All done with ALA/CLA and mostly done with the mayhem surrounding the move, so it's back to regular posting for the most part.

The conference was great, I'm so glad it was in Toronto because if it wasn't I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone. I learned fairly early on that there are a lot of meetings to attend at ALA. I had four sessions highlighted on the program but it turned out that three of them were cancelled at the last minute, so I pretty well spent the rest of the four days in meetings. And listening to great keynote speakers (Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Naomi Klein, amongst others) who were all greeted by very supportive audiences, for obvious reasons. And seeing old friends and making new ones. And grabbing free loot off the exhibition floor. I spent a lot of Saturday making my way through the exhibits and left with a lot of pens and catalogues. I had only ever heard about all the free books one can supposedly get at these things, I didn't see any evidence of them. Until Monday. When I managed to scoop 14 free books in a matter of 1 hour.

I was in the Membership II meeting when the decision on CIPA came down. Carla Hayden, new ALA president, was leading the meeting since Mitch was fielding inquiries at the press office. Someone rushed over copies of ALA's press release for everyone at the meeting. Since we didn't have a quorum, the floor was pretty well open for discussion of any issue so most of the rest of the discussion focused on CIPA. Consensus was that the silver lining to the decision was the fact that the ruling did not indicate the manner in which filters would be turned off for adult patrons. Thereby leaving the procedural part of it to local/individual library policy, which in turn gives the library a little latitude in it's "interpretation" of this part of the law.

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published Monday, June 30, 2003  @ 16:54 | |

Posts will be irregular over the next couple of weeks and here's why. You might see me at ALA before you hear from me here. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

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published Monday, June 09, 2003  @ 15:10 | |

Wendy Newman, CLA president, has written an open letter to the ALA member community about life in Toronto post-SARS. Read it here (sidebar: regrettably, this isn't on the CLA site yet, it's percolating through the listservs at the moment. Hence the locally mounted copy). Many of her sentiments are mirrored below.

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published Thursday, June 05, 2003  @ 13:11 | |

Recently I've been feeling like I should be doing more to dispel SARS-in-Toronto myths, thereby encouraging folks to resist the urge to cancel their conference registrations (now that it's, you know, more reasonable to do so again). But then I think, these are information people I'm talking to, we all know that there's gobs of information out there on the Toronto situation, and who better than librarians to ferret out the meaningful stuff? But could it possibly help to hear the first-hand experiences of one particular Torontonian? Maybe. To that end, here's how SARS has affected me:

• I do not wear a mask or gloves when commuting or just out in the general public. Nor do my family, friends and colleagues. Nor does anyone else on the street.


• I would feel 100% confident in going to a local hospital, should I ever need to. Toronto Public Health posts information on hospitals (and other facilities) that are closed or quarantined due to SARS cases. I feel I have access to a sufficient number of alternative health care facilities, none of which have ever handled a SARS case.


• If SARS wasn't in the media so much, I would hardly think about it. Honestly, people around here aren't even talking about it anymore. Mostly we're just taking advantage of all the great sports and entertainment deals that are being offered by local businesses to boost travel to the city.

Mail me with questions if you have any. Heck I could probably even provide an affordable, last-minute accomodation recommendation if you need one.

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published @ 09:38 | |