CONFESSIONS OF A N00B: My first ILF Annual Conference (ToolKit B for 671)

This is my first ILF Annual Conference and I'm pretty excited about it.  Maybe I'm expecting too much, I mean, it is a day of presentations in conference rooms. However,  I'm going to keep on being excited about it.  I am only attending one day (Tuesday the 18th) this year, but I've got that day packed full of interesting presentations on my schedule.  Of course, because school librarianship is my focus at school and at work, I chose sessions that should help me both at work and in my own development as a librarian in my own right. I used the ILF's conference mobile site to select and keep track of the sessions I want to attend.  The YHBA session and the 2014 books for k-8 session are slam dunks.  It's important to me to keep current on children's literature so I can provide excellent readers advisory to my students.  Censorship is a difficult subject for elementary school librarians, so I hope to learn something that will help me to navigate challenges and select materials with bravery.  As for the INSPIRE database, I know what it is, but I have only tried to use it a few times.  Maybe the session will help me figure out how to get more out of it.  The dinner is really just for fun, but it will be cool to tell the kids I got to see the author of Shark vs. Train in person.

The only event I'm attending that's a bit more tangentially connected is the keynote speech.  I chose Tuesday because of the keynote, though, because Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan  
 is an expert on copyright and intellectual property, which, in my humble opinion, is fascinating.

Here is my schedule for tomorrow:

0800-0830 Arrive at the Marriott East in Indianapolis
0900-1000 Keynote with Dr. Vaidhyanathan
1100-1150 Page Turners Aplenty: Your New YHBA Nominees
1330-1420 How Censorship Hurts Kids
1500-1550 Thousands of New Pages: A Pick of the 2014 Books K-8
1700-1750 INSPIRE me! (about the INSPIRE database)
and
1830-2000 The YHBA Banquet with 2013 Winner Chris Barton
                  I am the most excited about this session (I even paid extra!) for the opportunity to hear this author speak because my students LOVED his book, Shark vs. Train.  I hope to have an anecdote to share with them when I get back.


Well, as the 10th Doctor says, "Allons-y!"