The Opening General Session is a huge event in a huge auditorium with a huge amount of people. Yes, huge. There is something comforting, however, about sitting in a room with thousands of seats and finding yourself suddenly sitting next to a librarian friend from your home town. This, I believe, is the power of electricity. Literally. We were both looking to sit in a place that would allow us to plug in our laptops… battery power can only last so long at one of these events.

The General Session began with a short film that highlighted some ALA successes in the past year. We learned about the partnerships ALA has undertaken with the @ your library program. The film included footage of how ALA contributed to the disaster relief in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

A number of libraries and communities were destroyed by the hurricane. The libraries that could function, did so; offering support to community members so they could have some normalcy in their lives, reach family members, and fill out FEMA forms online.

Current ALA President Michael Gorman took a few moments to honor the librarians from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast areas who were in attendance at the conference. In addition, everyone present observed a moment of silence for all those who were lost in as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

NO Mayer Nagin – Spoke about how librarie across the country provided a network to help thei citizens of NO get the information they needed and make the connections they needed after Hurricane K. ALA conference is the largest convention that NO has hosted since Katrina. Mayor Nagin thinks we “rock.”

Lt Governor Landrieu was also in attendance at the event. As the Lt Governor in LA, his dept is in charge of the state library system. He gave a warm welcome to those of us attending the ALA Annual conference.

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright was the keynote speaker at the event. Her comments were passionate in line with her new book, The Mighty and the Almighty.

I hope that a transcript of her comments will be made available. I admit to being so focused on her comments, that I did not take the time to capture them all. As I have a warm love of lists, I did capture this nice list she provided near the beginning of her presentation:

4 reasons why every boy and girl should be introduced to the library early on:

1. Libraries are fun
2. Libraries are educational
3. Libraries are the biggest bargain on the face of the earth, and
4. Libraries are a laboratory of freedom