Conferences are a great place to meet colleagues from other libraries and types of libraries. For me, I always feel invigorated when I go back to work after a conference. I’ve been attending them for the better part of 20 years and have presented at a few as well. The ALA annual conference, which changes location every year, but is often held in Chicago, the organization’s home base, can be an overwhelming undertaking. The New Members Round Table is a great place to start if you are new to the profession or just new to conferences. They offer information about what will be taking place during the conference, suggestions on getting involved in the organization and general helpful tips. The conference “program guide” is a hefty 200 pages plus, so it can cause analysis paralysis when trying to decide what to attend and how to get from point A to point B. The shuttle buses, provided courtesy of GALE, are a huge help when you are trying to navigate in a large city. One of the big things to note when you are new to ALA is that you can’t be in two places at once. It is a certainty that there will be two or more programs that you want to attend, at the same time, in hotels 5 miles apart. You have to make a choice which to go to, and hope for the best. It’s frustrating if you’ve traveled to a far-flung hotel to see a program on X, only to find out that you should have gone to hear program Y at a hotel far in the opposite direction and without time to get there before the program is over. It’s happened to all of us and you just have to take it in stride.
The most unique conference that I ever spoke at was one where I was talking about the Queens Library’s Job Information Center with a PowerPoint presentation that I had created and had to have translated into Russian as the conference was for Russian speaking librarians. If it wasn’t for the numbers at the bottom of the page, I would have been hard-pressed to be able to explain anything that was on the screen. Luckily there were translators for those who didn’t speak English.
On organizing a conference- the state conference in New York is known as NYLA (New York Library Association) and has been held for many years in Saratoga Springs- home to thoroughbred horseracing. Since it is often in the same place, it can be difficult to find volunteers for some of the committees. The staff of the Queens Library once acted as the Local Arrangements Committee – from a distance of about 200 miles. That’s one of those times when you just have to dig in and do it. Do we know the best restaurant in Saratoga? No, but I often say about librarians- may not know about a subject but we know where to find it. And so we did in Saratoga. It can be fun and you are helping out with colleagues from around the state. The next time I served on local arrangements for Saratoga, I lived much closer and actually had good suggestions for those who needed restaurant recommendations.
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