Seems Like I am Living in O'Hare

Today I am trying to travel back to Corvallis after finding a house in Eau Claire. Because my daughter works for United Airlines Cely and I are able to take advantage of some great travel fares. The only drawback is that we have to fly standby. Today is one of those days when the system doesn't work so well for us. We arrived at the airport in time to catch a 9:00 flight. That flight checked in full as did the 12:15 flight. Now we are waiting for a 5:30pm flight. After that it could be the 8pm or the 10:40pm flight. OR we could end up going through the entire process again tomorrow. It seems that Portland Oregon is a very popular place this weekend.

The important thing is that we found a house in Eau Claire and had our offer accepted. One more hurdle crossed on our way to Eau Claire. The house is just what we hoped for. It is the right size, near campus and in the 3rd Ward. Now we have to wrap up things in Corvallis and arrange for a mover.

Meanwhile I am sitting in the airport hoping to catch a flight west.

ALA Conference II

This year's ALA conference was more about seeing people I hadn't seen for a long time. One was a woman who I went to library school with. I ran into her and her daughter in one of the hotel lobbies. The last time I saw them the daughter was in a stroller. I've got some pictures in my camera that I will be loading to my personal site but I forgot to take the cable to upload them to my computer.

Other than the OCLC Symposium, the most interesting thing I attended was the discussion group I was co-convening with Jan Zauha from Montana State. The topic of the discussion was around the role of academic libraries in promoting reading and literacy. Most of the discussion revolved around recreational reading programs. One library was getting surplus from the local public library's multiple copies. That seemed like a good way for an academic library to work with the public library in town. Another library provided space for a small circulating collection from the public library so that their students could have easy access to popular titles when they needed to read during their spare time. Unfortunately, everyone agreed that students don't really have much time to read anything outside of their classroom. Most of the libraries represented around the table were involved with some type of readings or programs throughout the year. Once again over committed faculty and students led to low turnouts for most programs.

On Sunday night I was able to have dinner with Chris Cox who is currently serving as the interim director at UW - Eau Claire. We talked about the town and what to expect of Eau Claire and what to expect from the area. He helped me learn more about the library community in Eau Claire and the state. I was able to learn more about the ways things worked in McIntyre. We also talked about some of the things I hope to accomplish when I get there. One of the interesting things about Eau Claire is that there are three fairly new library directors in the city. I will be the newest. The director of the Eau Claire Public Library has been in his position for about a year. And, there is a new director at the Indianhead Federated Library System, the local regional system headquartered in Eau Claire. This might be a great time to get together and see what types of collaboration we can think up.

ALA Conference

Tonight I am writing from the ALA Conference in Washington DC. Cely and I flew the red-eye out of Portland and got in at 8:30. I got a couple of hours sleep on the plane but have been pretty fuzzy all day.

The first person I ran into was Chris Cox. That was pretty amazing. We had a little chat but got interrupted by a call from my realtor. I had to take the call because she needed to tell me the results of our house inspections. I will need to make a couple of repairs before the closing. I'm glad I took the call.

This afternoon I went to the OCLC Symposium that they usually have on Friday. I may have still been fuzzy but I was a little disappointed in this one. I was really looking forward to hearing Siva Vaidhyanathan but I didn't get what I hoped fore. He mostly spoke about the positive aspects of surveillance. He admitted that his view of the topic are reflexive of his environment; Greenwich Village in NY NY. Then he ended by putting more of the privacy invasion onus on corporations and not the government. I'm not sure I agree. His answer was that we need a rich dialog about privacy and surveillance in order to reestablish trust within our society. Not much to argue with that but not much in terms of insights from an insider.

Later in the early evening I attended the ACRL Dr. E. J. Josey Spectrum Scholar Mentor Program reception. I have been acting as a mentor for a student at the UNC Chapel Hill library school for the past year. Even though my protege was not there I did get to meet some highly capable and dedicated young librarians. It is good to see that the profession will be in such fine hands. It was also exciting to hear people tell me how lucky I was to be going to UW - Eau Claire. McIntyre Library is held in high regard. Ewa Barczyk, from UW - Milwaukee was there and welcomed me to the Wisconsin library community. I always look for her at the ALA conferences because my youngest daughter is working on an MA in German Translation there. I keep trying to find out if Ewa is seeing her in the library everyday.

More to come tomorrow.

Introductions

I have just set up this blog to serve as a means of introducing myself to the McIntyre Library and UW - Eau Claire community. The first thing you might notice about me is that I have a difficult time thinking up names and titles for things. I have always struggled over titles for writings, names for pets and names for our cars. The last car I named is called "Baby Blue". See what I mean? I have usually relied on my wife or our daughters to come up with the good names.

I kept putting off starting this blog because I could not come up with a snappy name. So here is where you come in. Help me name this thing. We can try doing it through the comments part. You all can suggest names and decide which one works best. Let's see if this will work.

Another thing is that even though I am not a baseball fan, I am still rooting for the OSU Beavers in the College World Series. And, they just beat Arizona State 12-6! Yeah! It looks like they may have a chance to do great things this year too. (Last year they won the College World Series.) I am really excited about coming to UWEC so I can start rooting for the Blugolds! I really want to attend some hockey games. When I was at the University of Denver I got excited about college hockey.