New Orleans is a city rich on history and the inspiration for several films, including The Big Easy, The Princess and the Frog, and the aforementioned A Streetcar named Desire. I haven't had a chance to fully tour the city yet to get a glimpse of its present, past, or future, but sadly the one part of recent history that we all know regards Hurricane Katrina from late August 2005 and its aftermath. The American Library Association (ALA) held their annual conference here back in 2006 and was one of the first major conferences held in the wake of Katrina. While there had been discussion about holding the conference elsewhere, board members of ALA decided to keep it in New Orleans. There is also a good opinion piece from Publishers Weekly regarding ALA's decision. (It's obtained through our online database Academic Onefile so you need to be on a Minuteman computer to access the link. You can also find it yourself by going to Academic Onefile, type in the keywords "american library association new orleans" and selecting the article entitled "Sara Nelson: booking New Orleans: the ALA did it. Others should follow" from the Magazine listing. Among other things, Nelson (a then editor at Publishers Weekly), mentioned the significance of using the Morial Convention Center, within distance of the Superdome. Both, if you remember, were insufficient in housing all of the people who were waylaid because of Katrina. Yesterday was rather quiet at the convention center as I signed in that it's hard to even imagine what it must have been like for all of those people back in the late summer of 2005.
While the 2006 ALA Conference placed some emphasis on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, there are still quite a few programs dedicated to the topic. For instance, there is a bus tour of public library branches built in the aftermath of Katrina, and a program entitled, "The Aftermath of Katrina and Rita: The Effects on Libraries, People, and Neighborhoods" (Here is a complete listing of Katrina related programs). I'm hoping to attend at least one of these sessions. While I agree that the city does want to move on from it, I think it's important that the rest of us don't forget.
By the way, I checked out an excellent documentary from our collection that I watched on the plane ride, Hurricane Katrina: The Storm that Drowned a City. I recommend watching it after I return it.
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Especially since we recently had a tornado warning here, maybe we should pay attention....after that last warning, it occurred to me that we at my house are totally ill prepared for a tornado.
We do, however, have ample cat food and three laptops.(and books to read).
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