I attended the Mid-Atlantic Radical Bookfair in Baltimore over the weekend. I moderated one talk and participated in another. Radical Reference also had a table, which was staffed by Bostonite Lana, Ohioan Char, New Yorkers Alycia, Julie, Rita and me, Californian Lia, and Megan from Washington, DC. I think that's pretty cool.
- The trip started for me when I left Barnard around 6pm. I arrived at Julie's place in Jersey City around 7:30. Julie can do wonders with frozen spinach, veggie burgers, pasta, and balsamic vinegar, btw.
- We couldn't find the directions to Gabe's house and got lost a bunch of times.
- Alycia, Julie, and I had a very giddy ride, nonetheless. It was like being at a pre-teen slumber party before everyone feels bad for making whoever cry or the host clumps up the stairs in a huff.
- We picked up Gabe in Philadelphia. Fortunately he didn't seem to mind how insane his traveling companions were, nor that we were two hours late.
- When got out of the car in Philly we found the directions, which helped us get to Baltimore only three hours behind schedule--2:30am.
- Luckily neither our hostess (Miriam, absent), nor her cat (present) seemed to mind how late we were.
- Miriam from the Baltimore County PL zine collection and Chuck from the Alternative Press Center joined Lia and me on the morning panel at the tremendously cool Village Learning Place.
- The talk was fairly well attended (20-30 people?), especially for its 11am time slot. The VLP was a public library but got shut down. Then the community turned it back into what looks a hell of a lot like a regular public library. I wish I'd had time to explore the place better--compare it with other Baltimore PLs, talk with the library staff, etc. I'm mostly curious how the community's vision and realization of a library differs from and/or is similar to what was there before and what is typical of public libraries in general.
- I tabled from 12-2. There wasn't a ton of traffic. I don't know if attendance was affected by the IMF protests happening in DC the same weekend. I also think bookfairs other than the biggies (London, Montreal, San Francisco) should stick to one day--get all the people there at once. We had Rad Ref flyers, patches, t-shirts, and a Ready Reference Kit. I also exploited the opportunity and gave away Barnard zine materials and sold a few copies of my zine.
- The talk I did with Gabe on Radical Reference as an example of community librarianship using open source tools had maybe 20 attendees. One of them, Johnny from Red Emma's was particularly enthusiastic about open source. If you're in Baltimore on a Thursday or Friday night, go by the book store with your computer, and he'll help you get set up or troubleshoot your open source software problems.
- The ride home was also somewhat fraught with error and hilarity, broken up with a trip to the Maryland House rest stop, where I smushed some pennies.
- After we dropped Gabe in Philly--and wrangled an offer to put us and perhaps some more members of Radical Reference up during ALA Midwinter--there was more getting lost. I was finally delivered to my spouse's apartment around 12am. Alycia helped me carry up the giant box of zines Miriam and BCPL donated to the Barnard Zine Collection. I'll be sending out a lot of dupes and not right for Barnard zine grab bags, so if you want one, let me know.