First I want to say “Thanks” to Nancy Gershenfeld and
everyone associated with this award. It has given me experiences and
opportunities that I otherwise would not have enjoyed.
Winning the Frost-Gershenfeld Travel Award filled me with a mix of
emotions. First, I was happy that I would get to attend this conference
for the second year in a row. (Last year, when the economy was better
and it was in Seattle, my employer, the Washington State Department of
Transportation, aka WSDOT, paid my way.) Next, I was concerned
about my family and how they would manage during my absence since I
knew the meeting was near the end of the school year. As it was I
missed the last days of elementary school for my daughter and middle
school for my son. Next, it felt a bit weird to be going to a place
where I had lived and worked 25 years ago, long before I ever thought I
would be a librarian.
Luckily by the time the conference planner arrived I was past the
emotional part. I engaged with getting ready for the meeting: examining
the schedule of sessions and marking the ones that looked appealing,
making sure I had a good supply of business cards, getting the proper
paperwork completed at work so they could pay me for the time I would
spend in DC and things like that. Because this is such a large and well
planned event, most of the session slots were double or even triple
booked with interesting offerings. Rather than worry about how I was
going to make it to everything, I felt good about having so many
choices in advance and would make final decisions about what to attend
when the time came.
The meeting began for me on Sunday morning with the gathering of GTRIC,
a subunit of SLA's Transportation Division, the Government
Transportation Research Information Committee. It was really great to
be in the same room with people who I communicate with all the time but
rarely get to see. We discussed ways to leverage the strengths of the
various members’ organization to help improve the service we all
provide. For instance both the University of California at Berkeley and
Northwestern University are home to university transportation centers.
These centers perform transportation related research on behalf of
state and federal governments. And because they are also associated
with large university libraries, they have large staffs that will do
their best to make sure they are cataloging the material coming from
the various states and the federal government. This is a huge benefit
for the many state transportation departments that have solo
librarians. (Luckily WSDOT is not one of those!) I had just finished
taking LIS 560, Instructional and Training Strategies for Information
Professionals, and because of that many of the sessions I attended were
about instruction and training. But I have to say the most significant
events of the conference for me occurred outside the formal sessions.
During Monday’s Networking Lunch, I gathered my lunch and looked
around for a space to sit. I selected a table and started making use of
my business cards, handing them out to my tablemates and exchanging
stories about what we did for work and why we were at the meeting.
After chatting for a while we were surprised and honored to have
current SLA President Gloria Zamora join us. It was a treat to listen
to her talk about where SLA had been over the past year and the short
and long range plans for the organization’s future. This was
where I first heard that SLA is seriously considering a name
change in 2010. It was also an educational experience to watch her
“work the table” making connections with everyone seated
there.
On Tuesday I took advantage of some “non-conflict” time
(this means no scheduled sessions) to wander through the INFO-EXPO
and see what the various vendors had to offer even though WSDOT’s
budget would not allow for any significant purchases. While at the OCLC
booth I chatted with one of their representatives about my work and
also about being an online MLIS student at the iSchool. This led to a
discussion about WorldCat Local and the UW’s role in launching
this project. Then I learned about WorldCat Local “quick
start,” (WCLQS) a stripped-down version of WorldCat Local that is
available to OCLC subscribers as part of their current subscription
fee. Something for nothing? This was worth exploring. When I left the
booth I had information on how to get started with this product as well
as a list of talking points to use when presenting it to management.
This has proved to be the most significant event of the conference as I
am now exploring setting up WCLQS for the WSDOT libraries. It’s
not happening overnight because we are examining our workflows and
holdings to see if any changes are needed to make this tool work as
efficiently as it can. I am enjoying this process as it allows me to
work with people outside the library and think of the big picture.
Even though the SLA meeting ended on June 17, I had one more meeting
day on June 18. This meeting was again a gathering of transportation
information professionals. Many of the folks here were also at
Sunday’s GTRIC meeting. It took place at the National Academy of
Science’s Keck Center. Transportation Knowledge Networks
(TKN) are regional collaborations, with one in the west, the Midwest
and eastern United States, and this was the first ever in-person
meeting of representatives from all of these organizations. We heard
speakers from the US Department of Transportation and the
Transportation Research Board. Then as regional groups we discussed
goals for the coming year and then came together to decide national
priorities.
With WCLQS being the big takeaway of this meeting for me, I guess I
would say to anyone going to a conference is certainly to have a plan
and be prepared but be ready for the unexpected.
Respectfully submitted,
Andrew Poultridge

MLIS Candidate 2010
Read Holly's report...