Carmen Melendez, Acting Head of the Reference Department at the University of Puerto Rico Law School Library, received a grant from CS-SIS that enabled her to attend this year’s AALL Conference.  Here’s what she has to say about it:

“Nunca es tarde cuando la dicha es buena” 1

The above is a proverb that can be attributed different meanings. I am using it in the context  that no matter how much you have to wait for something, when you get the reward the wait will have been worth it. I adopted this proverb as my motto after I fulfilled my dream of traveling to Europe almost a year and a half ago. The wait was worth it. I say the same about the AALL Annual Meeting this year. After 15 years of absence, I was able to attend this year and it was worth the wait.

I am grateful to CS-SIS for giving me a grant as an experienced librarian which allowed me to participate in the AALL pre-conference, Cool Tools: The Workshop. During this past year, I have been learning and using various emerging technologies. This workshop gave me the opportunity to learn about technologies that I didn’t know existed, such as Exhibit and Yahoo Pipes. I also learned about technologies that I knew about, but never used, such as the creation of widgets.

The participants of the workshop came from different kinds of libraries and backgrounds and different levels of experience with technology, something that was very helpful during the workshop.  I am grateful to Roberta Woods, my desk partner, because her knowledge and experience with technology was invaluable for me while doing the exercises.  Also, the use of a wiki as a tool (before, during and after the workshop), was something new for me and enriched the experience. Months after the workshop, I still kept using the information of the wiki and can review what I learned.

At the AALL meeting, I attended many conferences, most of them related to reference services, legal research instruction and technology. I have to confess, I did not follow AALL’s advice about attending different kinds of activities during the meeting. There were many excellent conferences that I did not want to miss and to learn from them. Even at the exhibit hall, I attended many presentations.

After many years of absence from AALL I was very impressed with the many changes that the organization has implemented. The on-site registration, the wireless access and the printing of the handouts were very fast and efficient. To return to an AALL meeting has been a very refreshing and revitalizing experience which I hope to repeat next year.

1. WordReference.com Language Forum – http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=173271

ALL-SIS Chair Beth Adelman has just sent around an announcement that The Report of the ALL-SIS Task Force on ABA Standards Review, which has been forwarded to AALL in an advisory capacity, is now available.  The Task Force has made several excellent suggestions for updating the Standards and the Report is a must-read for the law librarian community.

This Friday, Sept. 18, at 3 pm CALI is hosting a webinar featuring guest presenter (and Cool Kid CS-SISzen) Sarah Glassmeyer on how to use alternatives like wikis and blogs for course management.  Sarah is Reference and Access Services Librarian at the University of Kentucky Law School. You can register for the webinar by logging in to CALI here.

The AALL Executive Board Strategic Directions Committee has announced the creation of  “Strategically Thinking,” the AALL blog for all things futuristic.  As the Association develops a new roadmap for the next three years, it  needs all of us  - the members – to provide the directions, speed and forecast. The Committee invites all of us to contribute to the planning process, and we should take advantage of the opportunity. Blog about your thoughts on our organization – what you would like to see change and what things should we keep doing?  Share, brainstorm and collaborate on the blog.

Each week the blog will  feature a new thread topic encouraging discussion of what direction the AALL should take, mixed with “open mike” sessions.

(Note: We’ve asked all our Grant winners to submit a blogpost about their experiences at the AALL Conference in July. This post is from Joe Cera, an Intern/Law Librarianship Student at the University of Washington, Gallagher Law Library.)

I was very happy to be awarded a grant by the CS-SIS group to attend the annual conference. I was a little nervous about the whole experience because everyone I talked to had a different opinion of the annual conference and I didn’t know what to expect.

Checking in was surprising. I knew there would be a lot of librarians there, but I didn’t expect the atmosphere. The whole area was buzzing with some kind of nervous energy – like bees without any flowers. I’ll admit that this made me a little nervous, but these are my people so I jumped right in. I also thought it was fun that each person received a canvas bag which made identifying librarians outside of the actual conference very easy (they were everywhere).

I am a recent graduate from the University of Washington Law Librarianship program and the conference offered a great opportunity to meet new colleagues. Unfortunately, I did not get to take full advantage of all the conference activities but I did get to see a lot of the placement office. The interview process at the conference turned out to be very stressful but extremely rewarding. While I didn’t get to meet a lot of librarians in the traditional conference method I was able to meet a large group of librarians in the interview process.

Prior to the conference I was sure that I could participate in a number of interviews, see a handful of programs, and participate in extra events. It wasn’t until I arrived at the conference that I realized how busy I would actually be. The interviews were only about 30 minutes to an hour, but each of those interviews required hours of preparation. I did step in to the exhibition hall to see the new toys. A new, unemployed librarian was not the person vendors wanted to spend a lot of time with but I did get a good feel for some new products.

Overall, I found my experience extremely rewarding. I met many librarians through the interview process. I also found that my limited experience with what I consider to be the actual conference experience was like dipping my toes in to test the water. The water seems nice and I look forward to jumping in next year.