Midwinter Tuesday: Heard, Overheard, and Smelled

Strolling through the Midwinter exhibit hall just before it closed on Monday afternoon, I felt that traffic was light and wondered what some of the vendors would have to say about it, plus I wanted to pick their brains about what they were doing to prepare for revenue drops precipitated by the economic meltdown. I was pleasantly surprised to be told by several people that show traffic had actually been quite good and their company's financial health was not nearly as compromised as I'd thought it might be. Vinod Chachra of VTLS  told me international business was up and keeping the company well in the black. In fact, he said, VTLS is hiring, not laying off, largely due to international business. "We've had a record year," he said, and "we're investing it in R&D and customer support." Stacilee Oakes Whiting of SirsiDynix echoed Chachra, saying the company over the past 18 months has had 15 product releases and was also hiring. I asked what they had killed during that period, and she said WebCat, in order to concentrate on Enterprise and Library Lan. Whiting was one of several people who told me during the conference that vendors want to help libraries demonstrate the value of the products and services patrons receive for free by issuing a receipt with every transaction that shows what "you saved" by using the library instead of going shopping. The receipts would be similar to what some grocery stores do with their "preferred customer" cards—except that in grocery stores, the final tab is never zero. I remember many years ago someone wrote to me and asked what American Libraries could do to start a movement in this direction. It is an interesting concept, and maybe ALA's new Office for Library Advocacy can help us figure out how to take it national. I talked with Andrea Sevetson and Marina Azariah at LexisNexis, who gave me a demonstration of the company's expanded Interactive Statistical Database. They also said the company was doing well and subscriptions showed no sign of declining. A member of ALA's Government Documents Round Table, Sevetson's major complaint about the conference was not low traffic in the exhibit hall; rather, it was the Association's website. Echoing round table members at the Planning and Budget Assembly, she said it was frustrating for volunteers to have to train so intensively on the Collage content managment system and then have it fail on a regular basis. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, ALA staff received an e-mail message from Al Companio, building maintenance supervisor, saying that on January 27 at approximately 3:30, ALA experienced sewage water damage caused by the 30 East Huron condo with which the Association shares the building.   "The damage to the elevator car and shaft is extensive due to sewage that entered the shaft at the eighth floor," said Companio. He explained that the maintenance staff and a contractor plumber hired by the condo association had attempted to clear a blockage in a six-inch sewer pipe and "was overwhelmed by the volume of sewage that rushed down the pipe when they cleared the blockage and entered into our shaft." Ewww. ALA employees left the building due to the odor, Companio said, and condo maintenance people were mopping up the sewage that entered into the 40 East Huron lobby. While damage is being assessed and clean-up continues, staff will probably be staying home this week because "the stench may still be quite strong and could affect our employees ability to work in such an environment." Welcome home!