This is my third trip to the SLA annual conference and how times have changed.

My first conference was in Baltimore in 2006. My aunt’s bookstore provides all of the books for the SLA Marketplace and since I was waiting to hear from library schools (early acceptance to two programs, but I hadn’t yet heard from McGill) she gave me the chance to attend the conference, help her in the bookstore, and to meet a whole whack of special librarians. It was eye-opening. And exhausting. And I was sold on coming back again.

The following year the SLA was in Denver and I attended instead of my aunt and handled the Marketplace on my own. All went well, and I met more great people. Since I had just finished my 1st year of library school I felt like I was almost part of the crew at the SLA. People I had met the year earlier in Baltimore were happy to hear that I was at McGill, and that I was president of McGill’s SLA student group.

Now I’m back again, this time in Seattle. Having lived in Vancouver while my mister did his master’s degree, so the climate is familiar and surprisingly comforting. (I say this now as it hasn’t rained - yet. And it’s currently 13C degrees. Montreal had just finished a substantial heat wave of 32C+ degree days so this cool air is doin’ a body good.)

The biggest change from my first SLA conference, is that I can now call myself a librarian - I completed my MLIS this spring. I’m also the secretary of the SLA Eastern Canada Chapter among many other professional associations (I seem to be involved in most of them. Ah the folly of youth!) So now I feel as though I really belong here.

I’m really looking forward to meeting up with the LSW group, as well as seeing Dr. Vint Cerf (yup, the internet god) be interviewed by Charlie Rose. I’ll be tweeting during the conference (I’ve been told we’ll have lotsa free wifi) and posting thoughts to this blog when I get a chance.

This is my first library conference where I can say I’m a librarian. Rockin’.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under about me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.