habitually probing generalist

Last night, our ALA and ACRL student chapters hosted Mary Ellen Davis, Executive Director of ACRL, and GSLIS alum.  She spoke about ACRL and the future of academic libraries, and also showed us the new ACRL recruiting video.  She did speak relatively realistically about the situation though.  More so than ALA for sure. [11 Jun 05: Changed ACRL link to new official one.]

I didn’t catch everything as well as I’d have liked as I was broadcasting the presentation and later meeting as a LEEP class for some of our distance ed students.  I was providing some description and commentary and passing along questions to Mary Ellen via chat software while streaming the audio.  Of course, it will be archived so I can go back and listen to it.

After the meeting was over, Mary Ellen joined several of us ACRL student members (Annie, Emily, Laura, Amber and me) for coffee and chocolate at Moonstruck Chocolate Co.  It was very nice to sit around in a small group and talk with her.  She is a very nice and gracious lady; quite interested in what we are up to as the 1st student chapter of ACRL, why we decided to form a chapter, etc.  Seems Library Journal may be interested in our story too.  We are working on some ideas to help spread the idea to other schools.  Luckily, we will have a little continuity into the fall for next year.  We hope to be able to come up with some ideas for ALA Annual.  With Mary Ellen’s help we also have some others to help spread the idea.  Guess I better get that web site moved into its permanent space.  Kind of busy finishing up the semester though at the moment.

It was a nice evening though.  After Mary Ellen hit the road back to Chicago, the rest of us went to see some live, local music after pausing for a bite to eat and some quality beer.  One of our posse wanted to go see the band, Theory of Everything, as she knows the bassist, Paul Kotheimer, who works at Circulation at the main library.  They were pretty good so I picked up their CD, ‘Evolution Of The ‘Art.  I was quite excited when I listened to it this morning as it has a song I heard on our local commuity radio station a couple of weeks ago that I just had to have but didn’t catch the name of or who it was by.

Hug A Republican. 

Have you hugged a Republican today?
Have you tried to spread your love to those who love the NRA?
Though they might be quite reluctant cause they’ll wonder if you’re gay.
You should hug a Republican a today.

The rest of the CD is pretty good too.  But getting my hands on this was a definite bonus!  That Trois Pistoles Belgian Dark Ale I had from tap was awesome too.  Haven’t had a beer like that since I was in Belgium almost 20 years ago.   Maybe if the weather gets nice again right after the semester ends I’ll be able to walk down to Crane Alley and have one or two some night (or two).   I sure hope they don’t swap it for something else before I have a chance to savor another.  I don’t drink much anymore but that was a beer to change a man’s mind.