ALA Midwinter report back

Here's my report back from ALA Midwinter 2008. I'll fill you in on my experiences with the Chinatown bus, radical librarian/radical techie love, the zine librarians meet-up, a white privilege workshop, Radical Reference, Movers & Shakers, and vegan eats.

Chinatown bus
You just can't beat the $20 round trip ticket. It took about 2 hours each way and was perfectly pleasant. I've heard one or two horror stories about the NYC-Boston route and had a bad experience coming back from Baltimore once, but generally, I'm a big fan.

east coast/west coast radical librarian/radical techie love in
Basically this has everything to do with the fact that at the last minute my friend Danny Grobani, a techie I first met at an anarchist book fair in San Francisco's boss decided they should both attend ALA in order to get the scoop on Koha. Since I hadn't arranged housing yet, he offered to let me stay with him at his swank (all he could get at the 11th hour) hotel. Eric was with us, as was Laura Quilter for the first night. We had a little gathering that included an assortment of other radicals from the SF Bay Area and east coast cities. It seems to me that good times were had by all. Interestingly, as Alycia pointed out, a major theme of this conference was open source this and that, so perhaps our brand of radical library/tech is catching on with the mainstream.

Zine Librarians Meet-up
Well this was kind of a bust, as there were only three of us (Laural, Alycia, and me) there. Laural took notes, which should appear on the Zine Libraries website soon.

White Privilege Discussion
While I am thrilled that this event happened, and that it was really well attended (I'm guessing 150 people, including E.J. Josey, maybe 60% of whom{?} were people of color), I was a little disappointed. I think the consultant/presenter, Art Munin let us off a bit too easy. He stated in the beginning that the session wasn't going to be about all white people being evil. His going way too easy on us I think made it so that people could walk out of the session feeling all good about themselves, not having confronted their own racism. Plus the comments seemed to be as usual disproportionately from white folks, men, and library directors, and most of it seemed to be more about showing how knowledgeable they were about the topic than really confronting the issues at hand. I know it's impossible to do a real anti-oppression training with a group that size in two hours, but I do think it could have been a little less...feel-good. Munin did convince us that racism exists in America today, but not how much each of us is carrying it around in our own heads and hearts. This doesn't mean I won't attend future white privilege discussions at ALA (and elsewhere). Like I said, I'm thrilled the event happened and will be glad to learn from and support future discussions. btw one of my favorite comments came from a friend who said something like how when he reports back to his boss about what events he attended the boss will probably ask "Why didn't you go to something related to your job?" (and either stated or implied the idiocy of that question).

Radical Reference meeting
We met at The A-Space, which I'm sorry I didn't bother to learn more about, but it seemed like a swell organization. The meeting was good, but since I wasn't taking minutes, I'll leave the description to Lia Friedman, who did. Stay tuned to the Radical Reference site.

I will say that the meeting was invigorating. It was heartening to come together with 23 people, about half of whom (I'm guessing) were new to Rad Ref. I'm particularly excited about that Alycia, Bess Sadler, Gabe Farrell, and others will have a go at redesigning the website. Another hot project Alycia is coordinating is plans for Rad Ref to support the RNC protests in the Twin Cities this summer. I was also pleased to have in attendance several members of PLG, a group with whom Rad Ref and/or I have occasionally had a rocky relationship (in my opinion through no fault of my ours!).

Movers and Shakers lunch
Library Journal hosts a fancy lunch at ALA Annual for each new class of Movers and Shakers as well as all the old ones. They decided this year to have a smaller affair at Midwinter, too, to create a discussion among its "brain trust" (is how I think one of the editors referred to us). It's a pretty smart idea I think, but like with the white privilege event, I was a little disappointed. I gotta say I was expecting a more exciting and perhaps more youthful crowd. Personally I think vendors and directors of large libraries should be excluded from received this emerging leaders award. Nothing against directors, but I think they've got plenty of other opportunities, eh? And vendors--fuck 'em. Anyway, some of the conversations at this event were really predictable and dull.

Fortunately I was sitting with Ria Newhouse and Alycia Sellie, both of whom had lots of interesting things to say. I'm sorry I sound like I'm ragging. I really do think these lunches are a neat opportunity for dialog between LJ deemed achievers. But my cynical self wants to believe that LJ's desire is the furthering of the profession, and not just its profile. I don't know if they can separate the two. I also apologize if I'm unwarrantedly ragging on LJ because I have a real affection for several of the editors, including Raya Kuzyk with whom I worked at Pseudo.com, and internet television network at which we toiled before it went bankrupt in the dot com crash in 2000. She did not write for them, and I did not librarian.

Alycia, Ria, and I walked to Wooden Shoe Books after the lunch, and it seemed like they really have their shit together. It was well-organized, had appealing wares, and was tidy. I'm hoping to get involved with zine readings there sometime in the near future.

Vegan Eats
Philadelphia is the best convention city I've ever been to for accessible, affordable, and delicious vegan fare. Hooray for Basic Four Vegetarian Snack Bar in the Reading Terminal Market and Kingdom of Vegetarians in Chinatown, which is right next to the convention center. Even the random Italian restaurant we went to after Radical Reference had specifically listed vegan options.

Regrets
I fell for the weather hype and left town earlier than I'd planned, hoping to avoid a rain and snowstorm that never appeared. Supposedly there were going to be 10 inches of snow in NYC. No wonder people don't evacuate storms when they're told. They're used to forecasters' lies and/or mistakes. I wish I'd made it the Sunday afternoon/Monday stuff on my to-do list.