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Here are some other tips submitted to our contest:

Tip 1:
Carry your lunch, or some of the components.  I take water, nuts, fruit, carrots and celery, yogurt, raisins, etc.  along in my “briefcase.”  Nuts don't need refrigeration. Fruit, carrots and celery (cut up, in a baggie), and yogurt can be perched atop ice in the ice bucket in your room to keep them cool, if you're in a hotel that doesn't have a fridge. 

Tip 2:
Carry your breakfast cereal and eat breakfast in your room.  You can usually find a little corner grocery near your hotel where you can buy milk, juice, bagels, more fruit, yogurt, etc. for lunches.  While the prices for these things may be more than you would pay in your grocery at home, they will, overall, be less than you'll pay for breakfast and lunch in restaurants.

Tip 3:
Walk or take the ALA provided shuttle busses, rather than cabs unless you are in a dire situation where you must be at a meeting a long way off instantly.  It's good exercise to walk, carrying your stuff.

Tip 4:
Take public transportation from airport to hotel and vice versa.

Tip 5:
When you must eat in a restaurant in order to participate in something or other, you can lessen your costs by not ordering alcohol, or coffee, or soft drinks.  Just drink the water they provide.  Order an appetizer instead of an entree, perhaps with a salad or soup.  Don't order dessert or coffee. 

Tip 6:
When you are able to have input into the restaurant choice suggest a place that isn't upscale, doesn't look upscale, isn't in an old and famous hotel.

Tip 7:
Don't go shopping if it will tempt you.

Congratulations to Rebecca Power on her award winning tip on staying at the local youth hostel instead of a hotel.  Here is Rebecca's tip in detail:

A colleague and I are staying at the Hostelling International Washington DC hostel which is just a few blocks from the convention center and conference hotels (11th St. between K and L).  You don't have to be a member (it costs a few dollars more for non-members), there  is no age limit, and bedding is included (you don't have to bring your sleeping bag anymore!).  At the DC hostel, non-member nightly prices were quoted to me as follows:

2 bedrooms: $112 split between two people
4 bedrooms: $38 per person (some of them are semi-private, with a half-wall between sets of two beds)
6, 8, or 10 bedrooms: $35 per person

That's some pretty serious savings for being right in the thick of things.  I know it doesn't suit everyone to live dorm-style, but a pair of 50 cent earplugs go a long way to make it bearable.  Plus, you get to meet people visiting the U.S. from all over the world (a favorite fact of my 65-year old mother who always stays there when she visits DC).

 Rebecca will enjoy lunch with incoming RUSA President David Tyckoson at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

Per suggestion of Eileen, I'm posting on the blog to tell you a little bit about the technology and marketing techniques that we use to promote our One Book One Community program.

After a struggling One Book One Community program that limped along during the winter months, we decided to combine this program with our summer reading festivities.  Patrons who sign-up for summer reading are automatically enrolled in the program, which runs from June 12 – September 11.  This year our title is The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.  Patrons are directed to a blog that we've created (http://bplonebook.blogspot.com) to participate in various discussion questions.  The more they participate the more entries they are given into our drawing at the end of summer.  We have some prizes donated from local businesses (fitness pass, restaurant coupons, etc.) in addition to some great electronic prizes purchase through a grant (iPod nano, digital camera, web cams, etc.). 

This has been a great success for our library as our numbers last year (the first year we did it this way) doubled!  Feel free to check out the blog or our home page at www.brownsburg.lib.in.us.  In the right-hand column we have a link that says Adult/Teen Summer Reading with more details about the program.

Hope you all have a great summer!

Amie 

At this year's Literary Tastes: Notable Books Breakfast on Sunday, June 24, from 8 to 10:30 a.m., attendees will hear stories about survival, joy and the poetry found in every day life.  The Literary Tastes: Notable Books Breakfast is being held during the 2007 ALA Annual Conference, in Washington, D.C.

In 2006, ALA held the annual convention in New Orleans and hosted volunteer projects to help rebuild the Crescent City.

One of the authors, Jed Horne, will talk about Hurricane Katrina and stories of the people of New Orleans.

Jed Horne is a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  He and fellow staff members covered the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.  In 2006, Horne and the newspaper staff received two Pulitzer Prizes for Public and Breaking News Reporting. 

Horne is the author of the book, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City. In this book, New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Horne skillfully attempts to untangle a disaster and its aftermath through victims' personal stories. He will be one of the featured authors at the Literary Tastes Breakfast.

The other authors schedule to appear are:

Melissa Fay Green, contributor to the New York Times and The New Yorker, is the author There is No Me without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children. In this book, the scope of the AIDS epidemic is illustrated through the heartwarming story of Haregewoin Teferra, a humanitarian who runs an orphanage in Ethiopia.

Kathleen Flenniken's first collection of poetry, “Famous,” won the Prairie Schooner Prize.  “Famous” is a collection of unpretentious and comfortable poems that deal with everyday events and situations in a sometimes humerous and always fresh way. 

The authors were selected from the 2007 Notable Book Council’s “List for America’s Readers,” an annual list of 25 outstanding fiction, nonfiction and poetry books for the adult reader. 

Registration is available for the event.  For more information, go to:
(http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2007a/home.htm),