barely aLIVE! from the conference 3

Well it's the last day of the conference, and feeling a bit seedy after the Conference Dinner at Tjapukai Aboriginal cultural centre - which was a lot of fun, and it was great to continue the conversation with our Singapore visitors. And also - not the winner of the QPLA Library of the Year, but a very credible runner up with a Special Certificate of Recognition for our Youth Library - very nice to be acknowledged. And anyway the winner was a neighbouring library (Rockhampton City) - I suggested to Cheryl that we do a joint press release (the same daily newspaper serves both towns).

The speakers today were very interesting - a firm of architects (did I mention I love architects?) who have done incredible things with existing buildings to turn them into fantastic libraries. Picked up some more random architect speak that may come in handy: "fenestration" = windows; data reticulation = wires (or wireless more likely).

Followed by Alan Butters who is a technology consultant, again with some very sanguine advice about returns automation - a very commonsense graph showing that there is a point beyond which the costs associated with sophisticated solutions can't be justified by the productivity gains, based mainly on the size of the library. (I wonder how relevant these physical returns processes will be when ebooks become the dominant format??) During this talk I had a flash of inspiration on how to develop a staged technology plan for our library service...

This afternoon we are off on the bus to look at some libraries around Cairns. Later I hope to inspect some bookshops too as I have this killer idea to explore for the new library...Tomorrow will attend the State Library's visioning workshop, and on Friday I'm off to snorkel on the Reef before going home on Saturday. It's a tough life...