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Preamble
On the twenty-first of June
2007, I had the excellent opportunity of attending the ALA
Conference and Exhibition which is held annually, this time in
Washington DC.
Even though I was an IFLA fan
with regards to attending conferences, I had to pass this year
leaving the turn to my colleague, the reference librarian who
attended IFLA’s two months later in Durban,
South Africa. Upon returning I
felt the urge to share the experience in writing to make-up
for my shyness in speaking and describing the experience
orally.
Visa Procedures
I started visa procedures
early in February very reluctantly, I have to admit. The
political situation was very stressful and it was very painful
to talk myself into leaving Lebanon under such circumstances.
Luckily, these procedures were very straightforward. The
application could be picked up from a local bank and the
interview was set there for a month later. On the assigned
time for the interview, I took a cab to the American Embassy.
I submitted the application and selected English (of course)
as the interview language. Then, I started a long journey of
waiting along with a large number of applicants who were
seated in a classroom manner. To kill the boredom of the
wasted hours, I started helping people with no or poor
knowledge of the English language through filling what was
missing in their application forms. It was fun helping out and
jokingly charging them $10 for each task.
Visa Interview
Hearsays about my assigned
interviewer were not very pleasant. His character seemed to be
overly strict and I prepared myself for an uneasy task. Coming
from an American University requesting to attend an American event put me at ease. Noticing that
elaborated answers were not appreciated, I approached the
assigned window and the nice looking but stern man started
bombarding me with questions:
Q: Why are you going to the
United States?
A: I am going there to attend
the American Library Association Annual Conference.
Q: Where is it going to be
held?
A: In Washington, DC (of course with the
accent).
Q: Do you know anybody there?
A: Not really! (Thinking
that I might have if I search deep in my mind).
Q: What do you mean?
A: I mean no I don’t (threatened).
Q: Why did you say “not
really”?
A: Just an expression! (Looking
him straight in the eyes).
Changing his tone, he asked
again:
What is the conference about?
A: Digitization, electronic
resources, consortium, etc. to the end of a long list of
professional jargon (with relief and assuming he knew
nothing about the subject).
Track! He gave me a coupon.
Is this a yes? I knew it was
but I wanted to be assured through eye contact with the people
around. I sent the taxi driver back to the Embassy on the next
Friday to pick up the passport. Yes I got the visa covering
just the period when the conference was held. I hated waiting,
but I had to wait for another three months.
Conference and Accommodation
registration
Even though that wasn’t the
first time I traveled or attended conferences, I had an
inhibiting feeling inside. Maybe this was due to the far off
United States or maybe because I was worn out by the stressful
situation in Lebanon. God Knows!
Concurrently, I was concerned
with the huge changes taking place at the Lebanese
American University and in the
librarianship profession as well. Readings on strategic
planning, reports on accreditation, listserv correspondences,
and professional articles were accumulated and there came the
time to clear and clean the attic.
Studiously I started my
readings and generously the University started finalizing my
registration to the conference, the empowerment workshop, and
the accommodation.
Surprisingly, all the first
six choices of hotels were sold out early in February and
luckily, I was given the Washington Marriott as an
alternative.
Through my quest to finalize
all procedures, I accumulated some traveling hints that I
thought I should share with any candidate planning to attend
ALA in the future:
·
Large
cities have more than one airport, you should find out from
your travel agency in which airport you are landing.
·
Airport picking up of the
ALA attendees is not available.
You find out early enough that you are on your own especially
if your mentor becomes severely sick right at the time when
the conference is taking place. Thanks to Gale,
shuttle buses are provided which makes commuting from and to
the Convention Centre, where the Conference takes place,
smooth.
·
Hotel
map in the printed program does not add anything new. Already
the info is available online and you can always calculate in
kilometers the distance between your hotel and the Convention
Center, where major events take place.
·
Print
and online leaflets are useful in providing information about
the International Librarians booth where you have special free
but essential internet facilities.
·
Overseas attendants (internationals) have to fetch their
badges onsite. The Conference badge is not sent in advance.
Setting My Personal Conference
Calendar
I started reading the
preliminary program from the very first cover. I wanted to
live the experience fully and deeply. Due to the constant
budget cuts, chances to attend conferences will diminish with
time.
The program considerately
started with a series of workshops meant for first time
attendees (newbie’s) followed by: ALA President’s Program,
Auditorium speaker series,
“The stacks”. (Why not just
the exhibition?).
Again another listing:
Division President’s Program, AASL, ACRL, ALCTS, ALSC, RUSA,
YALSA, etc. Are the above mentioned programs redundant, held
in parallel, more important, more focused, Not to Miss??? I
was baffled still by the division of the program!!!
The preliminary program also
advertised something called “Special Events”. All these events
were expensive. Some of them seemed specialized workshops on
specific themes as Leadership, Management, Technical Services,
and Trends in cataloguing … Quite tempting. However, the
exaggerated costing would discourage you especially that those
courses would consume a whole day which could be filled by a
variety of alternative activities. So those events should be
considered carefully. Frankly speaking I couldn’t be motivated
enough to attend any of them.
Scheduling for the conference,
assisted by the online calendar, was a great exercise, quite
frustrating though. Under the description of a lot of
lectures/programs/events I read the statement “this is paid,
you have to book” or “this is free you have to book”. Only
onsite I recognized that the booking requirements were no
more, IMHO, than a statistical device to measure the number of
attendees since I was able to attend some of them even without
booking (the free ones at least).
So my advice is, just ignore
booking, go there, and sit on the nearest chair or the
available spot of ground or a comfortable dust bin for the
worst case scenario.
The same events were grouped
in the preliminary program in a different manner. Through
tracks and sub tracks, the conference tried to group some of
the lectures to create one focused workshop to cover a certain
theme, namely, Administration & Leadership, Human Resources &
Staff Development, Collection Management & Technical Services,
etc.
This didn’t work for me. I
went through 34 pages where 340 programs were listed. I formed
my own package. My aim was to expose myself to a variety of
offerings, i.e. the ALA structure, the authors’ sessions, the
new trends in technology and its profound effect on the life
of the new generation and consequently on our profession.
Impressions from the sojourn
Only instinctively I
registered for and attended a workshop described as
Empowerment Workshop. You can never be sure how useful a
workshop bearing the name: “Mama Said There’d be Days like
This” would be. It was a lovely and informative one. It helped
complementing what the big conference failed to achieve with
regards to visiting the Library of Congress and other major
features of the city.
I also listened to famous
fiction and non fiction writers, beautifully describing their
first hand experiences; attended lectured about gadgets which
I saw my nephews and nieces manipulating, MP3, MP4, IPOD, etc.
I consolidated my knowledge of wikis, blogs… I skillfully was
looking patiently and persistently to regain my lost
inspiration and the morale drastically chattered into pieces
by the stagnant and shameful situation that Lebanon was
trapped in.
Tours
Tours were costly and the
activities of the conferences did not include visits to any of
The White House, the Capitol Hill, the Library of Congress
(for God’s sake), and the famous Smithsonian Museums? (Will I
have time to discover which ones to visit? 18 Smithsonian
Museums in D.C.).
Anyway by the time I was able
to contain my surprise, all the tours (for my good luck) were
booked. Why paying that much when you can attend them yourself
free of charge? Moreover, the conference organizers were able
to schedule at the last moment some tours and events to the
Library of Congress, the dream place of every librarian.
Conclusion
Attending ALA was of course a
good experience, not quite fulfilling though.
I had a feeling (not very
scientific; it has been a long time since I attended IFLA’s
Conferences), that lectures offered at IFLA’s would be more
satisfactory. But later it was explained to me as I could also
figure out for myself, that ALA annual event was an umbrella
covering different divisions competing to offer the best
programs and foreseeing their execution rather than merely
lecturing all day long.
Before leaving, my colleagues
in Lebanon pointed to me the importance of the huge exhibition held. It indeed was,
even though Thomson, Proquest, Gale, H.W. Wilson, OCLC, LC and
their different products were not unfamiliar commodities to me
or to my institution.
At the end, I extended my stay
one more day on my own expenses. Plenty of intellectual
activities were not to be missed. I took the superb trolley
shuttle bus and marathonically toured the Capitol Hill, the
American Indian Museum, and the Air and
Space Museum. In the afternoon, I
treated myself into the famous DC Duck tour. It takes you by
land and then by water to all the city’s beautiful monuments
and sceneries. This last tour summed up a beautiful experience
in a city I could strongly relate to my country in lots of
aspects.
Some useful hints from a
lecture about professional development
ü
Be a
major player in your field.
·
Work
in leading committees.
·
Get
involved in various activities
ü
Learn
how to do research.
·
Earn a
doctorate degree: credential/respect/recognition
ü
Say
YES to new opportunities even if it involves moving.
ü
Never
lie.
ü
ALA American Library Association / Events & Conferences
http://www.ala.org/ala/events/eventsconferences.htm |
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