End of an era?

About a year ago, the continuing education committee decided to clean this blog up and make it active again, especially so that it could be useful during conference. Daniel Cornwall, in particular, has done an amazing job of providing regular, thoughtful and informative posts. The blog is almost perfect except for two things: Daniel is doing almost all of the work, and according to our statistics, very few people are actually reading it.

Since everyone is busy and we hate to spend time on things that aren't being used, we've decided to stop maintaining this blog at this time. It will still be up. Anyone who has signed up for an account to post is welcome to do so, and I'm happy to sign up any AkLA folk who would like to post. If it becomes active, great! If not, then I'm still pleased with the role it has played and what we have learned from doing it. Thank you to everyone who has been involved with creating and maintaining the blog!

Questions? Concerns? Comments? Need another project now that we're not doing this one? Please contact Freya Anderson at libkitty (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Kodiak - Wish you were here!

My flight got in on time on Thursday. I met a few friends on the flight who rented a car once we landed. They invited me to tag along and we drove about 30 miles out of town to a place called Fossil Beach. We stopped many times along the way to take photographs of breathtaking scenary, bison and even a few pigs. I hope to get these uploaded to Flickr within a few days of returning to Juneau. It was a blindingly sunny day, which was a real treat for us Juneauites. I've been told by locals that sun in Kodiak is about as common as sun in Juneau, so I feel especially blessed to be here.

After we got done sightseeing, we went to the opening reception which featured the Kodiak Island Drummers. They were high energy and demonstrated great precision. The leader asserted that their group was one of the most multi-faith, multi-ethnic and multi-age drumming groups currrently in existance, and he apppears to be right. A good time was had by all and AkLA President Mary Jo Joiner and several other librarians showed off their considerable dance skills and stamina.

It was a great opening day. Wish you were here. While it won't be the same as being here, check out the conference wiki for notes on some of the sessions written by Freya Anderson and other AkLA members. And if you are here in Kodiak with me, please use the "comments" button on the wiki session pages to give your impressions of the sessions you went to.

Nearly There!

I have once again found a working free wifi connection. This time it's at the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage.

When I last wrote, I was stuck in Juneau with about 10 other librarians trying to get to the 2009 Alaska Library Association annual conference in Kodiak. After two cancelled flights, the third time was the charm. We got into Anchorage. It was too late for me to conduct my databases class at the Talking Book Center, but I was happy. So were my fellow librarians.

I am on the 10am flight to Kodiak and expect to arrive in 11:20am. The flight is operated by ERA Aviation. Over many years I've been trained to arrive two hours before every flight. Not just because that's the normal expectation for domestic flights, but because my CPAP machine gets special screening EVERY TIME I FLY.

I had forgotten that as an air taxi service, ERA Aviation is not subject to the same security checkpoints as Alaska Airlines. I was both estatic and slighly disappointed to find this out. Slightly disappointed because I now have two hours at the gate. But estatic because I'm freed from the hassle of the cattle line and the humilation of being assumed a security risk until my medical equipment is proved otherwise.

I'm staying at the Comfort Inn in Kodiak. If you're an attendee reading this blog, feel free to stop me and say hi.

My next entry will be from Kodiak when I actually have something Conference related to say. I just wanted to let folks know that the Southeast contingent is on its way!

Waitiing in Juneau

This is my first blog entry for AkLA 2009. I'm writing it from the Juneau Travelodge. Our morning flight was weathered out. I'm currently waiting with friends for the 12:30 flight. I was scheduled to teach a databases class in Anchorage at 1pm. I cancelled it. Hopefully I and the other Juneau people will get out today and I'll have some actual Kodiak posts for you.

That's Alaska travel for you. I see it as an adventure. How about you?