Well, the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver, Colorado, Feb 9-13, 2018 was our first conference as a merged section. It was a delight to meet and work with our merged membership and a great way to kick off our future as a section. We often remarked coming back from different ESS meetings on the goodwill and diverse viewpoints our meetings already are starting to benefit from! We know there is lot of work yet to do to build community and our digital presence as a section, among other things. We also know of ESS members’ interest, service and care in furthering the profession through the section’s collective work.

In particular, we received many comments and suggestions before, during and after the conference to re-think future ALA conference scheduling to accommodate the bulk of the ESS membership’s preferences. It turned out the former SEES and WESS meeting practices were not easy to merge seamlessly! To gather the membership’s perspectives, an online survey “ESS Conference Attendance” was distributed to the Executive Committee, as well as the Slavlibs and WESS-L mailing lists.

Here is a brief summary of survey results: The most popular meeting days are Saturday and Sunday. Most members attend both in-person and virtual meetings. Attendance of particular meetings varies, due to different membership numbers and interests, and will need to be carefully studied: the most attended meetings include the General Membership DG; the All Committee Meeting; the Executive Committee; Germanists/Romance DG; Social Sciences and History DG; Classical, Medieval & Renaissance DG; and other ALA sections, such as Rare Books and Manuscripts, GNARP, CIFNAL, PCC and others. Meeting overlap is a major concern for some respondents, while others are more flexible and willing to make choices. There is a clear preference to have all in-person meetings scheduled over two days, not three or four. Somewhat surprisingly, however, most members liked the merged ESS schedule just as much or even more, compared to prior to merger!

There were many very helpful specific comments, and, in particular, many respondents would like to try a blended format (i.e. in-person meetings also allowing remote participation). Overall, 42 responses were received – many thanks to everyone who took time to answer the survey! The survey results will be discussed with the membership in more detail, including the Executive Committee meeting at ALA Annual. We hope the incoming leadership of the section will be able to benefit from this information and improve ESS conference scheduling in the future.

Our ESS-sponsored ALA Emerging Leader Lauren Howell and her team will present their project working with ACRL’s Residency Interest Group (RIG). To support their work, the team created a strategic plan for compiling and storing oral histories from resident librarians with a general timeline of the 1980s to present. Afterwards, they recorded the RIG’s first oral history, to test their plan. We're hoping this project will help inform and improve the ways in which residency programs are formed and managed.

For the coming ALA Annual Conference, we’re excited about our collaborative LES & ESS conference program, “Zine Cultures as Critical Resistance: A Hands-On Workshop to Empower Community Engagement and Student Learning.” Many thanks to David Oberhelman, Joe Lenkart, Lydia Willoughby and all of the ESS and LES Conference Planning Committee members for their work on this program. During the program, we’ll also take a moment to commemorate David Oberhelman in his professional contributions to ACRL and as a colleague. We hope you can participate.

We also hope to see many of you at the Friday, June 22 Happy Hour and the ESS Cruise on Sunday, June 24 from 6-9pm. Please stay tuned on the WESS and SEES listservs for more information from the ESS Membership Committee.

Thanks for a great first year as a merged section, and here’s wishing for many more. It’s been an honor to volunteer as ESS Co-Chairs.

Lana Soglasnova and Kristen Totleben

ESS Co-Chairs