ALA Annual Conference Summary

NMRT Meet & Greet
Loud. You may have read, heard, or experienced that NMRT Meet & Greets can be full of people, so full that we overfill our assigned space and spill out into hallways, bars, or other rooms. This Annual's event in the Westin City Center was no exception. We started in a small conference room and grew fast. It was a great opportunity to see old friends, be introduced to new contacts, and to see some of the current and recently-past officers. There were many pictures taken, some of which you can see on Flickr along with other NMRT pictures from Annual.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/nmrtannual07/

STS Publications Committee Meeting
I attended this meeting as a new member and the incoming STS Web Editor. Among other business the committee discussed the current progress of the STS website, how it should be redesigned and the appropriate organizational channels to propose additional STS members work on the website. I also took this opportunity to learn current practices and documentation from the outgoing STS Web Editor.

STS Breakfast and Discussion Program
Through the planning of STS Officers and the support of sponsoring vendors, the STS All Members Breakfast was appetizing both in food and discussion. There was ample time for morning refreshment and informal networking before the program got underway. Catherine Soehner 2006-2007 STS Chair introduced the incoming officers and sponsors then allowed for more time for networking at each table. The program "Ten-Squared" was organized by the Continuing Education Committee and set up topics for each table at the breakfast. The hot topic at our table was "Google Scholar", and when everyone got up to pick a table they preferred for the discussion we had a full table including two vendor sponsors. Our discussion ranged from partnerships with Google, which was enriched by the sponsor representatives, to information literacy to the state of the research process in higher education today. The summaries of all discussions were presented and will be made available online soon.

3M/NMRT Social
With an anniversary theme on Sunday, June 24, 2007, the 3M/NMRT Social decked out the Independence Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Washington, DC in sparkling diamonds. With “bling” on their fingers the attendees celebrated 75 years of NMRT, including those years as the JMRT (Junior Members Round Table), and the 32nd year of the Social in partnership with 3M Library Systems.
The 3M/NMRT Social is an award banquet to recognize the recipients of both the 2007 3M/NMRT Professional Grant and the 2006 National Awards for Museum and Library Service. Dr. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services, offered a few on the importance of libraries and librarians to the nation and promised to be careful with the phrase "great success".
Then the music started with the inevitable Electric Slide courtesy of Top Hat DJ. There was plenty of appetizing food and a few drinks for everybody. In closing 3M provided door prizes to a few lucky winners. Those who brought a new children’s book to be donated to DC Public Library were entered into a special gift basket drawing. You can find some event pictures on Flickr using the tag “nmrtannual07”.

STS Program
The conference room for the STS Annual Program was mostly full when I arrived early due to a misprint in the ALA schedule indicating it started a half-hour earlier. The Oberly Award for Bibliography in the Agricultural Sciences was presented first for AgEcon Search to Louise Letnes, Patricia Rodkewich, and Julie Kelly. The first presenter, Thomas Dowling from OhioLINK, gave what he described as not "what we are doing well" but "what we hope to be doing well very soon". The large scale digital repository he discussed is planned to cover multiple geographic locations and institutions as well as many types of information, including video and image collections. One interesting point was how each member of the consortium could keep identity for its content and yet all content could be shared in a common interface. The second speaker, D. Scott Brandt from Purdue University, spoke from an administration perspective on encouraging communication between librarians and faculty as well as building a institutional repository that can handle diverse content. The wide spectrum of research stretches from raw data to ontologies to gray literature to scholarly publication. He spoke of the need to speak frequently with researchers about what they are doing and their data.

NMRT New Chair Orientation
This was essential training for new chairs and I attended as incoming co-chair of the NMRT Web Committee. Nanette Donohue presided one of her first meetings with a well planned agenda. During introductions I was able to get to know the faces of the members I would be working with in the coming year, including my committee's director, Membership. The importance of communication was stressed, for example including the involved NMRT officers in all email. Finally the budget was presented with important explanation from the the incoming and outgoing NMRT treasurers.