(Trying again, having trimmed the message .....)
Yes, they always try to obtain sponsorship, and often get some ...... but
even with sponsorship the costs that remain to be covered are still high.
The scholarship bash is an extraordinarily high profile event of interest to
the entire membership, so sponsors are way easier to find ..... and most
companies would rather support something like that than to provide a lot of
support to programs that are of interest to a rather specialized subset of
the membership.
I suspect that most of us attend ALA either entirely, largely, or partly on
our own dime. The subject comes up in Council all the time, and each time
it comes up that's what we find .... the number of librarians whose
institutions pay any, or any significant portion of their expenses to go to
ALA is (relatively speaking) pretty small, although many people THINK that
everybody else is getting support.
ALA is actively working on ways to increase opportunities for electronic
participation (she says, having chaired the ALA President's Task Force on
Electronic Member Participation), and I think we can expect those
opportunities to increase significantly and rapidly. But not everything is
suited to it; not everyone would rather do it that way; AND anything that
reduces overall conference attendance has an impact on the overall
conference budget .... which has a significant impact on ALA's budget ---
all of which must be taken into consideration in planning, adjustment,
vision, etc.
Also, electronic participation has to be supported somehow (probably
primarily by the attendee/member) because it can be pricey to supply. When
you participate electronically, of course you don't have to travel or eat
meals out or pay for a hotel, which is certainly a boon, but there are
tradeoffs in terms of accessibility (from both perspectives), interactivity,
etc.
It's a huge puzzle.
janet
Janet Swan Hill, Professor
Associate Director for Technical Services
University of Colorado Libraries, CB184
Boulder, CO 80309
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Tradition is the handing-on of Fire, and not the worship of Ashes.
- Gustav Mahler
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion List for issues related to cataloging & metadata education
& training [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Weaver
Kudos to those but in terms of attendees, or would be attendees, it is an
expense unless you are a full time student or can have your institution
reimburse fees, on top of ALA registration costs and travel expenses. Do
they try to obtain any sponsorship for such events to keep fees down for
people ? A ticket to the Scholarship Bash is only $40...
I'm attending ALA this year, out of pocket but while its great to see a
decent student rate, for an average librarian, even with some reimbursement
from their library, on top of other conference events some of these are
quite high end.
Cheers, Karen Weaver
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