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Sunday morning I woke up late so I had to hustle to get to the Convention Center in time for the “Cutting Edge Technology” presentation I had chosen out of the three I wanted to attend in the morning time slot. On the bus, I saw Scott Muir, who used to work at DALNET cooperative at Wayne State, but now works at the Arizona State University Downtown campus in Phoenix. Scott reminded me that my son Derek had once been the “talent” for a DALNET promotional video when he was about 8. What a hoot!

The “Cutting Edge” session was supposed to be in the “Exhibits Stage” area so I wandered up and down the acres of exhibits until I finally found the tiny stage with hundreds of people crammed, standing around, and trying to hear the panel of speakers. Deciding it wasn’t worth it, and with blisters already bursting, I used the time-honored ALA trick of attending the next presentation that was closest to me in location. In this case, it was a very good session on institutional repositories. I got there in time to hear 2 of the 3 speakers from the University of Michigan (they are everywhere) and California Institute of Technology. They had lots of practical advice as people who had now done this for years. Since ZSR is just forming its Scholarly Communications Committee and trying to raise interest on campus, I noted how the UM speaker said it was most effective to sell the concept by calling it a service to faculty to self-archive their publications, rather than trying to sell it as an institutional repository, jargon that means nothing to faculty. I got lots of tips and caveats and questions to take back to our nascent committee. On the way out of the session, I ran into another former colleague from Wayne, Karen Bacsanyi, who said she was going to retire but hopefully come back to work part-time.

I ate a quick sandwich on the floor (literally) of the Convention Center and then bused up to the Mayflower Hotel to hear Theresa Chmara talk about the “Status of Recent Litigation Affecting Libraries.” I have long admired Theresa’s work as a First Amendment specialist at Jenner and Block in Washington. She is legal counsel for ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation. Since I recently signed on to write an article for the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science on the effects of filtering, I thought I should get back to the world of intellectual freedom. I saw lots of my former colleagues from ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, including Carrie Gardner, who is now a library science faculty member at Catholic University here in D.C. I cited Carrie’s doctoral dissertation in my own dissertation and book. Theresa gave a very lucid description of recent and current library freedom of expression litigation in the areas of patron behavior, censorship challenges, hostile work environment, meeting room policies and privacy/confidentiality.

Then it was back to the Convention Center in time to surprise Jack Walsdorf with a retirement celebration and cake at the Alibris exhibit. Jack is a long-time bookman who came to ZSR with his popular Book Lovers Road Show in April 2006. He has helped out at Alibris for the last 7 years and is a truly good guy.

My final program of the day was supposed to be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr on the environment but I was about 10 minutes late getting there due to Jack’s party so when I arrived upstairs at the Ballroom the doors were closed and they wouldn’t let anyone else in due to “fire code” restrictions. Blagh.

To conclude the day, Bill and I met my beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, at the Coutts reception at the Gordon Biersch Brewery. Elizabeth works in the library of a law firm in Washington D.C. and after a drink at the party, we went across the street and had a lovely dinner at McCormick and Schmick’s seafood restaurant. Aaaaaah.