01.23.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:22 pm by Greg Landgraf
My last bloggable event of the day was the ERT Author Forum, subtitled “Women of Mystery” and featuring the mystery authors Erica Spindler, Francine Mathews, Mary Jane Clark, and Nancy Atherton. I had to miss the last half for a planning meeting, but I’d like to share some juicy quotes from the first half.
Spindler: On mystery vs. suspense: “Over the years what I’ve done is start combining the idea of mystery and suspense. I really can’t let go of the drama and emotion that isn’t really part of mystery.”
On her history as a painter: “With paintings, you have sort of a skeleton of an idea and you go with it. [When writing] you kind of work with what you have and try to build up the emotion. It’s kind of like when you’re painting and it needs a little red—so you add it.”
Mathews: “It helps to be a high analytic [personality type] if you’re going to write detective fiction. I’m an INTJ—they’re all such attractive qualities that I spend most of my life in my basement alone.”
“Once your characters start speaking to each other, they acquire a life of their own. It always happens 300 pages in.”
Clark: “If there were no such things as criminals I literally would not exist because I was conceived by two people who met while working at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“If not for the public library, I definitely would not be writing books today… The library was it for me and my little sister.”
Atherton: On her school librarian: “When I walked into the library, Mrs. Bailey could hear the angels singing because she knew I loved books.”
“I write mysteries with no murder, no crime, and no detective, and yet I’m told they’re page turners. I think that’s due in part to the fact that I just absorbed everything as a kid.”
“I’ve managed to come this far by doing everything wrong. I couldn’t write an outline with a gun to my head.”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:07 pm by Greg Landgraf
At the Forum on Library Education, four supporters of the Draft Core Competences Statement, which is scheduled to be considered for Council approval at the Council II session on Tuesday, discussed the statement and took questions from the crowd of about 60 attendees.
While acknowledging that the draft statement is more general than some—including some of the assembled crowd—may desire, the panel argued that the generality is not a defect. “I’ve had comments about areas of librarianship that have not been included,” said Linda Williams, coordinator of library media services at Anne Arundel County (Md.) Public Library. “If you included every area or specialty of librarianship, you wouldn’t have the core anymore. You’d have the whole field.”
“I think the generality of the core competences is their strength,” added Janet Swan Hill, associate director for technical services at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It’s easy for people to focus on omissions when they are in areas of particular passion, but if “you can spend some time [looking], it’s there, it’s subsumed under something else.”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:51 am by Greg Landgraf
After an early (6am) flight, my morning has been spent getting oriented. This is my first Midwinter and things seem manageable, although they may look different once the full mass of people gets here and the events get into swing.
ALA is sharing the convention center with the International Sportsman’s Exhibition. No word yet on how much overlap in registration there is, but it looks like that show gets started later in the day and runs later into the evening than Midwinter—so it’s conceivable that some hunting librarians might attend both.
The Big Blue Bear outside the Colorado Convention Center
One of the first things I saw at the convention center is a giant blue bear sculpture outside the front windows, peering in. I originally figured it might be part of the sportsman’s expo, but it is actually part of the convention center’s branding. (You can, if you so choose, purchase smaller replicas.)
Also of note are the convention center staff, who have thus far been extremely friendly. Several are stationed at the convention center’s main entrance, and they’ve been tremendously outgoing in greeting and offering assistance to people as they come in.
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