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Keeping the fire and lighting the way, SUNY librarians conferenced this June near the Onondaga Nation. The 41st SUNYLA Annual Conference (Onondaga Community College, June 17-19, 2009) showcased many SUNY libraries and their efforts to support long-time services while implementing new aspects of a 21st century academic library.

Conference sessions included those that put a focus on LibGuides, digital preservation, international students and collections, "Poetry Postcards and Place," Twitter and libraries, information literacy, library services and learning management systems, Zotero. These and many more were hosted in and around the seemingly new facilities of OCC.

A number of positive comments were heard about the keynote speech by Syracuse University's R. David Lankes. "Einstein Goes to a Party -- Librarians must look beyond functional definition of the field (what we do and how we do it) and to deeper understandings that will allow them to succeed into the future." Lankes ("the mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities") provided an inspiring, creative and refreshing description of his view of academic libraries today and in the future. He also challenged us to do more to reach out to the scholarly communities wherever they may be located in our institutions.

Poster sessions included "Carrying a Spark from Campfire to the People: The Roving Librarian" (Anita Whitehead, Genesee). Efforts to educate our faculty scholars about retaining some of their rights when signing publisher agreements as a facilitation towards more open access to that scholarly literature is another example of Lankes' point. We can all think of and describe other examples at our libraries.

Evening activities included local history from "Wampum Chronicles" (Darren Bonaparte) and lacrosse stick handicrafting (Alfie Jacques). The Association had the run of the Museum of Science and Technology Thursday evening. This included access to the many hands-on exhibits of the museum, catering by Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and a screening of the IMAX film The Greatest Places.

Great places around SUNY include Onondaga and Brockport (site of SUNYLA 2010).