ACRL - Opening Session

Today we had the joys of mass registration, the keynote session, and the exhibits opening.

Registration - If you you come to a conference the day of and try to register right before the fun begins, be prepared to wait. The ALA staff did a good job and kept the line moving at as brisk of a pace as they could manage. I will say the conference bags are pretty nice as they're messenger bags. I probably won't be carrying mine around however, as I brought my "conference bag" with me.

On my way to the opening session, I ran into Courtney L. Young who is the ALA Councilor for NMRT. Courtney is a lot of fun and we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night.

Opening Session - This afternoon's speaker was Michael Eric Dyson. He is a *vibrant* speaker. He is thought-provoking, engaging, comedic, dynamic and completely quoteworthy. Once Courtney realized I was taking notes, she kept making sure I wrote down certain tidbits. Here are but a few:

"Yes, I'm preaching to the choir, but the choir got to sing better."

"[Librarians must be] True patriots of the country and nation of Literacy."

"...patriarchal and phallocentric metaphor..." (I completely missed what this is in reference to)

***"Meet the people where they be and take them where they need to be." (emphasis mine)

Potential response when asked what we do: "arbitrator of enlightenment for the future of civilization."

Other highlights:

-If you're interested in the movement towards anti-intellectualism, read Richard Hofstadter's book "Anti-Intellectualism in America" from 1966.

-We need to help create learning addicts.

-To create those learning addicts, we need to be Trojan Horses by slipping those learning moments into the students', and patrons', everyday lives.

If you ever get the chance to hear Dyson speak, do.

Exhibit opening:
The more conferences I go to, the less time I want to spend in the exhibit hall without a plan in mind. I like talking with the vendors and learning about their products, but with the position I'm in now, there's not much call for what the vendors are trying to sell me. I did win a $10 Starbucks gift card from H.W. Wilson, though. This was after I told Courtney that I wasn't interested in hunting down all the giveaways, especially as I had won a gift bag from Borders last week (I was the first name drawn after I walked in the door). The salesman was good, and we sat down for a short session with four or five others. When they did the drawing, Courtney said, "watch, you'll win." I started to reply "Don't even joke about that" when he did call my name. In addition, the exhibit opening was fun as I ran into one of my committee's members and a chair of the same committee and we talked shop for a little bit. I'm feeling a little like a fish out of water as my background is in public libraries, but I do know a fair amount of academic librarians, and luckily, I have been running into them.

After I came home from dinner with Courtney, I discovered that while I had printed out my responses to a pre-survey for my morning session tomorrow, I had neglected to actually take them out of my printer and put them into my bag. Seeing as that and my toothbrush were the only things I forgot, I think I'm doing good.

Tomorrow, sessions, workshops, posters, and more sessions.