First Days: A Trip of Celebrations and Learning Opportunities at BRASS!

by Ray Pun

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend several ALA-related meetings scattered throughout the city of San Francisco. However, yesterday was also quite an historic moment: the Supreme Court of the United States (also known as SCOTUS) legalized gay marriage in America. There were tons of celebrations and parades going on throughout the city and that was just the beginning. This Sunday there will be the annual San Francisco Pride Celebration Parade.

For this ALA, I was hoping to attend more general RUSA-related events and learn more about RUSA’s vision and how fits with my own professional interests. As someone who is currently working as a reference librarian in NYU Shanghai, a new university in China, it’s critical to stay on top of emerging technologies and trends and innovative reference and research services in academic librarianship in conferences like ALA Annual because it’s difficult to get that kind of training and experience working abroad sometimes.

RUSA has a few different sections in various areas: business, history, resource sharing and emerging technologies, etc. Attending ALA Annual this year would give me the opportunity to visit spielautomaten some of the programs and learn more about these sections and fields and the people behind them!

Currently I am a current member of the Business Reference Services and Section (BRASS), and I was able to attend the BRASS reception sponsored by ReferenceUSA and held in ThirstyBear. I met and caught up with many colleagues who are librarians and specialists in business, economic, data and financial information services from different institutions including Yale, UCLA, Princeton, University of Michigan and many more. It is often one of the best-organized reception events I attend at ALA!

The BRASS folks are always nice and helpful and they really know their business and data research! I had wanted to catch up with some of them to hear how things were going in their institutions but also their thoughts about recent database products, services and the Greek debt crisis.

On Monday, I plan to attend the “Not Elsewhere Classified: Researching New and Niche Industries,” sponsored by S&P Capital IQ! I am particularly interested in hearing about researching startup companies – now that there are so many including Airbnb and Uber! Here are some group-selfies I was able to take and share!

 

Left to Right: Sara F. Hess (recent MLS graduate from the University of Michigan), Erin Wachowiz (Yale’s School of Management Librarian), Eimmy Solis (NYU’s Business and Economics Librarian) and Ray Pun (Reference Librarian in NYU Shanghai) Photo Credits: Eimmy Solis.

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Left to Right: Todd Hines (Assistant Economics, Finance and Data Librarian from Princeton, Current Chair of BRASS) Ray Pun (Reference Librarian in NYU Shanghai) and Bobray Bordelon (Economics and Finance Librarian/Data Services Librarian from Princeton) Photo Credit: Erin Wachowiz