ALA, Posters, and Expedia (oh, my)

Good news came last week in the form of not one, but two acceptances for ALA poster sessions I submitted in January. University funding for conferences, professional development grants, is tied to presenting as opposed to only attending, therefore the good news was also a fiscal relief. Early bird registration ended several weeks before session acceptance and/or denial were slated to arrive. What are the topics? One poster is on a successful library and college of education conference collaboration we held at the university last spring and the other is on different library blogs I am currently using both in the resource center and for professional development.

A quick aside: It is interesting to me that the ACRL committee rejected these topics, yet ALA accepted them. I would hazard a guess that the longer ALA conference has more poster session time slots, a larger pool of poster applicants, and a wider variety of needs to be met (academic, school, public, etc.). I would be interested to see the statistics for acceptances and applications on both. But, as advertised, I digress.

The most exciting part for me, beyond the conference money and presenting of course, is I have plenty of time to design and polish these presentations. Unlike last year's ALA conference when several conference gods were laughing as I had a session accepted, then had to decline due to the roaming gnomes travel plans, only to have a last minute chance at presenting after all with only a week to prepare. Last year I went from wanting to be brilliant ... to settling for not wanting to embarrass myself. This year I am going to plan more diligently (not to mention earlier) and set reasonable goals for the sessions.

Flush with the good news, I had already placed my travel plans on Expedia with hopes of acceptance for at least one of my proposed posters, I was thrilled (sarcasm alert) to see an email message from Expedia arrive over the weekend. After much dithering about choosing an airline and airport, all the flights out of Columbus flew from Columbus to Cleveland before departing to BWI, I went with Continental Airlines and Cleveland Hopkins. My joy was complete as both flights were non-stop at reasonable times. Hesitant to hear the flight news, I put off calling until this evening. Praise be, the only change was in departure times; instead of 7:35 am it is now 8:45 am.

Now I am editing this post while going in to the next room to see my favorite couples on Dancing with the Stars. It is now officially after 9:00 pm and my evening and weekend minutes are reading and waiting my vote. So far my favorites are Ian and Cheryl and Apolo and his partner (her name escapes me).

Tags: ALA, ALA poster session, Travel & Expedia