No Hand Sanitizer Found At ALA Exhibits

In advance of the American Library Association Midwinter Conference I reported that (scroll to the fourth item) 2009 was the year of hand sanitizer, and that little bottles of the stuff had surpassed pens as the number one giveaway item at professional conferences and trade shows.

So quite naturally I was curious to find out if many vendors at the ALA conference in Boston would offer hand sanitizer instead of pens. Much to my disappointment I discovered that pens still rule at the ALA conference. While nearly every vendor offers pens, I could not find even a single vendor giving away hand sanitizer.

Here’s a video that summarizes my hunt for hand sanitizer at the 2010 Midwinter exhibits:

Thanks to the following vendor representatives who appear in this video:
Jennifer Bradley – National Academy of Sciences
Henry Gross – Association of Research Libraries
Tom Porter – Learning Express
Trish – Language Learning Software
Renee San Jose – OverDrive
Cherene Birkholz – Action Library Media Service

6 thoughts on “No Hand Sanitizer Found At ALA Exhibits”

  1. You apparently missed LexisNexis and the spray hand sanitizer in a bottle shaped like a … PEN!

  2. Lisa you have been drafted for the “hand sanitizer discovery team” for ALA 2010. Apparently you have a keen eye for spotting hand sanitizer. Unfortunately I couldn’t get to every booth – and I did stop at L/N, but I didn’t get a chance to ask about their giveaways – I actually had a serious question for them – obviously a mistake. A bottle shaped like a pen just doesn’t cut it for me. I want a working pen that actually contains the sanitizer.

  3. EBSCO was also handing out tiny tubes of hand sanitizer. And I wasn’t even looking for it.

  5. Has anyone ever done a survey like: what’s the most popular giveaway item you grasped at an ALA conference? On the top of my list are Google brooches which can flash, and Mango T-shirts (because of the color, fresh and even delicious). Wish vendors could be more creative for Annual Conference.

  6. Interesting article and survey. Thanks!
    I was also looking for some hand sanitizer at ALA, but did succeed in my goal…
    But as shown in the video, I also got all kind of pens and pencils, which actually will be used for sudokus.

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