The great thing about going to ALA is that there is so much to do - but it means that while I’m there my email gets ignored and when I get back I have to catch up! I still have so many things to write about from ALA, but at least I can finish writing about the Spectrum Institute. If you want to see all my pictures from the institute, here is my photo set for Spectrum Institute 2008.

On the final day, our first session was about Radical Reference and we had ShinJoung Yeo, Greg Hom, Lia Friedman and Dr. Clara M. Chu talk to us about the work they’ve done with the Radical Reference collective. So what is Radical Reference? From their website:

Mission Statement: Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. We support activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists by providing professional research support, education and access to information. We work in a collaborative virtual setting and are dedicated to information activism to foster a more egalitarian society.

They talked to us about how they get questions, how people sign up, and how there are some members who are very involved and others that are only involved some. It was pretty exciting to see the large variety of questions that they get and the work that librarians can do outside their day-to-day jobs to work toward social justice and equality by supporting others doing work in those areas. What work are you doing that is helping these causes, or causes you believe in? We should be using the knowledge that we have not just to help ourselves, but also to help others.

The final Spectrum session, after lunch, was called Keeping the Spectrum Legacy Alive. It was a group of previous Spectrum Scholars who told us about how Spectrum had influenced their lives and also about the work they’ve continued to do with Spectrum. We keep the legacy alive by paying it forward - helping other scholars to develop, using the skills and knowledge that the institute has given us. It’s so empowering to know that there is such a dedicated group willing to help us in our lives and to think about how we can help others going forward by supporting this cause.

Keeping the legacy alive is also about having the funds to continue the program and continue providing scholarships. Did you know that the IMLS grant that funds a lot of the Spectrum scholarships is only funded through 2011? That means there is a LOT of work needed to raise money so that more scholarships can be made available.

The Spectrum Legacy is one of support and empowerment, of seeing wrongs and making them right through social justice and equality, of being together with others and sharing experiences to show that anyone can belong no matter what and that everyone is welcome. And also that you can have a lot of fun, while tackling hard problems and figuring out how you can make a difference!

Second day of the Institute? Also awesome (you’ll note a trend). In the morning we had a session on the origins of the Spectrum Scholarship. We learned about how it started and all the hard work that was put in by people like Elizabeth Martinez, Sandra Rios Balderrama and Betty Turock. Dr. Mengxiong Liu from San Jose State also spoke to us about the early years. The next session was about maneuvering ALA. Chisa, Hector and Patty told us about the many many many many many committees, councils, roundtables, interest groups and affiliates of ALA. After lunch we had a talk about job skills and one of the areas that was mentioned repeatedly was the need for grant writing. SJSU offers a class on grant writing taught by the wonderful Patty Wong. I am hoping it will be offered in the Spring because I really want to take it, but won’t be able to this fall.

After that, we had resume reviews. Mine was with Amy Wallace, the Head of Public Services and Outreach for the library at California State University, Channel Islands. My resume is of course geared toward software jobs, since that’s what I do (and I’ve had the same job for 7 years). However, if I did want to work for a library, it would definitely be an academic one, so it was good to hear about the differences between resumes for various types of libraries, as well as more about how to structure and design your resume when you’re interest in an academic library position. Soon after we had dinner, followed by the professional options fair.

The professional options fair was both to talk to potential employers but to also find out more about affiliate organizations and schools with doctoral programs. The fair reminded me that it’s a small world! I stopped by the table for the Medical Library Association and it turns out the president of MLA knows my aunt (a medical librarian), because they’re in the same region. Then at the ACRL table was Erika Linke, Associate Dean of Libraries for the CMU Library, where I went as an undergrad. I met her last year at the OCLC President’s Luncheon. This time we talked about open source software and the possibility of libraries eventually hiring their own software engineers to contribute to those projects, which would be a pretty cool thing. I also chatted for a bit with Susan and Liana who were there to represent the American Indian Library Association and then stopped to chat with the LITA reps as well. There were several other tables that I stopped at, and overall it was great to renew some contacts from last year’s conference and to make some new ones, as well as find out the wealth of opportunities that are available.

The first day of the Spectrum Institute has been awesome. It’s such an inspiration to hear about the cool things that other students are doing, and the great support that’s available. We had an ice breaker game this afternoon called Spectrum Bingo, where everyone had a list of attributes in squares and we were supposed to go around and find people who had those attributes then have them sign the block. Each person could only be on your sheet once, and you couldn’t sign your own. I signed most for “Doesn’t own a car”, but also for having visited the space needle, milked a cow, been to Hawaii, and marched in a parade.

In the opening session, a variety of speakers welcomed us and talked to us about getting involved in ALA and associations, including the current CLA president, the current and next ALA presidents, and the ALA executive director. We had a tasty dinner (the sesame shrimp were quite lovely) and then another session focused on success and moving up in the profession. The common thread seemed to be that you need to know yourself, so that you can know how to translate the skills you have into the job or promotion that you want. Also, that you should strip out the negative talk about yourself and instead think of ways to brag (but not in an arrogant way).

Here are some of the recommended readings:
Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
Brag! : the art of tooting your own horn without blowing it by Peggy Klaus
Now, discover your strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton

After the panel, Wendy shared with us her path to the job she has, and it’s so great to hear about the impact she’s had and the work that she’s done to help people become librarians who can, in turn, help others. Thanks so much for the work you do, Wendy! And thanks to everyone who has spent so much time putting the Institute together, because it’s been great so far.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything here. I decided that Drupal wasn’t really working for me, because it’s a bit more complicated than what I want to deal with just to have a blog and a few pages, so the past couple days I’ve spent converting to WordPress. So far it’s been fun to play with some new stuff (though I have worked with it before, in setting up a theme for the ALASC Blog). Anyway, it’s now up and running again, although there are still some tweaks I’d like to make. Please let me know if you notice anything that’s broken!

So what’s my excuse for abandoning my blog for the past 9 months? Mostly, school and work. School was pretty crazy in both the Fall and the Spring, but my classes were great. I really should write some sort of recap. Work was also pretty crazy, since we were neck deep in shipping our next release. The good news is, the software will be out the door any day now and I’m only taking one class this summer, so I have time in the evening to do other things.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for this year’s ALA Annual conference, and I’m excited about it. The first few days I’ll be occupied with the 2008 Spectrum Leadership Institute before diving into the main conference. At the end of the conference, my husband is coming down to SoCal and we’re going to spend a few more days in Anaheim then a couple days in San Diego before taking the train back home. The train trip will definitely give me some time to read all the books I pick up at the exhibits!

I’ve been remiss in writing about the other days of ALA because afterwards, I went to Chicago for a few days of vacation, then when I got home I had to dive back into my classes. In any case, here are somewhat abbreviated recaps:

On Sunday, I was up early so that I could make it in for the “Native American Heritage in the Nation’s Capitol: Representation, Repatriation, and Resilience” session. I was originally planning to walk to the train station so that I wouldn’t have to wake my hosts that early, but turns out Mike was up anyway, which meant I had the chance to read some books for about a half hour with Julie and Jason’s early-rising daughter. Made it to the session, which was a miracle because I am so not a morning person. The session was really interesting (and at times heartbreaking).

After that, I visited one of the poster sessions, had lunch, and wandered the exhibits hall for a little while. At 3 was the LITA Awards Reception, at which I was awarded the LITA/OCLC Minority Scholarship and met Fabulous George from OCLC. Next up was my first AILA meeting, although I’d met some of its members at the honor dance Friday. It was interesting and great to meet so many wonderful people. Originally, I’d planned to go to the student social, but by that time I’d filled my new-people quota for the day and headed home instead.

On Monday, I visited poster sessions and the exhibit hall again. Because of the OCLC lunch, I couldn’t really go to any of the morning sessions. I went to the lunch and was startled by the number of people that were there as well as the whole in-the-spotlight-in-front-of-everyone thing. After the lunch, Paige and I went to the Library of Congress, which was having an open house of sorts for ALA. We had the chance to visit the Asian Reading Room, Congressional Reading Room, and African / Middle Eastern Reading Room. The hallways there are kind of confusing. That evening was the SJSU SLIS reception, then back late-ish to Julie and Jason’s.

Tuesday was the tour of the Census Bureau Library. We had a talk by a historian from the Census Bureau, then spent some time perusing the library’s collection. Afterwards, I had lunch with Julie then headed back into DC to get my hair braided for the night’s inaugural banquet. Mike went with me, and it was kind of funny to be dressed so casually on the metro while he was wearing his tux. It was also kind of weird to wear my moccassins on an escalator when I put my outfit on. There was a Beatles cover band after dinner. Who knew librarians were such dancers?

I must say that ALA was a crazy whirlwind of activities. I think I can count on one hand the number of actual sessions that I went to, but I feel like the time I spent meeting new people was a big learning experience as well. It was especially great to end up spending so much time with Paige (we had fun!) and also with the members of AILA. There’s a sense of belonging there, and of being with people who share so many of my views and aren’t afraid to speak up. Thanks for welcoming me!

On Saturday, I met up with a fellow SJSU student. We’re both serving as ALASC officers and planned to try to get in touch, then managed to randomly find each other around the registration area. I went to a panel about research, which included talks about an ethnography of college students doing research, observation and survey study about usage of library services in a coffeehouse (compared to usage in the library), and a discussion of virtual reference interviews. I found the last one particularly interesting, given that for my reference class we had to use two different types of virtual reference services to ask questions then analyze the results of the interactions.

After the panel, I met up with Paige. We wandered about the exhibits hall (huge!) looking for the poster sessions because there was one I was interested in. We finally found it about 5 minutes before they were going to take the posters down, but at least we found it! Afterwards we went to get lunch, which was an adventure in and of itself…

That afternoon, I wandered around the exhibits a bit more. I ran into (well, not literally) John Meier, a friend of mine from my undergrad years, as well as some of the AILA members that I’d met at the honor dance on Friday. I was trying to balance spending time at the conference and spending time with the friends I’m staying with, and since I was going to be at the conference all day Sunday and Monday I figured Saturday was a good day to head back early. We ended up grilling for dinner and enjoying the weather. Then we had some tasty clown cupcakes, picked out by my friends’ daughter. Mine had lots of sprinkles. We hung out for the rest of the evening, and thus ended day 2 of my ALA adventure.

The stuff I did on Friday wasn’t actually at the convention center, but it was related to ALA. My friend Mike and I went into DC and I had to get my hair braided for the honor dance that afternoon. Unfortunately, at the salon I chose, none of the hairdressers knew how to do a french braid! Luckily, the receptionist knew how to do something close, so she ended up braiding my hair. Afterwards, we went to NMAI and met up with Renee, a member of my tribe who works for the museum. She gave us a bit of a tour and we chatted about genealogy, tribal matters and other interesting things. We grabbed lunch at the cafe (which is ALWAYS excellent), then she went back to work and Mike and I visited the Identity By Design exhibit which was amazing.

That afternoon was the Honor Dance, so I dressed in my outfit and joined in. Mike took pictures which I put up this evening (http://flickr.com/photos/hhd/tags/nmai). The dance was wonderful. The area around the circle was full of people, and on all of the floors above you could see people looking over the railing to watch below. It was fun, but a bit daunting. After the dance, we headed to Silver Spring and ate at a tasty Thai restaurant, then hung out at Julie and Jason’s (where I’m staying) the rest of the evening.

The ALA Annual Conference is coming up soon, and I’m going! I’ll be in DC from late on June 21 through the morning of June 29 and will be staying with friends from CMU. I’ve really enjoyed visiting DC the two times we’ve been, and I’m looking forward to it. The only thing that stands between me and DC? A long week of work.

Since I’m taking summer classes, I’m trying to get as much stuff done as possible before I leave so that I don’t have to worry about it while I’m gone. This means that the last week has involved a lot of reading, writing, and work. I’ve also been making repairs to my outfit and jewelry in preparation for attending the honor dance for Loriene Roy, ALA President-Elect. She will be the first Native American president of ALA. I’ll be going to the dance at NMAI on the 22nd, and the inaugural dinner on the 26th. It’s too bad so much of the events at the conference happens at the same time. I really would like to go to all of it. Well, maybe not *all* of it… but a lot of it.

In the meantime, I have about 150 pages of reading and one assignment to complete for genealogy, three (luckily, short) papers to write for my reference class, and a site visit plus report about it to do for records management. It’s going to be a busy 7 days…