ala – Page 6 – librarian.net

missing ALA this year

I sort of have a “How can I miss you if you won’t go away” feeling about ALA most years. I went when I was a councilor. I went when it was near me. I went when I was speaking at it. This time, none of these things were true and I was still a little exhausted from ALA Anaheim last year where my credit card number was skimmed and I had to drive an hour to get a decent restaurant. This year ALA is sounding fun, from the reports. ALA is always a better time when it’s in Chicago. More of the staffers can go and more people are used to the location and can get decent hotel rooms and the weather isn’t horrible. At least that’s been my experience. My work travel this month is going to consist of a trip to New Orleans next week [another popular ALA summer venue] for MetaFilter’s Tenth Anniversary where I will be paid to drink beer and eat alligator and wear a catchy t-shirt. Here are a few links I’ve been seeing about what I feel I’ve been missing at ALA.

Library Conference Secret Twitter Proves Librarians Sexy, Stern
Zines! Takes me back to my early days printing out Cognots at ALA in DC.
Watching the ALA2009 hashtag in real-ish time.
Meredith got an award!
ALA 2009 photo and tweet tracker (props to heather)
Library Journal’s up to the minute news tracker including their amusing top-of-the-tweets report

It’s just like being there, only I’m still in my pajamas, and I slept til 11.

I feel that I should mention ALA Connect

Posted on 08Apr0908Apr09 by jessamyn

ALA’s press release about ALA Connect and their blog announcement. ALA Connect itself. You don’t have to be a member. I signed up just to check out the user experience. They required me to have a username that includes my first and last name (i.e. different from every other username I have on the entire Internet, and that’s saying something) so you can find me there as: jess amyn.

As a non-member I’m limited to what I can do. I can tell you something I can do: figure out the first and last name of every ALA member, their work affiliation and what their level of ALA involvement is. It’s a little complicated, but I’m somewhat surprised that this is even possible. I can see a lot of people’s photos. People who might be surprised that their names and photos are up on a site that anyone can belong to. You know me, I’m a big social networker and my name address and phone number are all over everywhere, so I may be worrying for no good reason. Do people care if everyone knows that they’re a member of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (hey, I made that graphic, back in 1997!), perhaps not. It’s certainly useful to me as a non-member to find people I might want to ask about certain things and a ton easier than searching the website. Go see what you think.

what does a google policy fellow do?

Posted on 06Apr09 by jessamyn

I thought the Google Policy Fellowship was going to be for people studying Google policy, not people studying policy and funded by Google. In any case, many congrats Sarah Roberts, hope you enjoy your summer at ALA’s Washington Office.

going to ACRL? Got time for a preconference unconference?

Posted on 06Mar0906Mar09 by jessamyn

ACRL is in Seattle next week and the Radical Reference people are planning a preconference unconference on March 12th? Interested? Look for more information on the facebook group and the wiki. [related grouchy tweet about ACRL web page]

My local library gets an award!

Posted on 05Mar09 by jessamyn

Librarians at my town library — Kimball Library in Randolph Vermont — win the Paul Howard award for Courage. I wish I could say I had anything to do with any of this, but I was away at ALA while all of this was going down. This award is good news. Just yesterday at town meeting the head of our our library trustees had to defend the decisions that the library made during that difficult time whch included the fact that the library received an apology from the police for their illegal request of the library’s public computers. Meanwhile, the library has to reduce hours due to decreased funding.