Getting ready for ALA
Jun 22nd, 2006 by Karen
I’m off to New Orleans tomorrow for ALA. I’ve been so busy this spring that until Monday I hadn’t really stopped and looked at the program to see what I might be attending. Besides the panel I’m participating in our course! After perusing the conference offerings, I found that there is a plethora of really great programming at the conference. The biggest problem is (that like most conferences) the stuff that interests me most is at the same time. For example, the panel (Catalog Transformed: From Traditional to Emerging Models of Use) that John Blyberg is participating in is at the same time as the LITA President’s program (Internet Culture: what do we know about user behavior). This isn’t the only instance of competing programs for me.
I can see how this kind of thing happens because LITA is sponsoring one of these events and RUSA the other. Looking at the schedule it seems that ALA tries very hard not to put sessions sponsored by the same section at the same time. The problems with this is that is assumes that the interests and topics of the sessions of the different sections are diverse enough that there wouldn’t be a conflict. However, from my point of view this is not the case. There is a great deal of overlap in the kinds of programs that different sections are sponsoring, which makes it hard to see all the programs of interest.
Still I’m looking forward to the conference a great deal. I’m particularly excited about speaking and getting to see Mary Chapin Carpenter at the Scholarship Bash.
