ALA Conference Program

[Maureen Hammer <hammerm@blis.uthscsa.edu>]

Plan to attend!
As you start to get ready for the ALA annual meeting in San Francisco,
make sure you mark your calendar for:

                      Universal Access Tomorrow:
                   Silicon Valley Meets the Library

                        Saturday, June 28, 1997,
                               2:00-4:00 p.m.
                      Moscone Center, Room 102

> http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Library/Orradre/fred/litaprog.html
>
There is a growing interconnection between libraries and the computer
industry, not the least part of which is the dependence of libraries on the
hardware and software that is developed in the Silicon Valleys and Alleys
of our world. Yet libraries are not typical computer users. As pioneering
librarians
have discovered when implementing public online access, the challenges
of shared public use are not well addressed by the single-user model of
personal computing which has shaped much technical development.

If libraries and schools wish to be successful in providing universal
access to the new communications technologies, we need to foster a closer
collaboration between these institutions and the developers of our
computing future. This program features two Silicon Valley speakers who are
visionaries about the future of computing. They are also supporters of
libraries and of
equitable access to information and computing technology and therefore are
ideal partners for us in pursuing this goal.

John Gage, Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, is responsible for Sun's
relationships with the world scientific and public policy communities. He
was also the founder of the first NetDay, a volunteer effort to wire up
schools for Internet access.

Paul Saffo is a Director at the Institute for the Future, a management
consulting foundation that provides long-range planning and forecasting
services to Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. He devotes his
time to understanding the long-term social and commercial impacts of new
information technologies.

Questioning these speakers on how their views of the future can become
practicable realities for library service will be four librarians:

Howard Besser, Visiting Associate Professor, U.C. Berkeley School of
Information Management and Systems Gail P. Clement, Information Services
Librarian, Florida International University Lorrita Ford, Instructional
Services Librarian, Diablo Valley College Marilyn Gell Mason, Director,
Cleveland Public Library

A lively exchange of ideas is anticipated.

This program is brought to you by the LITA Technology and Access Committee
with the cosponsorship of the RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section.