I made it to ALA

I made it to DC in one piece. The convention center is gigantic. There are about 1500 vendors here so its is more than one person can see. I am going to go to a new member meeting this afternoon at 4 PM and during the day I am going to tour the library of congress. I have a comically oversized nametag holder and really won't be winning any fashion shows with it but the security is tight here so you have to have your nametag at all times. I am sure it is going to be fast paced tomorrow when the vendors open up! I have quite a few Integrated Library System vendors to visit. SirsiDynix, Tripple I, Voyager, and there are even a few open source ILS groups here that would be intersting as well.

KCPL Friends of the library

Hello, My name is Jay Peterson and I work at the Kansas City Public Library as Consortium Librarian. This year I won a scholarship that was provided by the friends of the library to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington DC. This is an amazing opportunity for me since this is my first year as a professional librarian and I have never attended an ALA conference before. I am going to report to the friends what I have learned at the conference and let them know a little about my experiences. I am really excited to have this chance and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start up a blog seeing as that it is a great way to send out my impressions and thoughts right away to the world at large of my experiences. I plan to post comments and content about library issues, new technology, anything that is worthy of note from ALA on this site for presentations to the friends and hopefully lead to people getting excited about the future of libraries and where KCPL will go specifically. This is the first blog i have ever set up I am ashamed to admit but i am hoping it is a good experience and useful for everyone as record of "real time" impressions of a wide eyed, newly minted Librarian hoping to make his mark on the world of Information Science.