I had this post started before this morning’s keynote with Paul Holdengraber (Live from the NYPL), but his comment about the “afterlife of the conversation” wrapped my thoughts up so perfectly. He started the day with a bang and loads of laughs, talking about his job at the NYPL. There are other posts out there that capture all the gems, but here are some of my favorites:

• People don’t only want to be fed, (consumers of library resources) they want to be nourished (or as I said yesterday, engaged in learning).
• We need to become more porous, better listeners at our libraries. And remember, we have 2 ears and one mouth…odds are we should be listening more.
• When asked how he successfully “oxygenated” the programming at NYPL, he said, the important thing is to begin.
• Ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
• And then make your offerings irresistible.
• And in this time with so many distractions, how can libraries help focus…create an age of attention?

In talking about his work interviewing folks, Paul said that part of his intention is to stimulate the “afterlife” of the interview or conversation, both in the buzz that’s created online, during and following the events, but also in the choices folks make to go to the stacks, read the book, and continue to engage with the library.

So, my original title for this post was “all pumped up, and no place to go”. I’ve had a number of CiL conversations with folks excited by presentations and eager to return home to apply fresh tech tactics in their own libraries. There’s a palpable conference euphoria in the air, but it’s coupled with anxiety about the conference afterlife. One librarian at my table at OCLC’s update breakfast said she was so excited to return to try some of these new tactics at her library, but specifically expressed anxiety about getting them past management. The barriers to sustaining the afterlife of our CiL conversations could rear their ugly heads in the form of passive managers or colleagues, or perhaps as a comment in these times like “there’s no budget for that”.

So what can we do to sustain the conversation? How can we come together to overcome these barriers and fully actualize our conference learning in the conversation’s afterlife?

Ahem…What about WebJunction?

I’ve often heard of WJ members who have tooled themselves with the stories, case studies and best practices they find on WebJunction before approaching their managers, their library boards, or their staff. With “proof”, they are better able to demonstrate the value of implementing newly learned tactics. Or folks have bolstered their proposals with the learning gathered via a set of related WJ courses.

So when you have success stories to share about overcoming these barriers, or when you need to tap into the experiences and learning of others and ask for advice, don’t forget about your WJ community of 40,000 librarians. As stewards of technology and resources (see presentation from yesterday) you may not realize how your experiences might be leveraged by another in libraryland to advocate for fresh strategies to sustain library services.

So this is a call to action for all of you out there. Please use your WebJunction to leverage the conversation’s afterlife. As Helene Blowers said during her session this morning, you are what you share.