Very well said, Elliot. Those are all the reasons a joint conference would be difficult. For 2014, I met with ALA chairs to explore a possible joint conference. They were very willing to accommodate us by offering us space for AJL meetings within their conference. We looked at joining them on Sunday, having AJL business meetings on Monday, and then extending the AJL conference for our own special sessions until Wednesday. They said our attendees could have free passes to exhibits and a reduced registration for ALA. The problem was that they could not work out the Kashrut with their hotels for the days we overlapped. Making our own hotel arrangements would have necessitated also making transportation available to get to the ALA venues --- not inexpensive. So, we opted for preceding their convention as we have done in the past.(We end on Wednesday and they start on Friday) The kashrut issue may be something local to Las Vegas, so I do recommend looking into trying to combine the programs again in other places.
Suzi From: Elliot Gertel Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:23 PM To: Rose Shoshanah Seidman Cc: hasaf...@lists.osu.edu ; Helen Chronister Subject: Re: [ha-Safran] conferences First, I apologize for the length of my message, but I think this is a rather complicated issue for a variety of reasons. FWIW, even though I am enumerating several obstacles below as to why AJL and ALA Annual Conferences cannot really overlap except perhaps for a day--as we have done at some of our joint programs since 1995--I am actually very much in favor of finding a way to make a convergence of the two conferences work or at least try it. That said, I want to state a few reasons why this is a difficult concept to put into practice. My understanding is that the primary reason AJL has been unable to "piggyback" (sorry for the "treyf" allusion) on ALA Annual Conference is that it is still very important to enough attendees of AJL Annual Conference to be able to have most of our meals during conference together, and that in order to accommodate all types of dietary requirements, these be strictly kosher meals. Apparently, ALA cannot guarantee such an arrangement. And, even if ALA could do so, the registration fees for the AJL portion of the conference or pre-conference would still have to be (much) higher than what ALA conference registration is. Remember, ALA registration doesn't include any meals. It is mainly the meals that make AJL registration so expensive. Another thing that might make it complicated to do AJL Annual simultaneously with ALA Annual is that we have highly specialized sessions; indeed ALA does, as well, but they are much broader in overall scope. With hundreds of programs going on at the exact same time, it is already difficult to select which ones to to attend. With these taking place sometimes quite a distance apart (unlike AJL, which is in one hotel), it can be problematic getting from one to another Indeed, even at AJL Annual with considerably fewer sessions, there are often simultaneous programs that are of interest, which makes it difficult to decide which ones to go to. If we add the many hundreds of ALA programs into the mix, it may dilute attendance even further at the AJL-specific sessions. Yet another consideration: most ALA Annual attendees tend to be there from Friday-Monday. AJL has traditionally been held Sunday-Wednesday. Friday and Sunday would be the strongest possible days for concurrent AJL and ALA (esp. joint) programming. And, many ALA attendees don't even stay through Monday. For example, at ALA Annual in Anaheim last June, we had a really fine joint program co-sponsored by AJL, ALA EMIERT JIC (Jewish Information Committee), ATLA (American Theological Library Association), ASCLA (Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies), and the Catholic Library Association. It was called "Virtual Faiths: Cooperative Digitization Projects" http://ala12.scheduler.ala.org/node/931 and included a speaker representing AJL and the JIC, Rebecca Jefferson of the University of Florida. Even given its sparse attendance of maybe 30 people, I believe I saw only one other AJL (Pasadena) Conference Attendee at this special program. And last year, the two conferences were held one right after the other, only a couple of local freeways apart. And the fact that Saturday is a prime day for ALA Annual Conference automatically prevents a number of AJL attendees from taking part in any of the events on that day for obvious religious considerations. They would have to arrive early on Friday, late on Saturday night, or on Sunday to be able to attend sessions on Friday and Sunday. As Shoshanah correctly points out below, since 1995 we have had a number of joint programs with ALA's JIC (and other groups). Even when AJL and ALA met in the same city (and even at a hotel used by both associations; ALA usually needs all the major hotels in the center of a city for its meetings plus the convention center), it was very hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to attract attendees of both conferences. These took place in Chicago (1995), New York, NY (1996), Washington, DC (1998 & 2010), San Francisco (2001), Toronto (2003), and Pasadena and Anaheim (2012). In 1995, when the first joint session was held in the Chicago Downtown Marriott (AJL's conference hotel and also one of ALA's), we chose Thursday for the program because it was one day after the usual closing day for AJL Conference and the official first day of ALA Annual). All the same, with the exception of a handful of us who also attended ALA, there were only AJL attendees at this program. While they were obviously willing to stay over at least one extra day, no one who wasn't also an AJL attendee was there from ALA Annual. In 2003 in Toronto, when AJL preceded ALA and CLA (Canadian Library Association) by one day, we picked Friday as the day of the AJL/ALA/CLA program, (which worked very well in 1998; more on that below). Attendance was very light, but it may have had more to do with people staying away because of the SARS epidemic. 1996 was an unusual joint program in that AJL Annual had been in Toronto two weeks before ALA took place in New York. All the same, we had a very large crowd for the second joint AJL-ALA program of over 100, I believe. I think this was almost definitely because NYMA, the NY Metropolitan Area Chapter of AJL, is so large in addition to the speakers and content, of course (as always). And in 1998, we had to turn away more people than we could accommodate because we had a very special program at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and a space that could only hold 150 people. A fair number of those who attended AJL in Philadelphia right before ALA went down to Washington to join many ALA attendees at this session. Besides having a very strong program, I think a number of people were also attracted by the free "VIP" passes to the USHMM's permanent exhibition anytime during the week without having to wait in any lines. Another reason that Friday may be the best day for joint programming/conference confluence is that those people who arrive for ALA on Thursday or Friday are looking for programs on Friday, and there are somewhat fewer ALA sessions on that day than Saturday and Sunday when the bulk of events take place. Be all that is it may, due to the special aspects of AJL Conference, we would almost certainly always have to run our conference up against ALA when we could arrange to be in the same city, which, as Shoshanah also pointed out, will occur again in June 2014 in Las Vegas. Unless we make the kosher meals we have together optional--as some have suggested--and account for the conflicts in programming and the fact that Saturday is a key day for ALA attendees, it would be very thorny to have AJL truly take place at the exact same time and in the same city as ALA. And, if held before ALA really kicks off, AJL would have to be a "pre-conference" and probably still cost more and entail being in town for at least two or three days longer than if just attending ALA. No matter how you look at it, it's not easy to surmount all the barriers. I'm willing to work with anyone who can come up with a reasonable solution to make this happen and would love to hear some pragmatic ideas to implement this. Elliot -- Elliot H. Gertel Irving M. Hermelin Curator of Judaica AJL-ALA Liaison Chair, ALA Jewish Information Committee The University of Michigan Near East Division, Area Programs 111-C Hatcher Graduate Library North Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1190 Phone: 734-936-2367 eger...@umich.edu On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Rose Shoshanah Seidman <sseid...@northwestern.edu> wrote: AJL has tried in a certain way– the ones I remember: Chicago in 1995, Chicago in 2009, Pasadena/LA in 2011 – in the future, Las Vegas in 2014 – hopefully (if we can pull it off) Chicago in 2017. Emily is right – ALA goes to large convention cities where we may not have a strong chapter New Orleans, Orlando – and ALA goes back to some cities on a regular basis, Chicago every four years, San Francisco, Washington DC where the chapter cannot handle such a demanding schedule. It would be nice if the Chicago chapter could welcome AJL every four years but this is not possible at all – even eight years may not be enough to recover between two AJL conferences. Shoshanah Seidman Shoshanah Seidman Faculty Liaison, Program for Jewish Studies, Northwestern University Library 847-467-2914 From: hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:hasafran-boun...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Emily Bergman Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 5:41 PM To: Helen Chronister Cc: hasaf...@lists.osu.edu Subject: Re: [ha-Safran] conferences Agree. I only attend AJL when it is close (California) or in the same city as ALA, since I attend ALA anyway. It would be good for ALA, since many AJL people may not go to ALA otherwise. On the other hand, ALA can only go to large convention cities, whereas AJL does not have any of those limitations. Emily Bergman Sent from my iPhone On Feb 13, 2013, at 9:37 AM, Helen Chronister <hchronis...@tiferethisrael.org> wrote: I'm sure that this has been brought up before, but I couldn't find it on the listserv. My budget has been cut so much that I have to pay a lot out of pocket to attend conferences. Since we are an affiliate of the Ameican Library Association, can't we piggyback with their conferences? It would give me more value for the dollar. Helen Chronister Librarian, Minnie Cobey Memorial Library Congregation Tifereth Israel 1354 East Broad Street Columbus, OH 43205 614-253-8523 614-253-6323 (fax) __ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran __ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- __ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
__ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.service.ohio-state.edu https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
