AASL National Conference is “going green”
Contact: Kathy Agarwal
Communications Specialist
312-280-4381
kagarwal@ala.org
For Immediate Release
August 21, 2007
AASL National Conference is “going green”
CHICAGO – The American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is pleased to announce that its 13th National Conference & Exhibition in Reno, Nev., October 25 - 28, 2007, is “going green.”
“As we think about the future at the AASL Conference, we are focusing on what our library media programs need to look like to help prepare our students for the future,” explained Carl A. Harvey II, co-chair of the National Conference Committee. “We also want to think about what we can do now to help preserve the environment our students will be living in. To that end, we found ways we can ‘go green’ for the 2007 AASL National Conference.
“There is no reliable way to gauge how many people will attend a given session, and hundreds of pages of unused handouts became waste during past conferences. With ‘going green,’ all handouts and supporting materials will be available electronically to registered attendees prior to and during the conference. In addition to eliminating large volumes of paper, this will also save on dozens of boxes that would be needed to transport the handouts from the printing location to the convention center.”
“‘Going green’ in Reno is more environmentally friendly – an investment in the future we all need to make,” said Sara Kelly Johns, AASL president. “‘Going green’ also provides attendees with flexible access to conference handouts electronically, letting us decide individually how best to use the materials provided by our presenters.”
All National Conference presenters are encouraged to post materials for their sessions online prior to the conference. On October 1, 2007, the handouts will be made available to registered conference attendees, who can either print those materials they will use in Reno and bring them along, or download the files onto their laptops and use them electronically during the sessions. Conferees can use the Session Finder tool on the AASL Web site to plan their session schedule well ahead of time, and they will have plenty of time to obtain the materials for those sessions prior to attending.
To make downloading needed handouts even easier, complimentary wireless Internet access will be available throughout the convention center, so attendees will be able to pull up the handouts on their laptops live during the sessions.
“We hope in this small way, we can save a few trees and send a message that we can help the future in more ways than one!” added Allison G. Kaplan, co-chair of the National Conference Committee.
The National Conference handouts will also be available for a limited time after conference, to make sure attendees can access materials they may have missed or sessions they decided to attend at the last minute.
More information about the AASL National Conference “going green” can be found at
http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/conferencesandevents/national/green.cfm .
Online registration for the AASL National Conference is now open at
http://www.ala.org/aasl/reno . The conference will feature three full-day and five half-day preconference workshops, several school and educational tours, more than 100 educational sessions, author events and more than 200 exhibiting companies.
The American Association of School Librarians,
www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), promotes the improvement and extension of library media services in elementary and secondary schools as a means of strengthening the total education program. Its mission is to advocate excellence, facilitate change and develop leaders in the school library media field.
