The Art of saying Thank You

Here’s what I received today from the organising committee of the Australian Law Librarians’ Association, Art of Information. It was a thank you for delivering a presentation about Second Life and libraries, legal educators and law librarians.

The thank you gift was full of win because:

1. I was the first to borrow Shaun Tan’s tales from outer suburbia when it came into our library and I had to read it waaay too quickly because it was immediately recalled. It is a book for savouring.
2. The book is part narrative and part art – very suited to the theme of the conference
3. Shaun Tan until recently lived in Western Australia
4. The metal bookmark is a gum leaf. I love the motif, going so far as to have my wedding ring designed to have intertwined gum leaves around the outside
5. It’s not a bottle of wine. I’d drink wine maybe three times a year and have very little appreciation of it
6. *Every* speaker at the conference received a gift, not just the invited speakers – which is as it should be

Thanks to the organising committee for putting in obvious thought.

I was sorry that I was working so I missed the Opening Address from Robert French, who has recently been appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. By all accounts it was a very thoroughly researched and thought out speech that dealt with the value of libraries. I was very pleased to finally meet Peter Black from QUT who gave the keynote, as we have been twitter friends for quite a while. He daringly tried doing it Lessig style, which went down very well. He expounded on copyright, defamation and privacy and suggested some legal models that would cope with the challenges brought on by Web 2.0.

I also enjoyed the afternoon session where three librarians spoke of their experience of introducing more order to internal communications and resources using wikis, content management systems and by restructuring the intranet. My “take home” from the session – ensure that you have a champion in senior management owning the project, and try to make it appeal to all members of staff, as both secretaries and practitioners will be using it.

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