After the keynote speech, there was a block of time in the schedule called a "No Conflict" time to give everyone a chance to visit the Exhibit Hall. The hall was full of vendors selling or advertising everything from books to architecture. Book vendors were there, including Follett and Baker and Taylor, as well as our local and independent Kids Ink bookstore. IUPUI was there, as well, with information about degrees in informatics and librarianship.
Almost every booth in the hall had candy to give away. Clearly they know how to get our attention! It really did feel like Halloween in there. One design firm was even giving away full sized Nestle Crunch bars! I put my treats in the goody bag I received when I picked up my name badge as I browsed the displays. As I made my way down the aisles, I was particularly interested in a machine that re-glues a books pages to it's spine. It was much cooler than my Elmer's glue and binder clip method of repair. Alas, it was very expensive. Maybe I need to write a Donor's Choose grant proposal?
The refreshing thing about this particular exhibition was the lack of sales pressure. As many of us are government employees or working for a large business of some sort, we don't really go from booth to booth writing checks. These vendors were providing us with information, for the most part, so we can decide if we have room in our budgets for book repair toys or for a big remodel.
I didn't ask a lot of questions this time because I don't really have the authority to make buying decisions in my position as a library assistant, but I did eavesdrop on many conversations between librarians and vendors. I got a feel for how size and location (rural vs. urban) seems to affect the services or amenities a library offers. I heard a librarian from a small rural school discussing the addition of Follett e-books to her collection which made me wonder how different her space and collection must be than mine, which services a large urban population. We've had e-books in our collection for some time. I also saw that the architecture firms had fewer people stop and I wondered if the interested parties were public library directors or maybe school district officials.
The hall was a good place to get a feel for the diversity in librarianship in our state. Many ethnic backgrounds were represented at the conference ranging in age from young adult to senior citizens and in the hall they were intermingled in way that made me certain that knowledge increases empathy. I read an article in the Guardian online with author Neil Gaiman the other day on the importance of libraries in a society and this quote really stuck with me, "...because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s very hard to hate people of a certain kind when you've just read a book by one of those people."
References
Litt, T. (2014, November 17). Neil Gaiman: Libraries are cultural 'seed corn' Retrieved November 21, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/17/neil-gaiman-libraries-are-cultural- seed-corn?CMP=share_btn_tw
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