It was a full week of activities for the SDLA Annual Conference in Chamberlain and Book Festival in Sioux Falls. The highlights at the conference included the keynote kick off speaker Joe Janes. He shared data about the profession for the changing image of librarians with a need to fill the labor pool pipeline. The statistics shared were an employee will have between 10 – 14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old. One in two employees are in their first year of employment due to the aging population of retirements and the increased population for the younger generations. 44% of the library profession will reach retirement age in the next two to five years. At the same time, librarians with master in library science degrees are entering the workforce into information positions other than libraries. To add to this labor pool challenge is the dynamic conversion for librarians familiar with hands on direct public interactions to virtual reference skills with databases and social networking. 50% of content is on the web and in four years it will be 70%. Equally important is the library as a place and librarians with proactive customer service skills to all ages and backgrounds of a community.
Author Ken Davis spoke about his series of “Don’t Know Much About…” and the Hollywood Librarian - a look at libraries in film wrapped up the first day of activities.
Other conference sessions included: State Board of Regents digitization project that is a potential partner for the RCPL strategic goal in digitization for Rapid City history, SDLN adopted a strategic plan with discussions forthcoming regarding a vision for a public library ILS that RCPL will help to facilitate and ILL requests to aid in collection development and I RCPL’s progress
I completed my three year term on the SDLA Board and will look to the future with no official assignments but with an interest in digital archiving of the association’s history.
