etc.

Feast of St. Agatha, virgin martyr and protector against fire. Also, birthday of Marie de Sévigné, 17th Century epistolarian.

Tired.

It was a good conference. Here’s a scratch-pad of presentations I attended, more for my own benefit than yours (I will add presentation links as they become available):

• How to Use RSS to Know More and Do Less [pdf] – Jenny Levine
• Always Fresh: Fast Content for your Web Site with RSS [pdf] – Darlene Fichter
• Keeping it all Together: Web Site Management Beyond the Launch – Lisa Goddard
• Implementing Federated Searching: A College’s Perspective [pps] – Carolyn Lam, Jane Foo
• Virtual Reference Users: Expectations and Perceptions – Diane Granfield, Mark Robertson
• Top Technology Trends – Art Rhyno, Karen Schneider, Roy Tennant

Also, the swag was good, although not as good as previous years. I actually stepped outside of my personal comfort zone and bought a few books this year (library conferences are supposed to be about free books, hence the comfort zone). The thing of it is that a wonderful local comics/graphic novel retailer had a booth on the trade floor, stocked high with piles of graphic novels and manga at 20% off retail prices. Here’s what I bought:

• Ghost World, Daniel Clowes (I’ve been meaning to pick this up for ages)
• Bone: Out from Boneville (vol. 1), Jeff Smith
• Joan (books I, II, and III), Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (manga about a Medieval saint? Resistance was, well, futile.)

But, considering that I netted 4 free books (most ARCs, some signed) for every book purchased (I count the three Joans as one; they were bundled, after all), I’d say I came out ahead. The free pile:

YA:

• Hero, Martha Attema (signed!)
• Sing a Song of Tuna Fish: Hard-to-Swallow Stories from Fifth Grade, Esmé Raji Codell
• Getting to First Base with Danalda Chase, Matt Beam (signed!)

Fiction:

• Gloriana, or The Unfulfill’d Queen, Michael Moorcock
• The Bird Factory: A Novel, David Layton
• Horizon Storms (Book 3, The Saga of Seven Suns), Kevin J. Anderson
• Regrets Only, Nancy Geary
• Detour, James Siegel
• Spin, Robert Charles Wilson (signed!)
• Blood Father: A Novel, Peter Craig

Non-Fiction:

• A Brother’s Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse, Richard B. Pelzer
• To Love, Honor, and Betray: The Secret Life of Suburban Wives, Stephanie Gertler and Adrienne Lopez
• Young and Hungry: Making the Most of Fresh and Affordable Food, David Lieberman