Friday is jam packed.
I kick off at 7:30 with the First Time Attendees and New Members Breakfast.
My experience has to be the exact one in mind when imagined by the organisers. I am seated at a table with a fine group- a delightful mix of library students, experienced librarians new to the conference circuit, and longtime ARLIS and VRA members and mentors (including VRA vice-pres Brian Shelburne). We talk shop. We swap backgrounds and interests. Cards are handed out. And the food is okay! (always a make or break for me at any event...)
I have a particularly fine old time with Maaike from Cornell, whom I would love to visit on the 'crawl but Cornell just a little too far off the beaten track from NY.
I race back to the room to attend small babies and squealing toddlers.
I head back downstairs and accidently position myself in the wrong session (Case Studies II, which nonetheless provides a great talk on teaching visual literacy).
I sneak into Case Studies I in time to see Ryan Evans talk On Rehousing Special Collections of the Alternative Spaces. Just great. I cornered Ryan after the talk to rope him into the 'crawl. I'm particularly interested in the open source he mentioned in relation to the White
Columns archives. Must go over my notes from his talk and schedule him for my NY leg ASAP!
Leap into the elevator and execute some motherly duties up on level 25.
Back downstairs I head into the exhibitions hall. So many delightful objects.
I stumble across a specialist Scandinavian Art and Design bookseller. She is selling a book I have been trying to get my hands on for some time.
While I cannot in anyway decipher the text it contains, this monograph highlights a Danish furniture piece we purchased for the skylab a couple of years ago (so expensive we have been a little too afraid to actually USE it). This was the book was waved at us by the furniture seller during the sale, and at the time was only available through non-english language bookselling sites. The ultimate coffee table coffee table book!
Lena (Scandinavian book-dealer) was particularly lovely, and invited me and the girls to coffee back in Southern California post-conference. I think she will make a lovely addition to the 'crawl.
The family has headed off to the Mall of America to acquire the iPad2 which is released locally today. I slip straight into the next session: Open Plenary- Works and Fair Use: Can bridges be built between educational users and copyright owners?
My fears about this session being another dry, depressing coverage of intellectual property rights issues relating to libraries were immediately put aside: Jule Sigall is an amazing presenter and his enthusiasm for the subject translate into an excellent experience for me, one-time copyright officer / long-time legal dunce sitting way down the back.