On Tuesday morning, members of the Information Technology Division gathered at 7 AM for one last meeting. Having fallen on the heels of the dance party, motions were passed by weary-eyed board members without much discussion.

After breakfast, I attended “Mashups: Future of Changing Content”, led by Nicole Engard, a self-proclaimed open-source evangelist and editor of Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data.

Next, I met my SLA mentor at the Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Division’s hospitality suite where I was introduced to several of her PAM colleagues and offered a bag of treats and souvenirs. We then returned to the convention center to attend the SLA Closing General Session Membership Meeting. Judy Woodruff moderated a panel discussion about the outlook for information and information professionals. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author Robyn Meredith, and IBM executive John R. Patrick shared their insights for the future. Beignets were served at the 2010 SLA Kickoff and Closing Reception.

As I exited the conference, I engaged in a conversation with a friendly crossing guard about the value of library clouds to him in his pursuit of an online degree and the perception of my profession and the confusion our organization’s name invokes. I then dropped by the gift shop of The Historical Society of Washington, DC. The woman who assisted me asked if I was with the library conference and mentioned that the society is housed in a Carnegie library building, which led to a discussion about Louisville, its museums, and its rich African American history.

Later that evening, I joined members of the Kentucky Chapter, aka “Kentucky Mafia”, for dinner at Bobby Van’s Grill. Despite the negative connotation, our nickname is a testament to our chapter’s popularity whose members and guests traveled from far flung destinations such as Christchurch, New Zealand and St. Martin in the Caribbean. The night ended with the Legal Division’s Open House and a round of drinks with friends at the Rocket Bar.

Additional photos are available on my Flickr account.

Despite the late night, I awoke rather refreshed and eager to embark on yet another busy day. For the morning’s first session, I dropped in briefly on “Globalization: Emerging Opportunities for the Library Profession” then moved on to “Reaching Next-Gen Users with Unified Discovery Services”. The latter provided a demonstration of a product employed by Dartmouth’s library to aggregate its entire collection within one integrated search box. While it was interesting, it didn’t fit my needs so I logged into Twitter and searched #sla2009. I noticed several people were commenting on “The Role of Social Networking Sites in Research”, so I packed my bags and headed to the other wing. By the time I arrived, it was apparent that others had followed the tweets because there was standing room only and very little of that.

Meg Smith, a researcher for The Washington Post’s Metro section, provided numerous examples of how she has mined social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, Wikipedia and about a dozen others to cull information for her newspaper’s reports and also to assist local law enforcement. She observed that because of the growing popularity of the aforementioned sites and their ability to limit searches by geographic region that local networks, like Louisville Mojo were waning. She also declared this the “Golden Age of Twitter” because users’ tweets still remain publicly accessible.

Next, I attended the Information Technology Division Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony. Unlike Saturday’s meeting, this was open to the entire group. We viewed two video entries for the centennial contest and heard an excerpt from the Student Award winner Stephanie Buck’s paper, “Emerging Technologies: Libraries in the Cloud”. It was announced to much applause that SLA has chosen Drupal for its content management system, which will be available to all chapters and divisions. This is the same CMS that the law school employs.

Following the meeting, I joined a packed house for “Onion Editor Calls for an End to Reading”. Scott Dikkers, editor and founder, provided much needed comic relief. His entire presentation was a parody replete with videos, newspaper archives, and statistics demonstrating why the Onion is America's finest news source. During the Q/A session, someone asked, “of all the vegetables, why did you choose an onion?” Scott replied that it’s a metaphor for peeling the layers of a juicy news story. Another asked if he was threatened by John Stewart to which he replied, “While they make fun of real news, we make up the news. We have a niche”. Evidently it takes one week from conception to publication for each feature, as opposed to 18 hours for The Daily Show.

That evening, I joined Ruth Kneale and Dick Kaser, editor of Computers in Libraries at the Technical Support Roundtable. We discussed cloud computing, Vista, open-source solutions and browser issues. We were later joined by Kathleen Robertson, another astronomy colleague from Hawaii. Shortly after, I reported to duty at The Embassy Ball, an annual dance party hosted by the IT and Leadership and Management Divisions.

Monday morning began with a 7 AM SLA Legal Division Business Meeting generously sponsored by BNA. I learned that BNA employs 150 reporters to cover the Supreme Court and was informed of its "economic stimulus package", which includes additional tools for SLA members. Contance Ard, formerly of Greenebaum Doll & McDonald, announced a great slate of programs for the 2010 conference. While there, I also networked with other law librarians from Toronto, NYC, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Indiana and was asked to a be a contributor to the legal division's wiki.

Following the breakfast meeting, I attended both a session by Jay Liebowitz, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, about the use of mapping tools to analyze the relationships within an organization and the latter portion of the Radical Reference session where I learned about a volunteer army of social activists who lend their research skills to providing answers to those who question authority.

The next item on the busy agenda was a networking luncheon where I joined a table of LIS students and hipsters with tatoos and pink hair from around the country. I chatted with a fellow genXer and art librarian about Mac Tools and our local roller derby chapters. After that, I toured the vendor expo where I tested my global business knowledge at The Economist's booth, gathered maps at NOAA and schwag from other vendors to share with my colleagues in the law library. The highlight was a book signing with my friend, Ruth Kneale, a systems librarian who just published You Don't Look Like a Librarian.

Later that afternoon, I delivered a projector to the "Librarian 1.0 to 2.0: The Future of Managing Content" session. Upon arrival, I noticed that the presenter's Macbook had a USB connection rather than a serial port connection and offered several alternate options for connectivity, to which her co-presenter declared me "brilliant". I reflected on his comment later that evening and delighted in the fact that amid fellow librarians and information professionals, my gender is not perceived as a handicap as it sometimes is among the male-dominated field of information technology.

I observed that the conference attendance was distributed equally among the genders and comprised of roughly 50% baby boomers, 25% genX/genY, and 25% from the silent generation. It is this diversity that continues to inspire and attract me to the profession.

The night concluded with a fabulous seafood dinner at Johnny's Half Shell followed by the IT Division's Sci-Fi Night, where I met two local science fiction authors and picked up a couple of copies from Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet" series.

On Saturday, I arrived in Washington, DC for the annual Special Libraries Association's conference. The first order of business after having checked into the hotel was attending the Information Technology Division's board meeting. While there, I reunited with an "old" friend from Hawaii, reacquainted myself with colleagues I met at the SLA Leadership Conference in Savannah, and submitted my report as the Webmaster Section Chair.

On Sunday, I met up with cousins in Baltimore to enjoy brunch and attend the Hon Festival, an annual 1950's style event inspired by local boy John Waters' "Hairspray". I regret having left my camera in DC and was unable to capture the many colorfully adorned "hons" (diner speak for "honey") replete with pink beehives and feather boas.

Later that evening, I attended the awards presentation, followed by former Secretate of State, Colin Powell's keynote address, and the centennial celebration. As we entered the venue, we were greeted by Hoovers' robot. I observed a gentleman berating him about the General's role in the decision to enter the Iraq War on false intelligence, to which the robot repeatedly replied "no comment". I initially wondered if that was the extent of its lexicon, but later observed it engaging in simple conversation. I then pondered if it was the tone of the gentleman or perhaps a keyword "liar' that triggered its response and decided I needed to seek out an AI librarian to explain.

Two of my Kentucky Chapter colleagues were awarded. Stacey Greenwell is a 2009 Fellow and Abby Heath-Thorne was recognized as a Rising Star within the organization. General Powell's talk was surprisingly entertaining, tech savvy, and relevant for the audience of information professionals. He joked that he learned all he knows about social networking from his 14-year old grandson who was born digital and that while he was born analog, he'd purchased a $59 converter to facilitate conversation between the two. I took copius notes and photos that I hope to share.

Later that evening, I attended a special tour of the International Spy Museum. Upon entering, I chose my code name "Greta Schmidt" and then assumed the identity of the 30-something German astronomer/secret agent throughout the rest of my tour. Not only did I learn about the sisterhood of spies, I discovered that my favorite founding father, Benjamin Franklin, helped prevent an attack by British troops through coded messages. Other highlights included interactive skills games, instructions for creating your very own microdot (microscopic photographs) with a pack of cigarettes and bottle of vodka, and the opportunity to crawl through an A/C duct. Lasting impressions: 2.5 hours is not nearly enough time to absorb all that the museum has to offer and lock picking suddenly sounds like an interesting hobby.

I wrapped up the night conversing with my roommate, a law librarian from Albuquerque who is also the New Mexico chapter's president.

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