AAUP Annual Meeting 2009

Forster’s “only connect” may be overused, but its simple sanity is particularly relevant for this year’s meeting. Our primary business remains one of making connections among writers and readers, teachers and students, researchers and librarians. Many of us work in small offices, far from daily contact with other publishing professionals. Coming together once a year allows us to appreciate what Forster was trying to tell us: one person alone cannot be as brilliant as two people together. Only “connect the prose in us with the passion,” and we will create a more harmonious community.

The program committee felt that there were too many overarching issues to be squeezed into the usual two plenary sessions; thus this year we offer you four plenaries, intended to address concerns that affect all of us, along with a host of connecting sessions that allow us to examine the ways that we can benefit from the issues raised in the plenaries.

While it’s important to focus on the digital future, it’s equally important to remember that most of us continue to operate in a print environment. This year’s Best Practices sessions, dedicated to preserving high standards throughout each department, will introduce our newest colleagues to these traditional standards and remind our more seasoned colleagues of the satisfaction to be found in maintaining these standards and adapting them to digital publications; with cross-training in mind, we encourage you to attend sessions outside of your particular area.

Each panelist will present checklists of the things that they wish they’d done in their position, the things that they wish they hadn’t done, and the things that everyone needs to know to work well in their area. These sessions will be very informal with plenty of time for questions and comments. At the end of the conference, we will add items gleaned from the audience and post the checklists on the AAUP website.