With the economy in the toilet, and technology producing many options for getting together without getting together, are face to face meetings (a staple of the library world) doomed? Especially the long distance ones?
Are these meetings productive, with the networking, eating, drinking, touring, attending workshops, drinking, eating, touring, etc.
Do they provide an essential library perk?
A couple of folks from Palinet are debating the issue.
What do you think?
Have you really tried to have an online meeting? I have attended some that were pretty good but some that were dismal. In one that I recently attended, the software kept failing, the speaker was boring, I ended up looking at my email a lot, and thought it was quite a waste of time.
In a recent survey that I did, 83% of the librarians in Utah prefer face to face training. The numbers speak for themselves. Sometimes there’s no substitute for the real deal.