Wendy on the Web

For the past year, I've been working on our state library association conference next month. If you're an Alabama librarian and you're not part of ALLA, now is wonderful time to join, but we'd love to see you in Huntsville regardless... and early bird registration ends this week.

Some things I am looking especially forward to:

The ticketed President’s Luncheon which will feature Julie Danielson, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blogger and picture book writer for Kirkus. Julie is co-author with NYPL's Betsy Bird and the late Peter Sieruta, of Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children's Literature.The much-anticipated book will be out in August, but Julie will be giving us a sneak preview, "taking us behind the scenes of many much-loved children’s books, promising secret lives, scandalous turns, and some very funny stories."

The Young Adult Services Round Table (YASRT) sessions at this year’s ALLA conference include lightning booktalks, regional authors including Beck McDowell, Irene Latham and Laurel Snyder, a CCRS update, and workshops on grant funding and planning computer animation programming for young people. A YASRT mixer will round out Thursday’s events, and feel free to pop by the VBC Ballroom 2 at 5:00 on Thursday the 24th for that if you can't make the conference.

In addition to those sessions, information literacy guru Esther Grassian will present the opening keynote on Wednesday, bestselling thriller writer J.T. Ellison will speak Thursday morning, and LibraryBox creator and technology innovator Jason Griffey will speak at Friday morning's closing event.

Join us and the exciting library world speakers coming to Alabama for the first time!