I and over 100 MOUGers are already here at the Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel, but many of you will be arriving today or tomorrow for the MLA Annual Meeting. Here are a few tips from those of us already on the ground.

1.  Assistant Convention Manager Diane Steinhaus has updated the instructions for how to find the "Airporter" bus at the Cincinnati Airport, based on her trip to town yesterday. Take the 2X route "Airporter" Bus, operated by Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK).The bus departs from east end of Baggage Claim. Look to your right when you go outside baggage claim and walk toward the Taxi stand. You will see the TANK bus shelter to your right near the rental car pickups.The “Airporter” route goes past the Northern Kentucky Convention Center before crossing the river into downtown. Exit the bus at 5th and Elm. The conference hotel is one block to the east at the corner of 5th and Race.
2. I drove to Cincy. There are several good parking options near the hotel. The hotel garage has valet parking, discounted 10% for MLA participants during the conference, and that comes out to around $25.00 a day. If you self-park in the hotel garage, that rate goes down, and if you don't charge the cost to your room, but instead pay when you exit, it goes down further. I parked at the Tower Place Garage (or Pogues Garage, but most of the signs still say Tower Place) on the opposite side of Race St., and that charges $15 per day. If you'd like to see the full range of parking options near the hotel, check out this pdf. 
3. A taxi should still cost $34.00, one way, from from the airport to the Hilton.

Safe travels, and see you soon!

Live Video Streaming and Chat in Cincinnati 

If you enjoyed the live video stream and archived videos from last year's conference in Denver, never fear! Thanks to support from Alexander Street, the live stream returns for free for all sessions taking place in Pavilion/Caprice. You'll be able to access the video stream from the conference homepage starting Thursday morning.

There will also be a link to the chat screen. If you're somewhere else - whether miles away in the your library or in another area of the conference - and you have a question for the speakers or the room, please participate by using the chat service, which will be monitored by Reduced Registration and Program Committee volunteers. 

At the close of the conference, all the videos will be archived and available to watch on the Music Library Association's Vimeo channel. And if you're feeling nostalgic, you can see all the Denver video's there right now!

Please encourage colleagues and students at your institutions to take advantage of this opportunity to participate in the Cincinnati conference. In particular, we're hoping that this year there will be more online participants in the Town Hall discussions taking place on Thursday and Friday evenings. So spread the word!

Link to the live stream feed with chat window: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Bq7m4fWP4Xk

There's a fair amount of programming that stretches into the evening hours, and it's all pretty terrific. So make sure you grab a cup of coffee during the afternoon breaks on Thursday and Friday so you'll be alert for the following:

Public Services and Cataloging/Metadata Town Halls

The Public Services Town Hall starts at 5:00 PM Thursday, and the Cataloging/Metadata Town Hall starts at 6:00 PM Friday in Pavilion. These are great forums for learning about the latest and greatest developments music librarianship. Both programs are also part of the streaming video program, so encourage colleagues and students who cannot attend in person to tune in on the conference website and to add their questions for the room via the chat feed.

Rockin' @ your Public Library

This session doesn't get going until 6:00 PM on Friday, but it looks like a good one. The speakers will be talking about how to expand the toolkit of public events or programs that encourage patrons to unleash their creativity. The organizers, recognizing the "happy" aspect of their program's hour, invite attendees to drop by the hotel bar and purchase a beverage to bring along to the session.

User Groups

There are the many user group meetings meeting from 6:00-7:30 on Thursday, including Alma, III, Voyager, and SirsiDynix (an OCLC group is also meeting, but at a different time). In a world of constantly changing ILS's, such groups allow librarians from different institutions to compare notes and plan for the future.

You'll find the CVB's table in the Pavilion Foyer (near the Registration Office) at the following times:

The Cincinnati Guidebook is now available, and it's better than ever this year.

For members and attendees new to Guidebook, it's a conferencing app that you can download for free on both Android and Apple mobile devices. You then search the "guides" available in the app to find this year's MLA conference. You can do this three ways.

1. Search for "MLA Cincinnati 2016" 
2. Enter a code into the search box. This year's code is oonoaixf.
3. Scan this QR Code: 

What's so great about Guidebook?

1. You can build your own conference schedule from the program. Just click on a session, and at the bottom select "Add to My Schedule". When you then select "My Schedule" in the main menu, you'll see all the sessions and meetings you plan to attend listed there. Unfortunately, custom schedule items still cannot be added to "My Schedule".
2. The hotel maps are zoned for the various meeting and session rooms. Select any session, click on the map link, and see a drop pin map for that room within the hotel.
3. Want to make sure you catch a colleague's presentation? Select "Speakers", search, and you can find all the sessions in which they are presenting. 
4. Guidebook has social media links to the MLA's Facebook and Twitter feeds, so you can chat online about the conference with ease. Twitter hashtags for 2016 are #musiclib2016 and #muslib2016.

Have questions about Guidebook or notice something got left out?
Contact Program chair Katie Buehner at katie-buehner@uiowa.edu.

As part of this series, Janelle Varin will be leading a workshop on Text Mining, and she made a great video that talks about the technique and what you can expect to learn in her session.

If you plan to attend any of the workshops in the series, please complete this quick survey (only four questions) so the organizers can prepare the sessions to answer your questions. 

http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/surveys/?id=digital_workshops

Tomorrow's post - MLA 2016: The Return of Live Streaming

1. Fountain Square
2. Cincinnati Museum Center
   • Current Exhibits include "The Art of the Brick" (an all LEGO® installation); "Treasures of Travel: Cincinnatians Collect the World"; "Big Bone Lick: A Place of Discovery"
3. Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum
4. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
5. OTR Brewery District
6. Taft Museum of Art
   • Current Exhibits include: "Daubigny’s Studio Boat: Life on the Seine"; "Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape"
7. Krohn Conservatory 

The program website and the sign-up form may be found here:  http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/page/mla_2016_mentoring/?

Expectations of those participating in the Conference Mentoring Program:

• Answer questions about the structure of MLA, the purposes of the conference, and how those purposes are carried out in the various forums
• Attend a session, roundtable, and/or exhibits together
• Introduce newcomers to people at the conference

Other opportunities for interacting include sharing a meal together or attending poster sessions. Mentors can further assist new MLA members by being friendly and supportive contacts shortly before, throughout, and perhaps after the annual meeting.

Mentors and mentees will have an opportunity to meet towards the end of the First-Time Attendees Program, from 6:20-7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 2.  Mentors can then escort their mentees to the Opening Reception of the 85^th Annual Meeting at 7 p.m.

Lastly, if you know of any students who may be attending for the first time, or know of anyone else who will benefit from this program who may not subscribe to MLA, by all means spread the word.   The more the merrier!

Registration deadline:  Wednesday, February 24, 2016

 The MLA will develop a new Distance Mentoring Program to assist new members during the year between conferences.  More details will be available at the annual meeting.  One of the questions below is to gauge interest in participation, but will not be a commitment to join that program.  We hope you will be interested!

For additional information on being a conference mentor, please see the Mentoring section at the Our Profession / Jobs and Careers / Career Resources pages of the MLA website:  http:/www.musiclibraryassoc.org/?Mentoring

If you have questions about the Conference or Distance Mentoring Programs, please contact:

Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy 
Coordinator, MLA Conference Mentoring Program
Tel. (203) 432-0497 Fax (203) 432-7339
E-mail: suzanne.lovejoy@yale.edu 

If you'd like help connecting with someone to room with in Cincinnati, you can use the Roommate Clearinghouse to locate others who are also looking.  

Access the roommate clearinghouse form here.

You can also contact the Clearinghouse's organizer, Jane Nowakowski, in the following ways:

• by email at mlaroommates@gmail.com
• by fax at work  +1-609-497-0243
• by phone at work  +1-609-921-7100 ext. 8305

To watch the video, head over to YouTube: https://youtu.be/XP80VtZuPQE