Gearing Up

Posted On Jan 10 2007 by

Seattle will be my 6th ALA conference as an American Libraries columnist, and my 2nd since the summer 2006 launch of Hectic Pace. It’s part of my duty to cover the exhibit floor for the magazine, and here I will admit it for the first time–it is my favorite part of the job. There’s something one cannot get from press releases, phone calls, e-mails, and webinars. This is not to say that one can get a whole lot more from a scripted demo by someone who has worked for a company for 2 weeks, but there’s something about walking the …


Size Matters

Posted On Jun 27 2006 by

It’s hard for me to truly believe (sometimes) that Google thinks of libraries and librarians as anything other than quaint. Bringing this feeling home to me was the size of Google’s ostentatiously humongous booth at the 2006 ALA Annual conference in New Orleans (thanks, Roy, for the photo!). Maybe they thought we were in Texas again. Don’t get me wrong, I love, envy, resent, fear, and try to emulate Google as much as the next guy (or gal), but there’s just something about that ALA booth that says “if we really had our way, we’d have the whole floor.” Maybe …