Guest Post: A Look Back at the NLS Conference

A guest post from Maureen Dorosinski, President, KLAS User Group, of Florida Division of Blind Services - Bureau of Braille and Talking Books Library

I was listening in on the last Reader Advisor meetup and when Alice said the NLS conference was “three weeks ago,” my heart bounced off the ground and back and I could not believe how time was slipping away.

I have been procrastinating on two writing projects and a presentation, but now it is critical that I get them done.

I start looking through photographs for the thousandth time, ones to send individually, use for the presentation, and this post. I look up and twenty minutes had gone by. I try again, looked up, and an hour had gone by. I try again, frustrated, and a whole weekend has gone by. I am truly crestfallen.

Where has my motivation gone? I think it could be once I share it, I am giving away a piece of it and it will be that much farther away. Despair grips me. Another week goes by.

I have a 14-foot display screen coming to the library for a slide show for the library staff. Time is ticking away and I am no closer. It’s TOMORROW. And my Google Photos for the week still sit at 990+ photos.

Once I write those final lines, clean up the album, present the last update, and name the folder, it is over. It gets put on a shelf, in a binder, into a computer folder. One more thing done. An ending. Closed. And I never want things to end.

How can I just…move on? Get things done?

One night, we all went to a reception in the Library of Congress Great Hall, where we listened to the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, and I was standing smack in the middle, right in front! I remember looking down and I was right on the edge of the compass rose seal in the middle of the floor- I got a little haughty and thought, I wore my jean jacket and sandals to the Library of Congress!

Then was abruptly humbled, with one upward glance, swamped by the grandeur of the Great Hall. Mesmerized by exquisite murals and ceilings, buttresses and arches, along the carved putti and cherubs lining the marble steps, with the columns and statues at every turn.

We had the opportunity to go to the Thomas Jefferson Library. His entire library recreated, displayed, and stretched out in a large, curved glass bookcase, and we could read the titles: The History of Philosophy by William Enfield, The Horrors of Slavery by William Ray, The Law of Charitable Uses by John Herne, and some works of Plutarch. To my utter glee, I found titles that were on the shelves, we can get them on Amazon or Google Books! We can read the same things he did!

A few of us even saw a Microsoft blue error screen on a display right outside the Jefferson library! (at the LOC!! Who would have thought…)

Walking around the Great Hall, I loved the fact that Poetry was the middle throne in the Poetry Gallery’s painted ceiling, with the words Architecture, Music, Sculpture, and Painting surrounding it. I had my architect husband Sean on a video call with me, so we walked that and another of the galleries ‘hand in hand’.

I found it amazing that the paintings of the words Home, Family, and Science seemed to be all right next to each other.

One of the inscriptions on the ceiling was, “Give instruction to those who cannot procure it for themselves.- Confucius”
This is what we do when we find books and get language learning materials, nonfiction books, and even programming. We are sharing instructions on how to do something for someone who wants what we can give to them.

Equally memorable on the trip were the unplanned things. I walked down a hallway after a meeting in the Madison building and found myself outside of the Performing Arts Reading Room and could not believe my luck. That there was such a place, of all the plays and reference materials! They even had a real card catalog, still in use.

In that area were the Sound Recordings archives, and they had an Edison record player, and the composer Rachmaninov’s desk! Just sitting there! I talked to the guys in the Sound Recording room, and it was funny, I overheard them having trouble looking things up in the LOC catalog. “Do I put the whole title in, and then click the drop down, or just use keyword?”

The next day I got my Library of Congress Reader’s card, and while time was short, I took advantage of an exceedingly high caliber research request of a previous patron, which was laying on a table: One Hundred Years of Comic Strips and another book with vintage strips like Little Orphan Annie and Blondie and Dagwood, Cathy, Dick Tracy…

Gathering in such an iconic place helps you realize YOU have a greater purpose in your work, and that it is something that is commemorated in the magnificent structures and collections of the LOC.

It takes three buildings to contain the greatness that is the Library of Congress. And by extension through NLS, we all can hold a piece of it as well in the work with NLS that we do every day.

It’s getting closer to the end of this piece, and I just don’t want it to end. I found the folder for the last conference I planned, and it’s like it never existed. I go back to Google Photos, and lose yet more time.

How do I hold on to it? I do not want it to ever end. When I do, it’s like it never happened. I looked a picture, and remember so many other little thigs I had forgotten. Am I doomed to putting it away, and forgetting it all?

That is certainly how it feels, but that’s not fact. The fact is we can carry the feeling with us every day, through remembering to follow through with meetings and projects we say we want to, even if it takes multiple Doodles to do so. It means calling, not just texting, that person that you could not believe it had been over a year since you had a true live conversation.

It means taking advantage of every new opportunity to connect with our fellow KLAS travelers and boil down what it means to you to be able to communicate it down to a few lines for your justification for the next conference. How about the KLAS Conference, in March 2025 in Indiana?

I think part of my reluctance to start and finish is that wondering if what I found significant will be of any meaning to anyone else.
At the end of the trip, I sent a message to Sean saying in part: “My visit was not long enough, my heart is too full to form words.” That could be the real reason I struggled to begin to write- my heart is just too full.

With love and memories,
Maureen Dorosinski, President, KLAS User Group