GreenBeanTeenQueen

With LibraryCon 3 only two months away, it's about time I wrote about last year's event! Sheesh! But I'm back with lots of LibraryCon notes! You can read about planning LibraryCon Year 2 here . I thought I would devote an entire post to Geeky Storytime at LibraryCon since it's one of the things I get asked most about.  Toddler GreenBean as Batman I have tried hosting Geeky Storytimes as a special evening storytime before (I wrote about those here , here  and the LibraryCon 1 edition here ) For year 2, we decided to utilize our StoryHour Room as a tabletop gaming room, which meant we needed a new spot for Geeky Storytime to kick off LibraryCon. We opted to host it just outside the children's department, as we have an open area there, we could fit more people, and we hoped we could draw more attendees this way. All of that worked out perfectly and just as we had hoped! I started off the storytime with welcoming everyone to LibraryCon and Geeky Storytim...

Well, I finally have time to sit down and type up all my thoughts about LibraryCon Year 2, or as I lovingly called it, Revenge of the Con!!! LibraryCon 2015 was such a huge success we knew we had to repeat it.  (You can check my posts about our first year here: Part One , Part Two , Part Three) Yet even with that success (400+ in attendance, great feedback from attendees and participants), we realized after the fact that we forgot all about marketing and promoting the Library itself. We figured people would walk into the Library, but with nothing to draw them there and with the entire event being held in our main concourse and meeting rooms, no one actually entered the Library. So the first item up on our planning agenda was to figure out how to promote ourselves. The first suggestion was for us to have a table ourselves. We collected various swag from conferences (with multiple staff attending ALA Annual, we were able to talk to comic publishers there and pick up lots of pos...

Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 1 Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 2 I've hosted two Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytimes for kids and I knew it would be the perfect fit for LibraryCon. My previous Fandom storytimes have been OK, but I held them on Friday evenings, which are always a tough time to draw a crowd. Plus, I didn't get the true geeky families I was hoping for and I knew my audience at LibraryCon would appreciate and love a storytime based on fandoms. I took some things that I've used before and added a few new things for the LibraryCon version. I actually had to adapt and change my plan at the last minute because my crowd ended up being much younger than I anticipated. So here's what we did for Fandom Starts Early LibraryCon! (flying like superheroes) Opening Song: Hedwig's Theme -I opened the doors had the kids walk in to Hedwig's Theme and welcomed everyone to Fandom Starts Early Storytime. I told the parents that it's fun ...

This is part of a three part series about the LibraryCon program we hosted at my library. Be sure to check out: LibraryCon-Part 1-The Planning LibraryCon-Part 1-The Big Event And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon! Many cool people who helped make LibraryCon awesome! (photo credit: E.M. Ervin So there were many, many things that went wonderfully at LibraryCon and we pulled off an amazingly fantastic event. I'm so proud of all the work that everyone did and what a fun program it turned out to be. Here's what worked well: -Involve the local geek community.   We reached out to so many organizations, cosplay groups, gaming groups, authors, illustrators, and other area cons to create our booths. In turn, those groups gave us names of others to include. This worked well because it helped us find people who really wanted to be part of this event. - Provide water! And food if possible. We provided lots (over 100!) bottles of water for the people st...

Since LibraryCon was such a huge event, I've split these posts up into three parts. Find Part One-Planning here and stay tuned for Part Three-What I'd Do Differently ! And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon! After lots of meetings, prep, and planning, LibraryCon was finally here! (photo credit: Valerie) On Friday, we set up the concourse and meeting rooms with our tables and labeled everything so everyone could find where they were assigned. I also set up for my Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytime. We started LibraryCon with a Friday night screening of a local webseries, Drifter . They screened some episodes from Season 1 and then hosted a Q and A with some of the cast and creative team. We had a small but very interested turnout (we had around 30 people attend for this event). We weren't sure if it was the timing, the day, or having two days worth of events, but the people that came loved it. Valerie and I didn't know if we would have a smal...

I've been wanting to host a huge fan convention at the Library for awhile now and I knew it could be done! Many years ago I hosted a Mini-Anime Con for the teens and it was a great event and our Cosplay prom was always huge, so I knew we had an audience ready for an event like this. When I hired Valerie as the Teen Librarian , I knew she would make an excellent LibraryCon partner in crime and so our first annual LibraryCon was born! (Here's myself and Valerie, all smiles and ready for an epic day!) photo credit: Valerie The planning: Planning for this event started many, many months in advance. We are very lucky that our branch manager is a huge comic fan and fellow geek, so we had great support. The three of us met and had several brainstorming meetings of who to invite and we made a field trip over to our local comic book store to talk to the owner about local artists we should include. Valerie also made a trek to another area con that happens in the winter to scout...