Mea Culpa

I was wrong. The city of New Orleans pulled it off without a hitch. It was obvious that there had been a great deal of gearing up for the arrival of the librarians. Service in hotels and restaurants was occassionally iffy either because of shortages of staff or lack of training and experience. It was obvious that many staff had been hired recently to cover the volume of business that ALA brought.

I never heard an official number of attendants. Some of the vendors in the exhibit room said traffic was considerably less than normal for this conference.

Last year's meeting in Chicago had 27,000 people. This year was not close to that.

Apparently there are a number of large conferences who are looking to schedule New Orleans who have been waiting to see how ALA goes. The success of this meeting should be a good sign for business in New Orleans.