The third and final installment of a SLIS student's experiences at the American Library Association's Annual Conference.

Sunday June 24th

Today had the most potential as we had planned to attend discussion panels all day long. Because I've never been a librarian and I'm only a first year grad student, I feel like there probably was a lot of really great information that was over my head. Perhaps a more experienced, practicing librarian could have gotten a lot of good out of what I was able to listen to. At least this was a new experience for me and I'm sure hearing something was better than nothing at all.

So the first panel we arrived at regarded the concept of embedded librarians. Many colleges are wondering if they can get better use out of their libraries if they actually have librarians interact proactively with classes. Deborah Nolan, a dean from Towson, first spoke about the history of the concept. She didn't like the term "embedded" because it literally came from the Iraq War with the concept of "embedded reporters." But the concept is essentially the same: to have librarians present with classes in order to increase information accessibility.

Kathleen Pickens-French and Krista McDonald, both from Miami-Ohio talked about a concept they called "3's Company." In essence, they believed that attention spans are short these days and that by overloading web pages with information, the user will learn nothing. Effective web design requires us to be economical with information. They argued that if a user has to scroll down a web page, they will not digest information. Everything must be to the point. Links with icons, they thought, also made web pages more palatable to anyone reading them. Their examples were spectacular. I recommend looking them up for tips on web page design and how to maximize the usefulness of a webpage.

Kathleen Langan from Western Michigan talked about being a "by proxy librarian." That is to provide short tutorials on information literacy and provide them to students so they can access library resources quickly. She very much agreed with the "3's Company" essay on being concise about information.

Paul Betty from Regis University talked about his school's policy for librarians to actually target classes notorious for research in order to become embedded. He also said that as the times change, schools should treat ALL classes as distance education classes. Even face-to-face classes are depending more and more on technology and those students and professors will need the same skills that distance education students and professors possess. Regis University actually places their distance education classes under the reference library in terms of school organization.

I split up from mom who was interested in a different discussion panel than I was for the next time slot. I snuck into a room with a talk entitled "Trends in Cloud Computing." I confess to know very little about cloud computing. So a lot of this discussion was over my head. But I thought it might be a good introduction to the technology. Erik Mitchell from the University of Maryland was the introductory speaker. Yan Han from Arizona State had an interesting report regarding the cost of cloud computing versus traditional storage techniques. He seemed to feel that cloud computing as storage of information was financially competitive with traditional storage, it was just whether or not you agreed with the terms of service of a cloud computing provider that made it worthwhile--which he evidently felt was a big deal. David Minor of the San Diego Supercomputer had similar comments to Yan Han.

By this point, much of the information was over my head. I noticed every single person in the audience except for me was taking notes. They were all nodding, with one or two distressed questions/comments from the crowd which the panel answered calmly. I felt like I was really missing out on a deep and important discussion. The last speaker (who was inserted into the panel at the last second, so I don't know his name, but he was from UC-San Diego) talked about performance experiments on cloud computing and some mysterious elements that he was unaware about. Counter intuitively, he said that the more people use a cloud system, the better it performs, sort of like a torrent file share. He did have some concerns about cloud computing: if everyone starts storing their information on the cloud and a newer, better technology comes along, would it be very difficult to move that information from the cloud to the new technology? He seemed skeptical. I wish I had caught his name, because he exuded brilliance and had a lot of great observations.

We retreated to a yummy lunch at Burgerland. They had kim-chi hamburgers. I was tempted, but I went with the traditional patty.

I was assured the panelists at the next discussion were real intellectual heavyweights of the librarian world. They included:

• Stephen Abram, Gale Cengage (Toronto, Canada).
• Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC (Aberystwyth, Wales).
• Meredith Farkas, Portland State (Portland, Oregon).
• Clifford Lynch, CNI (Washington, DC).
• Nina McHale, Arapahoe Library District (Arapahoe County, Colorado)

The panel was sponsored by LITA and I was really pleased to learn the master of ceremonies was Roy Hessinger from UNLV, my undergraduate alma mater! Several awards were handed out to librarians and students who either had a tremendous accomplishment or showed great potential. Before the panel could properly get underway, the fire alarm went off! We were on the third floor of a very large building. There were thousands and thousands of people being evacuated, very slowly. It probably took me 5-10 minutes to leave the building. People on the sidewalk looked pretty bewildered to see the huge mass of people exiting the convention center at once. The mad but polite and orderly stampede of librarians….

When the okay was given, I made my way back up and the discussion began. Again, most of what was discussed was over my head, being the inexperienced fellow that I am, but I can list the topics covered.

1. Structured data, wikidata...Dempsey talked of this and recommended looking at schema.org for ideas on the topic.
2. Instructional design....Farkas recommended University of Arizona as a blueprint for good design...she asked "how do you give good library instruction in a DIY environment?"
3. Mobile aps....McHale argued that mobile ap design is becoming increasingly important and functional, and that when designing aps, one shouldn't merely make it a copy of a regular webpage, but make it functional for somebody on the go. She said everything mobile users do can be classified in four categories: :"look up and find", "explore and play", "check in/status", and "edit and create." All aps should consider those categories when being created.
4. Experience based transformation....Abram talked about this. This was certainly over my head but I gathered it had something to do with bibliometrics and understanding how useful individual research experiences were.
5. Management of scholarly identity....Lynch talked about name identification standards. Again, something over my head but I instinctively felt that this was an important talk.
6. RDA....replacing cataloging AACR2's standards.
7. ACRL's value of academic libraries....development of assessment management systems to see if a professor or librarian is doing a good job getting information across to students.
8. Responsive web design.
9. OCLC link data.
10. Security issues.

I remember a moment of laughter when Abram admitted to hating QR codes. He said something to the effect of "they always put them in places you're not ready to scan, like along escalators, or they put them in places where you have no reception, like in subway stations."

Thankfully this panel was recorded. So if any of it sounds interesting to you, you can view it streaming here. It's broken up into parts. The fire alarm is at 4:13 of the first part!

The final panel was regarding virtual librarianship. I attended for selfish reasons: we have group projects regarding technology and our group is considering Second Life and its applications or potential towards libraries. Really, this panel was about Second Life. The pros and cons of Second Life were obvious from the start: there were very few people in attendance. I know little about Second Life, but I had been under the impression that it might be "on the way out." On the other hand, there were a good amount of virtual attendees who were observing and hearing our discussion online. Obviously, whatever future Second Life has, there was something here reinforcing the value of online participation. I was able to do some excellent networking because of the session. The group intends to further its discussion on a book entitled "Beyond the Blogosphere" on July 22^nd, 1 pm Pacific. I may virtually be there!

That was pretty much it. The conference was exhausting! But I highly recommend attending conferences to my fellow librarian students. The opportunities for networking and learning new tricks are enormous. I went to a much smaller conference, the MLA in Seattle earlier and was offered a job (which I cannot accept) despite the fact I did very little talking and was extremely passive. ALA is infinitely bigger than MLA, as a conference. If you want to start a project, to meet people with similar interests, to get a new perspective, to GET A JOB, a library conference is a great place to do that and more.

Maybe I'll see you at ALA Midwinter in Seattle, January 2013!

Were you able to attend the ALA Conference this year? Tell us about your experiences in the comments!