Among the librarians

Here we are in Washington DC, along with something like 20,000 librarians - way too many chubby middleaged women clutching tote bags - and I am one of those chubby middleaged women, so I am allowed to say unkind things about us. Today I am lugging my camera, but I haven't taken any pictures yet.

Right now I am actually sitting on the floor (and can't even see the presenter slides) in a program about NextGen library catalogs, hearing a guy from Georgia with a pretty, soft GA accent, talk about GA PINES, a statewide open source library catalog. The room is packed, even though in the last session I went to, on innovation in libraries, one of the speakers (pretty wisely, I think) said that rather than worrying about innovating the catalog, we should be innovating the library-user experience. This speaker from Georgia just showed the requisite circles & arrows slide, the outline of the server architecture, and professed not to understand it, which got a laugh.

Last night we ate at the District Chop House, which was OK, I had the salmon, but it wasn't as good as our late night tapas at Jaleo on Thursday - nothing ever is - this time we had garlic shrimp, oxtail w/garlic mashed potatoes, chorizo, also with garlic mashed potatoes, green beans with ham and yet more garlic, grilled asparagus with romesco sauce, and poached salmon with a vegetable stew. And flan, and I ordered rose by accident instead of red wine, but it was OK. -- Although we'll have sausages at the ballpark, while the Indians beat the Nationals, and I bet that comes close.