MidWinter Meeting 2016

I attended the American Library Associations 2016 Midwinter Meeting in Boston which
ran from January 8th through the 12th. My plane got into Boston at 11am on the 8th of January. I
was unsure of the procedures to get to my Hotel since there was a shuttle mentioned as one of the
hotels amenities, on my registration. I called my hotel the Midtown and was told that there was
no shuttle. After speaking to the lady at the airport, I was told that the Silver line was free from
the airport and that I could take connecting trains from South Station to get to my hotel. I get off
at the wrong stop which turned out to be the convention center. After getting my badge, I found
out that my hotel only has shuttles in the morning and in the evening, but I could take a shuttle
from the convention to a hotel 5 minutes from mine. Got to my hotel, checked in, and got
cleaned up for the convention.
I got back to the Convention Center in time to catch the Booklist Author Forum featuring
Ken Burns, Mark Kurlansky, and Terry Tempest Williams. The forum was structured to focus on
why the authors write what they write and about their process as authors. Each of the authors at
the forum had a different reason for choosing their subjects. For Burns he is trying to tell the
American Story through the lives of others, which deeps the question that we all ask ourselves.
For Kurlansky he looks for a good story that has meaning. As for Williams she writes to answer
question that she has. They all agreed that editing can be a tough job. Burns compared making
movies to making maple syrup in that making that 5 minute snippet of an interview, he had to
spend an hour interviewing that person. Two of my favorite quotes from the forum are all
biography is failure, but we have to try Ken Burns and Collaboration is the only way forward
Terry Tempest Williams. After the forum ended the exhibit hall opened up, meet a couple of nice
librarians that took me under their wings and showed me around, as a result I entered the Oxford

University Presss raffle and won The Oxford Companion to Wine. I than returned to my hotel
room for the night.
My second day of the convention was Saturday the 9th which begin with the ALA
JobLIST Placement Center orientation at 8:30am. At the orientation they explained what was at
the placement center and that I could put an anonymous version of my resume on the ALA
JobLIST website. I also scheduled an appointment for my resume to be critiqued. According to
the critic my resume was very good and only needed a few bullet points that illustrate what I did
that was relevant to the job I am applying for; and that when I finish my practicum I should
move my practicum experience to be above my education, but until then its fine where it is. After
my resume critique I attended a presentation by Susanne Markgren entitled Preparing for
Today's Job Market1 Some of my major take always for this presentation are the important of
researching a position and library before applying for it. That the one page resume is dead and
that a resume should not exceed 3 pages; at that point you have just made a bad CV. A good
cover letter is about 6 paragraphs long and about two pages. I also learned that it takes forever
for a search committee to fill a vacant position. Finally I learned what an elevator speech is and
how to construct one. At 2pm the placement center was having an event called Check-Out a
Librarian in which interested parties could talk to a librarian about their position and about their
career. I talked to Alexandra Rivera about my course of study and about her library, she give me
her business card and asked me to send her my information and my areas of interest. As I was
heading back to my room to update my resume, post it, and send my information to Alexandra, I
ran into Dr. Snow and we talked for a bit. I finished my activities in my room and proceeded to

1 The slides for this presentation can be found at

http://www.slideshare.net/smarkgren/preparing-for-todays-job-market.

arrive back at the convention center just as the exhibit hall was closing up, and had to get on the
bus to return to my hotel.
My third day of the conference begin by going to the exhibits that I had yet to see; as I waited for
the Job Fair/Open House to begin at the job placement center. While at the job fair I meet with
several librarians from several libraries that either have entry level position open or will have
entry positions open soon.
As I was heading to lunch I ran into Dr. Brown, and found out that I could observe any
meeting or presentation that was not marked closed. So, I attended a panel presentation at 1pm
entitled American Libraries and Gale: Bridging the Gap through Digital Humanities2. In this
penal Kathy Rosa, David Seaman, Thomas Padilla, Stephanie Orphan, and Jon Cawthorne
discuss a variety of issues and their experiences regarding digital humanities. A few of my big
take a ways from this presentation were; key finding from the American Libraries/Gale Cengage
surveys of librarians and faculty about digital humanities. Some results include that a digital
humanities center belongs in the library according to the faculty surveyed, that almost 9 out of
10 faculty [of the faculty surveyed] use digital humanities tools in their research or teaching,3
and that the majority of librarians surveyed in the Librarian Survey indicated that a librarian or
the library should be involved heavily with the project as a full contributor. According to David
Seaman it has gotten easier to raise fund for digital humanities projects, however consideration
for tenure and promotion have not yet advanced to the point where digital humanities projects
2 A blog post about the panel that features a photo of the back of my head can be
found at http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/digital-humanitiesbridging-the-gap-of-library-and-faculty-engagement/.
3 Digital Humanities: Faculty Survey Results-December 2015. Slide 11.
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/digitalhumanities-faculty.pdf.

are included. I also learned what Portico does, they are a long term storage facility for digital
materials that can be made available to the publisher in case of loss and they maintain the
perpetual access for institutions that purchased it. Finally, the earlier that the library becomes
involved in a digital humanities project the better advice and service they can provide to the
project.
At 3pm on Sunday I attended discussion group entitled Transitions from traditional OPACs to
discovery systems: how has this had an impact on use and instruction. What I leaned from this
discussion is that discovery systems are good for freshman and sophomore students, but can lead
to failure for junior and senior students. The reason for this is that the discovery layer limits the
amount of detailed searching that the user can do. This in turn leads to low level undergraduates
learning to use the discovery system and using better resources than they would have used
otherwise. However, they will than try to duplicate this success in their higher level courses and
fail because their search required them to use a very specific set of search terms and limiters that
the discovery system just couldnt do. The reason for this is that in lowering the barrier to entry
the discovery system adds a layer of complexity that a librarian needs to explain to the user and
explain more than once. A few other points about discovery layers is that, since they are for the
most part purchased, they can have conflicts with other library systems like the librarys link
resolver. Its not all bad though, a discovery system can have some benefits even for advanced
users for example discovery system tend to be better at finding relevant chapters of e-books than
OPACs are. Further, at a few of the institution the introduction of discovery systems have led to
increased faculty use of e-books. Though, there is a danger in this if a faculty member decides to
assign one of the e-books as a textbook and the license limits concurrent users or even worse if
the book is a PDA title and the professors class triggers multiple purchases of said book. One

librarians said that at her library one of the professors assigned a PDA title as the textbook and
ended up costing the library several hundred dollars.
The final day of the conference for me begin with attending the Legislation Assembly
which begin at 8:30 am4. The Legislation Assembly is where the Washington Office fill tells the
members of the Assembly what has been going on in Congress and listen to what is concerning
the members of the assembly. This is done so that the Legislation Assembly can do what it is
charged with doing by ALA which is to act in an advisory and resource capacity to the ALA
Committee on Legislation5. Some of my big take a ways from this assembly include what the
Washington Office lobbies for and how they interact with ALA. Some major areas of concern
include funding, copyright, privacy, public access to government information, broadband access,
and the recent victory for school libraries. I also learned about the the kind of inside track that
lobbyist can have on issues, the staff form the Washington office was able to what has come up
in Congressional discussions in addition to what Congress may do in the future. After the
Legislation Assembly, I went to the exhibit hall and saw what was left to see and got some free
stuff. I left at about 2:30ish to go back to my hotel room.
I feel that MidWinter was a great experience for me. I learned a lot and had a blast doing it and
wish Orlando was in the budget. I got to see some awesome products like a microfilm reader that
wasnt a pain to use. I wished I had known that I could just walk into a panel and sit down, I
definitely would have attended far more if I had known.

4 See attached itinerary.

5 The American Library Association, Legislation Assembly,
http://www.ala.org/groups/legislation-assembly.

Supporting Documents
Link to PDF of supporting documents
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9NiwWH3nG48bWY0Y3VVUlV4OGs/view?usp=sharing.