Professional Development

Hello All! This is my first time as a blogger, so bear with me!

Yesterday was a day of planes and airports for me. I left my house around 9am and arrived at my hotel in Seattle after midnight EST. I was able to watch The Queen on the flight from Atlanta to Seattle. I also had a nice chat with my seatmate who is an engineer with the U.S. Forest Service and a cattle rancher in Missouri. She also happens to be the Treasurer of her local public library board. She was eager to tell me all the improvements they have made in the last few years, including providing internet access to county residents. They have done a lot with grants, including building a combo library/tornado shelter with a grant from FEMA!

Unlike Susan, the west coast time suits me. It is nice to think that my 8am meetings will begin around 11 according to my body clock. My first meeting this morning (Saturday) is with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Bylaws Committee. We will be considering a slight change to the Law and Political and Sciences Section’s (LPSS) bylaws and then begin a discussion of the need for section by-laws in general. This can be dry stuff, but by-laws do keep an organization as large as ALA, and its divisions, on the ’straight and narrow.’ After this I will be heading over to the Convention Center to pick up my packet and meet with the Government Documents Roundtable’s (GODORT) Federal Documents Task Force (FDTF). I’m serving as the GODORT Cataloging Committee’s liaison to FDTF. We will spend the first part of our meeting talking to representatives from the EPA about the EPA library closures. We hope to come up with some ideas on where the EPA material might be able to go to remain accessible. Then we’ll have a representative from the Government Printing Office (GPO) give us an update on the happenings in DC. Later on in the day I’ll be doing some reading for my Monday committee meeting that I couldn’t get to before I left W-S.