Al Gore Video Feed

The Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture at this year’s ALA Midwinter Conference was presented by Al Gore. What would such a famous speaker and activist say? How would he connect the crisis of global warming to libraries? I had high hopes.

“If you want a book to be signed, you have to buy them over there before the lecture!” This was my greeting outside the convention center ballroom as staffers gesticulated towards a bookstand. The tone was set, and the room filled quickly.

Gore started his lecture by acknowledging the suffering and destruction in Haiti. Empathy, he explained, is one of the most powerful emotions tying humans together. He asked us to empathize with future generations and consider the kinds of destruction they will inevitably face if we don’t act decisively to save the environment.

“Save libraries!” I was thinking. “Prevent global warming and the destruction of libraries!” What kind of world would this be without libraries?

Gore outlined our options for prevention, covering each chapter of his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, except the one chapter that was relevant to libraries and librarians.

Surely, the majority of the people in that room had already seen An Inconvenient Truth. The lecture did not stray very far from the same information. What if he had paid the most attention to the one chapter he skipped? Wouldn’t that have been inspiring and energizing?

I left the lecture feeling frustrated and dismayed. This presentation was another symptom of what I feel is a larger problem with ALA conferences. Bonnie Swoger wrote in the Undergraduate Science Librarian that “there is a disconnect between the library world and the research world.” I feel that a similar gap exists between libraryland and the technology, design, and marketing worlds.

Getting such big names as Al Gore to speak at our conferences is awesome, but let’s make it even better by inviting them to talk about their ideas relating to our profession. Let’s take the opportunity to hear something new.

We need to hear from our users, as Bonnie suggests, but we also need to hear from experts outside the library world to help us move forward and keep up with the ever-changing landscape our libraries are part of. We need futurists, philosophers, economists, designers, and technologists to speak at our conferences. We need to hear it from the horse’s mouth — what will effect us.

I still think librarians are a great source for programming at ALA, but I want diversity of thought. I don’t want canned presentations or recycled discussions. I think the change would help us keep up and maybe even change our general image from “behind the times” to “in the know.”

For the upcoming ALA Annual Conference 2010, Jason Griffey and the LITA Program Planning Committee decided to switch the program proposal process from a paper form and in-person interview to an electronic exchange: a Google Form and email correspondence this year, and hopefully a conference planning system by next year. (The PPC ProgramProcess TaskForce recommends the Open Conference System, an open source application from the Public Knowledge Project.)

With generous help from Ranti Junus, Systems Librarian at Michigan State University Libraries, a senior member of the committee, and Chair of the PPC ProgramProcess TaskForce, I learned that the process used to be very involved:

1. The chair, co-chair, or vice chair of the Interest Group (IG) sponsoring the program would fill out the paper form and make many copies for each PPC member to read. (The information requested on the paper form was exactly the same as that requested on the Google Form this year.)
2. The IG would arrange an appointment and meet with the PPC for 20-30 minutes.
3. Feedback from the PPC was immediate: clarifications, potential audience, etc. PPC sometimes suggested the IG collaborate with other IGs within LITA or with other divisions. Typical collaboration usually entailed asking the other IG/division to co-sponsor to share information about the program with their own members. Time slots were also discussed. (Usually, the PPC chair had the timetable with her so she could check with the conflicts.)
4. The PPC would then come to a consensus.
5. A PPC liaison who was assigned to the IG would take over communication to the IG proposing the program after ALA Annual. The liaison was the go-to person for the IG for all PPC-related communications and was responsible for making sure that the IG would get the information they needed in a timely manner. Liaisons were also responsible for reminding the IGs about turning in other information such as the names of the speakers, communicating PPC discussions related to the respective IGs, and informing PPC about the IG’s progress preparing the program.

This year, with the use of Google Docs, Griffey was able to set up a Google Form for program proposals. The information from the Google Form was funneled into a Google Spreadsheet shared by all the members of the PPC. This was the process so far this year:

1. Griffey put out a call for proposals on the LITA Blog on June 24, 2009. This included a link to the Google Form (now defunct), a link to the form on ALA Connect, and an announcement that program proposals no longer need to be sponsored by an IG.
2. The committee met at ALA Annual 2009 and discussed the new procedure and intentions to change the LITA Manual by ALA MidWinter 2010. The program planning process no longer includes IG liaisons or required meetings with submitters at MidWinter. (View our Meeting Minutes.)
3. After the program proposal deadline on July 31, 2009, the PPC members read all the submissions and rated each on a scale of 1-10. These ratings were based on interest, the reflection of the program on LITA, its likelihood to draw a crowd, its currency, etc. Comments were also made and recorded on the spreadsheet regarding improvements or questions about the program. The ratings were averaged for each program proposal.
4. Every submission that received an average of 7 or above was approved, a 4-6 was marked as “maybe,” and a 1-3 was rejected.
5. Junus then plotted a schedule of LITA programs for Annual 2010 with the requested times of approved and “maybe” programs on a Google Spreadsheet. This was so our committee could better visualize what program belonged when. (We didn’t want programs that would draw a similar audience have to compete with each other.)
6. The PPC met on gTalk to discuss the outliers a few days later. Emails were sent to some submitters for clarification on their program proposals.
7. In mid-September, Griffey met with other Program Planning Committee Chairs at ALA in Chicago to discuss and arrange the preliminary schedule for ALA Annual 2010. (Hear more about the ALA Conference Planning Committee at Griffey’s blog.) Luckily, LITA was able to get through the scheduling without having to change much.
8. Pretty soon we’ll be volunteering to email approved submitters our congratulations and suggestions for improvement.
9. More to come as we get closer to Annual…

It has been an interesting experience so far, helping to shape the ALA Annual Conference 2010 and understanding how conference planning is done from the inside. I’m very excited for many of the programs LITA is sponsoring, but, secretly, I wish every day of Annual could be an unconference.

There have been some big changes afoot: I am now engaged, I left my job in Rochester, and I’ve moved across the country. We moved to Los Angeles for my fiancé to pursue his Masters in Interactive Media Design (AKA game design) at the University of Southern California, and he starts this Fall semester. We’ve been here for a little over a week so far. Things are starting to settle now, but we still have a bit to iron out. I am unemployed again as the searching and applying for jobs in this area has not yet returned any rewards. I still have a lot to do.

ALA Annual is coming up! This will be my third consecutive ALA Annual Conference, and, since I was accepted to a LITA committee for the 2009-2011 term, I will be going to at least 3 more ALA conferences in the near future (including Mid-Winter). As a bonus this year, I will be roommates with none other than the Library Scenester. (Aren’t you envious?) With the lovely Erin around, I’m sure to have a fantastic time.

The LITA committee I will participate in after this upcoming ALA Annual Conference is the Program Planning Committee. My use of Twitter (@library_chan) and information from other librarians I follow were instrumental to my volunteering and getting accepted to the committee.

I follow several people on Twitter who are very involved in the American Library Association. As most know, Jenny Levine (@shifted) works for them, but Amy Harmon (@infowidget) was, and continues to be, an ALA Councilor-at-Large. I also follow Jason Griffey (@griffey), a very active member of LITA and the Program Planning Committee Chair. Aaron Dobbs (@awd) helped me greatly via Twitter. An active LITA and ALA member (and now an ALA Councilor-at-Large — congrats!), he lobbied the LITA president to include me in a LITA committee. Thanks, Aaron!

How did this come about? During the past ALA Mid-Winter Conference, many people were tweeting from sessions and meetings. In particular, Amy Harmon tweeted from ALA Council meetings and encouraged more of us to get involved. Though I love going to the conferences, I find the ALA hierarchy mind-boggling, and I had preconceptions about the inner-workings of ALA and its divisions. Amy Harmon’s call for more involvement coincided nicely with an announcement from the LITA Twitter account that LITA was looking for committee volunteers. What better way to get involved in ALA than to pick one of the most interesting and exciting ALA divisions? So I joined LITA (finally!) and signed up (and tweeted about signing up)!