Read for summer!

The rain appears to have (mostly) ended, temperatures are closer to normal and libraries have kicked off their summer reading programs - that means it must be summer! This winter brought back memories of years past, when things were typically more severe - we've been spoiled by recent milder times. But there was still some traveling, including a fun week in western Montana with my colleague where we ended up staying in Missoula while a blizzard raged outside. But the hotel internet was great, and we could still get a lot of work done. Offline conference in February, Federation meetings, new director trainings - all great opportunities to network and meet up with folks I haven't had a chance to work with before this. The annual MLA conference in April was a new experience for me as a state library representative instead of a public library employee. Next year I hope to be able to present a session or two. More fun: a complete set of new gadgets for our TPZ collections! I spent the week setting up the iPad mini, Samsung Galaxy Tab3, Kindle Fire, Google Nexus and my own personal Asus Transformer; an additional Dell tablet will also be added later.Since I'll be heading off to the ALA conference next week this will be a good time to choose one to take along. TPZs won't be loaned out to libraries as in the past, now they are designed just for the consultants to become familiar with the various devices out there so we can help others. Suddenly there are more learning opportunities too: MOOCs to keep me occupied this summer! "The Future of Librarianship" seems like an obvious topic I need to be following, and I'm looking forward to attending this course with David Lankes. I also signed up for a course on copyright, something I've always wanted to know more about. It's a class designed for teachers and librarians so should have useful information. Before that, however, is the ALA conference. Several sessions I'm interested in have handouts available; I need to get those downloaded to whatever device I'm taking so I'll be prepared! I've never attended ALA, and suspect this will be completely overwhelming, but I'm looking forward to the experience(and Las Vegas with 20,000 librarians is sure to be fun!).