Monday, February 4, 2008

The TREVOR Awards

For those of you who missed me speaking at Gulliver, let's just pretend I was awesome. In reality I was suprised that my voice lasted as long as it did (I'd been sick with a cold and, well, Friday I sounded like a frog with laryngitis). I think I owe my clearness to numerous cold and flu tablets and lozenges. Thankyou Cepacol.

Anyway, the talk didn't go as bad as I expected, I even got questions! I was nowhere near as good as Deb from Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation who 'wow'ed everyone with props and funny anectdotes, but noone fell asleep.

Luckily I stayed around after the forum for the presentation of the TREVOR award (presented by Alan Brough who, funnily enough, is about to start studying to be a librarian). The TREVOR (which stands for Trophy Recognising Excellence in Virtual Online Resources) was won by two libraries, Wellington Shire won the country award and Brimbank Libraries won the metropolitan award. I was shocked. As was the woman in charge of databases for Brimbank Libraries who had said earlier in the day "oh well there's no chance we'll win that!"

The trophy itself is a monument to bad taste. Imagine a netball trophy covered in those 'wow' stars from powerpoint presentations (sparkly blue of course) with a billboard on the top saying TREVOR.

Ah well, we won it though. Our patrons are learning. Next maybe they'll start joining our Facebook profiles and we'll have a gazillion friends and have MEGA events. 900 people at our storytimes, etc.