Two conferences in Philadelphia

I'm in Philadelphia this week attending two library conferences. The first one is the Association of Library and Information Educators (ALISE for short) and it started yesterday. This is the first time I've been to this conference and I'm enjoying it very much. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming and I've met quite a few very interesting people including a lot of other doctoral students in library science, some classmates from TWU, some of my professors from TWU and, best of all, some of my library science "idols". Those are people whose work I've admired over the years. It's pretty cool to meet them in person.

This is a small conference compared to the one that starts at the end of the week (the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting) and I was a little worried that it wouldn't compare well to the other small conference I always go to in the summer where everyone is particularly warm and welcoming. But I'm happy to say that everyone here has been nothing but warm and welcoming. I have ribbons on my name tag that identify me as both a student and a first time conference attendee and lots of people have stopped me to introduce themselves and to ask me about myself so I feel right at home.

I also feel right at home because all of these people are interested in the same types of things that I'm interested in: research in library science. I've already attended several workshops, meetings for people with like interests, and poster sessions. I've heard about
historical research methods in library science (interestingly, women were the first librarians to conduct surveys of library users, not men even though men originally dominated the profession).

I mentioned that this was a small conference. There are fewer than 500 attendees and all of the events are taking place at the same hotel so I haven't ventured out of the hotel yet. On Friday the next conference starts. That's the big one with probably between 5,000 and 10,000 attendees and events scattered around downtown Philadelphia in hotels and the convention center. Friday is also the day that most of my friends and co-workers from Corpus Christi arrive so I'll have lots of opportunities to "see" the city, including the Philadelphia Art Museum (on the steps of which the famous scene from the first Rocky movie was filmed).

Stay tuned for more!