What better way to end an internship than with a party of thousands of like minded individuals? Well… not exactly a party. There was work involved, but ALA09 sure gave me the chance to end it all with a bang.
It all started with preconferences on Thursday and Friday. Thursday I played the normal intern, just helping everyone register and get to the correct room, but Friday the ALCTS staff was brave enough to let me run an off-site event by myself. I’m happy to report that “Manipulating Metadata: XSLT for Librarians” went off without a hitch, AND I got to review XSLT. Bonus!
Friday night’s ALCTS101 session was very informative in helping me decide which sections of ALCTS to join. I was given the advice to just join them all, but I thought that might be a little overwhelming. I settled on Acquisitions, Cataloging and Classification, and Preservation and Reformatting.
Saturday, the first “real” day of conference, was a little mind-boggling. In the morning I browsed the exhibits, but found myself a little lost. From what I hear, that’s normal for a conference rookie. I think my biggest mistake was going when the exhibits opened. Pushing through the swag seekers is not my idea of fun. In order to remind myself that I was present for professional development, I attended a few good programs: one on how to choose whether or not to outsource digitization (and how to buy digitization equipment if you decided to), and another on metadata workflows.
The highlight of Sunday was the ALCTS awards ceremony where I (along with Keri Cascio- another awesome Missouri librarian) received Certificates of Appreciation. My citation mentioned this blog thus provoking moderate guilt pangs due to recent lack of updates.
Monday morning was the most exciting. I learned more about ALCTS from listening to the members formulate a vision of the division’s future in their “Creating Our Future” forum than I did from ALCTS101. The President’s Program brought the President and Director of The Art Institute of Chicago, James Cuno, to speak on Who Owns Antiquities. His impromptu presentation elicited passionate reactions from the attendees. I found myself mostly disagreeing with him, but I would never complain about a speaker that made me think as much as he did.
That about sums up the majority of my first conference. Oh yeah, except for the 9 hours of ALCTS board meetings where I took minutes and learned all of the ALCTS secrets that I’m not at liberty to share. Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill, digitize, and catalog you. I think they actually publish the minutes, but humor my glamorization for now.
That’s it, I’m done! Yay!
BUT…
I still have a week of class in Syracuse before I’m OFFICIALLY done with everything and then I immediatly start the new job in Kansas City. I also need this week to think up a new title for the blog. Suggestions are welcome, but for now I’ll just be the One Week Left Librarian.
Jordan Fields 