ALA Annual Conference, On not attending
Mon 26 Jun 2006, 11:59 pm
This year I continued my fairly recent tradition of skipping ALA. I don’t regret missing the conference, but I do regret having to pass up several invitations to get together over a beer (or a hurricane; do they still serve those in New Orleans? I’d expect the name seems less cute since Katrina) with old or new friends during the conference. I think next year I’ll go to D.C., skip the conference, and just drink with librarians.
But the great thing about the web is that I don’t have to feel left out–I feel like I attended the conference just by reading blog posts. No, not the conference reports, silly! The conference-related snark from A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette. Check ‘em out:
- Conferences, Returning from: “Cull out the good vendor give-aways for yourself and then dump the rest off on your coworkers or the homeless (15 minutes)”
- Freebies, collecting conference: “In order to make the most efficient use of your time, don’t look vendors in the eye. Just grab the freebies by the handful and go!”
- Totebags, On hating: from an anonymous comment on this post: “Since librarians often fly to conferences, wouldn’t it be better to have barf bags emblazoned with library related logos?”
I see fellow conference-skippers Steven and my new imaginary friend Iris are also giggling at this.
- License:
- File under: Conferences
- Comments? 11
You can add me to the list of non-ALA-attending Librarian’s Guide to Etiqutte-laughing people. (Heck, you can add me to your list of imaginary friends, too, if’n you want to.)
Comment by joshua m. neff — June 27, 2006 @ 6:24 am
Joshua, since you have left a few comments here and I have left at least one at the goblin in the library, we are certainly imaginary friends.
Comment by Steve Lawson — June 27, 2006 @ 8:10 am
Giggling… no. More like wiping my eyes and catching my breath (especially for the post about “Territorial, Being.”
We should set up an anti-conference! It would have freebies, the ubiquitous iPod give-away, and lots of hanging out with librarians, but it wouldn’t have anything about “[insert word here] 2.0″ or Millennials. It would also be free.
Comment by Iris — June 27, 2006 @ 8:33 am
You are on to something, Iris. We have been trying to imagine an online conference with all of the content and none of the “extra stuff.” Instead, we need an in-person conference with only the extra stuff. We would have the very best nametag holders evar.
Also, I wonder what library vendors’ experiences of the conferences are like. Something tells me that an anonymous group blog of library vendors where the tell about being on the other side of the great freebie stampede would be very entertaining.
This also reminds me of something I overheard on the exhibits floor of ALA. Several years ago (in San Francisco?) I overheard one swag-laden librarian say to another is a hissing whisper “those people have much better totebags than we do!” I shouldn’t be too superior, though, because I was on my own quest to find the booth giving away the large, black, “Pat the Bunny” totebags.
Comment by Steve Lawson — June 27, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
Hah! We would definitely have to have the tote bags… as big and brightly colored as possible, and preferably with more writing in smaller print than anyone else’s tote bags.
Comment by Iris — June 27, 2006 @ 12:43 pm
Oh, I’m totally down for the conference of just extra stuff, if only we could find a way to fund it. There’d have to be some write-up for library higher-ups that would make it sound like the once conference we all had to be at.
Happily, I managed to miss almost all of the exhibits this year. I want a conference slave who will go to the exhibits for me, pick up cool stuff for my coworkers, and have intelligent, reasoned conversations with OPAC vendors that will result in transformed catalogs. . . well, one can dream.
Comment by Laura — June 27, 2006 @ 4:05 pm
What’s the deal with tote bags anyway? I’ve been a librarian for 10 months now and already have enough to last me through the rest of my career. Does anyone in the next generation of librarians really carry these things around?
Comment by Nick Baker — June 28, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
I confess that I use those silly tote bags regularly. I often want to take more books, papers etc. back and forth to work than fit in my backpack and then out comes the Internet Librarian bag or the RBMS Preconference bag. I don’t always keep the new ones I get, though, and other than the aforementioned Pat the Bunny bag (really the ne plus ultra of conference tote bags in my experience) I don’t seek them out.
We have established elsewhere that I’m old and uncool, so just consider this further proof.
Comment by Steve Lawson — June 28, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
“Hey, you kids! Quit skateboardin’ ’round here, or I’ll whack ya with my tote bag!”
Comment by joshua m. neff — June 28, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
I have found that conference tote bags are great for storing materials collected at conferences (after, of course, recycling all those PowerPoints, according to proper etiquette).
If you come here to DC next year during ALA week, I’d definitely join you for drinks with the librarians.
Comment by Julian — June 28, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
Oooh, ALA’s in DC next year? Am I the only librarian who didn’t know that?… Well, I guess I win the uncoolness contest. Can I have my tote bag prize now?
Comment by Iris — June 28, 2006 @ 9:16 pm