library girls

Gwen and I had a grand time at the American Library Association meeting in DC today. It's one of the few times where we're not on the clock working a convention but instead are the attendees being catered to about every facet of something we're actually interested in. We think we made back the $25 entrance fee in all the swag we collected in the exhibit hall. We took away a respectable amount of stuff. We saw some people come away with three and four bags full to the brim with stuff - as bad as doctors doing their office supply restocking at medical conventions.

Our lone mistake was being too easily drawn in by the reps manning the booths. I had naively assumed that library reps couldn't be anything like pharma reps, but I was mistaken. We were only pounced on once, at the very beginning of the day, and after that, we kept to the neutral walkways in the very center and the outskirts of the exhibit hall, only venturing into an aisle when we were sure there was a booth we wanted to see, so that we wouldn't waste our time being talked at by reps. We also cleverly went through the exhibitors brochure and circled all the booths we wanted to see, which saved some walking since we could go aisle by aisle, and mercifully, the booths were grouped according to type - tech, public libraries, publishers, audiobooks, etc.

Our favorite section was the graphic novels, which were, poetically, on the fringes of the exhibit hall. We got a preview of a new series called The Plain Janes, as well as some nifty Vertigo/Marvel/comicbook superhero buttons. We felt very comfortable in this section because, as Gwen so rightly put it, "these are our people."

Google had a very cool interactive exhibit that shows you all their different search features, which go way beyond just the plain Google or Google scholar search engines, and we got nifty Google pins too. There were several freedom-of-speech groups, such as the Freedom to Read Foundation and ALA's Banned Books Week (Sept 29-Oct 6). I was given a copy of Bridge to Terabithia, which I've not read since 5th grade, but which is a really good book - I remember my 5th grade teacher crying while she read us the ending (btw, TONS of books given away and sold at this convention), and a couple of posters for upcoming movies (Dark is Rising and Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which looks suspiciously similar to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). There were a couple of mystery book booths, Poisoned Pen Press and Sisters in Crime, a pretty brochure about the special collections at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and a teaser about the Carlyle Letters becoming available online in July through Duke University. Thomas and Jane Carlyle wrote more than 14,000 letters to more than 600 recipients, including George Eliot, Emerson, and Thackeray during the 19th century.

Oddly, there were quite a few jewelry and clothing booths, and we were at a loss to explain how they were related to libraries or reading. However, we did like the purses made out of books. I did pick up a tea mug that says "tea" on one side and "641.3372" on the other side (the Dewey decimal number where you'd find books on tea in a library's collection).

We had lunch at Teaism near the National Archives - we needed a little break from the other 20,000 librarians. We had bento boxes with yummy sticky rice, cucumber and ginger salad, chicken, and sweet potatoes, and minty iced green tea. We need a Teaism closer to home.

I am now more than anxious to find out if TWU will let me into their library science program. They're apparently still processing applications - sigh. We did visit the university booths, although they had a dismal showing. UMD wasn't even there, even though the convention was practically in their backyard, and yet several out-of-state schools showed up. So I at least have some alternative places to apply to if TWU doesn't want me.

The National Book Festival is September 29th, by the way.