American Library Association Annual Conference
Chicago, IL
June 2023
Thanks to a generous professional development grant from CNY-CLRC, I was recently able to travel to Chicago, IL, for ALA’s Annual Conference 2023. ALA is the premier American library advocacy body, not to mention the world’s oldest such entity, and I had never attended a conference on this scale before. I attended several invaluable sessions on topics such as gaming, STEM programming, outreach and much more from Friday through Sunday.
One of the first things I did on the evening I arrived was attend a Game Jam run by ALA’s GameRT (the Gamer’s Roundtable) at a nearby hotel which functioned as one of the sites of the conference. I met and networked with a variety of public, academic and special librarians as we played several
“ice-breaker”style games which are good to get to know a new person, such as Wavelength, Just One and Shogi. I also got a lot of ideas for easy to reproduce TTRPGs from free online resources. These have been a wonderful addition to my arsenal for many of the Homeschool Tween passive programs that center around gaming such as Homeschool Hangout, Tween Scene among others.
On the first official start day of the conference for me at McCormick Center the conference venue, i.e. Saturday, I attended the GNCRT (Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table) which featured a panel with three prominent comic artists — Jeff Smith (author of the Bone series), Kazu Kibuishi (creator of the Amulet series) and Lamar Giles (author of YA fiction like Spin, Fake ID, etc.) who talked about crucial issues of featuring diverse perspectives in their books, and how the recent rising tide of rightwing censorship. Following this I attended a really fun and informative session on how to build a sustainable metaverse for the library which is also inclusive of equity and diversity. Hosted by John Macleod of XRLibraries — a national network of libraries implementing Virtual and Augmented technology into their communities. The session went on to describe how to create metaverse hangouts using free resources like the Mozilla hub and how to create simple 3D models to populate the metaverse or make an avatar with other free resources like Mozilla extensions Blender or Spoke. These metaverse spaces could be used to host a Manga room, or for a virtual author reading, or tell a story, or graphically depict an oral history. I came away with a good understanding of the potential for using the Metaverse to create educational STEAM programming for youth of all ages.
I was eager to hear a presentation on fostering podcasting as a means for community connection, especially since I had recently concluded my own podcast recording program with tweens at Liverpool. The Gwinnett Public Library located in a suburb of Atlanta, GA extended the concept further, to host monthly staff-led podcasts with members of the community participating. Each podcast was about a different topic determined by community interest, and the library hosted the space to record, and also hosted the podcast on an online platform like Anchor.fm (Spotify for Podcasters), or Zencastr, etc. The session was super informative about the tech necessary (mics, mixing boards, recording software) and various free iterations that could be used as alternatives. It was also to hear the logistics (staff time, space, etc.) spelled out clearly, that would be necessary to create such ongoing programming.
I finished Saturday by attending two back-to-back programs on gaming. One was on how to use Twitch at the library to stream gaming activities at the library to a wider, virtual public. This was a fantastic presentation by staff from the Deerfield Library in Deerfield, IL about the potential of Twitch to reach an audience — young adult males — who are normally a difficult demographic for a lot of libraries to create sustainable and attractive programming for. This session also broke down the tech necessary both hardware (camera, mic) and the software (OBS Studio/Twitch Studio and video editing software like Adobe Premiere) and logistics necessary (recording room, staff to run the program and do social media/branding) and also someone to do the content moderation on the Twitch stream chat. The session also highlighted that Twitch is not just to promote gaming, but also a great way to host virtual storytimes in real time, “lunchtime listens” among other things, or even demos of 3-D printers/other tech.
The other session was another Gaming-related program, titled Tabletop Gaming With Kids & Families. This session was about leveraging tabletop gaming (TTGs) to foster language and social emotional development. The session’s focus on how to use TTGs to adhere to the Education Dept.’s 5-point “Talk Read Sing Write Play” model, as well as the CASEL Standards for Emotional Learning was especially useful. The talk was followed by an unstructured game-jam where the panelists led us through an array of games that are appropriate for accomplishing the above objectives.
A game that I particularly enjoyed was aptly called Animal Upon Animal (pictured above), which was easy to learn and wonderful silly fun besides. In fact, I had the chance to play this very game during a TTG program with a group of very little kids at a program upon my return to LPL, who had been getting bored playing Life or Monopoly, but they had a blast playing Animal Upon Animal! This game is definitely a keeper, and I will purchase one for LPL very soon.
Sunday began with the GameRT president’s program about game creation. The session dealt with how easy it is to create your own games with some free online resources. This was another fabulous addition to my Tween program-idea arsenal. After a presentation, all attendees were encouraged to brainstorm and create their own gaming ideas based on some very basic “ludic” and storytelling prompts, even if one has very little game design experience. This was a really fun and useful session to say the least.
My final session of the conference was an eye popping showstopper, featuring picture book artists and library cooking program promoters June Jo Lee and Jacqueline Briggs Martin. They led a cooking demo, after talking about their newest publication — a stunning picture book bio of Sandor Katz the maverick food journalist and fermentation aficionado. I was happy to get a signed copy of this book during their book giveaway. I appreciated their demo of how to make Katz’s signature fermentation hybrid “krautchi” (a combination of sauerkraut and kimchi), which I plan to replicate during one of our cooking programs at LPL! I was also happy to share stories with the audience about Liverpool’s own “Charlie Cart” mobile kitchen and the cooking programs it has enabled us to do during a Q/A session.
The remainder of my time was spent collecting books, media and various items from the trade fair and talking with various vendors. This was very beneficial as I was able to collect several giveaway items that could be used as prizes or to add to our collection at LPL. I also had fruitful conversations with the New York Times vendor about a new library app that enables patrons to directly access the online app using library credentials. I also had a good conversation with the folks at the BrainFuse table who offered to help lead free tutorials for us, so library staff can offer patrons better help at the reference desk for career services or other educational needs.
The general thrust of the conference was on the vast conservative led censorship effort currently underway in the United States, especially book bans and the targeting of content featuring people of color or LGBTQ individuals at public libraries. During one of the big keynote talks preceding Judy Blume’s heavily attended talk, the Illinois State Representative Alexi Giannoulias gave a talk about how Illinois was leading the way in “banning” books bans. He voiced his support in the fight against book banning and his work to facilitate critical legislation for intellectual freedom, including the historic legislation that bans book bans in the state of Illinois. It was very heartening to see concrete political action at the legislative level, and hope NY sees more of this. It definitely made me think about what public librarians in NYS might do to push for such change.
I didn’t have a ton of time to explore Chicago, the conference schedule being somewhat nonstop and grueling, but I did walk around the city during my free time, on my way to breakfast or dinner, etc. and I had a very nice time checking out the Loop, Millennium Park, the riverfront and parts of Greektown. If you’d like to know more about my experience at the ALA Annual ‘23 conference or about ALA, please contact me at saptarshi.lahiri@lpl.org.
Saptarshi Lahiri
Librarian 1 – Youth Services, Children’s Specialist – Liverpool Public Library
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