More to Philly than cheesesteak.

I went to Philadephia last week to attend the ACRL 2011 conference. I have been to library conferences before, but never to this one. Never to one that catered specifically to academic libraries. It was different, but it was also the same. Most of the same vendors were there in the exhibit hall (thankfully Euromonitor was there, which means that I got a replacement for my favorite pen that I picked up at the SLA conference last year) and many of the topics were the same - What does it mean to be a next generation librarian? How can you integrate social media best into your library? What kind of mobile site are you developing? How are you showing your institution and community at large that you are valuable? You know, the same-old same-old. I'm telling you, what librarians need is someone to come to these conferences and present a talk on how not to be collegial and easy-going, on how not to spend your days gathering data to show your community that you provide value. Show me a librarian who is persistent, aggressive, direct, and who runs a lean, mean organization that gets consistently high funding and that's the person I want to learn from. This person would be truly revolutionary and I might even pay my own money to attend the conference at which she speaks, because the rest of us are too interested in group-think, in trying to convince people that we are worthwhile, that we provide services that are needed to the community, that we should have meeting after meeting to make sure that people like what they do, aren't too overworked, and that we gather every last person's opinion and feedback before we write a first draft of a procedure (only to go back at least two more times to the group for every last opinion before presenting a final draft to the group that will get shot down at the last minute for violating some kind of ancient policy that should have been changed a long time ago), to say much of anything that hasn't been heard before.

But, cynicism aside, I actually learned stuff at ACRL. I learned that there are so many librarians out there today who are passionate about what they do, and who are implementing some pretty innovative ideas at their libraries. I learned that there are thousands of colleges and universities out there in every little town imaginable, and it's from some of these smaller, more nimble kinds of institutions that I'm seeing some of the most creative solutions to problems. I learned that Access Services is like the Cinderalla of the academic library community, in that it's the dept that does the vast majority of the labor and reaps hardly any of the rewards. (My manager's manager, with whom I was traveling, kept likening Access Services to a logistics operation, and I was somewhat offended by that, since I don't see myself as working for UPS (not that there's anything wrong with UPS, of course). I learned that given a bit of an energy and confidence boost, and a lack of desire to spend my outside-of-work time devoted to non-work-related activities, I might actually try to do some in-depth reading on topics that are unknown to me and to get more involved in the organization. At one point I was thinking about starting a professional blog about the days in the life of a new Access Services librarian, and had visions of people following my content, retweeting my tweets, and of me becoming a Library Journal Mover & Shaker.

I'm home from the conference now, though, and the real world has sunk back in, so that desire to become involved has faded (somewhat). But, at least ACRL gave me the chance to see a bit of Philadelphia, like City Hall and the National Constitution Center. What I may remember most about my trip to Philly, though, is the ACRL Closing Keynote speaker. Recognize him? That's Clinton Kelly, looking as snappy as ever and doling out his fashion advice to all of us eager and needy librarian-types. Yes, he told us to be ourselves, to love ourselves for who we are, to have confidence in ourselves, but he also told us that the shoe makes the outfit, so whatever you do, always wear great shoes. Those are words I can live by.