Well, it has started off with as close to a tent revival as 3,000 librarians are ever going to get! Michael Eric Dyson, the prolific and sometimes controversial author of more than a dozen books on American culture, dug down to his academic roots and to his training as an ordained Baptist minister and delivered a virtuoso keynote address this afternoon as ACRL’s 13th National Conference opened in Baltimore. There is no way to capture Dyson’s dynamic speech, which wove poetry-slam renditions and lit-crit of hip hop lyrics with dead-on impersonations of Bill Cosby and quotes from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The man can teach. The man can preach. And his message was that academic and research librarians have the power to radically change young lives, the wherewithal to make sure that the truth gets found and heard in an oppressive ignore-the-people-at-all-costs political climate, and the downright sacred commission to do both. Call me a sap, but I’ve believed it all along. I’ve heard it a lot from the the ALA and the ACRL in watered down, insipid versions that quote Jefferson and yammer on about democracy. But Dyson made me proud. He made me want to shout and jump out of my chair. I would have given him an Amen if he’d asked for one. . . and the huge ballroom full of librarians present did give him a standing ovation. Well deserved. If I don’t get another dime’s worth of inspiration out of the conference, I will be satisfied. Kudos, too, to Joel B. Thornton–a Spectrum diversity initiative scholar who will soon earn his Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. He introduced Dyson eloquently, gracefully, and with a lot of heart. Great start.