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The majority of my time at this ALA was spent carrying out my duties as the Chair of the Law and Political Science section of ACRL. I attended ACRL Leadership Council, LPSS Executive Council, our program, our awards breakfast and our general membership meeting. The big news from our section is that after the ACRL Board of Directors voted, we are now going to be the Politics, Policy and International Affairs Section (PPIA). It will take a while for the name to trickle down through official channels, but that was a big part of what I had worked on over this last year. We are also going to begin the process of adaption our IL Standards for Politics to the new framework for Information Literacy model. That will be a big task.

I did squeeze in a couple of programs. The ACRL President’s Program was on Data curation in libraries. Nothing earth-shattering there but does seem like an approaching storm for libraries over the next 5 years. I also attended the Top Tech Trends panel that LITA puts on for each conference. The final program I went to was the most useful and it was a discussion group sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) of ACRL and was about the process they, and the Communications Committee of the Educational and Behavioral Science Section (EBSS) have undergone as they approach translating their IL Standards to the new Framework model. They have approached it differently but I got good ideas to pass on to our committee once it has been formed. A formal procedure is coming soon from ACRL so we want to be ready to go with it.

Aside from my duties for LPSS and the sessions I attended, I managed to visit a few vendors that I needed to see in the exhibits area. There was lots of chatter about Proquest’s purchase of Alexander Street Press and unless I missed it, ASP did not have a booth at Annual. I visited with Gale, Sage/CQ Press, Proquest, Springshare among others and Mary Beth and I visited most of the furniture booths to start getting ideas about what is out there for new public spaces at ZSR.

I have to admit that ALA in Orlando was not as bad as I had expected, logistics wise. It was hot – but the hotels, shuttles and convention center seemed to be fairly well located and organized. I give it two thumbs up but admit that this conclusion is helped, perhaps, by the fact that our hotel had a lovely pool area that included a lazy river – perfect for unwinding after hectic conference days. Also helped by the fact that Mary Beth and I had a spectacular day before the conference began at Universal visiting Harry Potter. It was truly magical.