Comments on CLA Conference 2007

For a few days this week the Canadian Library Association (CLA) held their annual conference in St. John’s. While I was not fortunate enough to attend the event as a full-fledged I was able to be a volunteer, a position that allowed me to get a pretty broad sense of the conference (though there were certainly elements that I missed out on, namely the socials and receptions). As I was kicking around the conference facilities a few things struck me:

-So far it has been my experience that many library students wear cardigans, both males and females. It was not my experience than conference-attending librarians wear cardigans.

-Librarians are attracted to what they perceive as free food. The trade show was seemingly stormed each time lunch or snacks were made available to delegates. It was nice to see that many of these food eaters were responsible and wanted to properly dispose of all of their garbage.

-Free trade show giveaways are greatly appreciated. While acting as a trade show greeter (AKA badge checker) I saw people walk out with bags full of items though they had only been collecting these items for a few minutes. I myself picked up about a bag and a half of items and I was less aggressive than some individuals.

-Of all the demographic groups that would reasonably be represented at this conference it seemed to me that the young male group was the most underrepresented. During the conference I saw only a handful of males who looked to be under thirty.

-The quality of presentation really ranged. One that I saw was great, while another completely failed to keep my attention. The amount of time given to these presenters also ranged, and unfortunately the best presentation had only an hour while one of the more painful ones had an hour and a half.

-For some reason many of the presentations were done in a pseudo-panel form. I was never quite able to figure this out. To me it seemed that just having individuals, or people working on a particular project, might have made more sense. This combining of related, but not directly related, presentations just did not work for me.

-While a few library students did attend the conference, the number seemed quite small. This issue was to be dealt with by a resolution that was to be presented at CLA AGM on Saturday (obviously I did not attend).

-On the whole I would recommend that library students attend this or an equivalent conference at some point during their library school period of time.