ALA 2013 - A Librarian's Journey

I was honored to be chosen to attend my first ALA Conference, held in Chicago this summer.  My journey began with 2.3 million Blackhawks hockey fans greeting me in downtown Chicago, where a parade and all day celebration of the recent Stanley Cup victory was taking place. While waiting for check-in at the hotel, I was able to visit the famous Art Institute of Chicago. The lion statues guarding the entry wore gigantic Blackhawks hockey helmets.

Visiting the ALA Conference early Friday evening, I was among the first to enter the Exhibit Hall, which turned out to be a mad dash to visit the exhibits handing out wonderful free gifts. The hottest item for the evening was an Authors are my rock stars t-shirt. I spent the evening visiting exhibits for everything from publishers to vendors to complete operating systems. I returned with souvenirs, books, and bags to share with my coworkers. I met the president of LucaLight, who supplied the shelf lighting for NW, the rep for Public Information Kiosk, which sells dispensing machines for library materials, and watched a Mango Languages Premiere demo.

Later, I attended several sessions, including Beyond Genre, an interesting discussion about fiction genres with panelists Laura Lippmann, Margaret Dilloway, and Naomi Novik. I brought back a list of Sure Bet recommendations for readers’ advisory to share with coworkers. Boomers to Seniors: Library Models for Serving and Engaging Older Adult presented a study and showed how libraries are creatively including the baby boomer generation in library programming. See http://www.transforminglifeafter50.org and http://creativeagingtoolkit.org/.

I think one of my favorites was Fantastic Voyage: Reference Service in an Ever- Shrinking Print Environment. One of the presenters, Nicolette Warisse Sosulski, Business Librarian, Portage District Library (MI), who is also a virtual librarian for a divergent group of libraries and institutions, often receiving calls, usually from desperate students, at 3:00 in the morning when no library is open and no other librarian is available to help. She must rely totally on e-resources that the student can also access, which can be very challenging. Melissa DeWild, Collection Development Manager, Kent District Library (MI), has rearranged the books in her library system bookstore fashion, eliminating the use of the dewey decimal system throughout all 18 branches. They loosely followed the BISAC system used by bookstores, but tailored it to fit their needs. Her story was really quite fascinating. Another speaker discussed his academic library’s changing all “reference only” works to circulating. Only 17 titles remain “reference only,” and all of those have a 2nd circulating copy. He presented some sad statistics regarding reference books use. His library has had few problems with getting the now-circulating reference works returned. While these ideas were not unknown to me, it was much more interesting to hear it directly from those who have actually implemented the ideas.

Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. I boarded a bus shuttle to take me to the Think Fit 5k Fun Run & Walk. While I can take pride in the fact that I dragged myself out of bed on a cool Chicago morning in order to participate in this “fun” event, I can’t brag too much about my stats. I think there were many more runners than walkers, and I ate their dust!

One of the highlights of the weeks was listening to Alice Walker, best known for her National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple. Her new books are The Cushion in the Road (essays) and The World Will Follow Joy (poems). Miss Walker read pieces from both books, prefacing each reading with her comments. For example, she had hoped upon reaching 60 that she could just “rest on her cushion,” meditate, and retire. Instead, she has had to “move her cushion” to the middle of the road, not the side, and to continue her human rights activism, because she cares what happens to the world.  Due to segregation, she did not have access to her public library growing up in Georgia. She now actively supports libraries, believing that access (to information) is the key to freedom. She is dismayed when schools are being closed rather than improved, and that we have a government that doesn’t seem to care. Miss Walker also expressed strong views on feminism, believing that women continue to be suppressed, and that the world would be a more compassionate, caring one if women were in charge. She is a strong proponent of human rights, and travels the world in support of various causes. Her support for freedom of speech and freedom from oppression made her an excellent choice to speak to librarians, who are often grassroots supporters of such freedom.

ALA was a great journey for this librarian full of engaging topics and speakers.

Tracy Stone is a Librarian at the Northwest Library.   She has been a part of the MLS family for 25 years.  She can be reached at [email protected].