Midwinter Tuesday: Heard and Overheard

As my last Midwinter post (from the Denver airport, on a decidedly spotty wireless connection), I offer this collection of interesting, thought-provoking, or just amusing quotes from the meeting—weather heard or overheard. "I'm just going to stand here and have a wonderful time!" —a woman near the entrance on Friday, apparently after unexpectedly meeting the latest in a string of friends. "I've had comments about areas of librarianship that have not been included. If you included every area or specialty of librarianship, you wouldn't have the core anymore. You'd have the whole field."—Linda Williams, coordinator of library media services at Anne Arundel County (Md.) Public Library, defending the Statement of Core Competences at the Forum on Library Education. "My job is to kind of drag you along or pull the reader along and keep you surprised"—author Erica Spindler at the Women of Mystery author discussion. "I've managed to come this far by doing everything wrong. I couldn't write an outline with a gun to my head."—author Nancy Atherton at the Women of Mystery author discussion. "Badges and smiles, folks! Badges and smiles!"—demand of the Colorado Convention Center employee monitoring the entrance to the exhibit hall at its opening. "One technology we do not have is amplification."—Maurice York, chair of the LITA Top Tech Trends committee. Attendees were pleased to have wireless access, but the lack of microphones sometimes made hearing difficult. "It's the Karen show."—Observation at the Top Tech Trends discussion; three of the panelists were named Karen (Schneider, Coombs, and Coyle). "The test for the open source community is, can you move past your founding library or founding community"—Karen Schneider, community librarian for Equinox, at the Top Tech Trends discussion. "They use robots because they're efficient. I love automation but you have to not overautomate."—Marshall Breeding, director for technology and research at Vanderbilt University, warning against overexuberance after Schneider told of an Australian library where patrons can watch through windows as robots check their books in. "There are visible staff to assist, but you don't want to tie people into doing mundane, routine, mind-numbing tasks."—Schneider, confirming that the library hadn't overautomated. "Technology is like a rabid puppy. It's running around destroying your house." Karen Coombs, head of web services at the University of Houston, discussing the need to constantly upgrade technology and why grants might not be sufficient to help rural areas to get broadband internet access. "Bernie Margolis, proud and pleased to be the state librarian of New York."—Margolis identifying himself, to enthusiastic applause, at the Membership Town Hall. "If we could ask the president to commit $1 for every person in the United States to flow to public libraries through IMLS and state libraries, can you imagine what an impact that would be?"—Barbara Genco, Brooklyn Public Library, at the Membership Town Hall. "I'd like to encourage you to say thank you because [Obama's] done more for public records in two days than many administrations did in 12 months." Gladys Ann Wells, Arizona state librarian, at the Membership Town Hall. "Any initiative [Obama] has, there's probably a way that libraries can support that."—Heidi Dolamore, Contra Costa Public Library, at the Membership Town Hall. "I love my library!"—Colorado Convention Center employee, exclaimed as he passed the ALA Press Room. "About to drink second cup of tea without Marmalade this morning. Also, I just won the Newbury Medal for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK."—Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman's Twitter tweet announcing the honor. "Newbery, not Newbury. Also ****!!!! I won the ******* NEWBERY THIS IS SO ******* AWESOME. I thank you."—Gaiman's tweet correcting his spelling error—and enthusing with a bit of decidedly adult language. Apparently the news had started to sink in.