Next meeting : 22 September 2011
Location : Dixson Room, State Library of NSW
Time : 10.00am - 3.30pm.

Tea and coffee will be served from 9.30am, lunch will be provided.

Bookings for this day are essential, and are limited to two per library.

Agenda :
The morning session of the meeting will feature David Lee King from Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas and Sean O'Brien from ABC Open.

David Lee King is known for trying out new technologies at his library, and sharing ideas about them. He is a skilled presenter of these ideas and challenges library staff to keep learning new skills and think creatively about how to apply this in their work places.

David's talk is titled, Freak Out, Geek Out, or Seek Out: Trends, Transformations, and Change in Libraries

We have a choice with change - we can freak out about it, jump in unprepared, or seek out the best tools and trends for our libraries... and plan for the future! David describes the current social media & technology transformation taking place, and applies those changes to a library setting. Then David discusses the changes a library needs to make to meet and participate in our new online, participatory world, and provides pointers to plan for these changes.

We are able to have David present in person because he is in Australia for the New Librarians Symposium.

Sean O'Brien, the ABC Open producer for the Illawarra will be talking about and showing some of the the content which is being created by ABC Open in this area and about collaborations with libraries and museums. You will be inspired to do more of your own content creation (and it may be collaborative content creation) for your own library. This builds on the ideas Mal Booth presented at the annual reference seminar in 2010.

In the afternoon you can help plan the future of reference and information services in public libraries in NSW. This session will include brainstorming and planning sessions for creatively developing reference and information services at your library. You should come away with some ideas you can start as soon as you go back to your work place.

We will be exploring ideas for:

• more effective communication about reference and information services
• how can we be creative about reaching people to help answer their questions
• management tools for twitter
• social media for reference (and the tools to help you with this)
• roving reference - what are you doing already, and how you can rove further afield
• how to really make sure it is a conversation?
• content creation and co-creation - how to make this work

Don't worry if you don't feel like an expert. Everyone’s contribution is valued and sought as we workshop ideas and innovations together.

If you are tweeting, blogging or posting photographs of this please use #risg2011

You can even buy a t-shirt as a reminder of this day.

Contact Ellen Forsyth on eforsyth@sl.nsw.gov.au with any questions about the day.