As I promised in last week’s post, I have some pics and info from the reel librarians program I presented at the 2016 Oregon Library Association Annual Conference. I had so much fun during my program — there was so much energy from the audience! 😀

The conference theme for this year was “Tell Your Story,” and my presentation was titled “When Others Tell Our Story: Librarian Portrayals in Film.” I have a copy of my conference materials online here at the Northwest Central website, in case you’d like to take a look. (Note: My slides look plain on the online version, since I had to take out the embedded videos due to copyright protection; I substituted film titles in place of the videos.)

There was a full house at the program — and then some, with people sitting on the floor in the back! I counted 75-80 attendees (some had to leave early and/or arrived later), and I was over the moon that there was so many people interested in the program! Everyone seemed super engaged and asking questions and leaning in and laughing in all the places I hoped they would! 😀

I started the program with a quick think-pair-share activity for the audience to visualize the first movie with a reel librarian they could think of, then share with a partner. Did they think of the same movie or librarian character? Did they think of different movies? I then invited a few audience members to share with everyone, and these are the resulting film titles that first came to mind:

• It’s a Wonderful Life
• The Music Man
• Party Girl
• Desk Set
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• Foul Play

A comment I heard more than once afterward was that attendees were thankful for a fun program and needed the opportunity to laugh — and that they wanted more fun programs at the conference in general. A friend also shared that she thought the scheduling of my program, set for right after lunch, was really good timing, as it helped energize the audience — helping prevent the “food coma” phenomenon!

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And thanks to my friend Stephanie for taking pics during my program!

I only had an hour, so I had to really condense the info and film clips to include in the program. I included screenshots and clips from the following 25 films:

• Before Night Falls (2000) — Class II
• Big Bully (1996) — Class III
• The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) — Class III
• Citizen Kane (1941) — Class III
• Curse of the Demon (aka Night of the Demon, 1957) — Class III
• Desk Set (1957) — Class I
• Flight of the Intruder (1991) — Class III
• Good News (1947) — Class I
• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) — Class I
• Hammett (1982) — Class II
• The Human Comedy (1943) — Class III
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (TV, 2004) — Class I
• Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) — Class III
• Maxie (1985) — Class II
• The Mummy (1999) — Class I
• The Name of the Rose (1986) — Class I
• The Pagemaster (1994) — Class I
• Party Girl (1995) — Class I
• Pickup on South Street (1953) — Class IV
• Rollerball (1975) — Class III
• A Simple Plan (1998) — Class II
• Sophie’s Choice (1982) — Class III
• Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) — Class III
• The Time Machine (2002) — Class III
• UHF (1989) — Class III

I enjoyed quite a few follow-up conversations with attendees, and have already received a few follow-up emails, as well — and a few more suggestions to add to my list! I was also super pleased at one woman’s comment that she felt the program had a good balance of fun and substance — awesome feedback! Others admitted to me that, at first, they couldn’t really think of any films with librarians in them but then were surprised at how many there actually are (I have almost 1,000 titles on my Master List!) and the variety that I showed through film clips. I also cracked up at the suggestion that I should develop a stand-up routine about reel librarians and take the show on the road! Hah! 😀

I also had a handout takeaway for the attendees who came to the program, available to view here. I brought 50 copies, so I totally ran out of handouts! The handout included my Reel Librarians link and email address, in case anyone comes across a film title to add to my Master List, and a copy of the trivia challenge questions, which were previously posted here on this site.

It was a super fun experience to put together and present the program! Thanks to everyone who attended the program, and for all the readers of this website and blog!

Next week, I’ll be back with another film analysis post.

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Sources used:

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• Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “OLA 2016 – Reel librarians program takeaway – Trivia challenge.” OLA Annual Conference, April 2016.
• Snoek-Brown, Jennifer. “When Others Tell Our Story: Librarian Portrayals in Film.” Tell Your Story: 2016 OLA Annual Conference, 2016.