Resources Worth Sharing: The 1997 TLA Annual Conference
Catherine Ensign and Sherilyn Bird

President Joe McCord’s conference theme reflected his deeply held belief: People, Libraries, and Information are Resources Worth Sharing. With that unifying vision before them, the dedicated Houston area librarians who made up the Conference Planning Committee began work. They evaluated current trends in librarianship in order to offer up-to-date, practical, informational programs with content that could be used in real library settings. Members of the committee established liaisons with TLA planning units and offered suggestions for program ideas. Committee members surveyed the programs offered by TLA program planning units and began to construct a program that would appeal to librarians in every type of library. The result was practical, educational, and entertaining programs for everyone--proving librarians are their own best resources.

The ‘Resources Worth Sharing’ theme became much more than just a play on the host city name as the rubric of resource-sharing was echoed from the preconferences to the general sessions to many of the conference programs and even committee meetings.

Preconferences

In one outstanding example of idea sharing, 50 librarians at the ‘Partnerships and Pathfinders’ preconference split into six diverse groups to brainstorm about what competencies students should have in the electronic age and how libraries can contribute to their development. The group generated an impressive list that ranges from a set of desired competencies to ideas for collaboration among schools, public libraries, higher education and the community. The responses from these collaborative discussions were so insightful that the program speaker, Elizabeth A. Dupuis, head of the Digital Information Literacy Office at UT Austin Undergraduate Library, created a web page to share the information with others.

Visit the site at http://staff.lib.utexas.edu/~beth/TLA/index.html to see an example of what librarians can accomplish in 15 minutes of brainstorming.

Highlights of other preconferences included the dynamic Alice Hunter who energized her audience with information on how to turn change from a circumstance to be passively coped with to a force that can be harnessed and exploited. Interlibrary loan guru Virginia Boucher from Colorado described theoretical and practical frameworks to coax the highest levels of service from interlibrary loans structures. Attendees at a storytelling preconference watched as a series of performers instructed by entertaining example. In ‘Keeping the Electronic Gate: Evaluating Internet Resources for Public Libraries,’ three professors -- Samantha Hastings and William Moen of the University of North Texas and Charles McClure of Syracuse University--urged librarians to begin to track the amount of use of the Internet and other electronic resources in the library. Mr. McClure went on urge that librarians conduct ongoing evaluations of specific services to ensure that they are appropriate and well used.

General Sessions

General session speakers and activities provided a dramatic and human backdrop for the conference in which everyone could participate. At Wednesday’s general session, the audience watched as several individuals were honored for their contributions to the profession. Dana Rooks of the University of Houston received the TLA Librarian of the Year Award for her contributions to building the TexShare academic library resource sharing consortium and Helen Croft won the TLA Outstanding Services to Libraries Award, the association’s highest mark of appreciation for the contributions of a lay person to libraries. (See page 66 for more information on TLA Awards.) Following the awards presentations was the first general session speaker, Sandra Cisneros, well-known Latina author, who spoke movingly of the role of libraries in providing the access to literature that was so valuable in her young years. Ms. Cisneros described how libraries and librarians contributed to the development of her own literary voice and style. She capped her talk by reading a poignant and masterful passage from a forthcoming novel in which a young girl describes an incident in which her grandfather, a decorated war hero, is harassed by the Immigration Service.

The second general session on Thursday provided more drama as conference organizers surprised First Lady of Texas Mrs. Laura Bush by presenting her with the TLA Project of the Year Award for the Texas Book Festival. The award followed the announcement by Mrs. Bush of the 40 libraries that won the first annual Texas Book Festival Grant Awards. Following Mrs. Bush’s remarks, ALA Executive Director Elizabeth Martinez greeted attendees with news of praise for a conference well done and a tale of the role of her home town library in her development. (Ms. Martinez was one of several ALA notables who attended TLA including Adam Eisgrau of the ALA Washington Office, Board Member Charles Beard, and presidential candidates Ann Symons and Kenneth Dowling).

Richard Rodriguez encouraged librarians, as they face the challenges of technology, to continue to preserve traditional library services. Mr. Rodriguez called the library of his youth a ‘safe haven.’ ‘The world of electronic information is rich and exciting,’ Mr. Rodriguez commented, ‘but also lonely and intimidating, and librarians must remain committed to services, especially for children, that touch souls and not just minds.’

Special Event Speakers

The President's Program presented by Karen Coyle of the University of California Library Automation Project was a simple but elegant presentation on ‘Why Librarians Should Rule the Net.’ The Internet is transient, undifferentiated, and expensive, while libraries are permanent, inexpensive, and organized. Librarians should rule the ‘Net, says Coyle, because they know what they are doing.

Michael Blake, author of Dances with Wolves, became George Armstrong Custer in a one-man show at the Friends and Trustees Luncheon on Wednesday. Sitting at a rustic writing desk suggesting a battlefield bivouac, Blake’s recitation, from Marching to Valhalla, a forthcoming novel about Custer, provided an unusually sympathetic view of a lonely and tormented figure.

On a lighter note, the fun and games of the Texas Bluebonnet Award presentation to Jon Scieszka kept the audience in stitches. Following presentation of the School Administrator of the Year Award to Bill Fish of Lee High School in San Antonio, the Bluebonnet presentation began with a series of children representing each of 10 TLA districts. Finally, fifth-graders Precious Lovelady and Ashley Simpson presented the Bluebonnet medallion to Mr. Scieszka who was left speechless by a practical joke played by his publisher. The publisher provided life-sized Scieszka masks to each member of the audience who for one brief moment wore them to very surrealistic effect. When he had recovered, the author read hilarious passages from his work in progress, a book that promises to lampoon science in the same way Math Curse toys with arithmetic.

(Left: Jon Scieszka with TBA Coordinator Annette Nall)

At the Friday closing luncheon, Melba Patillo Beals gave an inspiring account of her days as one of the nine students to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. Beals encouraged librarians to continue the very important job they do in their communities, stressing that librarians do make a difference in someone’s life everyday.

Conference Programs

Nearly every convention center room was filled to capacity as TLA attendees packed into a variety of programs and dodged between concurrent sessions. Two programs provided a point-counterpoint on the issue of filtering Internet access in public libraries. In ‘Kids, Sex, and the Internet,’ Ann Symons of Juneau, Alaska, exhorted librarians not to filter (see article page 68) while in another program, Brenda Branch, Austin Public Library director, described the sequence of events that led her to filter Internet access at APL (see article page 74).

Adam Eisgrau of the ALA Washington Office addressed the Communications Decency Act, the proposed copyright laws, and other threats to free access to information in his program ‘Justice on the Electronic Frontier.’

Many TLA members attended a seminar on certification featuring Mark Littleton, executive director of the State Board for Educator Certification; Keith Swigger, dean of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University; and Robert S. Martin, director of the Texas State Library. Mr. Littleton explained the status of certification requirements for school librarians and defended the use of the ExCet test as an indicator of competence. Dr. Martin described the benefits of widely available certification and stressed the need to provide educational opportunities for all librarians regardless of their location in the state.

It was also standing room only at an update on the proposed school library standards conducted by Jeanette Larson of the Texas State Library and Julie Todaro of the State Library’s advisory committee that drafted the standards. The speakers explained the content of the standards and took questions and comments from the audience.

Louella Wetherbee, librarian at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and member of the libraries and telemedicine advisory committee to the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund, urged librarians to take a leadership role in providing networked services to their communities. Bobbi Bilnoski from Interaction Associates presented ‘How to Have an Effective Meeting.’ Her talk included an interactive ten-minute meeting demonstrating the key functions of meetings: participation, process management, information management, and decision making. Two specialists in grant writing, Maureen Kuntz of the Center for Non-Profit Management, and Lillian Bradshaw, retired librarian and grant reader for the Hoblitzelle Foundation, shared their expertise and provided honest and to-the-point guidelines for successful grant writing.

On the legal side, two programs advised librarians on thorny issues. In ‘What’s Confidential? What’s Not?’ Ray Speece, general counsel for Harris County General Courts, discussed the Texas Public Information Act and how it affects libraries. Mr. Speece provided a series of examples of what libraries could and could not do under the law protecting the privacy of public library records. (Can a library give a reserve to a spouse? Yes, as long as the transaction is preauthorized by the borrower. Can a library keep summer reading logs in a public area? No.) In ‘Incorporation Made Easy,’ Tyree Collier, a lawyer with Jenkins and Gilchrist, described three ways to incorporate under the recently enacted Nonprofit Unincorporated Association Act.

Librarians eager to put up their own web page got practical advice at ‘HTML in an Hour’ from Scott Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson described how to create HTML, order headers, create lists, integrate graphics, and more. Copies of Mr. Nicholson’s handouts can be found at http://users.why.net/redbear/.

Barbara Tannebaum mesmerized her standing-room-only audience with tips on how to communicate with confidence or speak in public. She described how to identify and correct bad speaking habits. Ms. Tannebaum explained that people remember every presentation according to the 60-30-10 formula: 60 percent is body language, 30 percent how we sound, and 10 percent the message.

Numerous programs featured authors such as the ‘Fiction/Nonfiction Connection: Combinations Within the Curriculum.’ A packed room of early morning attendees learned about the writing and research methods of nonfiction writers Elaine Scott and Carolyn Lesser followed by author Christopher Paul Curtis relating similar methods for his historical fiction writing. Betty Carter of Texas Woman’s University smoothly tied together the need to connect factual and fictional information in the classroom.

Friday Features to Hook Librarians

The 1997 TLA Conference Program Committee hoped to begin a new conference tradition by offering author events on Friday morning, featuring well-known adult and children’s authors in an attempt to keep conference attendees riveted through the closing luncheon’s keynote speech.

With this goal in mind, the Program Committee planned several strong Friday morning programs. School librarians and children’s librarians were offered a program called ‘A Taste of Texas Authors: The Best for Young Readers.’ This program featured authors Joan Lowry Nixon, Patricia McMahon, Peni R. Griffin, Martha Moore, Elaine Scott, Rob Thomas, and Jeanette Winter. The room was packed and the laughter and applause could be heard throughout the convention center.

Despite a torrential rainstorm on Friday morning, over 200 librarians representing all types of libraries, turned out for ‘Murder for Breakfast,’ a free continental breakfast sponsored by Ballantine Publishing at the Radisson Hotel. This program featured Tim Hemlin and William Bernhardt. Hemlin is the author of two titles for Ballantine: If Wishes Were Horses and A Whisper of Rage. Mr. Hemlin’s mysteries feature a sleuth who is a University of Houston graduate student. Mr. Bernhardt’s new mystery, Naked Justice, is the latest in his bestselling ‘Justice’ series, featuring sleuth Ben Kincaid.

Back at the conference center, Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author, shared a story from his new collection, Tabloid Dreams. Mr. Butler explained that the inspiration for these stories derived from perusing the headlines of tabloids while waiting in the grocery line.

Special Features

Some TLA conference favorites returned this year in new and improved formats. The Internet Room became the Cyber Corral and attracted a steady stream of users who browsed the web and checked e-mail on Macs or IBM-compatible machines including several high-speed Compaqs supplied free of charge by the Compaq corporation. The New Technology Showcase expanded to two full days and featured demonstrations of many new state-of-the-art products. Exhibitors were once again offered advance sign-up for the 1998 conference, this time with the aid of a computer program and TLA staff expertise that allowed more precise booth and exhibit placement and planning.

Recreational and Social Activities

Once again, TLA offered many ways to relax after--and sometimes even before--a long day of conferencing. For the athletically inclined, the Fun Run was back this year, joined by a preconference Golf Tournament. Other librarians chose to take a guided walking tour of downtown.

Evening activities began before the conference with the first annual Elizabeth Crabb Benefit, a talent show of singers, musicians, authors, and storytellers organized by library consultant dona weisman to raise money for TLA legislative activities.

(Right: Welcome Party at the Kimbell Art Museum: (l to r) TLA
Executive Director Patricia Smith, State Librarian Robert S. Martin,
and Adam Eisgrau of the ALA Washington Office.)

Tuesday evening, conferees converged on the beautiful Kimbell Art Museum for the Welcome Party to meet colleagues and view the Georges de La Tour exhibit. The Kimbell rarely allows such gatherings in its galleries, but all parties--including museum officials--deemed the event a huge success.

Wednesday evening’s President’s Party--The Wild West Casino Night--offered an opportunity to gamble, mingle, and even take a turn at line dancing to a boot-scootin’ C&W band. All proceeds from the event went to the TALL Texans Leadership Development Institute.

Thursday night offered a choice between dancing at the first annual Doo-Wop Sock Hop at a downtown bar called the Flying Saucer, desserts with the Small Community Libraries Round Table, or meeting and greeting colleagues at an open house at the Fort Worth Public Library.

As the Texas Library Association continues to grow in number of attendees, programs, and exhibitors, only three cities will be able to accommodate the conference for the foreseeable future: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. So we move on to ever more ambitious conferences in these cities starting with next year’s conference -- ‘Texas Libraries: Local Touch, Global Reach’--in San Antonio. But even as we say good-bye to Fort Worth, we will remember the 1997 conference there as one of the most congenial, comfortable, and stimulating conferences ever--truly an experience worth sharing.