FGS: Librarian’s Day
Today was Librarian’s Day at FGS, a day sponsored by ProQuest that included a free lunch. All you have to say to librarians is “free lunch” and they are so there. So many folks signed up the meeting had to be moved to from the Arkansas Studies Institute to the conference hotel, the Peabody, which was a good thing since it got me over there to survey the lay of the land. It also guaranteed that the butter was shaped in the form of the famous Peabody ducks–which didn’t keep most of us from slicing of a piece and spreading it on our complimentary rolls. mmmmmmm
I chose to stay in the nearby DoubleTree since there was free wireless and free parking. Since I am paying my own way, I thought I would save a buck. I’ve always had good experiences at DoubleTree hotels (can you say chocolate chip cookie?). It’s only a block and I can certainly use the exercise–and it’s unseasonably cool for this time of year so it’s a pleasant interlude to walk over.
Today’s schedule was not printed in the conference book that I could find. One of my colleagues had copied the list of speakers and times so I relied on her info to see what was coming next.
This day is designed to provide information to those of us who help family researchers in libraries or archives. We have formal lectures but it’s also a great opportunity to network and see what others are doing. First on the agenda was Russell Baker, recently retired from the Historical Commission who talked about building bridges between our customers and our agencies and our volunteers and our communities–you get the picture. Russell always has lots of excellent advice rooted in his own long tenure as a librarian on serving customers and educating ourselves as well as those we serve. He handed out a wonderful list of “50 Things for Genealogists to Avoid,” adapted from Dr. Le Roy Barnett. Russell very carefully notes in the intro that genealogists and researchers certainly must have a list of pet peeves about librarians and archivists, but this is a list of 50 ways to irritate a reference librarian. He hopes it will be the beginning of a dialogue–I just think it’s an hilarious and accurate list of what we encounter (and deal with oh, so gracefully) on a daily basis. (#49, my personal fave: Send the same request for information to different members of the reference staff in the hope that the collective response to your question will be better than the answer you get from a single inquiry and individual. Never mind that this approach requires numerous persons within a limited workforce to conduct identical searches.)
Next we were to hear about the American Memory Project, but the presenter was ill. Instead we were treated to a talk about collection development policies (I know, a topic only librarians could love) by Susan Kaufman, manager at the Clayton Library in Houston (one of my favorite research sites). I was thrilled to get to hear her speak on this topic because I have just finished teaching two semesters of “Collection Development and Management” for the library school at the University of Oklahoma. Lots of good ideas for revamping the course and for polishing our own collection development policy at the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center.
Lunch brought a presentation from the ProQuest folks–oh, for all the money in the world. I salivated over the Historic Maps Works product, again, having first learned of it last year at NGS. Their newspaper product looks wonderful as well. I was reminded of just how many books they have digitized on their site and they will soon be adding 2700 more titles to their already 26000 unique titles. I was also reminded that I can use their Freedman’s Bureau records for my current study of African American Civil War vets in the 1890 Oklahoma Territory census.
After lunch we heard from Lisa Parry Arnold about the African American databases at Ancestry. She talked about the portion of Ancestry.com that filters for African American data–can I just say I was shocked?! I’ve used Ancestry since the beginning–one of the early home subscribers–and I didn’t know about www.ancestrycom/aahistory. You can bet I’ll be trolling through there for my soldiers. Amazing what you can learn at these conferences.
Final speaker was David Strickland, director of the Arkansas Studies Institute. He talked about his career as a “recovering academic,” which I can identify with. He also talked about building the current center–from two historic buildings with a magnificent addition for manuscripts and research. Someone asked him if there was anything surprising to him as he went through the building process–he talked about how some meetings were devoted to how long the bolts had to be and then went right on to “visioning.” Having sat through a year of meetings planning a new public library building in Oklahoma City, I could certainly identify. He was an entertaining speaker and it sounded like a wonderful building, but my feet wouldn’t endure one more hike.
Now, will I be able to hike back to the Peabody for the session on blogs, social networks and podcasting? Maybe a change of shoes will get me back over there.
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