membership has its benefits

My number one favorite benefit to being a member of the American Library Association is American Libraries Direct, their e-newsletter. Normally I hate e-newsletters because they are incredibly boring. ALA, however, has the world's best e-newsletter. This is based on the scientific fact that I actually read it. It's not just me either: my library school friends have confirmed that they read it as well. Here is something that I learned from today's: Iraq National Library Director Resists Military Intrusions. How would you like to have that job? I also learned that a man in a Fort Worth prison was just sentenced for smuggling meth inside. His girlfriend placed it into the spines of books the prison received via inter-library loan from public libraries. Lastly, I learned about a book written by an archivist, based on a document from 1830 that he discovered in the Burlington, VT town archives. It was an inquest into the "untimely death" of an unmarried 23-year-old woman, caused by a botched abortion. The most interesting part was the attitude of the townspeople, who were apparently mostly just disturbed that this "private" matter was being made public. Thank you American Libraries Direct!

In other library membership news, I just signed up for my first library conference. I will be attending the California Library Association conference in Long Beach. I am so excited--I am really hoping for some advance reader copies, some tote bags, some pens and pins, and hopefully some librarian cocktail hours. Woo hoo!