Category: ala

Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA Annual 2021

Posted on by jessamyn

a group of librarians in front of the Natucket Public Library sometime in the early 19th century

I am the Chapter Councilor for Vermont. This means I get to (have to) go to the annual and midwinter conferences and represent the great state of Vermont. I mostly like it. To be honest, I’ve liked it MORE since COVID means we can’t travel. This means two important things: meetings are held later in the day to accommodate our colleagues from Hawai’i; and meetings are cheaper because I don’t need to get on a plane and stay in a hotel to attend these meetings. There are many reasonable critiques of ALA, many of which I agree with, but I’m still trying to do my best in this tiny role. I always write up a report for the Vermont Library Association, the group that pays for my membership and which would be paying for my travel and registration. I figured I’d share it here as well.

I’ve just completed the ALA Annual Conference as your Vermont Chapter Councilor and wanted to fill you in on ALA things.

Continue reading “Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA Annual 2021”

Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA Annual 2020

Posted on by jessamyn
I attended the American Library Association’s first virtual conference between June 17th and June 27th. This was the first ALA Annual with new Executive Director Tracie Hall who was replacing acting Director Mary Ghikas who was filling in after the retirement of Keith Michael Fiels. Hall took over at a really difficult time with ALA reporting challenging financials even before COVID-Era consequences. I am, and have been, a big fan of her work.

Council meetings–both Forums which are for informal discussion and Meetings which is where business gets done–mostly worked out well. The last Council meeting normally happens at 8 am but thanks to the virtual meeting featuring members and Councilors in their home states, meetings were in the afternoon in Vermont so that they could be not too early in Hawai’i. Meetings took place over Zoom with voting taking place via an online voting tool that worked fairly well. While there were some accessibility challenges–the Director of the California Library for the Blind is on Council and had lots of useful feedback–we were able to complete our business. Here are the actions I took. Continue reading “Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA Annual 2020”

What I wanted to be when I grew up

Posted on by jessamyn

There was an interesting thread on ALA Think Tank where people talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I never wanted to be a librarian, though I liked the librarians that I knew. I wanted to be a writer though I wasn’t sure how you did that. I liked writing and I had the same name as a writer so I figured that would help. I was just digging through some old paperwork and I found my statement of professional concerns from when I ran for ALA Council. This is from 2002, so nearly 15 years ago

ala council statement

With the exception of the slightly over-the-top “family farms” aside, I still stand by this 100%, possibly even more now than I did then. And since then I’ve felt a lot more able to actually implement my ideas about the way the world of libraries and technology should work. I am very grateful that I work within a profession where I can be relevant and useful and effective in my late 40s and work with both older and younger members of my profession to create meaningful change. I even get to write a little as well. I’ve been updating my resume lately, not because I’m looking for work but just because it is a good thing to do, and will try to find a way to work this in there somewhere.

My Values Workshop for LLAMA’s Career Institute at ALA in Boston

Posted on by jessamyn

What Matters? A Workshop for Developing & Articulating Our Values

I went to ALA for the first time in several years last week. I don’t think I’ve been to ALA since the Think Tank has been in existence. It was a great setup. Conference was in Boston. I was giving a pre-conference. Part of my deal was that I’d get registration for the conference, and one night in a fancy hotel (and some $). It worked out great. Usually, I admit, I dislike workshops. I don’t like to be in them and I barely know how to give them. However, my feelings on this are not normative, so I tried to bring my education and my experience to an afternoon workshop for about twenty people and have some useful exercises and activities as well as some good discussion. I think it went well. My main self-critique was that I had made sure I had three hours of “stuff” for a three hour workshop and maybe didn’t leave enough time for people to just talk to each other. More blank spaces next time. You can read through my slides as well as see the handouts and exercises (and the image credits) at this URL: https://www.librarian.net/talks/llama16/.

ALA had a conference app that encouraged you to upload your slides to the application so people could have them. Great idea in theory, but in reality I didn’t see any privacy policy and was a little leery of giving up my content so I uploaded a single slide with the URL to my actual slides. Hope people didn’t feel that it was too cheeky. A few other photos of my ALA trip are here. Thanks so much to everyone who came to the pre-conference and especially to LLAMA who invited me and took very good care of me. They were a joy to work with.