It has been a bit of a whirlwind. I arrived in San Antonio (where my mom was born, btw) on Friday night – and because my bag did not arrive with me, promptly found myself a big Texas mall to buy myself some shoes and a blouse to replace the t-shirt and tennies I was wearing on the plane. (Tried to find a dress … no luck!) About half an hour post-frantic-shopping-spree, I shared dinner with ALA Edition’s Patrick Hogan, which was lovely – we chatted on everything from readers’ advisory to blogs to the publishing industry. I told him my top three requested blog/feed items from ALA Editions (editor’s letter/notes, catalog contents, industry/market “gossip”) and I hope that comes to fruition, maybe even in partnership with the already blogging/feeding (but who?). We ended with a discussion of how Library Thing just might be the next big thing. This inspired me to go home and catalog my books ~ as if! In between and meanwhile, Steven Cohen and I tried to tone down our incessant banter in front of our fancy new editor, but I’m afraid we still need to work on putting a lid on it (esp. when others aren’t as invested in our respective needs to be right! for shame!) I tried to get to bed early, but ended up ruminating for hours about library thing and readers’ advisory ~ it’s still marinating in my drafts folder. I do hope that Patrick and I can get together again to talk about working together on some of those blog ideas. A good start to the weekend, I must say.

Day two has been just as fun ~ and now I have the clothes I meant to wear. (They delivered my suitcase in the middle of the night last night.) Steven Cohen and I schemed some more on our Libraries Build Communities plans over breakfast, and ran into the It’s All Good crowd (can’t wait for my secret present tomorrow at the Blog Salon) and introduced Steven to Mike Teets ~ finally, his chance to tell someone (besides me) at OCLC that they ought to buy Library Thing. (Not a bad idea!) Later on in the OCLC station of ALA’s employment placement service area, I learned that you can show up at one of these conferences or midwinter meetings and pretty much plant yourself and your resume around a room full of prospective employers. Most of those there today were from large urban libraries (Boston, New York, San Francisco, L.A.) and I met a few soon-to-graduate MLIS students from UT-Austin. Over lunch I had the great pleasure of talking with OCLC’s Nancy Lensenmayer about her experiences in library school. What I’m just learning (that technology is just a tool, and not the point) is something she said we all have to learn over and over again. Funny how when I’m learning something for the first time, there’s always this feeling that the knowledge has always been there, just waiting for me to come around to it. Do we have to learn things on our own, or can we learn them from mentors and leaders in the field – just by listening? The rest of the afternoon was spent in various meetings with WJ-ers – all of us taking advantage of some time together and away from the office(s). I may have some new community partners to announce in the near future. Stay tuned…

Another highlight of the meeting so far has been my time spent at ALA Editions reception, where I got a shiny red “Author” tag to wear on (or shall I say over) my exhibitor badge. Isn’t it just the perfect thing for a nerdy girl like myself to get all excited about? This event was swarming with other red-tagged authors, some of them fellow bloggers, and current DeathMatch seems to be: library 2.0 is stupid vs. library 2.0 is all there is. Maybe I sit in the middle of this debate: library 2.0 is stupid and all there is. I admit that I put in my two cents along the way (although I had promised myself not to get involved) and then, as soon as possible, changed the subject to something like: so, what’s the most exciting/interesting thing happening in your library this year? (A conversation I like much better than the he said, she said, we all said, blah, blah, blog. Whew! We were already tired!) I made a few new friends that I hope to follow-up with in terms of cool community building stuff happening in their libraries, and cool stuff we’ve got going on at WebJunction to support such things. I ended the evening with a stop at WJ Advisory Committee member Loriene Roy’s reception to support her bid for ALA prez. Her theme on Community is right on target – and I wish her the best of luck. On the way out, I ran into Cassandra Osterloh from WJ-NM and we chatted about their current Rural project and her work as an Advocate and Moderator for WebJunction (thanks Cassandra – you rock!).

Many people throughout the day had very nice things to say about WebJunction and the work our community is doing to share resources so that we can all work smarter in libraries – this was great to hear – even better: the number of times I heard it. One person, very funny actually, said something about WebJunction being OCLC’s adopted child, rebellious, a renegade … maybe sort of like a teenager with a trust fund. Yes, very cute, but WJ has to work on sustainability just like the libraries we work with. The WJ “trust fund” is a unique investment in the library community, in all of our work, that we can’t afford to squander.

Almost forgot – I walked through the Alamo site today in between meetings. The surrounding area looks something like Main Street DisneyWorld, but the original building is extremely cool. I hope to get a few hours in the afternoon tomorrow to spend a bit more time checking it out.

And – although I missed it in person due to luggage debacle mentioned above – check out The Shifted Librarian’s blog for a minute-by-minute on the “Extreme Makeover” symposium. I’ve heard all over town today that it was packed, extremely interesting, and generated some great conversation. I also hear that they were podcasting – not sure of a multi-media recording. I’ll come back and add links when I’m my head’s not three seconds from the pillow…

So much to take in – I can hardly unpack it all. But I’m left with a cozy feeling tonight: that my colleagues are passionate about their work and about libraries. It’s something that always amazes and inspires me when I come to one of these things. That, and I feel very lucky to be here spending this time.