By Jason Griffey | There are many stories from the 2008 ALA Annual conference in Anaheim, from Google being MIA on the exhibition floor to what happens when a few hundred librarians descend onto Disneyland. But my favorite story from my time in Anaheim starts like this...
ALA TechSource Blog
By Daniel A. Freeman | You don’t have to Ask Jeeves to know that a lot of search engines have come and gone since the web went mainstream. While in the past we may have yahooed, hot botted or altavista’d our way around the web, today there is no question that Google is king.
By Daniel A. Freeman | It seems like the role that gaming plays in libraries is expanding exponentially. What once seemed like a trend is now a deeply entrenched part of our profession. Gaming is playing a bigger and bigger role in academic, public and school libraries all over the world and librarians are not only increasing their gaming content and its availability, but are also using it prominently in library programming and public service.
By Cindi Trainor | What materials do you recycle and reuse in your library? Do you have an innovative use of recycled materials? Please post your images to flickr and add to the TechShots pool or link to them in the comments below.
By Kate Sheehan | 2008 has been my introduction to ALA’s conferences. Philadelphia, PA was my first mid-winter, Anaheim (“it’s a dry heat”), CA my first annual. The size of the conference made for difficult decisions, including pitting LITA’s “Top Tech Trends” against OIF’s “Privacy: Is it Time for a Revolution?” I chose celebrity over friendship and went to gawk at Cory Doctorow.
By Michael Stephens | First up, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Folks at ALA 2008 in Anaheim, California were all “A-Twitter!” Of course there was also much Flickring, texting, blogging, IMing and any other 2.0-ish, social-networkey “ing” you can name going on as well. Twitter, however, seemed to be on everyone's mind and at many people's fingertips -- amongst what I heard referred to as the Twitterati.
By Cindi Trainor | The adage, of course, is that a picture is worth a thousand words. What picture could sum up the best of ALA 2008 for me?
By Tom Peters | After attending 20 ALA Annual Conferences (Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, NYC, shaky LA, Chicago...) as a rank-and-file librarian, I arrived in Anaheim late last month as a first-time exhibitor. It was an interesting experience, to put it mildly. I opted to start with a regular 10 x 10 booth exhibit, rather than a table. Because it was all new to me, I had to learn about costs, conference service providers, and generally how not to make a fool of myself. I think I succeeded, but I have my doubts.
By Daniel A. Freeman | Now that we’ve all recovered from the conference and our California suntans have faded away, we’re ready to share our conference experience with the rest of the world. The 2008 ALA Annual Conference was a huge success. Attendance was excellent, the programming was outstanding and the technology available to members was unprecedented.
By Tom Peters | Remember David Cook? He was the guy who won the American Idol competition last month. Throughout the merry month of May the citizens of Beautiful Blue Springs, Missouri were all a-twitter (in the pre-Twitter sense of a-twitter) about David Cook's candidacy, because he is a graduate of Blue Springs South High School. Most of the local businesses had "Vote for David" signs prominently displayed, and several local charities were auctioning off David Cook memorabilia even as the memories were forming.