NLA Conference and 2.0

Last week I attended the annual conference of the Nebraska Library Association. Many of the presentations were very Library 2.0, including the keynote session by Annette Lamb. But what really grabbed me was an early Friday morning session on creating archival finding aids. The presenter's advice: create it from the point of view of the user. Now that's very 2.0 customer centered service even though it's very low tech at the moment. I attended a session on LibraryThing next, and what stood out to me was that the institution's cataloging policy did not allow customer-needed non-LCSH terminology (that is, local subject headings), so their way to get those terms was to use LibraryThing. Or, one could just use local subject headings, keywords in a searchable abstract field, or other keyword searchable fields in a cataloging record to provide access using terms the customers need and want to use. Then I attended another archives session on one of the open-source archival management tools I'm currently considering for use in my library. There were many excellent sessions during the conference and I certainly continued my lifelong learning through my attendance at NLA.