Opening of the 13th AASL National Convention

Thursday, October 25, 2007
The moon set behind the Sierra Nevadas after 6 a.m. this morning. Lovely.
There is no free wireless in any of the Reno hotels affiliated with this convention, so I took my laptop to the Reno-Sparks Convention Center to catch up on my email and blog posts. Disappointingly, a vendor had fouled the wiring, so an internet connection was not available for quite awhile. In the meantime, I attended a newbies’ luncheon hosted by ABDO publishers. The luncheon not only provided a box lunch, but also an introduction to AASL committee members. Each speaker provided a tip for first timers. A couple were memorable, such as affixing a luggage tag to your conference bag, rather than asking at the Lost and Found counter for a white and blue bag (provided to all registrants by Gareth Stevens), while another speaker told the librarians to rip the needed day’s pages out of the program book to avoid carrying extra weight. These are all good suggestions for ALA Mid-Winter, which will be held in Philadelphia in January 2008.
Next, I attended the Exploratorium. This venue highlights innovative school library programming. My tip for getting the most from future Exploratoriums is to read the booklet thoroughly. The booklets are not available ahead of time; you receive one at the door as you enter. Cruising around the tables without the benefit of first reading the booklet is not productive because the displays are frequently filled with lots of small print. Reading the Exploratorium program booklet first will allow you to pinpoint the librarians to whom you may wish to speak.
I was finally able to connect to the internet, and caught up on email and posted the blogs.
The formal Opening General Session took place in the ballroom. As stated by the AASL president, Sara Kelly Johns, the new Standards for the 21st Century Learner are being unveiled at this conference. The daily newspaper, AASL Advocate, on 10/25/2007 said “The purpose of these standards is to shape how school library media specialists teach their students and to help librarians shape student learning more broadly.” The new standards will be available online.
The guest speaker was Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. In this book, Pink explains why right-brain, creative thinking, the kind taught in school libraries by school librarians, is needed in today’s world, where routine tasks are, and will continue to be, outsourced. He quoted a gentleman from Fairfax, VA, whose name escaped me, who said, “We need to prepare children for their future, not our past.” Mr. Pink spoke with “brevity, levity and repetition.”
The Exhibit Hall opened following. I picked up books, pens, and more advertising bags than I can use at one time.
Exhausted and over-loaded, we all lined up to catch the shuttle bus that returned us back to the hotel.
It was made known in the AASL community that J. Linda Williams, a school librarian, is running for the position of ALA president. It is imperative that every Philadelphia school librarian who is a member of ALA marks the ballot for Linda and mails it in. If all 9,500 members of AASL do that, she will win the election to become president of ALA.