Sunday at the ALA Annual Conference

My third day at the conference continued the parade of celebrities I admire. Nancy Pearl is not only a hero but a Library Action Figure. She’s also written several books of book recommendations including Book Lust, More Book Lust, and the new Book Crush for children and teens. She spoke mainly on encouraging children to read and to validate the choices they make in reading. She also warned of the perils of a life of reading as a counterbalance. She told the story of how the Library Action Figure came about, and the 39 librarians with no sense of humor who sent her hate mail.

I’d scheduled myself to attend a Blog and Wikis Interest Group but I didn’t like the looks of it since it seemed to be another committee meeting (with laptops) and that was not where I wanted to go. So I quickly flipped through my program and discovered that a program called Harnessing the Hive: Social Networking in Libraries was taking place in an adjacent room. It was even tagged as being suited to New Bees. I can’t believe my luck, because this may be the best program I’ve attended yet. Three presenters showed off actual working collaborative tools that have improved services and research in libraries. I’ve got lots of links to follow up on this as well.

I left the convention center and returned to the U Street area, this time to attend Mass at St. Augustine, a predominantly Black Catholic parish. The priest preached for half an hour, two children were baptized, and the choir sang a whole lot of gospel so the Mass lasted 2 hours! Not that I’m complaining. The liturgy was beautiful and I felt very welcomed. I ate a veggie burger sub at the famed Ben’s Chili Bowl prior to returning to the convention center.

I didn’t have time to visit the exhibitions as planned, but did get to make yesterdays blog entry and head to the ALA Book Cart Drill Team Championships. It was hillarious. The team from Pennsylvania named “Get Down With Your Funky Shelf” definitely had the best name. However, the Divas from Texas who performed the Rosie the Riveter inspired “Riveted by Reading” truly deserved the coveted Gold Book Cart.

Thanks to the power of Youtube, now you <em>can</em> see the ALA Book Cart Drill Team Championships! At least parts of the event.

irst, the Readin’ & Rollin’ team from Milford, Ohio who took fourth place and the autographed DEMCO catalog:

Next, the Bronze Cart winning Delaware Diamonds:

The Silver Cart winning performance by Gett Down With Your Funky Shelf of Gettysburg, PA.

The Book Divas of Houston, TX took home the Gold Cart with their performance of “Rosie is Riveting”, only a snippet of it is available here:

After another long day of conferencing, I visited Northern Virginia to see my friends Annie & Mike. Additionally, a fellow librarian/conferencee/friend Camille (and one of her friends from Ithaca) and Washingtonian/friend Lisa Lynn were there. So the six of us (and Mike and Annie’s in utero son) went out for Thai food in Alexandria (no pun in the name). We actually talked about a lot of library and social networking stuff. Camille and I came up with a creative writing project based on odd reference questions. It could even be like the “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” game where three stories are told and you have to guess the real reference question. This originated from Camille’s story about IM reference where a patron first asked for everything they had about biotechnology and then followed up by saying an illegal alien was living in his apartment. We will be presenting this game at the next conference.

So it was another good, full day. I can’t believe that it’s gone by so fast and there’s only one full day left. I also can’t believe all that I’ve learned. I hope I don’t lose all these great ideas brewing in my head. It’s hard to find time to write them all down.