Kink in My Throggs neck

This past Wednesday through Friday I was down in Throggs Neck, NY (at the beautiful SUNY Maritime campus, which resides on a tiny, 55-acre peninsula sticking out into the Long Island Sound and strangely situated directly below the Throggs Neck bridge) for the annual SUNY Librarians conference.

It was thoroughly enjoyable and educational and I even managed to survive the stress of co-presenting a half-assed presentation on library instruction with virtually my only preparation occurring at the conference! There are really some innovative librarians in SUNY (especially when it comes to thinking about information literacy and in dealing with the frustrating ALEPH system - thank the gods I only have to deal with the simplest parts of that monstrosity!).

I do find it frustrating, however, in trying to hold conversations with my fellow librarians because my college is just so much different than everyone else's. We have no print collections or even a library building and have very little face-to-face contact with students. Even in today's world of hyper-online library services, a majority of traditional librarian time goes to managing the traditional physical resources. So most people that can get past my nebulous gender expression and engage me in library shop-talk end up being mystified as to what we do all day or jealous that we get to work from home once a week. As I said a couple times, we are truly the black sheep of the SUNY family!

Still, I learned a lot and met some very cool people and I hope got our name out there a little bit. Now I have to think up a good presentation topic (one of my own choosing this time!) for next year's conference...

But first I have to do some more running around like a chicken with it's head cut off because I have less than a week to pack up all my shit and move out of my house and down to Albany (only to move again into a bigger apartment in mid-August!!!)...