Parting Thoughts
TS-SIS Survey Summary
TS-SIS Survey on TSLL
From the Editors
Winners

Anne Myers Boston University amyers@bu.edu

There is a black hole for most AALL members in the annual meeting program selection process: that period between the deadline for submitting a program proposal and the date you are notified whether or not your proposal was accepted. This year I had a chance to sit inside that black hole as a member of the Annual Meeting Program Selections Committee (AMPSC). I learned a lot about what I, at least, saw during the proposal review process and thought that others might find some of it useful in preparing proposals in the future. Please bear in mind that I speak for myself only, not for AMPSC or AALL, and that procedures and processes change over time.

Having said that, let me also say a little about what we did before entering the "black hole" period. All AMPSC members were assigned to be liaisons to multiple SIS's, chapters, caucuses, and other interest groups. We were charged with helping groups know about the program theme and proposal deadlines, made sure they all had copies of the Program Planners Handbook (which we also revised), and worked with them to help clarify questions or issues to be considered. My liaison assignments included both the Technical Services and Online Bibliographic Services SIS's, and I sat in with their education committees during the annual meeting as program ideas were discussed.

Once proposals were turned in, however, it was time to change hats and become a member of AMPSC, charged with looking at all of the programs submitted. And there were a lot of them! Approximately two weeks after the submission deadline, each committee member received a big black notebook with 170 program proposals, 17 workshop proposals, and indexes to the above done every which-way (by proposer, SIS, broad topic, length of time, format, etc.). We had one week to read, review, and rank proposals. Our responses were then sent to headquarters and compiled into more lists that we used during our selection meeting in September.   [continued...]