If you don’t see your favorite librarian in the next couple of days there is a good chance he or she is here with us in Seattle.
Thousands of librarians from all over the country are ascending to the Emerald City for the American Library Association (ALA) mid-winter meeting.
The most literate city in America welcomes you to library heaven and we can’t wait until you see our new downtown library!
There are over 2000 meetings and events and over 100 different discussion groups, covering all the major topics affecting the trade today.
There will be book parties and book related events all over town. Over 20 official parties and receptions and many unofficial ones as well.
The ALA Mid-Winter Wiki Page is a must visit numerous times throughout the event.
Tons of information, blogs and images.
There is also a link to the Wiki entry “List of Representations of Seattle in Popular Culture” and way too much information on our “coffee culture”
Book Patrol’s “There has to be something else that needs to be talked about” award for the mid-winter meeting goes to the following event:
ALA President’s Program: Learn to FISH
Attendees are invited to join ALA President Leslie Burger and speakers from the FISH!Philosophy to help inspire organizational and cultural transformation in your own library. The FISH!Philosophy – 1) Be there; 2) Play; 3) Make someone’s day; and 4) Choose your attitude about how you come to work – grew out of Seattle’s Pike’s Place fishmongers who learned how to turn stinky, grueling 12-hour shifts into a unique customer and employee experience.
Now don’t get me wrong -in this the 100th anniversary of the the oldest farmer’s market in the country, our Pike Place Market– we love and respect our market but I just can’t make the leap or the “throw” in this case. I am sure it is good organizational behavior and team building stuff but at the end of the day you are still throwing stinking fish and probably being underpaid as well.
You might be smiling and people may be taking a lot of pictures of you but the basic activity is the same.
Yes, it is a unique customer experience and a unique employee experience and of course every library in utopia would like to make every customer and every employee have a rich and unique experience each and every day but these days the basic activity of a library and the basic role of a librarian are in flux and in the process of being redefined. One would hope that the ALA President’s Program would be a little more…