It was an interesting ride, being an ALA Emerging Leader in the Class of 2009. The upshot: I got to work with a great group of people, create some cool videos, and met a lot of really interesting librarians. The downside (downshot?): I’m not really any more interested in getting active in ALA committees than I was beforehand (and that, I think, is really the point of the whole thing).

That said, I recommend the program to other emerging librarians for a number of reasons.

1. You’ll meet a bunch of young(er), active, new(ish) librarians with lots of energy and great ideas.
2. You’ll get to collaborate on a project at a distance with a group of people you don’t know very well. Okay, this sounds like a con, but really, I think this type of work, and being able to do it effectively, is becoming more and more important as we get more and more online and virtual.
3. You’ll have an excellent excuse (and possibly a sponsorship) to attend both ALA conferences for a year. Attending an ALA conference won’t make or break you as a librarian, and you may or may not get a whole lot out of the sessions provided, but either way it’s an excellent opportunity and shouldn’t be passed up (especially if you’ve never been to a big library conference before).

One of my fellow ELs has written much more prolifically on the topic than I have (or plan to), including her “10 Reasons to Apply for Emerging Leaders 2010.”(See also 2, 3). The deadline for applying, including ALL supporting documents, is July 31st. So hopefully you’re already underway, or you can type really fast and have some letters of recommendation already sitting around … Apply to become an Emerging Leader for 2010 here.

What follows are some of my thoughts on the EL process, why it’s valuable, and where it’s not. These are broken down into two parts: my thoughts after attending ALA Midwinter, and; my thoughts after attending ALA Annual (and finishing the EL program).

If you want more info on other EL projects, documentation, and some behind-the-scenes stuff, you should check out the ALA Emerging Leader wiki, where each project is outlined and deliverables are linked.

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ALA Librarians Need Coffee to Survive

Thanks to the Friends of the Washington State Library and the Washington Library Association, I was the lone staff-person at the Washington State Library who got to sneak off to Chicago last week for the American Library Association Annual conference. Attendance was pretty good at the event (I think even more than last year), but I imagine these were mostly east-coast attendees and less folks from Washington State.  As such, I thought I would share my notes (pardon their lack of organization) and general impressions.

I liked Chicago a lot more than I thought I would. I’d built up a bias against it from travelling through it, but had never stopped and looked around inside the city proper. There was a lot to do, plenty of excellent food and interesting sights, and I walked until my feet issued a proclamation that if I didn’t stop walking they would be writing up their two weeks notice. I saw quite a few Segway tours, which I found amusing but had to admit were actually pretty sensible.

The conference itself was a bit of a mixed bag. I was mainly there for my Emerging Leader work (which was the only reason I got to go in the first place), and that was interesting and fulfilling and all things good. The other sessions I squeezed into my schedule were hit or miss, and the only thing that kept my awake at certain points was sneaking peeks at ALASecrets and ALASecrets2009 on my netbook. It should be noted that this was perhaps one of the more interesting things to happen during the conference. Not only did a secret back-channel ALA conference gossip rag pop out of nowhere and blossom (200 followers within a couple hours); but it was subsequently censored, and presumably by a librarian. That it was replaced within an hour with a non-censorable but equally accessible alternative speaks volumes for the ingenuity of people in our profession and, in general, the total lameness of censorship.

But we all knew that already. Right?

I enjoyed the conference in the end, though I always think there should be something more, like I’m missing something. I definitely enjoyed Chicago, and would recommend it to anyone who likes an active vacation in the big city.

Detailed “session” notes after the break.

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