ALA participation

[CMUNSON]

Hooray Karen! It's nice to see someone elaborate so eloquently about one of 
our profession's dirty secrets: the inability for younger and new 
librarians (of all ages) to get involved in their association. I'm 32 and 
have been a librarian since 1990. ALA in San Francisco was the FIRST time 
that I've been to an ALA conference (other than looking for a job at 
Midwinter in 1990). I'm not technically a librarian right now, but I want 
to stay involved in my profession. My trip to ALA was funded by the 
association I work for.

I've wanted to participate at ALA over the years, but the librarian 
positions I worked at (mostly acting and contractual) had little or no 
travel money for bottom of the totem pole folks like myself. Year after 
year it was the librarians with all the seniority that got full funding.

Of course it would be nice if most of any library's staff could attend ALA 
if they wanted to, but we are talking about scarce resources here. We can 
see that consistently these resources are awarded over and over again to 
those with seniority. I don't know, maybe the reasoning is that these folks 
are "active in ALA," therefore they should be the ones to get the funding. 
But how are junior and new librarians supposed to get involved, if they 
can't afford to go to ALA on their own sparse pay?

My proposal would be for those librarians who have attended the last 3 ALA 
summer conferences, to step aside next year so another librarian can go, 
who hasn't been able to. Go to the conference if you like, but do it on 
your own money, which we know you have since your salaries can often be 
$20,000 more than ours.

Karen, this would get some fresh blood into ALA. Not only would it get some 
folks involved who understood new technology, but it might get more 
techno-critics involved too. Then we could get some fascinating debates 
about the future of libraries.

Ooh, what fun.

I really enjoyed the ALA conference. I attended some interesting sessions, 
heard some good speakers, met some cool folks, and went to some great 
receptions. I even found myself drafted to be a session moderator at next 
year's conference, so keep an eye out for the Alternatives In Print session 
on "Infoshops."

Chuck