--- Nancy Sack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > but there's no reason why many--if not > most--of the other > responsibilities could not be spread more widely. > I'm thinking here of > soliciting presenters (and then soliciting their > bios, abstracts, A/V > needs, waivers, etc.), soliciting exhibitors,
If I may put my two Canadian cents in here, having been on the 3-person conference programming committee when we hosted the AJL conference in Toronto in 2003, I can suggest some reasons for both of those. AJL can't pay for professionals to schlep to the conference to give a presentation. That necessitates getting 2 types of presenters : (1) those who can manage to have their accommodations & transportation costs picked up by themselves or their institution (2) Those who are local and, therefore, don't require transportation or accommodation. Out of 91 speakers who agreed (initially) to present papers in Toronto, 36 of them came from the province of Ontario and an additional 4 came in from neighboring province Quebec. That's 45% --- almost half. I would guess that the percentage of invited "locals" is similar for other AJL conventions. Notwithstanding the need for local inviting of presenters (you can often get a better response if the presenter already knows you &/or your organization, than if being asked by an outsider), it would be nice if those outside of the host-city could help out with the inviting of non-local presenters. With group-planning sites (e.g. http://groups.yahoo.com, which I used for the 2003 conference), it's possible for presenters' names & details to be added to a shared document, slotted in, etc. --- even from many miles away. There's been reference to "some of the same people seem to attend the AJL conference, year after year". Such dependability can help take some of the stress off of the planners, since we have a good sense of which attendees will be likely to offer to present for a session (or help out) at the coneference. Some examples : Joan Biella & Lenore Bell always update us about cataloging & classification, the Sydney Taylor Awards Committee always gives 2 sessions on "the best of the bunch", Elhanan A1dler often updates us on technology, Stanley Nachamie usually helps out with the Orthodox morning minyan, etc. I think I already posted once about the idea of a "Speakers Bank", similar to our bibliography bank, which planners (local and non-local) could use as a resource to draw upon when trying to match up people &/or topics. I don't think it materialized, though. I wasn't on the exhibition committee, but I did take a look at the list of potential exhibitors that was used. Of 403 vendors approached, 69 of these were in Ontario and, if I recall correctly, many of those 69 were among the ones who actually booked tables at the conference. This makes sense, since it's easier to get local exhibitors to come to the conference than those from outside of the city / province / country. Hawaii, eh? How'm I supposed to tell my wife that we can't go to a library convention in Hawaii? Oy! ;) B'shalom, Steven M. Bergson, Librarian Jewish Public Library of Toronto Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
