Published: August 26, 2025 by Cat Tang

From Thursday, June 26 to Monday, June 30, 2025, I had the opportunity to attend the American Library Association (ALA) Annual conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My travel was supported by iSchool student organization leadership funding I was eligible for as the result of my involvement in the SJSU ALA Student Chapter (ALASC), as well as prize money received from the ALA New Member Round Table (NMRT) for ALASC’s 2025 ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award win. 

This was my second time attending the conference, as I also had the chance to travel to the 2024 ALA Annual conference last year, but it was my first time ever traveling to the East Coast. As a born-and-raised SoCal native, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I did plenty of research beforehand, so I was a little concerned about the weather, as it was forecasted to storm throughout the entire trip, particularly on the days I was to fly in and out of the city. While it did in fact rain throughout my trip, luckily the sky ended up being clear on the day I flew in. However, I stepped out of the airport into what felt like a veritable wall of air—the humidity was no joke! As someone unfamiliar with high levels of humidity, it was a very novel experience for me.

I arrived in Philly a day early to give myself time to adjust to the time zone difference and thought I was fine when I slept soundly and woke up feeling refreshed on my first morning in, but somehow the jet lag didn’t hit me until my second morning. That day, I woke up feeling like my head was simultaneously stuffed with cotton balls and filled with bricks. I could not get up—my head felt physically weighed down. I had no choice but to go back to sleep for another two hours, but when I woke up again, I still felt awful. However, there was no way I was going to lie in bed the whole day, so I forced myself up anyway. Thankfully I felt better after putting myself through a light workout and grabbing a wellness smoothie from a shop down the block from my hotel. 

Because the conference didn’t officially start until Friday evening and I had flown in on Wednesday afternoon, that left me with some time to explore the city before the conference. I spent the remainder of Wednesday unpacking and recuperating from my flight, but on Thursday I was able to walk from my hotel to the historic district and visit the National Constitution Center, which was offering free admission that day as part of the Wawa Welcome America Festival, held annually from June 19 to July 4 in Philly (highly recommended to check out if you’re ever in the city during that time period, as many museums offer free admission and there are other activities scheduled throughout the city; I also received a free hoagie at the National Constitution Center as part of the festivities). Although the museum was quite large and filled with interesting exhibits, I unfortunately wasn’t able to explore everything because I had to report to my shift to help set up the iSchool booth at the Pennsylvania Convention Center at 1 pm. I wish I would have been able to wake up earlier so I would have had sufficient time to explore the museum in its entirety as well as visit the Liberty Bell. Seeing the Liberty Bell was the #1 must-do thing on my bucket list while I was in Philly because it’s such an iconic landmark, but the line to see it was so long on that day that I decided not to wait and to just try to come back earlier on another day. Unfortunately, I never got another good opportunity during the rest of my trip. However, there’s so much to do in Philly in general and many other significant landmarks/sights that I also didn’t get to visit, so it makes me think I just have to make another visit to the city someday!

After I helped iSchool staff Vivian Zuo and Sheila Gurtu set up the exhibit hall booth inside the Convention Center and picked up my official conference badge, I was able to spend the rest of my evening visiting Chinatown for dinner/dessert and exploring the Chinese Lantern Festival in Franklin Square. 

The next day (Friday morning) was when I got hit by severe jetlag and struggled to wake up all morning, but by the afternoon I had dragged myself out of my hotel and headed out to University City for lunch at White Dog Cafe. (No actual dogs were present, but there was a LOT of dog-themed decor—it was really cute!) 

Then I visited Penn Museum, where admission was also free for the day thanks to the Wawa Welcome America Festival. The museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania campus, is huge and has three floors, so I again ended up running out of time to fully explore all the exhibits, even though I had already spent 2 hours there. I think 3 or 4 hours would have been ideal to truly see everything, but before I left, I did a speedrun through the exhibits I didn’t properly have time to appreciate in depth. I had to head back to Center City in order to catch the opening general session of the conference, which featured Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as the main speaker. She talked about remaining optimistic in spite of the trials and tribulations life has thrown her way, and I found her resilience and optimism to be a small source of strength for the times we are currently living in. 

After that came the Exhibit Hall opening, and unlike last year, I was prepared for it this year. Well… sort of! I at least knew the scale of what to expect and the deluge of sights and sounds and vendors and book giveaways that would greet me, but in reality, I found my introversion was still ill-equipped to handle navigating the maze of booths. I think I had a plan on how to navigate the Exhibit Hall, but it promptly fell out of my brain once the doors opened and I was inside that massive room. I wandered around simply scoping out everything there was to offer, and then I got in line to receive a signed advance reader’s copy (ARC) of Karina Yan Glaser’s new book, The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli. I’m sure the author won’t remember me, which is a relief, because although she was incredibly sweet, I was a tongue-tied, flustered mess! My words completely failed me that evening, but thankfully I fared better during the other author signings I attended over the next few days. 

That was it for my Friday. It had already been a long day, so when the Exhibit Hall closed at 7 pm, I went straight back to my hotel, had dinner in my room, and got some rest for the night. 

The next morning, Saturday, June 28, I surprisingly didn’t have any trouble waking up and was lined up outside the Exhibit Hall bright and early, alongside a sizable crowd of people also waiting for the doors to open. I thought it was funny when the onsite security told us not to run when the doors opened, and no one did in fact run, but instead speed-walked so fast we were practically flowing into the room like a wave. It was truly a sight to see, and I found myself internally beaming with the thought, Ah, this is what it’s like to be a librarian! 

Now, on this morning, I was a woman on a mission—I wanted to see the Pigeon! I had the publisher’s booth number written down, so I made a beeline to it; evidently dozens of other people had the same idea, because not even five minutes after the doors had opened, I was in line to meet the Pigeon and the line stretched all the way down the length of the Exhibit Hall. One of the staff at the booth looked flabbergasted and wondered aloud if they should cut the line off already. Meanwhile, I was absurdly excited to meet a children’s book character, but it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one, judging by the eager people queued ahead of and behind me. 

One picture with the Pigeon and one copy of Will the Pigeon Graduate? (you and me both, buddy…) later, I was rushing out of the Exhibit Hall and trying to hunt down the next event I wanted to be at, which was the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) event celebrating the 38th anniversary of The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. The event featured a welcome video from the author, discussing his work and its first release through Penguin Classics USA this year, followed by a live panel discussion on Pacific Islander publishing with speakers Dr. Loriene Roy (2007-2008 ALA Past-President & 1997-1998 American Indian Library Association President), Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada (2022-2023 ALA Past-President & 2016-2017 APALA President), Nicky Andrews (Open Education Librarian at the University of San Francisco), and Kaylin Melia George (author of the 2025 APALA Literature Award Picture Book Winner, Aloha Everything). 

I really enjoyed their discussion, and it was important to me to attend this event, as I have been making a concerted effort to educate myself about the Pacific Islander community within the past year. (In fact, my ALA Annual 2025 iSchool Networking Reception poster presentation was centered around the Pacific Islander community—I will talk more about this later.) I wanted to connect with the speakers after their panel discussion and introduce myself as an officer in the SJSU Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) iSchool Student Group, but there was quite a crowd of people waiting to talk to them, so I slipped out to use the restroom first. However, when I returned, everyone had already vacated the room and the next session was setting up! Oh well. Little did I know then that I would have another opportunity to connect later. 

So after that, I rushed three floors up (in my opinion, the Pennsylvania Convention Center was much more confusing and difficult to navigate than the San Diego Convention Center last year) to the main stage to watch the featured speaker, George Takei. He was both funny and moving and it was insightful to hear him discuss his experience living and working as a gay Japanese-American man in this country. 

Then I left the Convention Center and walked to Rittenhouse Square to check out the weekly farmer’s market, but I arrived just as they were beginning to clean up and didn’t end up buying anything. I had intended to grab lunch in or around the area, but I ran out of time, so I had to book it back to the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for the iSchool Networking Reception poster presenter check-in. I stopped by my hotel on the way there to grab a snack from my room, and it was a good thing I did, because although there was food at the reception, it was still being set up by the hotel caterers when I arrived, and I was already hungry. I actually didn’t end up eating later either because I was too preoccupied with my poster presentation and didn’t have time to think about food. 

Before the reception officially opened to everyone else, I connected with some of the other student poster presenters, including Elizabeth Graham (who I’d previously worked with, as we were both Advocacy interns for Dr. Chow last summer), Kara Davis, Jennifer Hunter, and Winnie Yee, and enjoyed hearing about their presentations and telling them about mine. We also had the opportunity to take pictures with the iSchool director, Dr. Anthony Chow, and with outgoing ALA President Cindy Hohl. Once the reception officially began, I had a positive experience presenting my poster, entitled “Where Are the Islanders? Searching for the PI in AAPI” (my poster is viewable online through this webpage I built to showcase it) and connected with many past and present iSchool students. Among them were 2024-2025 ALA Spectrum Scholars Emily Taina and Kate Uesagi, incoming ALASC Events Coordinator Yuna Miyamoto, past AANHPI SG officers Allison Law and Indira Nauth, and current AANHPI SG Secretary Alexandra Balgos. It was really nice to meet Yuna in person after having only met virtually when I interviewed her for her current position, and I didn’t know Allison & Indira would be at the conference at all, so it was a wonderful surprise to see them. 

Toward the end of the networking reception, Dr. Chow presented ALASC with a trophy in commemoration of our 2025 ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award win, and I accepted it on behalf of the group. I was also visited at my poster presentation by recent iSchool grad Caroline Chow and SJSU King Library Information Technology Consultant Neil Ordinario. Neil’s work and presentation with fellow indigenous Pacific Islander library professionals Nicky Andrews and Steve Shaw at the 2024 ALA Annual conference was actually what inspired and informed much of my own poster presentation, so I was thrilled that he stopped by to take a look at my work. Afterward, I was visited by the Co-Chair and APALA representative of the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC)’s Steering Committee, Kat Bell, who informed me she had heard about my poster and had to come by to take a look for herself. She also invited me to the APALA Literature Awards banquet later that night, musing that I would make a great fit to serve on a literature awards committee. I was incredibly flattered and excited for the opportunity—the poster presentation truly yielded some worthwhile connections and outcomes for me! 

At the conclusion of the networking reception, I packed up my poster and went back to my hotel to put my things away and get freshened up a bit before heading out to the APALA Literature Awards banquet at the The Crane Community Center, located in Philly’s Chinatown. Attending the event was an incredibly surreal experience—there were so many prominent AANHPI industry professionals in attendance, as well as authors whose names I have seen so often working in the children’s department that they feel like veritable celebrities. For example, Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham were there, accepting the APALA Young Adult Literature Honor for their recently-published graphic novel, Lunar New Year Love Story. Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese, which was also adapted into a 2023 Disney+ series, is an Asian American classic at this point, and LeUyen Pham has written and illustrated so many books that her name is a staple in any library’s children’s department. I couldn’t believe they were standing in the same room as me! 

I felt like a shrimp in a sea full of fish, not only because of the authors who are veritable celebrities, but also because everyone else in attendance seemed so well-established, well-connected, and accomplished in comparison. That’s not to undersell my own accomplishments and the positions I have held, as I am the current Chair of the award-winning SJSU ALASC and I have helped establish and lead the AANHPI iSchool Student Group, but I’m still “just” a student. It was difficult not to feel out of place and like I had nothing to talk about with long-time industry professionals who are all so accomplished and already know each other. Everyone who had been at the APALA Whale Rider event earlier (Jaena, Lessa, Nicky, Kaylin), except Loriene, was also present at this event. Thankfully, there were some other students present too, including Alexandra and Kate, as well as familiar faces like Caroline, Neil, and of course, Kat, seeing as she had invited me! The banquet featured delicious food catered from local Chinese and Indian restaurants, so I happily dug in—I was incredibly hungry because of how little I’d eaten while running around all day! 

This was another valuable experience for me to connect with other people in the industry (though admittedly, I struggled to do that), and I really enjoyed seeing all the books that were award recipients. It warmed my heart to think about how Asian American and Pacific Islander authors are getting opportunities to tell our own stories these days, when it didn’t feel like that was the case just a decade or so ago. I was very grateful to Kat for inviting me to this event. We rode back to our hotels together at the end of the night and I returned to my room utterly exhausted, but in a good way! It was a long and eventful day! 

And yet… there was still more to come! 

The next morning (Sunday, June 29), once again struggling with the time difference, I woke up as early as I could manage and headed over to the Convention Center to start the second day of the conference. (Even getting up relatively “late,” at 9 am, caused my body to scream at me that it was still only 6 am back home… and it doesn’t help that I’m a night owl in general, so early mornings are not naturally my thing.) After some continued confusion about the layout of the Convention Center and difficulty locating the room, I managed to catch the end of the “Stronger Together through Connections Worldwide: International Collaborations in Library Services” session, then went on to pretty much spend all afternoon in the Exhibit Hall collecting books and author autographs. This was in stark contrast to my mindset at the ALA Annual conference in San Diego last year, when I had been adamant about NOT going crazy with collecting books and coming home with a dozen tote bags full of them, but this year, I just couldn’t help myself! (Which is actually crazy, because last year I could have at least packed my car full of books and driven back home with them easily enough, but this year I had to figure out how to ship all the books back home from across the country, which left me wondering why I had done such a thing to myself… more on that later.) 

My favorite children’s book author, Grace Lin, was at the conference this year, so part of the reason I really wanted to attend this year’s conference was to meet her! I did in fact get that opportunity—I went to the book signing of her latest release, The Gate, The Girl, and the Dragon, and was able to give her a letter I had handwritten for her. I never thought I would ever get the chance to meet her, so it was an exciting experience. 

I also met Trung Le Nguyen, the author and illustrator of one of my favorite graphic novels, The Magic Fish, and heard him talk a little bit about his forthcoming work, Angelica and the Bear Prince, which I am very excited about! 

At around 4:30 pm, I had to peel myself away from the Exhibit Hall and catch a shuttle to the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown, where the NMRT Annual Social was being held. I arrived early, got some snacks (mostly fruit—there were a lot of delicious-looking desserts too, but I hadn’t really eaten all day again so I was hungry for real food and not keen on just filling my stomach with sugar), and connected with Christina Gunning, a fellow student who has just started her MLIS program at the University of Southern California and is looking to make a career transition from digital marketing. I also met Tasia Pender, fellow SJSU student and current Social Media Coordinator for the iSchool. Tasia, Christina, and I chatted with Dr. Chow, who came to the social in support of ALASC, as we were to be recognized for our 2025 ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award win, but unfortunately he had to leave before the award was presented since he had another commitment to attend. He invited me to attend the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) dinner too, but I needed to stay at the NMRT Social to represent ALASC. However, I appreciated the invitation and the fact that he came to the social to show support for ALASC. He also shared some useful advice about networking, explaining that it’s not about connecting with “everyone” but finding the people you have a genuine connection or shared interest(s) with and deepening that relationship with them. I think I already knew that nugget of wisdom, but it was nice to have the reminder anyway, as I thought back on the APALA Literature Awards banquet from the previous night. Although I felt like I hadn’t done a good job of socializing because I didn’t go around introducing myself to everyone in the room, I decided that I need to give myself credit for showing up and connecting with a few people regardless. It is already a big push out of my comfort zone for me to attend conferences and participate in events like these, so I should recognize that as an accomplishment and a commitment to my personal and professional growth instead of worrying too much about the areas in which I am still lacking.

We also played self-introduction bingo during the social, which was a nice icebreaker that made it easier to get to know other people in the room. The activity was organized by the Retired Members Round Table (RMRT), so the event was actually more like a joint New Members Round Table & Retired Members Round Table social. Dr. Chow chose not to participate in the bingo, so there was a really funny moment when one of the retired members sassed him for being unsociable, and the look on his face was priceless! “It isn’t every day I get spoken to this way!” he exclaimed, but everyone thought it was hilarious, including him. 

Toward the end of the social, ALASC was presented with our 2025 ALA Student Chapter of the Year Award, and I had the opportunity to take a picture with outgoing NMRT president Cara Calabrese and incoming NMRT president Morgan Brickey-Jones, as well as chat a bit with both of them. When Cara told me that it has been a pleasure to read the SJSU ALASC’s Student Chapter of the Year Award application each year because we consistently do amazing work, her statement was such an affirmation of the work we have done, and I felt deep pride in my student group. She also said that she would nominate me to be the next president of NMRT, and I don’t know if she was serious or not, but it would be an honor and a challenge I would take on if the people feel that I am a good fit for the role! I had never planned to be the current Chair of ALASC either, but I stepped into this role because I saw that a strong leader with institutional knowledge was what our student group needed at the time. 

I left the social feeling very pleased and returned to my hotel room that evening to unwind and organize the dozens of books I had collected from the Exhibit Hall, knowing that I needed to get them all ready to ship out the next day! 

And yet, even knowing that, as the final morning of the conference dawned on Monday, June 30, I could still be found in the Exhibit Hall collecting, yes, even more books! In my defense, most of the books were not for me—I was picking them up because I thought they would be great to send to my second cousin, who had just had a baby, or to my friend with an elementary school-aged daughter. Outside of the books I was collecting to send to help them build their home libraries, I also acquired a few titles I thought my library might like to consider adding to our collection when I got back to work. One of my friends described me as “library Santa Claus,” as I later spent several hours in the post office inside the Exhibit Hall, unloading my tote bags full of books, hunting down and packing boxes for the books, and finally waiting in line to ship the goods out to four different addresses. My arms were incredibly sore by the next day, so I do not necessarily recommend this behavior. Or, at least, if you’re going to collect as many books as I did, come prepared, like some other people did—throughout the conference, I encountered several people in the Exhibit Hall wheeling luggage that they had apparently brought specifically for collecting books!  

Once I was done sending my book boxes off, I left the Exhibit Hall and rushed back to the main stage, for the last time, to catch Grace Lin’s main speaker stage. She spoke about her latest book and her journey from being a child who wanted nothing to do with her own culture to an author who now writes stories celebrating and uplifting that very culture. I really appreciate the work she has done to craft stories inspired by Chinese culture and to ensure that Chinese American children can see themselves represented in youth literature, and it is the very reason she is my favorite children’s author. When I was a young Chinese-American girl searching for characters or authors who looked like me on the shelves of my local library, I remember I never found any of that representation until the day I stumbled across Grace Lin. For that reason, she will always hold a special place in my heart. She showed me it was possible to find characters who looked like me in youth literature and for people like me to grow up to write books (though I have long since retired that childhood dream). 

After her speaker stage ended, I left the Convention Center to get lunch, intending to return later, but the moment I stepped off the shuttle in front of my hotel, it began to rain! I didn’t actually bring an umbrella to Philadelphia, so I ducked into my hotel to wait out the rain… but the forecast said it was going to rain intermittently for the rest of the day. I was bummed because I had been planning to try to go see the Liberty Bell again after the conference officially ended, but I didn’t want to walk around in the rain, so after lunch, I ended up spending the rest of the day in my hotel room packing my things up and preparing to fly back home. It was a little disappointing to miss the closing session of the conference, because it kind of left me feeling like I had unfinished business with the conference. If I were to go back in time, I think I would have taken a snack with me to the Convention Center that morning and stayed in the building until the conference officially ended, or I would have at least walked across the street to get something to eat instead of going all the way back to my hotel. Philly was very walkable and my hotel wasn’t that far away from the Convention Center, but all the same, going out in the rain was enough of a deterrent to keep me inside for the rest of the day. The next morning, I woke up at 5 am and caught my flight back home. Philly was lovely, but I was relieved to be back in LA! 

Overall, I had a really amazing trip filled with many meaningful professional experiences and moments of fun! Last year, I had really tried to pace myself, as I was new to conferencing, but this year I felt like I was experienced with the organization of the ALA conference, so I wanted to do everything. Or, well, not everything, because that’s physically impossible with how many events are scheduled for the same time throughout the conference (which constantly resulted in tough decisions when I wanted to go to two or more events that were all happening at the same time and I had to choose between them!), but as much as I could pack into my schedule. In reality, I ended up missing a lot of the events I had planned to go to, for one reason or another—like the weather, getting confused about the Convention Center building layout and being unable to find the room I was looking for, or purely being too tired and choosing to take a break instead—and I would have liked to have attended more sessions during the course of the conference, but I still learned and experienced a lot, and I am glad to have had the privilege to attend the ALA Annual conference once again. 

I am happy to say that I was selected as an ALA Spectrum Scholar for the 2025-2026 cohort, so I will have the opportunity to attend the annual conference again next year and participate in the Spectrum Leadership Institute. I am looking forward to the experiences, opportunities, and enrichment that come with being a Spectrum Scholar and my final year of the SJSU MLIS program, as I plan to graduate in spring 2026! 

Editor’s Note: The SJSU iSchool highly encourages students to attend professional conferences but also realizes that it can be cost prohibitive. Travel grants are available to eligible students to help lessen the financial burden and increase conference participation. iSchool student Cat Tang​ received one of these travel grants.