Awesome Friends, Anderson Cooper, and (Adult Beverage) Storytime at #PLA2016

I love attending conferences not only for the professional development opportunities but also for the chance to meet in real life many of the amazing people I count on as my online professional network. Yesterday, #PLA2016 started off in the best way possible when I was able to meet two of those lovely and talented people – Lisa Mulvenna (see her post about her visit to the basement of my library) and Holly Stork-Post, one of my fellow Storytime Underground Joint Chiefs!

Today the goodness continued with Anderson Cooper’s excellent opening session talk. I’m an early literacy librarian; I don’t read a lot of “grown-up” books.  But his book – about a year of (email) conversations he had with his mom Gloria Vanderbilt about things they’d never talked about – sounds quite interesting. I’ll have to put it on hold!

However, the best bit of the conference today came after the day’s regular activities when
about 30 librarians, mostly those who work with youth, informally gathered in Union Station for the first ever “drunk” storytime. With adult beverages in hand, we read our favorite storytime books aloud (much to the amusement of the many non-librarians there) and everyone came away with new ideas for sharing with our youngest patrons.  One passer-by was so inspired by our performances he came over and told us about his own self-published picture book in hopes that we’d give it a try! I hope this will become a regular after-hours conference occurrence!