This year’s annual American Library Association conference was a whirlwind of activity for me. I was hoping that I could write blog posts everyday on everything amazing that happened. Unfortunately, I never had any time between meetings, sessions, and social events to write anything including a stack of postcards that I bought at the Library of Congress. However, I will present a brief summary the top 5 experiences that I had over the course of the week in Washington DC with my fellow librarians. These are presented in no particular order.

1- ALA Think Tank
A couple of months before the conference I was invited to stay in a rented apartment with 13 librarians who were in various areas of their careers and the profession. Some of us were managers and directors and some of us were library students. Everyone was a leader and had something great to bring to the house and share with the rest.

There were a few great experiences that I got from being a part of this conference tribe. I was able to attend a social in the president’s suite and meet amazing luminaries in the profession. I knew where all of the best sessions and workshops were happening. I was inspired by fantastic ideas and concepts during our morning, lunch, or evening meetingups when we simply sat around the house and talked about each of our experiences in the profession. Some of the best times were had when we were just sitting around the house and talking to each other and getting to know everyone. Librarians Unplugged

Of course, anytime there are 13 leaders in a small space there were some times of conflict and drama, but these were pale in comparison to the great experiences that I gained and the fantastic people I met.

2-Battledecks
On Monday night Janie Herman brought another EPIC edition of Battledecks to ALA. Battledecks is a competition where some of the best presenters in librarianship are given around 10-12 slides that they have never seen before and are also given a topic having something to do with librarianship that they have to relate back to the slides. The slides have almost nothing to do with libraries and instead are filled with images of LOLcats, funny charts and graphics, and other humorous photos and phrases. The competitors are judged by a panel of judges and ties are broken with an applaus’o’meter. This year’s winner was Jason Griffey.

3-ALA Dance Party
ALA Dance Party was organized by the good folks over at www.8bitlibrary.com. This was an event not sponsored by ALA but was advertised almost entirely via Twitter and Facebook and various blogs in an almost guerrilla like fashion. In the end, about a hundred librarians showed up to the Apex nightclub on Friday night and danced until the early morning hours. Some of the attendees included Joe Murphy, Loida Garcia-Febo, and Stephan Abrams and far too many other amazing folks to name. Here is a short video just to give you an idea for the ALA dance events to come at the next conference.

4- Library of Congress
One of the Librarians from the Think Tank named Tiffany Mair and I braved the morning heat and humidity of DC and walked to the Library of Congress in the hopes of having a tour. Of course, with 27,000 librarians in DC it was almost impossible to get a spot in the tour. So instead, we took ourselves on a smaller self-guided tour and took a look at the displays of Carl Jung, early America, Thomas Jefferson’s private library, and some of the various other smaller works being shown. I can’t complain about missing the tour because there was so much to see just by simply walking around without a guide.

5- COPE’s Session on creating a Social Networking Policy
As a member of the Committee on Professional Ethics, I was very excited to attend our session on creating Social Networking Policies in libraries. I hadn’t realized that navigating the legal and ethical framework of these policies could be so difficult. For example, I learned that its possible that the legality of deleting or editing comments by patrons on library social networks could be a violation of first amendment rights if there is not a clearly written policy in place. You can see more of the thoughts and ideas that come from this session, and future COPE sessions, by searching the #ALAethics hashtag on Twitter.

Overall, I can’t imagine a better way to have spent my ALA Annual Conference then the way I did. It was filled with amazing new information, fun experiences, and meeting fantastic people. Now I’m already excited to get ready for midwinter and I hope I get to meet you there!

-PC Sweeney