I very much enjoyed attending my first ALA conference. From my point of view, it was incredibly well organized. Over 20,000 people and things seem to run without a hitch.

I attended several interesting sessions and meetings. An interview session with Joshua Ferraro, of LibLime and Koha fame, included questions about consortia and open source ILS, long term support and very interestingly, the recent collaboration between Relais and LibLime. Watch for an open source Interlibrary Loan tool in the future.

Another intriguing session was "Size Does Make a Difference: Library Networks, Cooperatives and Consortia in the 21st Century". A panel discussed ongoing efforts through surveys to identify issues with existing statewide cooperative efforts.

OCLC is encouraging more communication between states in the Pacific Northwest that have group service contracts (such as Montana). ALA was a second opportunity for this new group to meet and I attended that meeting the second day I was at ALA. We're learning a great deal just from being able to get together and toss around ideas about what we all need from OCLC to make group services successful. Montana continues to be hailed as a model.

I was happy to present the Montana Memory Project during an OCLC session on CONTENTdm, Connexion Digital Import and WorldCat.org. There were plenty of questions about the MMP and where we're headed as a collaborative.

These are just a few highlights in three full days in Anaheim. ALA is truly amazing and I valued the experience whole heartedly.