June 3, 2007

I learned an important lesson last night…curtains are important when in a city that never turns off its lights. My room only has sheer curtains, so it’s not very effective. Hopefully, I will get more sleep tomorrow.

I began the morning by going down to the Trattoria restaurant in the hotel, since I was comped for having strangers wander into my room yesterday. The buffet was ok, but I was a little distressed when watching one of the waiters cough into his hand, then pick up silverware to set a table without ever washing his hands…I’ll skip this one next time…I did meet another SLAer on the way out, though, and passed on my extra free breakfast ticket to her…I felt like Santa Claus!

Next, I wandered over to the top secret Westlaw breakfast meeting (more coffee!). I met some nice people and learned about an interesting new service that will be launched later this year. Unfortunately, I signed a confidentiality agreement, so I cannot speak on this anymore for fear of death or being cutoff from Westlaw access.

Two of the people that I met, Julia and Lynn, became my companions on and off for most of the day. We went to Starbucks with another coffee loving SLAer that we picked up, Becky, and had a nice time. We also managed to catch a good portion of the Native American dancing back in the Conference Center. Amazing!

At 11 am, I was on my own in the EXPO hall. I spent four long hours wandering among the vendors and accumulating a wealth of loot. I learned a LOT, which I was not really expecting since I figured I was just going to get sales pitch after sales pitch. I did get a lot of sales pitches, but I also learned a lot from them, too. For instance, I found out that Elsevair (sp?) has a lot of great books that would fit in with our library, even though they are not technically a legal publisher. Additionally, I learned that a lot of law libraries are subscribing to market/industry/company databases in an effort to help build their knowledge base on various industries and legal areas. Not a bad idea.

In addition to a lot of information and business cards, I received a great deal of free stuff. A couple of the giveaways really deserve a mention. First and foremost, EBSCOhost is giving away Colorado pine trees in celebration of their efforts to become more “Green”. You can take the trees home and plant them! I think the best freebie that I received, though, was from this nice guy from Minisis, Inc. who was one of the first vendors that I spoke with. He gave me a USB drive! Very much appreciated since my current drive looks like it is due to break in half at any time…I also received two pedometers, one from Thomson and one from the Copyright Clearance Center. By bedtime, my count was 7262 steps, which is impressive, especially since I found the pedometers after already being at the expo for over 3.5 hours.

After the EXPO, I went to the LD’s Leadership Tea, where I met some of the movers and shakers in the division. We had a great conversation with Kgomotso Radijeng, the law librarian from the University of Botswana, about marketing libraries and library associations. I told her about my new toolbar and she seemed interested. Maybe I should write an article for the LDQ on my attempts.

After Tea, we went to the opening ceremony and saw all of the awards and heard Al Gore speak. It was a wonderful ceremony, and Gore had a great impact on us. “The revolution begins!”

I finished my night off at the LD open house. It was a nice turnout, and I ran into Lynn and Julia again. I met some more nice people, including Jean from Cornell and a few others whose names I am currently blanking on.

By 10:30 pm, I was dropping into bed. What a busy day!