NSLA Conference

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I was at a conference down the street all weekend and I lost my rhythm.

There were two obvious reasons to go to the conference: 1) To network to try to find a job, or information that might be helpful in my job hunt, and 2) to actually learn some new stuff.

I did meet a lot of new people. Most of them were from the Annapolis Valley region, so they weren't too helpful, but they made the Saturday night banquet even more fun that it would have been. Louise is going to have a good time working with these people after her grand tour.

I was purposefully trying to not schmooze. I didn't want to come off as either desperate or a jerk (or both), so I would just socialize and talk about the sessions. Usually people would notice that my conference pass didn't have a library printed under my name so I got really good at briefly describing my situation: "I just graduated and followed my wife (shorthand) to Halifax, I've only been here a couple weeks and am looking for work." Some people asked about Ottawa (or reminisced about trips to Ottawa) and others gave me pointers and introduced me to some people they thought I should meet. I met a guy who's on the hiring committee for a job I applied for last week, so if I get an interview he will already have some sort of impression of me. But again, I wasn't trying to schmooze, so we talked about Halifax mostly.

The director of Dal's library school was really nice. She was working the room, so she introduced herself to me. She gave me her card and seemed genuinely eager to show me around the faculty and introduce me to the cataloguing professor. She even suggested that I might be asked to give a guest lecture in one of the cataloguing classes because I've worked as a tech for so long. Can't look bad on a resume.

Oh and I went to a pub on Quinpool after the banquet called the Nail and Kneecap that is really nice. Sort of smooth-around-the-edges but the music was consistently great (Velvets, Iggy, Clash, Cat Power, Feist, Robert Johnston). It's a bit too far away to just hop down for a pint after the kids are in bed, though.

The sessions themselves were good, but perhaps not great. They mostly seemed aimed at introducing the audience to things that they've never heard of before. I was expecting a bit more knowledge sharing between experts from different circumstances and perspectives (Especially in the "Cataloguing is Public Service" session). But because I had two agendae (what is the proper plural?) I didn't want to show up at sessions that would connect me with people in specialties I have no interest in, even though those are the sessions I would learn the most from.

Most of the intellectual highlights came after a session was finished and a meaty, informal discussion would emerge over coffee. I suppose if I'd been out of school longer, these sessions would have been a nice, low-key reminder of the things that I knew but were no longer in the front of my mind.

So now it's back to the actual job-hunt. Wish me luck.

Cheers