Last night's hunt for pizza with Karen and Michelle turned futile when all the pizzarias in our area had at least an hour wait. We didn't want to wait. In hindsight, we should have, but oh well. After a lot of walking and debating we ended up at a sports bar-brewery type place, which was a winner because a) the wait was only 20 minutes; and b) it was not prohibitively expensive, which most downtown Chicago restaurants are. (I see now why pizza and hot dogs are so popular in this city). We did end up having a good meal and a good time, and that's what it's all about, right?
Took forever for the whole dinner thing to happen, and while I wanted to meet up for a beer with Steve, it was getting late for this old lady, so I chose to go to bed. Roommate and I turned off the lights at 11 p.m. Then the incredibly obnoxious loud conversation started. Called the front desk. It stopped. Started to drift off... WHOOP BAM BAM... loud music... call the front desk... it stops. We actually fall asleep. 1:30 a.m. or so... very, very loud idiotspeech wakes us up again. Fabulous. Call again. We finally fall asleep. I am annoyed and thinking that damn it, I may as well have gone out and partied since I wasn't going to get any sleep anyhow. Oh well. :-(
Woke up with giant dark circles. After showering etc., trotted over to the CVS around the block and up the street to get a DIET COKE and some granola bar type things. The hotel and the conference center only serve Pepsi and darn it, that's just not going to fly with this girl. I ended up hanging out for 10 minutes waiting for the CVS to open, but I'm glad, because during that hangout I realized there was still a price tag on my skirt. Classy!
First program of the day: A "Digital Library Showcase" put together by LITA. I missed the first part, which I'm very sad about, because the presentations I did see were pretty interesting. One was about the variety of scanners and cameras that are available, and I'm pleased to say that once again, our choice of scanner at SNHU is validated, being noted as the best one on the market that's in the "not insane" price range. She also endorsed an inexpensive scanner (around $350) that is one of those flatbeds with the glass all the way to the edge of the machine so you can scan books without breaking their spines. I mention this in particular because later, I saw the scanner in person at a vendor booth. The vendor was of course happy to provide a demo. It was pretty neat although the quality is not preservation-quality -- but a great little machine for making access-friendly files from bound publications. You avoid cracking spines and also avoid the distortion that often happens when scanning thick books on a flatbed. Pretty neat.
Also saw part of a presentation about a project at Clemson involving scanning some giant maps; it was an interesting lesson in large-format scanning and how you really have to closely look at the numbers to determine if you really want to do that sort of thing in-house or send it out. Very interesting. I talked to her afterward and it turns out she knows the digital librarian at FSU, who I worked with as a GA. I love a small world!
Okay so then, program two. "Future of Libraries" -- an OITP breakout session. Took forever to find it because I swear, this convention center is a big labyrinth. The plan was to go to this session and join the OITP folks for lunch afterward. Soooo... I get there a few minutes late, and the room is jammed. Absolutely jammed. There are people standing outside the doors peering in, it's so jammed. So obviously I'm not doing this. I check my schedule and realize the "Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance" is at the same time, and wouldn't you know it, it was right next door to the program I was at earlier. Figures. So I scurry back across the convention center and pop in. I learned that I have a lot to learn. I mean, it made sense and all that, but I have a lot to learn about XML/XSLT etc etc etc. I wonder how I'll learn these things.
Unfortunately one of the metadata speakers never showed up, so the program ended early and I went back (aaallll the way across the conference center) to the Future of Libraries. They were taking questions and comments so I hung out for that, but honestly, I didn't see my OITP supervisor and I had absolutely no idea where the lunch thing was supposed to happen... and Leo had sent me a text asking if I wanted to do lunch... so I gave up and went to Chinatown with Leo and one of his colleagues and enjoyed some fabulous dim sum. I really hope that was okay. The whole thing felt like a comedy of errors.
To continue the comedy of errors, after lunch I planned to hang out at the conference center exhibits before a 3:30 program, "Collaborative Digitization Discussion Group." Now okay, I am not in a collaborative digitization project, but I might be someday, and I thought this would be a very valuable session to sit in on and network etc. Soooo, around 3 p.m., I check my schedule to see what room it's in so I can start to mosey over there. And it's at the $#@$! Hilton, three miles away. #@$@%#@!
I do get on the shuttle bus to that area of town, but by the time I get there, well, I have to be honest. I'm tired. I'm very tired. I'm really grumpy because I can't believe I screwed this up. And I am really not in the mood to stand around with a map and try to figure out where the darn Hilton is, and then try to figure out where the room in the Hilton is that I need to be in, and then walk in to what is probably a small discussion group, super late. (I'm really, really, really grumpy at this point). So I decide, never mind, forget it, there's a digital preservation thing that the lady from Clemson mentioned at 8 a.m. tomorrow and I'll just go to that.
Soooo, yeah, I just walked back to my hotel at that point and thought, yes, these are the trials of conferencing! I should've just stayed at the convention center and gone to something else instead... oh well. What're you gonna do.
So now I'm doing some much-needed relaxing in the hotel room. I bought a ticket for the "scholarship bash" at the Art Institute tonight. I'm looking forward to enjoying the art since I didn't get there last night. Why, I could just look at their Seurat for several minutes! Looking forward to it. Even though yes. I'm still tired. That guy next door better just go to sleep tonight like a normal person.
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