June 25, 2016

 I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night, which made getting up this morning kind of suck. But I did get up, and got ready, and headed to the convention center around 8:30AM. Had I been a little quicker I could have caught the shuttle but I think it left about the time I was leaving my room, so I walked. And I was sweating by the time I got to the convention center but it wasn't as bad as yesterday.

Our first thing today was going through the convention center as a class. The goal was to wander around for an hour and then meeting the new dean of the library school before going to see Margaret Atwood speak. Right at the beginning of the wander the other professor with us on the trip noticed the Gamer ribbon on my badge that I got at the gaming event last night and asked what games I played. That led to a long conversation about video games and then I ended up walking with him throughout the exhibit hall and talking after we got separated from the rest of the class. In that time I picked up my first free book, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. Someday I would like to write books so I thought it made sense to get a book about writing them better. After getting over that first hump, later in the day I also picked up Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre, American Ulysses by Ronald C. White, Jr., Thornghost by Tone Almhjell, and A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl.

At ten o'clock we ended up at the booth the new dean was supposed to be at but he was apparently out walking around talking to people. And he never showed up. Not a great first impression. Several people wanted to go see John Lewis speak but weren't able to because we were required to meet the dean. And then he blew us off. Good guy. I suggested the professor take a picture of us looking sad in front of the booth so she lined a few people up and did just that.

And then we went to see Margaret Atwood. They are two very different speakers, and Margaret Atwood was good, but Michael Eric Dyson was way better. The funniest thing she said was that when she was a kid she thought 'child molester' was pronounced 'child mole-ster' and that a job where you rounded up moles sounded like a pretty fun job. She also talked a lot about Shakespeare, not only because he is her favorite author, but also because her new book is based on The Tempest. If she is as funny in her writing as she is in her speaking I should probably read some of her books. Apparently they gave out her new book at the end of the session but I left halfway through the Q&A. Oh well.

I wandered around the exhibit hall again, picking up those other books, and eventually it was time for my next session, which was supposed to be about the impact of the Japanese gaming market on publishing. The original speaker wasn't able to make it so a writer for graphic novels took his place and did a good job talking about how important graphic novels are, especially for people not interested in reading. I also learned that the company hosting the session, UDON Entertainment, has manga classics series that turns classic books into manga, making them more accessible to kids who may never pick up a classic book. At some point tomorrow I want to find their booth and take a look at them.

I left that session a little early so I could head downstairs to a session on digital conversion. It was a panel where the speakers spoke about the current projects. Two people created a digitization project for photos from the 1960s taken at their university. Another was working on creating a combination of a web crawler and a browser that can actually archive streaming media, which is apparently very hard to do at the moment when trying to archive a webpage in its entirety. The third person talked about the digitization of over 200,000 pages from newspapers, all of which are also sent on to the Library of Congress for their collection. The last panelist was in charge of the team at NYPL Labs that recently released 187,000 high-resolution downloads of public domain materials. I've actually perused that a bit so it was cool to learn more of the story behind it.

I had a little bit of time after that session so I decided to have a quick lunch. So I didn't end up super hungry like I did yesterday. I didn't have a lot of time and I didn't want to get something very involved so I just got black beans and rice. Probably would have been quicker to get it in a burrito but it was cheaper to just get them both on a plate. It was only four bucks because I think the guy only charged me for the rice, but maybe the price I was thinking of was only when it was in burrito form. I'm not complaining. Especially after I at the rice and it was kind of awful. It was either undercooked or overcooked. Maybe some combination of the two because every mouthful I ended up with several hard pieces of rice that I thought would break my teeth. I survived.

If I hadn't stopped for lunch I probably could have gotten a seat in my next session, but I did, so I didn't. There were actually several seats open but some were in rows blocked off by people sitting on the end, or they were in between two people, so I just stood at the back. The session was about the use of gaming to attract young adults to the library and it was really interesting. Two librarians from the Chicago Public Library spoke about how they used a giant Jenga set made out of 2x4s at public street fairs to attract attention to the libraries game programming. The second speaker was a librarian at the New York Public Library and in his game programming he made connections between video games and books. That might be video games directly related to specific books, either in plot or references in the game. It could also be games that were inspired in the development process by books. I got a lot out of that session.

All of these sessions had been in the convention center but the final session of the day required a bit of a walk. I went across the bridge, skirted around that hotel and continued on a bridge to the next hotel, which I then walked through and ended up on another bridge that connected to another hotel. Good grief. Once I got in that hotel I took the escalator down and then got out my map and tried to figure out where the session was. I couldn't find the room on the map so I found a helpful looking person who was directing traffic for another session and she was able to direct me back up the escalator and down a hall. Had I looked at the sign above the door I could see when I first came in, instead of at the big sign with information that didn't pertain to me on it, I may have found the room quicker.

This was a required session because it was a panel about research and one of our professors for the trip was a panelist. The four panelists just talked about their current research and it was all incredibly dry. If it hadn't been required, meaning that all twelve of us were in attendance, four or five people would have been there, and I get it. We all knew about our professor's research because we've all had him for class and he talked about his research in that class. I guess you could say each project was interesting in their own way but I wasn't feeling it and I don't think any of us were. I was most annoyed that I had walked all that way.

And then I had to speed walk back with my roommate and the two girls I went to Universal with. They can all walk so fast and I don't get it. I probably have the longest legs of the bunch which should give me an advantage in stride but I think their shorter legs give them a quicker pace, which is hard to keep up with. It doesn't help that I have also started to develop a blister on the bottom of my right foot.

In the end it was probably good that we went at that pace because we were able to catch the shuttle. My roommate opted to walk but I was kind of over it after the walk we just completed, so I went with the girls down to the shuttle. It probably sat there for several minutes after we got on but had I walked by at my desired pace I doubt I would have made it in time. So I guess the fast walking can serve a purpose.

When I got back to the room I ate the last of my pizza, looked at some conference stuff and then started typing up my journal for the class. I need to actually write it in a physical journal but I thought it would be better to type it up first. I'll probably change my mind when I start running out of time but for now that is the plan. I almost finished the first day of travel before stopping to type this.

And now it is ten o'clock so I am going to go to bed. An early night so I can get a full night of sleep. Tomorrow will be another long, full day. I am looking forward to what I can learn and I am hoping that my legs and feet make it through. As long as I don't have to try and keep up with someone's speed walking.