ALA Annual - Washington DC - June 2022

@benitastrnad, who helped organize the 2019 ALA meetup, will be at the conference again this month and is hoping to meet up with others.

Unfortunately I will have family in town so won't be available to meet up, but I'm happy to help coordinate.

Benita has suggested the Busboys & Poets by the convention center (4th & K), which is where we met last time (and has ample outdoor seating)

I have a commitment earlier in the day, but depending on schedule, I may be able to make a meetup.

I have a sad that my wife let her ALA membership expire. But then again, I'm dealing with lots of family stuff and can't make it.

From today's State of the Thing email:

"The American Library Association's 2022 Annual Conference & Exhibition is returning to an in-person event this year for the first time since the pandemic began, and LibraryThing's founder Tim Spalding (timspalding) will be there!

Tim will be showing off an exciting new "Lists" feature for Syndetics Unbound, LibraryThing and ProQuest's (awesome) catalog enrichment product for public and academic libraries. Lists allow libraries to make attractive, custom lists in their catalog, and to share them with other libraries.

Tim will also have a limited supply of TinyCat and LibraryThing pins to give out to LibraryThing fans. (See below for more info.)

The ALA Conference is being held in Washington, D.C., at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. You can find Tim at the ProQuest/Clarivate booth #2507! (Send him a message on LibraryThing or email tim@librarything.com to make sure to connect with him.)"

Hello everybody,
I finally got word from Tim Spaulding (he who invented Librarything). There will not be free passes to the exhibits hall. There will be partially paid passes. Here is the e-mail that I got from Tim.

Hey Benita. According to our conference rep:

Free Exhibit Hall Only Passes
ALA has unfortunately dropped the popular free option for exhibits only passes. People can now buy a pass through our code for a $50 discount now but nothing is free anymore. Just send them the details below to buy the discount passes.
  Register for a $25 Exhibit Hall Only badge
· URL: https://www.compusystems.com/servlet/ar?evt_uid=846&oi=YHvzX2jzL8HHoIiGjo9vo...
· Exhibitor Invitation Code: V206
· Not valid for Friday access to exhibit hall

That's pretty lame.

Sorry. I hope to see you there!

T

I am still thinking that we can have a meetup. Would Saturday night at Poets and Busboys work? The exhibits close at 5 PM so maybe we could meet at 6 PM. How does that sound?

OK. Made a decision. The meetup is at Poets' and Busboys at 6 PM. This is the one on K Street - close to the convention center.

450 K Street NW, Washington D.C. 20001

We will meet about 6 PM. The exhibits close at 5PM so this will give some of us time to get to Poet's and Busboys.

Whoever can make it - I will see you there.
Benita

If anyone else is here, I’m outside.

>8 timspalding: would have, but I tested positive for Covid yesterday. That’s what I get for flying these days…

I was there - inside. The desk and the head guy had my name and the table inside marked for us. Oh well! That is the way this conference has been. Everybody has forgotten how to organize things like this. The people at Busboys and Poets didn’t know there was a library conference in town! He was a bit put out that there were three different Library groups booked into the restaurant on the same night. He asked me why?

Even my hotel has had problems. Broken escalators. Elevators that won’t leave the 7th floor once they go up past it they stop then go to floor 7 and won’t move from there. Weird!

There is also fewer ARC’s. This’s is due to supply problems and unknown numbers of attendees. Many people registered late so publishers didn’t know how many boos to order.

Also the publishers are pushing heir new and mid level authors. I did hear David Maraniss but couldn’t get a book because they ran out during the signing. Same thing happened with Sabaa Tahir. I think that some librarians got greedy and took more than one copy.