Monday, April 28, 2008

Looking Forward and Back

I had a presentation last week at the Kentucky Library Association Academic and Special Sections / Special Library Association Kentucky Chapter Joint Spring Conference. From Abstraction to Reality: The Opening of UK's Information Commons, presented with my supervisor, Stacey Greenwell, went well, and I think our audience was pleased. We even got a nice write-up on Citegeist. However, all I can now think of is all the things I wish I'd done differently.

Ending slide: I really wanted to avoid the ubiquitous and obvious "Any Questions?" slide, so we had a collage of photos from The Hub. However, in hindsight, I wish we'd had a slide with links. I think librarians would have made a note of The Hub's website, or Facebook page and visited later.

Better seen than heard: I'm now thinking of things I referred to in the presentation but didn't represent visually. I mentioned all the cool things that students write on the whiteboards, so why did I put a slide of a bare board? I could have had Chinese grammar, chemistry or math equations, or something equally cool. I could have also taken a screen capture of our LexGo page on Kentucky.com instead of just mentioning that we have publicity there.

And speaking of visual images, why didn't I think to ask someone to take photos of us presenting? This was my first professional library conference presentation, and now I have no photos to post on this blog or elsewhere, unfortunately.

These are all good lessons learned, and next time (when I'll be brave enough to present by myself), I'll make sure I remember them.

1 comment:

Stacey Greenwell said...

Alice, these are all very good points. I'm not sure why I didn't think of these things either!

You did an outstanding job with the presentation. I keep getting compliments from our colleagues. When I tell them that this was your first presentation at a library conference, they are amazed. Here's to many excellent presentations from you in the future!

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