Saturday, June 24th

My hotel is just 2 blocks from the convention center (and about 6 blocks from the shuttle buses – it’s a big convention center). I headed out early to catch a shuttle bus to the location of my first meeting. At 7am, it was already uncomfortably humid outside. I was already feeling smug about remembering my comfortable walking shoes and lightweight clothes. By 5pm, neither of these would bring me any comfort, I might as well enjoy it now.

My first meeting was the Membership and Planning Committee of ASCLA/ICAN. ASCLA is the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies. It’s a sort of catch-all Division of ALA for people who work in/with state libraries, networks and consortia, and independent library consultants. Plus, it has a section for those who work with people with disabilities. The ICAN section of ASCLA is for Interlibrary Cooperation and Networking. These are the consortia folks. The membership and planning committee has been working on some materials (print and online) to provide more information about the benefits of ICAN membership and to explain more about what it is the section does. The print publication is about ready to, well, go to print. The online piece has some work ahead of it.

After ICAN, I was off to RUSA STARS orientation. STARS is the Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section of the Reference and User Services Association. At the close of this conference, I will be Chair of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Group. Rethinking Resource Sharing is a powerful initiative that really deserves its own post (hopefully that will happen later on). This meeting is the orientation to how things work within the RUSA Division and the STARS section. There are many layers to ALA and many, many members; so it’s important make sure that the committees and interest groups know how to maneuver through the organization and get things done. More important, we need to know how to get information about what is happening to the membership.

These two meetings wrapped up most of the “business” end of my conference. Committee meetings are important and a great place to really network with colleagues in other states and organizations; but the real thrill of attending conference is in the programs.