Off to Bangor (and a Short Vodnik Anecdote)

That’s pronounced BANG-gor, for all you non-Mainers out there. Not BANG-er. But however you pronounce it, I’m heading there today for a library cataloging standards meeting. What’s that, and why would I go to it? Well, I work for the University of Maine system, and that means there are a whole bunch of librarians at a whole bunch of universities. We all share the same catalog, but we’re spread out across the state. In order to keep some order to that catalog, the heads of the cataloging departments meet up three times a year to discuss how things should be organized, and to decide when the best time to start our ploy for world domination will be. (Seriously–the meetings would be much cooler if they took place in the war room of Dr. Strangelove. Maybe I should make that suggestion.)

We meet in Bangor because it’s central to the state, so no one has to drive six hours. I’ll be at the Bangor Public Library today. Actually, last week I was at another Bangor library meeting. I’m on the Central Maine Library District Executive Board, and last Saturday we had a state-wide meeting of all the boards. So I got to go to that. (I also had the chance to announce to a room full of thirty librarians from across the state that Vodnik would be published in a little over a year. They all now want to know when it comes out, and they’d like to do some signings at other libraries, too. I even got an invitation to the Bangor Book Festival for next year. If you’re a writer, you want to be a good library patron people. Librarians love books, and they love people who love libraries even more. Now if I could just arrange for Stephen King to read an ARC . . . His wife’s on the board of trustees for the Bangor Public Library, and I know the director . . . But sadly, that’s probably more than I’ll be able to pull off. Not really sure Vodnik would be his cuppa, anyway.)

Anyway. This was all just to say why I wasn’t going to be able to write much of a post today, but look at that–this post turned out to have some substance to it, after all. Have a happy weekend, all!

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