Sue Polanka, Wright State University

On October 25th and 26th our membership gathered for the 38th annual conference in Wilmington, Ohio. We had a great turnout for the preconferences and full day conference events. I’d like to thank the conference planning committee members for their hard work, dedication, and positive and fun attitudes throughout the planning stages. It was a pleasure to work with each member of the committee. We received 122 evaluation forms from the conference. ALL 122 rated the overall conference as excellent or good. This in great part due to the efforts of the CPC, which included:

Don Appleby, University of Akron
Barbara Bishop, Heidelberg University
Deberah England, Wright State University
Gwen Evans, OhioLINK
Meghan Frazer, Ohio State University
Sheryl Gannon, Brown Mackie College
Jeff Hartsell‐Gundy, Miami University
Eboni Johnson, Oberlin College
Katy Kelly, University of Dayton
Diane Kolosionek, Cleveland State University
Krista McDonald, Miami Univ. Hamilton
Joan Milligan, University of Dayton
Alisa Mizikar, Wittenberg University
Jerry Natal, University of Toledo
Aaron Olivera, Ohio State University
Sue Polanka, Wright State University
Peggy Rector, Denison University
Kathryn Venditti, Ashland University

And our webmasters – Melissa Bauer from Kent State and Karen Plummer, University of Akron.

We had amazing support from our vendors this year as well. Twenty eight vendors registered this year for a total sponsorship of $16,200. Thanks to our vendors, we were able to keep registration under $100 for members, we were able to add 2 preconferences, bring in 3 keynote speakers for the conference/preconference, and support 8 faculty and administrators from Ohio to be part of our panels. Thanks to Alisa Mizikar and Jerry Natal for coordinating this effort.

A number of individuals also received grants, scholarships and awards at the conference. The Jay Ladd Distinguished Service Award was given to John Burke, Miami University Middletown. A special recognition award was given to OHIONET for their ongoing support of ALAO. The full list of award and scholarship winners are listed in the awards portion of this newsletter. Congratulations to all of our recipients.

This year we decided to give away door prizes and large raffle items to attendees instead of providing a small gift to each attendee. The ALAO CPC would like to thank the vendors, exhibitors, academic institutions and individual ALAO Members who donated door prizes for the conference. There were over 120 door prizes given away by our loyal supporters.

Door Prize Donors for the 2012 ALAO Conference were:
Appalachian Gateway Center at Southern State
Ashland University Poetry Press
Big Grass Farm Designs
Brown Mackie College
Corvis Recycling LLC
Denison University
Diane Kolosionek
Disney Educational Productions
Learning Express Library
Oberlin College
OhioNET
Southern State Community College
University of Akron Press
Wittenberg University
Wright State University

Our raffle items included an iPad, Google Nexus, and two $100 Visa gift cards. Winners of those prizes were:
iPad – Brian Gray, Case Western Reserve University
Google Nexus – Amy Werring, Southern State Community College
Visa Gift Cards – Karen Oye, Case Western Reserve University and Diane Schrecker, Ashland University

Brian Gray had this to say about his iPad: “I would like to thank ALAO for the wonderful door prize at the recent ALAO Annual Conference. My wife teaches 6-8 graders. The next week she used it as an election polling station so that her students could experience the process of voting for a President. The conference was wonderful and inspirational, and the door prize just an unexpected bonus. Thank you, Brian Gray”.

We did ask a question in the conference evaluation about raffle prizes or keepsake items and the vote was pretty even. 47% said yes, go with the raffle item and 53% wanted the keepsake. We will leave this decision to future conference planning committees. Thanks to all of you who still use your ALAO staplers. This was clearly a favorite keepsake as many mentioned it in their evaluation.

Interest Groups
I am very pleased to report that all seven of the ALAO Interest Groups are currently active. Thanks to ALAO members who stepped up to chair two of our interest groups, we now have revitalized the Collection Management Interest Group (CMIG) and the Support Staff Interest Group (SSIG). The Co-Chairs of the CMIG are Phil Flynn, Wright State University and Julie Deardorff, Cedarville University. The Co-Chairs of the SSIG are Ginna Witte, Cincinnati State Technical & Community College and Derek Malone, Ohio University.

Respectfully Submitted,
Sue Polanka
President, ALAO