Exhibiting at MarketPlace

Yesterday PLS Coordinator Cherie Longmuir and I staffed a Nebraska Library Commission booth at the MarketPlace: Opening Doors to Success Conference in Kearney, Nebraska.  The focus of the conference, which was sponsored by the Center for Rural Affairs, was "building jobs and the rural economy from within."  Conference attendees included folks who were interested in starting a small business (or growing an existing one) and representatives of organizations that offer services and support to such individuals. 

We were there promoting NebraskAccess and public libraries as places to turn to for business information.  To get this message across, we distributed a handout titled Magazines for Business Owners & Entrepreneurs (PDF), which highlights some of the business-oriented publications included in the Wilson OmniFile and eLibrary databases available through NebraskAccess. 

We also got a chance to talk to lots of people about the databases.  Some were already familiar with NebraskAccess (Yay!) and others were excited to learn about it.  We explained to people that they could login with either a NebraskAccess password, which they could request from their local library, or a Nebraska driver’s license number, so some of you may be getting calls about this.  If you can tell that someone is calling and requesting a password as a result of attending the conference, we’d love to hear about it!

The last two observations that I want to share from the conference aren’t particularly related, so I’ll just stick them in as bullet points:

• First, and most importantly, upon seeing we were from the Nebraska Library Commission, many people made it a point to tell us how much they appreciate their hometown libraries and librarians.  We wish you were there to hear it, but since you weren’t we wanted to be sure to tell you here! 
   
• Second, one of the conference sessions was titled "Podcasting/Webcasting and Blogging: New Tools to Showcase Your Business and Community."  It was interesting to see that it’s not just the library community that’s starting to explore these new mediums for reaching out to new audiences.  Neither of us were able to attend the session, but according to the description the University of Nebraska Extension Service now teaches podcasting classes!