Sunday at ALA

Started the day out as AASL Affiliates Assembly. I ducked out for a bit to attend the YALSA author coffee. This year was a bit more organized than last year. There were no gaps between authors. They should seriously consider doing away with that whistle though! If you haven't been to this, it is a little like speed dating. An author sits at your table for about 7 minutes before moving on to the next. We didn't get to talk with all the authors but seated next to me for a few minutes were John Green, Dana Reinhardt, Amanda Jenkins (she gave me a book!), Adrian Fogelin, David Levithan (he's teaming up with John Green on a new book!), Terry Trueman, Eleanor Garner, Jay Asher, and Stephanie Hemphill. What a great time it was!!

Back to Affiliate Assembly to finish the morning. I hit the exhibits a bit during the lunch time. I got to meet Susan Beth Pfeffer and gush embarrassingly. Also went to Cornelia Funke's signing and got a free copy of her new book!! Also Suzanne Collins, Tor Seidler (he's from New Hampshire!),n Coe Booth and Norton Juster. And free books for each!! I loved that Scholastic reserved the ARCs of Inkdeath to those who waited in line!

The afternoon was spent in a session on privacy. Cory Doctorow, Dan Roth (Wired) and Beth Givens (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse) presented a very interesting and paranoia evoking program on privacy -- or the lack thereof. Very good discussions about what we should allow and how we cannot go back. Our info is out there for anyone to use. Pretty scary stuff. Discussion of how people willingly give their info out in order to save money -- eg store membership cards that give you a few cents off an item. At this point, there is so much info on us that business and government has. It's just a matter of time before they figure out how to use it. Beth encouraged everyone to push for legislation to prevent the data mining. As librarians, we need to teach our patrons -- kids especially -- to guard their privacy. They have to be shown that it is worth it.