Head Tale

I’m at the Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU) conference in Regina from today until Friday.

Here are a few random thoughts from my first day…

– it’s always enjoyable to attend a conference in a different city – staying in a hotel, eating meals in cool restaurants, checking out the attractions of a new place.  But there’s definitely something to be said for a conference where you get to go to sleep in your own bed every night!  (I took my leave from the reception tonight saying I had to go watch the hockey game and one librarian who’s staying in the college dorms like most attendees blurted “Where are you going to watch it?”  At home, I replied.  “Ohhh, right.  You live here.” she said almost sadly.)

– great session on using technology tools in library instruction and you always end up hearing about new sites or sites you should re-visit.

– as I often do on those all too rare occasions that I get back to the U of R campus, I took the opportunity to visit the English department and have a wander around.  I’d say about half the profs’ names are familiar and half are new (which leads to the realization that many of my profs were probably younger than I am now when they taught me – a disturbing thought for some reason.)

– speaking of my English degree, I’ve talked about this before but I tend to write this blog in an informal, stream-of-consciousness manner with no proofing. So all kinds of typos and “there/their, too/to/two” type errors slip through.  This is my own fault, not U of R’s, and I won’t be asking for a refund.  But I still reserve the right to judge other people posting online who make spelling and grammar mistakes! 😉

– still on that note, our body not keeping up with our brain was one of the themes of our excellent keynote speaker…

– it was great to catch up with a few colleagues I went to library school with and to meet others who were either at FIMS before or after I was there. (I’m especially looking forward to corralling two who are connected to St. John’s – one currently and one from her undergrad days so I intend to pick their brains in advance of our trip out east next month.)

– at the reception, one guest who, like a good librarian had researched Regina and its attractions, was very excited to hear that RPL had a film theatre. Another was interested in our province’s multitype database licensing program.

– I also got a chance to brag talk about SILS a bit too.

– okay, back to the game. In honour of Regina’s American visitors (and because I’m cheering for them too), I’ll say “Go Bruins Go!”