ALA Annual Write-Up from this year’s BRASS Student Travel Award winner Vani Sharma
Reflections on My First ALA Annual Conference
Attending the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago was an amazing experience. As a first-time attendee, I am deeply grateful to SimplyAnalytics for sponsoring the BRASS Student Travel Award and making my trip possible. Special thanks as well to Maggie Marchant, Chair of the BRASS Student Travel Award Committee, and Wendy Pothier, Chair of the BRASS Executive Committee, for helping me navigate the conference.
Collaborative Insights in Business Librarianship
One of the highlights was hearing directly from professional business librarians during the BRASS Discussion Group and BRASS New Librarians Group. The sessions covered critical issues facing business librarians, including vendor relations, licensing, user education, and public-academic library partnerships. I was particularly struck by how openly librarians shared ideas and collaborated to troubleshoot challenges faced at peer institutions.
I also visited the SimplyAnalytics booth, where I got a first-hand demonstration of the database and how it can be used to cross-tabulate variables from business, economic, and social datasets. As a data science student with a background in business, I appreciated its practical application for helping library users with demographic mapping, business planning, and data visualization.
AI, Information Literacy, and the Human Element
I was particularly eager to explore how libraries are adopting AI. One of the sessions I attended focused on leveraging AI to draft alternative text for digital collections, emphasizing the necessity of a “human in the loop” to preserve essential cultural context and clarity.
Another session shared fascinating research on student search habits across Google, Web of Science, and Scite, an AI search platform. Interestingly, rather than adapting their search techniques (such as using Boolean logic for Web of Science versus question-focused prompts for Scite), most students used a mix of techniques across all platforms. This underscored the continuing importance of library instruction in teaching students how to search efficiently across various platforms and refine their search by incorporating more contextual information about their topic.
Looking Ahead Overall, these sessions reinforced the irreplaceable value of human expertise and library instruction in an evolving digital landscape. As I prepare to graduate from the MI program, connecting with professional librarians has deepened my understanding of the field and will inspire my future work in academic libraries. Thank you again to BRASS and SimplyAnalytics for this incredible opportunity.