ACRL Draws Record Crowd to Baltimore

-- Library Journal, 04/02/2007

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) shattered records at its 13th Annual Conference, drawing 3100 individual members—and more than 4300 attendees in all—to Baltimore this past weekend. Seasonal spring weather made it a pleasant walk from the Baltimore Convention Center—where librarians shared the facility with gatherings of Mary Kay salesfolk and pre-teen cheerleaders—to the city's Inner Harbor attractions. Several sessions were standing-room only, addressing ongoing and emerging themes, from scholarly communications and the library as place to the power of social networking and the future of technology. Traffic was spotty on the show floor, heavy during no-conflict periods and but at other times quite slow. The twice-daily poster sessions and the Cyber Zed Shed, which offered 20-minute poster sessions on emerging technology topics, drew large crowds to the edge of the show floor.

Mary Reichel, who chaired the ACRL conference committee, said that webcasts of the show would be available for at least one year. At the Opening General Session Thursday, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson praised librarians for defending information and promoting learning. "You change lives as arbiters of enlightenment for the future of American civilization," he declared. At the closing session Sunday, National Public Radio legal correspondent Nina Totenberg discussed how the information landscape was becoming treacherous, and said that current administration's zeal in pursuing leaks threatens the foundations of journalism. "It's the government's job to keep secrets," she noted. "It is journalists' job to learn them when they can."