Where we got the blue cartoon shirts

For those who asked me on the floor today or saw others wearing the blue "She Blinded Me with Library Science" cartoon shirts, we got them from Questionable Content. A very funny webcomic with some very funny t-shirts.

QC Merchandise - it's about the third shirt down

ALA - Day Four

I know I haven't summarized yesterday for you, but I promise to do so by the end of the weekend. Today was the day my ALA wrapped up for the most part. I had the NMRT Executive Board meeting first thing this morning. While it was tough to get up so early, later I was glad to have it out of the way. I got back to the convention center in good time thanks to the Metro for the start of Wikiing the Blog and Walking the Dog. Unfortunately, the room was PACKED. I camped out by the dais on the floor for an hour before I decided to leave. I had to find a space in which to attend my online class. Thanks to ALA for providing wireless access, and thanks to LITA for providing the blog room.

Afterwards, I hit the exhibit hall. I needed to talk to a few vendors about a couple of programs we do out of our office. That took a little longer than I expected...partially because the vendors I needed to talk to were so spread out. I also visited with one of my former teachers who works for the Library of Congress now. It was good catching up with her. She had been at Seattle for Midwinter, which is where we met up again. I'm hoping she'll be at the other ALA conferences I'm attending for the foreseeable future as she was one of my favorite teachers. I also picked up a few advanced reader copies (ARCs) while I was wandering. I'm quite proud to say my bags, while a bit heavy, aren't completely full. I may end up in the exhibit hall tomorrow morning after breakfast with a few friends, but if I get any more stuff, it's going to be limited to a carry-on bag so I don't have to repack the suitcases. Honestly, I wouldn't have picked up all of these ARCs, except most of them are to look over for consideration for the awards committee I'm on. This is why I packed a mostly empty (and larger) second suitcase.

ALA Annual - Day Two

1. Remember to check the Flickr group for pictures: ALA Annual 2007


2. I hit the exhibits first thing as I decided not to go to the session I'd originally planned on attending. I've got a few exhibitors I need to ask questions of for work, and after I got my Darwin bobblehead from Greenwood, I got some leads to follow up on from one of the vendors. I also ended up with a lot more items than the two I planned on leaving with. Pretty much the extras are all ARCs, but dang, they're heavy!


3. My first session today was "Participatory Networks: Libraries as Conversations". I honestly had no clue what I was getting into with this session. It turned out to be a great kick-off session. Speakers included John Lester from Linden Labs, Eli Neiburger from Ann Arbor District Library, Kitty Pope from Alliance Library System, and Angela Semifero from Marshall District Library. All of them had very interesting things to say about how libraries can initiate conversations with people who may not normally come to the library. I think one of the truest comments came from Kitty Pope: extended services do not fit in with every community. Bonus: I got to meet Abby from LibraryThing as she was sitting right behind me.


4. Next was a brief lunch with friends before heading off to the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase. This was a great event organized by the BIGWIG group of LITA. Once again, this was absolutely wonderful! I got to meet Tim Spalding, creator of LibraryThing. I Tweeted with the Davids during introductions. And, I got to talk with Simon Spero about authority and taxonomy and folksonomies. What Simon had to say was extremely fascinating, but admittedly, a bit over my head. Definitely check out the Showcase's Wiki for ongoing discussions and presentations.


5. After dropping off my haul from the exhibit hall this morning at the hotel, I headed back to the Convention Center for the session called Trit Trot to Washington which was on Early Childhood Literacy techniques and exercises. This was a nice complement to the workshop I went to back in April that was led by Saroj Ghoting.


6. To cap off the day, the LISNews.com get together at the Capitol City Brewery. Much fun was had with friends, and the BBQ Pulled Pork sandwich was fabulous.

Sleep is now direly needed, so I'm off to bed. One last comment though: some very nice bags are to be had at this conference. It's kind of funny when you're on one of the shuttle buses and you're comparing bags from the current conference with past conferences with other librarians.

ALA - Day One

Well, other than not wearing enough layers to keep me properly insulated in the room where my committee was meeting, today was a productive day. We managed to get our work done early enough for me to make it over to the convention center in time to check in and go to the NMRT 101 session. While I was making my way to the session, I stopped into the Emerging Leaders Poster Session. I wish I could have stayed longer than the five minutes I did, but I got to meet Jane! The NMRT 101 session was great. I got there too late to grab a seat, so I found a seat along one of the walls close to the podium. Reiterating something I said during the 101 session: just show up. If you want to be involved in ALA, show up to the programs and meetings you are interested in. You control your level of involvement, so don't be shy! Now, I'm off to the NMRT Meet & Greet.

Made it in one piece

When your day starts out with a call saying "Um, we cancelled the flight you were supposed to be on, but we've put you on one at the same time but at the complete other side of the city. Call this number to confirm." Then you call the number, and you're pretty sure you confirm, but when they start trying to assign your seat, you get a recorded message saying "sorry, we've got too many calls and can't deal with you and you're puny problems, call back later." Well, you're not quite sure if it's an omen or a portent of things to com. The rest of my travels went fairly smoothly, though it did seem to take an inordinate amount of time for things to occur. I finally got into my hotel room about 6pm Eastern, about 9 hours after I'd left the house.

Tomorrow is my RUSA award committee meeting. Afterwards is some NMRT events. I'm looking forward to both as I'll get to see quite a few people I enjoy spending time with.

ALA Bound

Just a note that I'm working my way east to DC. Tomorrow is the flight first to Detroit and then on to DC. Expect somewhat daily updates. But seriously, the best conference investment: a backpack with a laptop sleeve. I have to carry my laptop around with me on Friday and Monday, and throwing my shoulder out is not in my plans.

Midwinter musings

Yeah, I know this is a month late, but here's my Midwinter wrap-up.

Friday: OCLC Symposium - "Who's Watching Your Space?"

I have seven (7) pages of notes from this program. It is one I'll still be trying to process six months from now. The streaming video is now available on the OCLC website if you're interested in watching. Honestly, if you're interested in social networking, particularly theory, it is well worth your time. Something Howard Rheingold said that stands out for me in my notes (especially after reading this Tribune article*) is digital natives need to learn citizenship, both within the digital world and outside of it.

The intermission videos showing people's answers to questions on how to describe social networking, privacy, security, communication, and life without social networking were very intriguing. If nothing else, watch the streaming video for those.

danah boyd's insights into social networking and the role it plays in people's, especially young people's lives, gave me some food for thought on how we serve kids, teens and young adults. How do we as a digital population create privacy in a world without walls? I live a great deal of my life online. I try to create a buffer/privacy zone in some of those areas, but I know that area would easily be eradicated by a persistent individual. In the scandals of teens and MySpace over the last few years, we can see the truth of the statement that the binary concepts of public and private have blurred. It is much easier now, than in the past, to make available information on the public web that would have only seen the light of day on pain of death.

Marc Smith from Microsoft rounded out the trio of presenters. His work with mobile social software (or MoSoSo as he called it) is a bit scary, but makes total sense. One of the first things he talked about was that footprints are aggregatable and and analyzable. Considering the statistic he later quoted, that if you own a mobile device, you will likely leave behind three terabytes (yes, 3,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information, why not try to collate and interpret that information?

I'll finish with a quote from either Marc or Michael: "The need for information guides is ever greater." Above that in my notes I wrote: libraries do not equal librarians. These are concepts we will *need* to keep in mind when communicating with the public and legislators on why we are vital to an information literate society.

For Saturday and Sunday, read the archives.

Monday: NMRT Executive Board meeting

We had two guests at the board meeting, the candidates for ALA President-elect. I would say both seem qualified, but I think Jim Rettig was a bit more prepared than Nancy Davenport to talk about his platform and how it related to members and potential members of NMRT. I highly recommend you check out their websites for more information, and if you have specific questions to contact them.

What did I ultimately get out of the conference? A lot. Even something I in no way expected or planned for: a committee appointment within RUSA CODES. That happened because I showed up at one of the committee meetings and contributed to the discussion. The chair remembered me and recommended me as someone to approach for further involvement. This is why I heartily recommend going to conferences if you can. The connections you make at conferences will put you in contact with opportunities.

*If you don't have a Chicago Tribune registration, check out Bugmenot's offerings.

Some mini-updates

1. I've moved into my new apartment and started my new job. However, I'm still on the lookout for the notebook with all of my notes from Midwinter in it. As I'm not quite done unpacking I have hope that it will show up.


2. I noticed today that younglibrarian.net was being forwarded to the old Geocities site. I apologize for this and it should be fixed within the next 24 hours. It looks like when the domain name expired earlier this year, it reset to the original settings when I renewed.


3. Thanks to Blogger forcing me over to the new version, I now have an additional e-mail address you can contact me at. The contact form on the site will send you to young_librarian at yahoo.com, but you can now also use younglibrarian at gmail.com. If you have New Members Round Table or other ALA related questions, please use nmrtkatie at gmail.com.

Look for some thoughts on Midwinter and professional involvement next week. How in-depth will depend on if I can find that notebook.