see pictures from the web; now I wish most of them would go away. Ah well. Paula's outline is on the web (of course) at http://www.uwgb.edu/ganyardp/talks/browsers/

The WLAF program, "The Campaign for Wisconsin’s Libraries: What’s In It for Your Library?" was "an overview of the exciting new "Campaign for Wisconsin’s Libraries," an ongoing state level campaign to promote a wider understanding of the value and importance of Wisconsin’s libraries." The (developing) website at: http://www.wisconsinlibraries.org/.
The tagline they're using is "Support Wisconsin Libraries: Keep us all in a better state," which works pretty well for all different kinds of libraries. I'm really impressed with the work of the Foundation and hope we can help them reach their (ambitious) goals.

So then I had to go over and put a couple of bids on things at the WLAF Silent Auction. There's a lot of fun stuff there and, of course, it's for a good cause.

The keynote speaker, Martha Teichner, from CBS News, was great too. Her talk, about libraries she has known and loved, was a good reminder of what libraries mean to people. Plus, she has a terrific voice.

Stopped in at the SLIS/SOIS reunion in time to see most of "The World's Fastest Librarian," a DVD by the fun folk at SLIS. It's worth seeing if you get the chance.

The Awards Banquet is always a highlight of the conference. As just about every recipient noted, even the individual awards are about group efforts: it takes a lot of people to create, maintain, and support an award-winning project or library or (even) librarian. Celebrating all the great stuff we do is always worthwhile. More on the awards at http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/awards/.