I've just returned from two days at the Texas Library Association Conference in Austin. For the first time I must say I had a really good time there. My previous trips to Austin had left me with the feeling that Austin felt like the least Texan town I had ever been in. This time I didn't really have that feeling. People were friendly and warm. Maybe it was the influence of hundreds of librarians being in the city...
I presented for the first time on the rights research I've been doing for Houston Public Library. I was on a panel of three, the other two being the Vice President of Digital Services at Baylor University and the other being the Copyright Librarian at University of Michigan. When I first was invited to be on the panel and I found out who the others were, my thoughts were, "Oh my God! Who am I to be on this panel. I'm just a student...!" Then my good friend Nicole set me straight saying I'd be fine because I'm the one in the trenches, so to speak, doing the actual work. Well, after hearing the presentations of the others, I realized she may have been a little off on that assessment, but it did what I needed: a little self-esteem boost, a little encouragement. I must say I think I did en excellent job on my presentation. I wasn't nervous at all. I got some laughs in the right places and people asking good questions that I knew the answers to. The best part was afterward, the VP from Baylor handed me his card and said to give him a call when I graduated. I think that was a pretty nice compliment.
At this conference I also go to meet Karen Coyle. How big a nerd am I that I'm still bouncing a little inside when I think about having met her? She gave a great talk about the future of the semantic web. Once I finish my school work, I plan to think more about the ideas I had while listening to her presentation and to read more about the current developments. I agree with her that while the computer nerds, as she put it, have done a lot, it really is up to librarians to help push this forward in the direction it needs to go since we have the experience thinking about how users search and what a useful interface would look like for them and, really, for all of us.
