The Meeting Point

It’s a big conference.

With nearly 60,000 members, the American Library Association is the biggest collective of librarians and information professionals in the world, so naturally its gatherings get big. Many thousands of members attend the annual conference. You can spend almost a week there and never spot the classmate or colleague you were hoping to see, if you didn’t prearrange a meeting point.

But you can also meet a diverse bunch of new and interesting people you never even knew existed before you arrived. You’ll queue up with early-career newbies and old-timers. You’ll see people studying paper program books, people monitoring e-gadgets, and people with the latest mobile device in one hand and a shopping bag, overflowing with new analog reading material, in the other. You can learn new things. You can make your case or change your perspective. You can have civil conversations with people who disagree with you. You can cross paths with people of virtually any color, gender, religious persuasion, or personality type on the map.

They’re all here, and all share a common bond: their belief in the value of libraries and literacy and community learning spaces.

At ALA, that’s the point where everyone meets.

Laurie Putnam
SJSU iSchool Lecturer
@NextLibraries 

Meeting point photo courtesy of Laurie Putnam

ALA Orlando Highlights– by ALASC Chair Tiana Trutna

This year in Orlando was my first experience with the ALA Annual conference and as I reflect upon it, I came away proud to be pursuing the library profession. 
What made me proud was the intentional attention to increasing diversity, and all the efforts of inclusion. Read More… 

Musings from a Student on #ALAAC16 — by ALASC Regional Events Coordinator Stephanie Barnaby

From the minute I stepped off the plane in Florida, the heat was oppressive. There were palm trees everywhere! I didn’t feel totally prepared for Orlando in the dead center of summer. The picture included here is of a gecko I saw by the hotel pool. I hadn’t seen one before and it took me the whole trip to get a picture of one. They move so fast! Read More…

Student Anna-Carin U’Ren Receives a REFORMA Travel Grant and Enjoys her First Professional Conference

This June I was fortunate enough to attend the American Library Association Conference in Orlando, FL. I suppose I had never considered attending a conference prior to this one, probably because I was so focused on my classes and had never actually worked in a library. Read More…

The ALA Spectrum Leadership Institute Opens Doors by iSchool Student Clara Asuncion

When I first received the phone call from Gwendolyn Prellwitz of the American Library Association Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion about my Spectrum scholarship, I was so excited I want to jump and shout. Read More…

Reflections and ALA Updates from Chapter Councilor and iSchool Instructor Patty Wong

As one can imagine, the tenor of the conference was both somber in light of the recent shootings at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, but hopeful in terms of the future and the roles we can and should take part in providing a better world for our communities. Read More…

Be sure to mark your calendar for the ALA Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, Georgia from January 20-23, 2017. Look for more details on the ALA website.

Upcoming SJSU ALASC events:

New Member Meeting: Monday, September 12th @ 6pm PST

SJSU School of Information Group Showcase Panel:
Wednesday, September 14th at 7:00PM Pacific Daylight Time
Location: Online via Blackboard Collaborate

ALASC chair Tiana Trutna will be there to highlight events and activities and discuss the benefits of joining our student chapter.

Session Link: https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2011274&password=D.3AC3B9C4CB7C753…(link is external)Individuals requiring real-time captioning or other accommodations should contact Dr. Sue Alman as soon as possible.

To keep up with future ALASC events, be sure to check the calendar on our website.

Show your ALASC spirit and check out the winning t-shirts from last year’s contest.

Fall 2016 Call for Submissions

Share your experiences in the great, wide world of libraries and reflect upon your time and learning at the iSchool! Get your name in print, get experience working with an editor and polish up your writing skills. And, have something you can use for your eportfolio!

You can gain all these skills and more by submitting your writing to the ALASC’s iSchool Descriptor—a student run online publication that’s been around for the last six years. The iSchool Descriptor publishes 3-4 issues annually, and accepts submissions on a rolling basis from all LIS graduate students, alumni, and faculty.

For the 2016-17 academic year, the Descriptor is accepting content for the following issues and subjects:

• Issue 1 ALA Conference and experience with the larger organization (submissions due before August 20, 2016
• Issue 2 Community—partnerships, programming and non-profits that work with libraries (submissions due before November 15, 2016)
• Issue 3 Technology and Libraries—services, programming and innovation (submissions due before January 20, 2017)
• Issue 4 Careers—job searches, internship experiences, resources and networking (submissions due before May 1, 2017

If you have something you’ve written that you’d like to see published but aren’t sure it will fit within these categories, share it anyway. These topics are broad and we want to be able to include you and give you the fun and important experience of being published. Want to send something early? Please do! We’re excepting submissions for future issues all the time.

Some Strict and Some Flexible Guidelines:

• Students, alumni, faculty and staff are ALL encouraged to contribute articles and photos. Written content should be between 300 and 750 words. (This one’s pretty strict.) If you have a longer research paper, the editor would be happy to work with you to trim it down, but the finished product will need to be within the required length.
• Written content should be either within the body of the email (if short) or an attached .doc or .docx file.
• Photos need to be JPEG files—the higher resolution, the better. Please include the following information so we can give proper credit: who took the photo, when it was taken and who and what are in the picture. If the picture contains people, please ask their permission before submitting it to the Descriptor (We’re strict on this one, too.)
• There is no writing style requirement (APA, MLA, etc.); we’re flexible.
• Research papers (remember the word count) must include references. References will not however, be included in the word count.
• All submissions need to include a short bio of the author and a photo.

And alas, we may not be able to accept everything that is submitted. You are welcome to submit for another issue or submit multiple times for the same issue or another future issue. Whether something is published or not is at the complete discretion of the Descriptor editor; this is the way publishing works.

Note: By submitting content, you are giving the Descriptor permission to publish said content. If at any time, for any reason, you wish to revoke that permission, please email the current editor of the Descriptor at ischooldescriptor@gmail.com.