Librarians Meet and the Heavens Weep

The Utah Educational Library Media Association yearly conference was last Friday at Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah. Even with a morning snow storm, we had 100 more attendees than were expecting from the 350 preregistrations. The number of conference attendees keep growing each year, which indicates the interest and dedication of the school librarians in the state of Utah. Our librarians are devoted to their students and spend their own money and time to improve their skills and expand their knowledge in all areas of knowledge and technology. Research continues to show that dedicated librarians in schools are essential for student achievement even while an increasing number of school districts throughout the nation are eliminating librarians and libraries to save money. This these districts do to the detriment of their students.

Anyway, the conference commenced with a keynote address on advocacy, School Library Advocacy: Ensuring Libraries for a Lifetime, by Dr. Ann Ewbank, from Arizona State University. We had a power outage just after she began, but she never became flustered, just adapted, as librarians always do. She moved off the stage closer to the audience, and we all moved down closer to the front of the auditorium. A prepared-for-anything librarian handed her a flashlight to read her notes in the dim glow of the emergency lights, and off we went. Just before she finished, the power came back on, and we saw a few of her slides on the screen.

Three talented Utah authors were guests and presenters at the conference. Utah authors, popular speaker Michael Ramsdell, author of Train to Potevka; James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner and The 13th Reality Series, and LaRene Ellis, author of the Stones’ Quest Series and her memoir How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams. Many of the sessions were packed because the classrooms were smaller than conference rooms we have been used to in the past, and many of us had to scramble to get to other sessions or "camp out" to be in the sessions we just had to see. I was fortunate to be in the session on the Flip Camera co-presented by my old friend and neighbor of 34 years, Brent Woffinden.

The session before lunch, my daughters, Rachel and Rebekah, both childrens' librarians in Salt Lake County Library System, presented their "Prop Me Up: Story Telling for Children." Rachel presented two years ago, and I invited her back with Rebekah last year when I was conference chair. They were the most popular session at the conference last year. They beat me out by two votes. I didn't present this year. I'm taking a rest; can't take the competition.

The lunch was an experience. The caterer had planned to have the attendees pick up their lunch as they entered the cafeteria. But the librarians got ahead of them and came in faster than the caterer could set up, so they sent everyone to sit down at the tables to be served. The problem with that was there were only two girls to serve. Several people started picking up plates and serving the tables at which they were sitting.  With four hundred and fifty people to be served everything fell apart. UELMA board members and a few other altruistic librarians joined in to serve, as librarians always do. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be patient and helped direct us to tables where the hungry were waiting. It was extremely difficult to weave our way through the closely packed cafeteria, but we made it, hopefully before too many lost their patience or missed the next presentation at two o'clock.

After a stormy morning, the sun broke out and the rest of the day was beautiful, eventhough I went back to my school and worked for a few hours cataloging new books.