ALA Midwinter Boston: Where Every Robot Knows Your Name
In mid-January, as the faculty were returning and gearing up for classes to start for the spring semester, just over 11,000 librarians and exhibitors descended upon Boston for the MidWinter meeting of the American Library Association. Our semi-annual gathering, spoofed in 2007’s YouTube “March of the Librarians” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td922l0NoDQ is the business-related, smaller conference, but is still a huge event, and rather overwhelming.
The exhibit part of the conference is most spectacular: vendors set up booths to draw in potential buyers of just about anything: books, yes, but also library systems, furniture, databases, audiobooks, self-check-out systems, alarm systems, book covering devices, microfilm machines, anything you could think of possibly finding in or near a library… it’s there. And then some. Jewelry. T-shirts. And of course the gimmicks. … Including the one I have a personal problem with: the robot.
There is a robot with one particular vendor, whose name I keep blocking out (Lisa Johnston knows, though, and keeps reminding me). This robot can carry on a personal conversation with you. I have no idea how this is done. Someone, somewhere, is pulling the strings, so to speak. It freaks. Me. Out. I hate this robot. Other people are delighted by the robot, and good for them. I can’t stand it. And so….I kind of had a wee bit of a freak-out on the robot this MidWinter. I hurt the robot’s feelings. I’m not proud. It was a moment I really, really hope wasn’t caught on video anywhere.
A little bit of background: at the conferences, publishers tend to give out pre-publication galleys (also called advance reader copies) of books that will be coming out in the next year, in the hope that we will read, like, and purchase for our libraries. This is, of course, my favorite part of the exhibit hall, because otherwise I abhor crowds. I will suck it up and brave the masses for free books – I don’t care if they’re riddled with errors. I can forgive errant punctuation if the book is free. I’m very generous that way. So: I’d spent a good long while in the exhibit hall, and I was weighted down with bagloads of books. Multiple. My shoulders were being torn from their sockets. I had many, many books. I was tired, overstimulated, and grumpy. When seemingly from nowhere, the robot whispered “Hi, Julie” in its creepy robot voice. I admit that I flipped out a tad. “JESUS CHRIST STOP THAT” may have been my not-so-cool reply. To which the robot immediately responded (with a hurt tone –how does it do that?!?!) “I only wanted to say hello.” Oooh, jeez. It was really time to get right on out of there.
Down to Work
I’m still relatively new to my involvement with this gargantuan association, but as soon as I came to Sweet Briar, I was strongly encouraged to sign up and dive in. As a result, I’m now neck-deep in committee assignments and loving (like the nerd I am) the hard work that the conference requires. I go in for multiple 4-hour committee meetings and might send out facebook status updates about my desperate need for a caffeine drip halfway through, but I’m incredibly lucky to have landed a spot on this committee. The 4-hour meetings are part of my ALCTS committee (gaaah, we love the acronyms in ALA, and speak in entire sentences made entirely of acronym riddles: “I’m the ALCTS/LITA CC:DA rep on RDA to MARBI, so….you know.” Mmm-hmm. No. No, I don’t). Anyway.
Back to it – ALCTS is one of the many divisions of ALA – the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. My committee within ALCTS is the Program Committee. Our job is to help funnel all of the other ALCTS committees put on programs at the two conferences every year. It’s a process. But we are the final line – the approving, the refining, helping to choose room setups, predicting audience size, scheduling against non-conflicting interest groups…things like that. Rejecting proposals that aren’t quite formed well enough yet.
My other big ALA commitment is to NMRT, the New Members Round Table. Right now I’m in my second year of chairing the Booth Committee, and at this conference my name was submitted and approved to go on the ballot for the executive board for the next election. Gulp. It’s exciting but also a huge commitment. I’ll be stepping up from chairing one committee to supervising and helping out five committees. NMRT has been really important to me, though, and I had a great time at this conference volunteering with their Resume Review service. It helps librarians at any stage of their career connect with mentors to go over their resumes and polish them with a personal discussion about job searches and what particular searches would be looking for in a resume. NMRT rocks.
Oh, and I saw Al Gore speak. That was tremendous.
Librarians’ conferences: they are amazing, but not all fun, games, and free books. We have to work, find 8 a.m. committee meetings and dodge robots, too.
Categories: American Library Association