Saturday, December 6, 2008

Sci-Tech Bunching of the LSW?

I am getting tired of being in multiple library organizations to get my fix of science, engineering and technology conferences. My main affiliation is with the SLA, but ALA/ACRL/STS and ASEE/ELD (and ASIST) are secondary and tertiary affiliations for me. (I used to belong to the AAAS, but I dropped that a couple of years ago.) I bet others feel the same way.

With the great new organization called the LSW [Wiki, Webpage, and the Friendfeed room] (thanks to Joshua Neff), science librarians don't neccessarily need to have an umbrella organization to talk, chat and meet with each other. We can organize ourselves without the organizational beauocracy. Following the lead of John Blyberg, and many others of the Unconference crowd [like the Library Camp West], we could have a Sci-Tech Librarianship (STL) Unconference without the overhead fees. We could create our own discussion lists, forums, websites, conferences, OA journals and magazines, video training sites, powerpoint presentations, and lots more. We can use Web2.0 tools to create our own organization!

In short, I am thinking of an STL Unconference in Denver in January of 2010, so that it doesn't interfere with the usual slate of summer conferences ala ALA, SLA, ASEE and others. Sure, you still have to pay the airfare and hotel costs, but you don't have to pay for a membership fee, and you would have zero or a very minimal conference fee. I plan to discuss the idea with many individuals at the ALA MW conference and at the SLA conference in 2009 in Washington DC.

Be prepared to be peppered with posts to various discussion lists.

5 comments:

Kristin Buxton said...

An unconference sounds great. I hear you on all of the organizations. I'm in STS and ASEE but not SLA.

Anonymous said...

I would be interested in such a conference. I am in STS and ACS but not SLA.

val said...

I think this is a great idea. We went to LibraryCampNYC last year, and the unconference idea is a good one. I would definitely be interested in attending a STEM one...

Bob Hall said...

I would be interested. Please keep us informed.

Anonymous said...

I'm definitely interested in attending an unconference that has enough STEM activities to make the trip worth it.