last week I went to a convention in Boston called ALA Mid Winter. Its a time when librarians get together to discuss all those technical things that go into organizing a collection of books on a shelf. It seems easy, yeah? It's not, mates. These guys haveß discovered a whole science surrounding how to categorize human knowledge, and art too, and then how to catalog it, attribute it to it's original creators and then find and disseminate it quickly to use lay people who just just want to look at our picture books of himalayan tabbies having tea and crumpets, or whatever.

These guys are mad wack serious about it all, however. They rented this huge convention hall in the city and thousands of people came and looked at all the books and technology they had gathered there. The old man is a computer geek and he was all over the automated systems that run the library back offices.

for my part, the most exciting things were finding people who also hang in Second Life like I do. ALA has a whole island sim in which all of their member organizations and divisions have note cards and things to do. The coolest is a map that takes over your camera so that you can get a good view of the island.

Me? I was just there to keep Dewey's name alive. So until next time: "Support your local library, mates!"