Why should librarians be talking to publishers? SAGE offers travel grant for librarian to attend the ALPSP International Conference

For the second year SAGE is offering a librarian or information professional a place at the ALPSP International Conference from 11-13 September (www.alpspconference.org).

To enter the competition to win a sponsored place, answer the following question via Twitter or email in 140 characters or less:
Why should librarians be talking to publishers in 2012?
Send your answer to @SAGElibraryNews tagged with #ALPSP or email to events@sagepub.co.uk. The closing date is 25 May. See www.sagepub.co.uk/alpsp2012 for full details.

Last year’s winner, Patrick Carr wrote the following about his experiences:

"Thanks to my receipt of a SAGE travel grant, I was able to attend the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers' (ALPSP) International Conference. The conference was held from September 14th through 16th at the beautiful Heythrop Park Hotel in Oxfordshire and was attended by a broad spectrum of professionals engaged in issues and challenges associated with the publication and dissemination of knowledge.

"In my current position as Head of Electronic & Continuing Resources Acquisitions at East Carolina University's Joyner Library, I work with publishers on a daily basis on acquisition and licensing terms. For this reason, attending the ALPSP conference was particularly insightful: it enabled me to see familiar topics in the field of librarianship (like evolving formats, patron preferences, acquisition models, and discovery tools) being addressed from a publisher-centered perspective.

In the current environment of tightening budgets, libraries and publishers are both being faced with the challenges of doing more with less. To successfully partner to address these challenges, it is essential that both parties strive to understand the other's perspective. I would encourage my library colleagues to consider attendance at future ALPSP conferences in order to pursue opportunities to strengthen those understandings."