I was able to spend about an hour visiting the exhibits this morning. While I was there I met some other PA librarians, Lynn Moses from Commonwealth Libraries, Merrill Stein from Villanova, and Joe Fennewald from Penn State Hazleton. I didn't find the booth with the Wheel of Acronyms yet, but I'll keep looking!

ACRL 101 - This was a great program! Very well organized. Pam Snelson, ACRL President gave a welcome and invited us to get to know a little bit about our neighbors. Then she gave an overview of how ACRL is organized (more acronyms!) Mary Jane Petrowski, ACRL Associate Director, told us how we can get involved in the Association and she broke this down by how much (or how little) time we could spend being engaged. We also heard from Jo Ann Carr who told us where we could find a home in ACRL, and if one doesn't exist, then they would build one for us! Louise Sherby, ACRL Representative to the 2007&2008 ALA Conference Program Coordinating Team explained how that committee organized the programs. She also gave us some tips on finding things in the Program Guide. And Julia Gelfand, Past Chair, ACRL Science & Technology Section gave us some tips on navigating the Exhibit Hall. The 'official' program being over, we were free to speak with representatives from many of the Sections. ACRL is creating a New Member Wiki and the surveyed us for things that we thought might be helpful to include. On our way out we participated in a Jelly Bean Assessment. We voted on whether or not we found the program "useful" by depositing jelly beans in jars. When I left, the "useful" jar was filling up fast and the "not useful" jar was empty.