Interested in learning more about SLA's conference locations over the years? Visit this unique, interactive Google? map to see the many cities that SLA has visited. All markers indicate the cities that SLA conferences were held in. Blue markers indicate the annual conferences and Green markers indicate Leadership Summits or Winter Meetings. The markers do not indicate the exact location of conference centers or conference hotels; they are simply placed near the center of conference cities.
While putting together this Google Map of SLA Conferences I came across several interesting little tidbits that may not be immediately obvious on a first, casual glance.
Some things are fairly apparent. For instance, even though the vast majority of SLA's conferences have taken place in the U.S.A. there are still 21 states where we have never held a conference. Also, we have had most of our conferences on one of the coasts. The east coast is well dotted with conference locations and California has a significant scattering of conferences as well. New York alone has had twelve annual conferences located there, to make it the city in which the most conferences have been held, by quite a fair margin. Nine of our annual conferences have been held in Canada and, not surprisingly, all of those conferences were annual conferences that are held during the Summer.
Now here are some of the less obvious things that are harder to notice. In 100 years of SLA there has only been one year in which a conference was not held. That year is 1945 and I'm sure it is no coincidence that WWII did not end until September of 1945. Another interesting note is that during SLA's early years there were a couple of years when we had annual conferences on both the east and west coasts. In both 1911 and 1915 we had two annual conferences. WWI did not, apparently, stop us from doubling up conferences in 1915. Our early annual conferences also tended to alternate between being located in large cities and being in national parks or other more remote areas. For example, our 1913 conference was in Kaaterskill which no longer seems to be a town, if it ever was, and has now been subsumed by Catskill State park.
It's interesting to take a look back and see how our conference locations can tell us a bit about our organizational history and how we have evolved.
Alex Grigg
Centennial Web Site Sub-Committee
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