I interrupt our previously scheduled programming… because the national ACRL 2015 Conference has come to Portland! I will be spending the rest of this week at the conference — and this is Spring Break week in-between winter and spring terms, so no rest for the weary! Therefore, I am taking a quick break from the weekly posting schedule on this Reel Librarians blog to focus on networking and professional development opportunities at the conference.

If you’re wondering what in the heck “ACRL” means, it stands for Association of College & Research Libraries, and it is the academic division of ALA, the American Library Association. The ALA is the oldest and largest library association in the world, founded in 1876 and chartered in 1879. There are over 62,000 members in ALA, and Melvil Dewey was one of its founding members!

The ACRL has an interesting origin story — it began informally in 1890, was officially adopted into ALA as a “College and Reference Library Section” in 1923, and was then officially reorganized as an ALA division in 1940. So this year (and conference) marks the 75th anniversary of ACRL, which is now the largest division of ALA and accounts for nearly 20% of ALA membership totals!

The ACRL 2015 Conference is shaping up to be a great one, with tons of programming and interesting keynote speakers. And being Portland — “Keep Portland Weird!” — there is even a section on the conference website, “Squatch out! for Serious Fun,” highlighting fun events in and around the conference.

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For more info about ACRL:

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• Click here to learn more about the ACRL 2015 Conference
• Click here to learn more about the ACRL 2015 Conference keynote speakers
• Click here to learn more about ACRL history and origins
• Click here to learn more about ACRL’s 75th anniversary
• Click here to learn more about the ACRL-Oregon chapter

For interesting (and slightly related) posts on this Reel Librarians site:

• Click here for my “Typical or stereotypical?” post about typical characteristics of librarians. This post includes Melvil Dewey’s 1876 description of a typical librarian!
• Click here for my “Cheers for library education” post about the 1941 film Cheers for Miss Bishop. This post includes info about the origins of library science education in the U.S. — and again, Melvil Dewey features heavily in this slice of librarian history!