ALA Annual Conference

I recently attended the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA as part of the student-to-staff program. This is an awesome program that ALA offers to library students. In exchange for the student working 20 hours during the conference, ALA pays for conference registration, lodging, and a stipend for food. I was placed with the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table (or more commonly known as FAFLRT).

On Friday I attended FAFLRT’s all day session on “Careers in Federal Libraries.” The above picture is from a panel discussion during the day. That evening I went to El Torito for dinner and ACRL’s anthropology and sociology section annual social. Dinner was great and followed by a fabulous evening of meeting new librarians.

Saturday evening some other librarians and I went to see Ani DiFranco play at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney. It was amusing to all of us that Ani was playing at Disney, but it was a great opportunity to see her. The show was awesome and we had a great time.

Sunday was full of various FAFLRT sponsored programming. I went to their board meeting, a discussion on the state of federal libraries, a program on “Gov 2.0: Going further with the Wikinomics folks,” and a presentation about “Researching, Archiving, and Collecting for the U.S. Congress.” After all of that, I went to the GSLIS alumni reception and then dinner with other students in Downtown Disney.

Monday morning was spent at a panel on “Feminist Publishing: The Evolution of a Revolution.” It was really good. Then I navigated the exhibits and went to dinner with my favorite librarian from my undergraduate college. Tuesday morning I scouted out free books from the exhibitors as they tried to lighten the load for the trip home.

These are just some of the highlights from my trip. I had a great time, learned a lot, and met a lot of people. Next year the ALA Annual Conference in is Chicago, so it won’t be as much as an adventure, but it will still be a great time. A few more pictures from the trip are on Flickr.

Tags: ALA, conference