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After hours of being airborne, I arrived safe and sound right before noon (Seattle time). I hitched a ride on a shuttle bus to the downtown Hilton, settled in and went to the Convention & Trade Center to pick up the conference schedule. It is amazing the number of sessions and meetings that are taking place over the next few days. It almost gave me a headache…..You probably won’t be surprised to hear that after sitting on a plane and in airports for 7+ hours I was so fidgety that I ducked out mid-afternoon and explored the town during a nice run. There is a pretty pedestrian/biking trail along the Elliott Bay and I was able to run through Pike Place Public Market and past the Space Needle. Here’s my route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=654005.

I got back to business after that and visited the exhibit hall. It is massive. I just strolled up and down aisles but did stop and talk with a couple ExLibris reps who showed me their latest product: Primo. It’s a new product that is targeted at updating the user portal to include some of those features that users are beginning to desire: “did you mean” links, user reviews, faceted browsing, cover art, lay tagging, etc. I never did find Alibris, but I didn’t do anything as sensible as looking at the hall exhibitor map. But I know I will be making some more targeted visits tomorrow and Sunday.

This is a beautiful big city with THOUSANDs of librarians running all over the place (and they are so easy to spot). As I got off the elevator this evening, I was amazed to run into Elizabeth Skinner from FCPL (she’s one of the Digital Forsyth folks). She and her colleague had a horrible trip out with yesterday’s weather problems, and were diverted to San Francisco where they were put up overnight. They finally arrived today. Their sad tale made my travel day seem like a breeze.