Readers’-advisory, collection-development and reference librarians interested in cutting-edge trends and possibilities in their field should plan to attend the RUSA President’s Program at ALA’s upcoming Annual Conference in Chicago.

The program, which will be held from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday, July 13, is the inaugural session of the Readers’ Advisory Research and Trends Forum, a new RUSA initiative where ideas, best practices and creative possibilities are actively engaged and deconstructed in order to contribute to the advancement of RA service. This year’s theme—how appeal is an interdisciplinary concept that applies to music, art and books—will be addressed with program content that covers multiple perspectives on the topic, including service implications and collection building.

The program will include three speakers whose resumes cover both the library profession and the multimedia arena toward which RA is headed. Nora Rawlinson, former head of Collection Development for Baltimore County Public Library and former editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly for more than a decade, gave a name to demand buying when she wrote the controversial article “Give ‘em What They Want” for Library Journal. Recently, Rawlinson co-founded EarlyWord.com with the mission of helping librarians anticipate public demand. Susan Chun is founder of Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project and a consultant to cultural heritage organizations, specializing in publishing, intellectual property and information management strategy and social media. She was previously general manager for Collections Information Planning at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nathan Altice is a musician, digital artist and adjunct professor of sound communication at Virginia Commonwealth University where he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Media, Art and Text.

Participation in the RUSA President’s Program is included with annual conference registration. Get the full scoop on registering for Annual Conference in our “how to register” blog entry.