A report from Library Land

I recently attended the American Library Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. -- the mother of all library conferences. According to an ALA news release, there were 19,513 attendees -- and I believe it. The gathering was so huge that I knew my college housemate was there -- and never saw her once in three days (she is a university library dean and operates on a whole different level of librarianship). What did I learn? For one thing, from the moment I stepped into the Convention Center to pick up my registration packet, I realized this was my tribe. Everyone looked a little familiar, even though I didn't know any of them. This conference was one of the first times I've felt real regret for not going into this field earlier in my career -- even though I value everything I learned from journalism and other jobs.

It was an exceptionally well-organized conference, which I suppose comes from having these down after all these years. Everything was in the room specified, at the time specified. Events started on time and did not run over their allotted time. A lot of conferences could take a few lessons. For me, it was a nice mix of literary celebrity and practical info. My only complaint is that not much seemed geared toward little libraries like ours -- and I know there are a lot of us out there. No doubt that's because little library staffers don't have time to attend ALA conference organizing sessions, or make their name in the field as speakers. But it's worth keeping in mind because I bet a big part of ALA's constituency actually comes from little shops.

There were some big name writers there -- Toni Morrison as the keynote speaker at the opening general session, John Grisham, Junot Diaz, Dennis Lehane. It was interesting to see the difference between librarians as an audience from a purely literary gathering like the Key West Literary Seminar or the Miami Book Fair. Librarians seemed purely appreciative, not needy in the way that literary eventgoers can sometimes be, and I liked that. Naturally all the writers made sure to give props to libraries and librarians.

Some other mostly random observations and quotes:

What is it with the librarians and Second Life? I just don't get it -- and I don't want to and I won't. Maybe it's because I associate it with a particularly unappealing former work colleague but it just strikes me as creepy. Isn't Regular Life enough, or more than enough to keep up with? I suppose this is just how others feel about Facebook but that's cool. No one's forcing you to do any of those things. It just seems like I never hear any references to Second Life ... except from strangely enthusiastic librarians.

"You don't walk into Nordstrom's and say, 'please show me your inventory management system.'" Stephen Abram of Gale, talking about the way we present our online public access catalogs to patrons.

"We are living in a golden age of comics and book design." Audrey Niffenegger, author of "The Time Traveler's Wife," "Her Fearful Symmetry" and the upcoming graphic novel "The Night Bookmobile."

Dennis Lehane said the first nine screenplay adaptations of his novel "Shutter Island" tried to change the story to have a happy ending -- and they all sucked.

The panel called "Isn't It Romantic?" -- which featured six very nice and funny writers of romance novels -- was held in a room that was way too small for the crowd, in stark contrast to other sessions that had much bigger rooms and were half full or less. I think that speaks to the dissing of genre in general and romance in particular (I didn't check out the couple of scifi sessions I saw on the agenda so I don't know if those had similar room assignment/crowd issues). Too bad -- because we know they're popular with readers and obviously with a good section of librarians, too. Speaking of stereotyping, I think I was at the exact median of age, body size and apparel choices in that room -- making me feel both at home and strange, like when I see Swedes whom I've never met and am not related to, but who sort of feel familiar.

And this isn't ALA or library-related at all but if you go to Washington and have limited museum viewing time, I cannot recommend enough visiting the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. They share the old U.S. Patent Office building and they are both fantastic museums that are also a reasonable size to take in. The Portrait Gallery side, in particular, offers a nice precis of American history at the same time as seeing some cool paintings. And I got to see a genuine painting of Elizabeth I there! (Yes, she's not American but she played a role in early English settlements.) The real thing! The guy who painted that was looking at her! That gets my Tudor geek on, big time.

Of course, if you're interested at all in libraries you will probably visit the Library of Congress -- I'm embarrassed to say this was my first visit there but it was so worth it. What a gorgeous building, and monument, to the mission of libraries and their centrality to our country. And it's a working library, too. The tour was great, with all the cool architectural and artistic details explained and they had a great exhibit called Exploring the Early Americas. Highlighted in this exhibit is a map from the early 1500s by German mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller, for which the Library recently paid $10 million. Why, you might wonder, would our national library pay $10 million for some German map? It turns out this was the map in which Waldseemüller named that big continent to the west after one of the early explorers: Amerigo Vespucci. OK. Now I get it.

Recent reading roundup

I'm currently immersed in one of this summer's Hot Books -- The Passage by Justin Cronin -- which I'm attempting to read with Salon's Reading Club (look for a future post contrasting that with the One Book One Twitter experience reading American Gods -- the short version is that I like the Salon experience better, at least so far). And there are a couple other titles I've read in the last month between everything else -- though now we've got the cable with the World Cup on and the Tour de France right around the corner so my reading rate could slow right down. (There are three copies of The Passage in the Monroe County Library system, by the way, with two requests pending so if you want this one you should get on the list.) But here's a report on a couple of recent reads before they get too far into the rearview mirror. My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliviera -- historical fiction set during the Civil War about a midwife who longs to become a surgeon, with lots of family drama going on. For some reason, this one just didn't grab me though I did finish it. It struck me as one of those "look how much research I did into the time period" historical novels. That stuff needs to come through not quite so obviously. We do have it in the Monroe County Library collection, just not at the Key West Library. I'll give it 3 stars.

The Big Skinny by Carol Lay -- a graphic memoir (my favorite genre in the graphic format, I'm finding) about a woman's decision, at around the age of 50, to finally lose weight and keep it off. How does she do it? Why, she counts calories and exercises more! Amazing! The book has a great opening where Lay is at a party and some woman is marveling at her weight loss, asks her how she did it -- and is deeply unhappy with Lay's answer. People would prefer there were some magic bullet, of course, rather than the old "eat less and exercise more" answer. The rest of the book is both Lay's story of why she was chronically overweight and the strategies she uses to stay thin. I liked it a lot. Not in the Monroe County Public Library collection, unfortunately -- I got it through Interlibrary Loan (thanks, Palm Beach County!). 4 stars.

American Gods -- Neil Gaiman's novel about a war between the Old Gods (Norse, Egyptian, you name it) and the New Gods (technology, media, etc.) on American terrain was chosen for the inaugural One Book One Twitter read and I jumped on it for two reasons: I'd been meaning to read that book and I was feeling mildly guilty for being Twitterphobic. It was an interesting way to get to know Twitter and I'm glad I finally read some Gaiman. But it wasn't the best way to read a book, especially this book. I wound up finally jumping ahead of the two-to-three-chapters-a-week reading schedule and finishing it in one big rush. And I liked the novel a lot but I'd like to re-read it, not according to some Twitterific schedule. This one, by the way, is in the Key West Library collection. 4 stars.

Speaking of graphic memoirs, or memoirs in graphic novel format, or whatever the hell you want to call them, I'd been meaning to read Stitches by David Small since it came out -- it got fantastic reviews. And we even have it at the library. But I hadn't gotten around to it -- until I was looking at the program for the upcoming ALA conference and saw that Small will be appearing there, along with Time Traveler's Wife author Audrey Niffenegger (whom I had no idea was an artist, too). Anyway it was enough to send me over to our small-but-growing graphic novel collection to check it out on Saturday. I opened it after work and I think I finished it before the sun was down. It's great -- harrowing, for sure -- like all memoirs, in the graphic format unhappy childhoods make terrific narratives. And Small's art is great, too. My favorite in this level is still Alison Bechdel's Fun Home -- but this one is a close second. In fact, the only graphic memoir I think I didn't like was one where the "author" was not the artist. I'm not sure why -- it just didn't feel authentic in some way. But this one did. A great book. 4 1/2 stars.