We just sent out the Call for Participation for the Reference Renaissance 2010 conference, so please look at all the cool things your Adult and/or Youth Services departments are doing and consider submitting a proposal for the August conference by the April 1, 2010 deadline.

We’re looking for reports from the field, panels, demonstrations, and workshops that range in time from a half hour to an hour and a half.  You can also present a research paper or use the really short Pecha Kucha format to discuss your topic.  And later on we’ll make a call for lightning round entries.  Conference tracks include Staffing & Managing User Services; Collaboration, Consortia and Sustainability as well as Virtual Services.  There’s even a Wild Card track for controversial issues or creative and innovative services etc.

Public libraries have responded to the economic turndown in so many helpful ways – but we all need to hear about your ideas and programs.  Tell us what worked and what didn’t and what you’d do differently the next time - don’t keep your brilliant new outreach efforts all to yourself – share the knowledge so we can all make our patrons lives better, without reinventing the wheel.

And if you can’t submit a proposal, remember, the conference is an excellent learning opportunity.  Conference chairs Rivkah Sass and Marie Radford and the planning committee are putting together a great program.

I’m really excited to announce that BCR’s second Reference Renaissance conference will be in Denver August 8-10, 2010.  The conference rose from the ashes of the Virtual Reference Desk conference, but has been expanded and this time includes tracks on Meeting Our Users Where They Are and New Roles and Future Directions for Reference Librarians. 

The Call for Participation should be going out next week, and we really want to encourage public librarians to submit proposals.  I realize everyone’s so busy that preparing a presentation might seem like an overwhelming task, but if you get a few people together and do a panel, you can share the work.  Also, you can submit a Pecha Kucha style presentation (20 slides for 20 seconds each, for a total time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds), or a lightning round (the call for these extremely informal submissions will be made later).

The 2008 conference was wonderful – jam packed with over 80 presentations and talks in six tracks ranging from Virtual Reference to Innovative Service Models to Managing Reference Services, it was an incredible value.  In fact if you’re looking for free library continuing education opportunities, many of the presentation materials are available online (not to blow my own horn, but do a “find” here on “Find Your Market” for the slides and full text of my presentation on how to promote your services to customers).  The proceedings will be published on 2/28/10.

So contact me at jshaffner@bcr.org if you want to stay informed about this conference and I’ll put you on the email notification list.  And when you book your flight, consider staying a few extra days - Colorado is a fabulous place for a summer vacation – our mountain valleys become magical patchwork quilts of flowers.