150 years of library conferences

Although I’ve only been around for the last 30 or so, obviously. My first ALA was Miami Beach in 1994. I think there were a lot of complaints since it was difficult to get from downtown, where there were some meetings and hotels, over to the beach area were the convention center was, more than once per day. Anyways, I don’t think they’ve ever gone back since then.

This conference was in Chicago and celebratory, 150th anniversary, since the American Library Association was founded in 1876. We thought a lot of our retired library friends would come, and there were a few. I’m on the iSchool’s advisory board and they sent me and my co-facilitator, since we were supposed to be creating connections between alums and other alums and current students. I think it worked pretty well. But I’m going to natter on about that in the report I’m putting off writing by writing this post, and talk about food and travel instead.

We arrived on Friday in time to have lunch at XOCO before heading down to McCormick Place for the conference.

Then down to the conference for Rachel Maddow

Oh yea, we stopped on the way for coffee, at the big Dollop on Indiana.

We went to the exhibit hall for the grand opening and talked to a few people. Including my date who I went to the Grateful Dead show with during the 2015 ALA conference, a sort of preview of their “fare thee well” shows. We are slide 11 and here’s a bigger one. We both had much darker hair back then.

We went to dinner at Victory Tap, regular Italian red sauce joint, nice but way too loud, with another old friend from the ALA technology division (now merged with management and cataloging) who we also met up with at the exhibits.

Saturday we eschewed the John Cotton Dana Awards that started at 8:00AM. I had to be at McCormick by 10:00 to meet up with a student. We stopped at the Monadnock Intelligensia for coffee and then I walked to the green line at Roosevelt, while Mark more leisurely finished his coffee and walked down. Or maybe the Roosevelt green line was Sunday and Saturday was the day I walked to Wabash & Washington and got the train. I think that’s what it was actually.

On Saturday, the student and I went to a session to see a film about children’s books, Story and Pictures By. There are three current authors in it, Christian Robinson, Yuyi Morales, and Mac Barnett. It was a little time-shifted, since it came out in 2023, so must’ve been filmed a good bit before. There was a lot of talk about pandemic and its impact on libraries and children’s books and children and schools. The other off timed thing about it is that Mac Barnett is currently the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, appointed by Library of Congress, and back in May of this year he got himself into a bit of trouble with some probably ill-considered remarks. So it was a little odd sitting in the film knowing that background.

I wandered around the convention center a bit afterward trying to decide what to do next. On my way to the iSchool booth, I got waylaid by someone I used to work with at Pleasant Company, and got my picture taken in the giant doll box with the doll who was getting worked on when I was there, Josefina.

I met Mark at Top Tech Trends, TTT, the program that was always a big deal for our former technology division, and still put on by the successor, merged division, Core. The big trend was AI and how can it be used in libraries ethically. After TTT, Neither of us wanted to go see the Core president’s program, “Healing the Modern Brain with Dr. Drew Ramsey”.  I had some ideas of things I thought I might go to, related to what I used to teach, metadata, vocabularies – and of course everyone was talking about AI being used in those areas. I ended up going to the RUSA, the public service division, prez program, on AI in reference but it was off in a very cold meeting room and I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Mark had decided to go see Min Jin Lee, who wrote Pachinko, so I went there instead. The author talks were generally more inspirational than other lectures at the conference. Although I don’t support ALA’s putting all the author appearances in the exhibit hall into the scheduler, along with regular events and lecture-style author talks in front of an audience. Min Jin Lee also had big thoughts about AI – she said it’s infuriating that we’re all being used as test subjects for this new technology and the profits are going straight into the pockets of bajillionaires.  I tried to read Pachinko a few years ago, and couldn’t finish it. Lee’s next book, American Hagwon, will be out in September, so I put the first book of the trilogy, Free Food for Millionaires, on hold at the library. Maybe I can read that and then loop back to Pachinko by the time Hagwon is available – just to show how popular Min Jin Lee’s books are, Free Food for Millionaires came out in 2007, and the wait time for the e-book is 15 weeks, and I’m number 9 on the waitlist for print.

On Sturday night, we bought $50 tickets for ALA’s big 150th party at one of the hotel attached to the convention center. It was properly fancy with fancy food, like shrimp shooters and rare beef crostini, and tiny tarts and other desserts. Also with huge lines for the food, and only slightly shorter lines at the bar. We went in and snagged some of the tiny desserts, fruit tarts and a tiny chocolate and caramel tart. A raspberry on Mark’s tart jumped off and rolled down his white shirt to get smashed on the floor. Fortunately we had also snagged free water and real cloth napkins so he was able to clean up his shirtfront. We talked to a few friends and heard the outgoing ALA president’s speech and listened to a few songs by the very capable local band. Ultimate party music, “This is how we do it” and Earth, Wind, and Fire “September”. But it was waaay too loud so we bailed after probably only about half an hour.

We walked over to get the red line at the Cermak stop by the Chinatown Chicago Public Library, and took it to Harrison to Himalayan Restaurant, recommended by my friend Marge, and actually ended up sitting with Marge and another librarian from Indianan University at Bloomington. Or at the next table over anyways.  It was cheap and good and a good antidote to the party at the crowded, too loud, hotel ballroom. 

On the way home we went past Chicago City Hall lit for pride month. Like Pittsburgh, last year.

Sunday like I said we got coffee and I partially walked and partially took the L down to McCormick for another meeting with a student. This time I collected the student and we went to Spoke & Bird, a cafe we really got to like when we had the apartment in the South Loop, and met up with another iSchool alum, Aimee, who I used to work with at Internet Scout. The nice Aimee, middle-school-aged John and Al called her.

All of which got me back to the iSchool booth in exhibits with just enough time to schmooze a bit before my last conference responsibility, the informal alum meetup at the booth, where we planned to adjourn to whatever space we could to chat. We had a pretty good turnout – see picture above.

We went to see Jill Biden speak. Then walked back to the hotel to dump our stuff and went to John and Megan’s to hang out in their back yard and eat veggie burgers and Caesar potato salad. And meet their new kitties. I only got pictures of Cosmo, Momo, the black one, but here’re mine and some of John & Megan’s pics of both Cosmo and Kodak, the Siamese looking one.

So a perfect evening to decompress from the conference.

Monday morning we got coffee and donuts and went home.