ALA Wrap Up Notes, Links, and Resources

After a very long but fun and productive 4 days at ALA Annual, I of course have many things to share.  Today I am going to try to do direct you to other places you can find wrap ups, notes and resources as well as report on a few smaller things I did.

I still have at least 2 more posts coming, but for one, I am waiting for the recording to be posted. That one is on Diversity in Publishing but in the meantime, please, please read this, "Post-ALA Race Fatigue." by April, a librarian, lawyer and blogger. Seriously, go now. I'll still be here when you get back.

Okay, first, I want to remind everyone clamoring for conference news from those of us who did attend, you can always get news about any conference or our industry in general from three places: American Libraries, Library Journal, or Publihsers' Weekly archive of all Library News

Also, Steve Thomas, the host of the excellent interview podcast, Circulating Ideas, did 4 mini-podcasts during the conference. You can click here to listen. Yes, I am one of the people he interviewed, but what I liked most about these mini-episodes was that Steve also did a recap on the programs he went to and what he learned. [For those of you who encounter this post in the future, they are Episodes 111.1-111.4].

Many people, including myself, Tweeted from the conference. You can see all of the Tweets, even if you don't use Twitter by searching the official hashtag- #alaac17.

One of the best programs I went to was Librarians Go To Juvie. Working with teens in jail is a personal interest and career goal. This program was on the last full day at 4:30, but boy am I glad I stuck it out and went. I have Storified my Tweets here so you can all learn about this wonderful program run by the Kalamazoo Public Library.

My friend and Read N Rave co-panelist Stephen Sposato from Chicago Public Library also wanted to share something he learned with everyone: "Someone (whose name I didn't catch) shared a great tip: use Bookshots for Hi-Lo readers (high-interest books for adults of low-literacy). Some libraries have special sections devoted to this need, but books specifically published for this market can be hard to come by."

This is so true. In fact, if anyone out there works with Hi-Lo collections for adults, please contact me. I want to talk to you about writing a post for me.

I also took my own advice and met a few interesting people by just starting up a conversation with the person who happend to be next to me by chance. 90% of them were happy to engage. I will share some of those stories in future posts. I also touched base with a few people I sorta knew and am working with them to create some useful guests posts here on the blog.

Also many of you came up to me and introduced yourself. Thank you for doing that. I never would have met you otherwise and I love meeting library people everywhere and anywhere, but especially at library conferences.

This is enough for a day after round up. I will be back with the full Read N Rave list of everything the entire panel talked about yesterday, but remember you can read more about the books I raved in this post. Plus I will have that audio recording of the Diversity in Publishing panel as soon as it is available.