GEN:IASL CONFERENCE

[BarbaraW6@AOL.COM]

Two weeks ago I asked for messages and questions I could take to the
International Association of School Librarianship conference in England
because I was doing a session on LM_Net.  Thank you to all who responded.  To
those who asked for information on IASL, I gave your addresses to the
membership chair and you will receive information shortly.

There were participants from four countries at my session-- the U.S. (people
who knew about LM_Net but didn't have Internet access yet), Canada, Great
Britain, and Iceland.  Later I gave LM_Net information to librarians from
Malaysia, Malawi, and Holland.  I also left pamphlets in the exhibit area and
they were all gone when I returned, so I hope that people from some of the
other 28 countries that were represented at the conference picked them up and
may become interested.  I also left a whole packet of material at the
American School of Paris where we went to visit after the conference.

Since I think that LM_Net is the greatest communication device for school
librarians ever invented, and since there are all kinds of international
questions that come up (I collected about 9 in just two days before the
conference for examples),  I was sure that everyone at the conference would
want to rush to sign up.  So I was a little disconcerted when the first
comment after my talk was,  "Wow!  This is great.  We ought to start
something like this for UK librarians!"   My point was that school librarians
all over the world could communicate through LM_Net, not that there should be
separate listservs for each country.   However, the woman from Iceland --
tiny Iceland has 9 people on LM_Net, by the way --  explained to me that the
problem with LM_Net for librarians in other countries is that it is so
American-oriented that the solutions offered just don't work in other places.

I can understand her point, but I do hope that more and more school
librarians from other countries sign up on LM_Net.  Let's be really friendly
to the ones who do.

Barbara Wallace,
Wyandotte, Michigan
BarbaraW6@aol.com