OLA Superconference 2006

Just got back from OLA and am very pleased with the sessions. Even though attendance was minimal for

Technology and Education: Are Library Schools Doing An Adequate Job?

interest was quite high. Not as many attended as I'd hoped but it was successful as an idea and for me, the conference was all about ideas. Jenny Levine presented and has blogged it at http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/ . It has started a conversation that I hope will continue. Michael Stephens posted his presentation at http://tametheweb.com/.
I wonder if this will be a trend of investigation and/or openness regarding what else library schools aren't responding to as well as we feel they should.

Stephen Abram's plenary on

Are Libraries Innovative Enough?

consolidated a number of thoughts I'd had into one presentation. He drew attention to many itches I had been vainly trying to scratch, including one of my favourites: using teams in libraries to drive agendas.

I applauded Michael Stephen's talk on

The Blog People: Librarians Generating Content and Communication

as he tried to get librarians to face up to the fact that our users are now content generators and want to organize their own work, just as we are now content generators and do organize our own work. And yes, we are content generators, and yes, most of the audience had not blogged, had not podcasted (me), didn't use an RSS aggregator (me again), etc. What is cluetrain?