Hot Topics

ITI Bloggers June 16th, 2009

One way to determine the topics of interest to the SLA attendees is to look at which rooms have overflow crowds. I could say that I cruised the convention center looking at overflowing rooms in the interests of “scientific research.” The truth is I spent so much time in the exhibit hall that I was late getting to sessions and several of the ones I had marked in my conference planner were either standing room only or spilling out into the hallway. Here are the popular topics that I identified (purely unscientifically, I assure you):

Translational medicine meets the semantic web (I really wanted to hear this one, cuz I want to know more about the semantic web. Oh well….)

Census 2010 (I listened to part of this. It was highly technical and an absolute “must” to understand if you are a Census junkie, a statistician or anyone basing decisions on the U.S. population trends.)

Measures toolkit for librarians (This was the Chemistry Division’s sessions about measuring and evaluating your collection, particularly important in this era of shrinking budgets. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just chemistry librarians filling the room.)

Marydee Ojala, Editor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals