Annual GOLD/GALILEO Conference guaranteed to send special and K-12 librarians "over the moon"#ggconference

Journal entry from a GOLD/GALILEO Users Group Advisory Committee Representative - Conference Musings - On behalf of special libraries and K-12 - July 2, 2010 - Teresa Pacheco, Electronic Resources Librarian, Gainesville State College, Oakwood, GA

What do you do when your special or school library is asked to "deliver the moon"?

Special libraries face special challenges: How do we connect with other librarians around the state when we are finding it increasingly necessary to prove our own worth to the communities of users we serve? School libraries find themselves in the same circumstances as school systems around the state struggling with ways to make little ends meet. Budget cuts, layoffs and cancellations of resources make it ever more difficult to provide high-quality services to our patrons. But what if library collaboration is our chance to face up to hard economic times and face down "sun, moon and stars-type requests"? Shouldn't we seize that opportunity?

The GOLD/GALILEO users conference this year offers several sessions that will be particularly relevant to special and school librarians:

Tom Sanville, the Keynote Speaker, brings a special level of expertise to the meaning of collaboration. Not only was Tom the 2007 recipient of the Professional Achievement Award for the Association for Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, he has recently left the well-known consortium OhioLink to join LYRASIS as its director of licensing and strategic partnerships.

Breakout sessions this year include ways to maximize the readability of your Web site, how to find open (and free!) access to resources - and how to use them, a session on grant planning and dealing with free government publications. These are just a few highlights from what promises to be a rewarding, inexpensive, one-day conference full of workshops and many opportunities to meet and collaborate with your colleagues from around the state.

Don't miss this opportunity to participate in the 15th Birthday celebration of GALILEO, one of the FIRST online collaborative virtual libraries in the country.

Examine all the breakout sessions we have to offer!

See you at the meeting. Salute! -- Teresa

"If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before." -- John Ashcroft

"If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative." -- Unknown source

Teresa Pacheco, Assistant Professor
Electronic Resources Librarian
Gainesville State College/Library
Office 106
3820 Mundy Mill Road
Oakwood, GA 30566
678.717.3658 (ext. 3658)
tpacheco@gsc.edu

Toni Zimmerman
Director, Resource Sharing & Interlibrary Cooperation
Georgia Public Library Service
A Unit of the BOR Univ System of GA
1800 Century Place, Suite 150
Atlanta, GA 30345-4304
P (404) 235.7129
F(404) 235.7201
tzimmerman@georgialibraries.org
www.georgialibraries.org