OK, as promised, a laundry list of experiences, reflections and comments from my recent adventures in D.C.

Preface: Conferencing is all about networking and I met some amazing people at this conference. I've mentioned before that after almost a year in the blogosphere, I'd never met a single one of my online acquaintances. Can't say that anymore and I couldn't have been more pleased to share company with all of my cybercolleagues.

So without further adieu, an extended recap of the first day of CiL.

Opening keynote by Clifford Lynch touched upon a number of interesting topics centered on a theme of the "unintended consequences" brought on by technological development. One of the more provocative ideas he mentioned was a recognition that not all things written are read by humans (consider search engine crawlers as an example). He asked us to consider how publishing and writing might change if it is done with machine reading and automated fact extraction in mind.

After searching in vain for the library blogger contingent before the keynote, I stumble across Steven (already an old friend, even if only in cyberspace) and Jenny. Happy to have finally made some connections, I follow them to the first session where I have the privilege of meeting Michael, Aaron and Andrea.

First session is very inspiring. David King of the Kansas City Public Library discusses the conversion of his library's collection of Internet links to a series of subject guides in the vein of About.com. He showed how a search for Harry Potter would pull up a page containing not only catalog holdings, but relevant web links, library and local events, etc. Unfortunately, it's not live yet, but the user-centered focus on aggregating local resources was a compelling approach.

Next session covered federated searching, sometimes known as metasearching. So many good reasons to consider federated searching, which, for those unfamiliar with the term, allows a user to search multiple heterogeneous resources through a single search interface. The presenter discussed how federated searching addresses the issues of "prior knowledge" (where the user must know how to choose resources to be effective) and "multiplicity of effort" (where the user must replicate the search repeatedly in different databases). Using a single interface that produces a list of results from different databases also facilitates resource discovery. The most promising revelation from this session was that this technology is already in use at King County Public Library. Why not at mine?!?!

Lunch time means a trip to Pennsylvania Avenue for a meeting with Blogdigger's Greg Gershman. He's an interesting guy and the stuff he does has enormous potential. Steven and I have been particularly intrigued by his Blogdigger Groups, which allows creation of a group blog by aggregating feeds from the sources you select. For an example, check out Steven's Librarian Blogs or my Indiana Blogs! page. Greg has been very receptive to feedback and I've enjoyed being a small part of the development of this particular tool.

After lunch, I went to a session that dealt with usability testing. Not too much here, but a few things that reinforced what I already know. Jargon is bad and it's even worse than most think. Just remember that "library catalog" is incomprehensible to a large percentage of users and you'll have the idea. I was mostly interested in the methodology they (being the Penn State University Libraries) used in testing their site. They did a task-oriented comparison of different site arrangements and navigational structures. Capture software was used to record mouse movement, keyboard strokes and running audio of the user's experience. They conclude that site navigation systems are at the core of site efficiency. Nothing too surprising about that.

Last session of the day was the first (and as fate had it, only) chance to see Steven present, alongside two other experts in the domain of "keeping up": Gary Price and Rita Vine. Rita presented a list of top newsletters for staying current with Internet search, most of which I am already well familiar. Steven ran through his 10 step program for keeping current, and again, I already know his perspective on currency, but enjoyed his rapid-fire presentation manner. And he did mention me in his presentation as co-conspirator on Blogsource, so that was an exciting moment for my ego. Gary talked about a wide variety of resources and demonstrated how he keeps track of over 700 sites using Web Site Watcher. He also mentioned that ResourceShelf now provides a full-text RSS feed and I couldn't help but applaud.

The most telling moment of the whole conference came during the question-and-answer portion of this session. After all of the discussion by both Steven and Gary about RSS, an audience member stands up and asks "What is RSS?" And I'll be darned if half the audience didn't applaud at someone asking a question that they all had been harboring the whole time. Wow. It's easy to forget that not every librarian lives and dies by the same set of technologies. Those who are thoroughly acquainted with OpenURL may never have seen an aggregator before and vice versa. And similarly, you can't assume that just because you've presented introductory material on a topic any number of times, there won't be new faces in your crowd. I learned more in that moment about technology in libraries than in any other time at the conference.

After the session, I introduced myself to Rita and Gary. I don't remember too much of that conversation, except for the moment when Gary thanked me for writing that article I wrote last summer. I didn't even mention it, but somehow he remembered. Amazing individual.

Wednesday evening means the legendary "Dead Tech" panel, which explores dead and emerging technologies in libraries. I had heard a little about this session and was told it was not to be missed. And Jenny was on the panel, so it was a no-brainer. What no one mentioned was how "loose" the presentation would be. I'm talking about panelists with beers in hand and almost every panelist having some sort of shtick related to the theme "Fear Factor." It was pretty silly with a number of the panelists mentioning Steven in some affectionately disparaging fashion. Of all statements made over the course of two hours, none stuck with me as strongly as the declaration by one panelist that Virtual Reference was a dead technology. Hasn't even been born in my library and perhaps it never will be. It was a statement much discussed over the next two days.

The late night activity took place at Zorba's Cafe with some falafel, hummus, red wine and good Hoosier-centric company. A long day that finally ended with some much needed sleep in preparation for day two. More to come...