SLA New Orleans

I had the honor of being given one of this years Knower Awards from the Philadelphia Chapter of the Special Library Association. [you can read about it here]

At the Conference the opening session was given by Mary Matalin and James Carville. They spoke mostly on how the diminishing number of media outlets is actually causing a rise in independent news sources, but not a rise in more news stories. Most of the news outlets are covering the same stories rather than causing more coverage of new events. Towards the end, James Carville spoke passionately about the need for more action to help Louisiana. He wrote an article for the Times-Picayune [link] as well as a longer version that appeared on CNN [link].

Mr. Carville makes some good points but I would illuminate them here. I’ll leave that to others, as that is not the point of this blog. But his comments were further illuminated in a session I attended where Drs. Ivor van Heerden and Stephen Nelson spoke on the geological problems associated with New Orleans as well as how they were ignored by the Army Corps of Engineers. Their slide decks have not been put online yet, but Dr. van Heerden has written a book (which I just began reading) which discusses many of the same issues. It is called The Storm and so far seems pretty good. An interesting New York Times article can be found here as well.

All in all, it was fascinating to go to SLA. It was also timely (although the conference was planned over a year ago) that it was held in New Orleans as the gulf is once again embroiled in another disaster. And even then, more drama ensued.