Weren’t able to liveblog this morning despite being prepared to because of (and I’m using the Convention Centre technician’s technical term here) “flaky connections”. I’ve shelled out $20 for a day’s wireless access but the access is not uniformly available throughout the building, with some areas seeming blackspots. Most annoying, and it’s meant that I haven’t had regular access for much of the day.
Apart from that the conference itself has been interesting, with some thought provoking talks (especially Andy Powell’s keynote this am), but I will have to distill my notes for a later post.
M wasn’t well yesterday with a bad gut, but I think he’s a lot better today and has been gallivanting around Melbourne with his aunts while I have been grappling with the connection. (hmmph)
Monday
Bloggers’ Dinner at Bhoj Indian Restaurant.
Meet 5:30pm at VALA Rego desk, Melbourne Convention Centre. Bhoj is at 54 Promenade, New Quay, Docklands.
Tuesday
VALA begins.
1-2pm Primo demo. Bridge Room 1, Crowne Plaza, 1-5 Spencer Street
7pm OCLC Dinner
Level 89, Eureka Tower
7 Riverside Quay
Southbank
Wednesday
12 - 2 ExLibris Strategic Directors’ Meeting
Bridge Room 1, Crowne Plaza, 1-5 Spencer Street
1:25 - 1:40 Blog @ Your Library (Showcase)
Exhibition Hall, Melbourne Convention Centre
(Support my colleague Sarah Edmunds; I was to have presented this with her but I will be at the ExLibris meeting)
2:35 - 3:05 Libraries interact: collaboration and community in the Australian library blogosphere with Kathryn.
5:30 - 6:30 ExLibris drinks.
Corporate Lounge. Crowne Plaza, 1-5 Spencer Street
Thursday
Last day of conference.
And this is not including all the exploring and adventures with M!
Published on 2 February 2008
in books.
While wandering around town with M yesterday evening, came across a copy of Seven Hundred Penguins on sale for $9 (marked down from $49.95)! As I have been salivating over all the wonderful covers in this book since I first saw it, I of course could not resist the low, low price!
It’s a retrospective, a look at the covers of Penguin paperbacks “from Penguin’s birth in 1935 to the end of the twentieth century”.
From the introduction, by Jim Stoddart:
Paperbacks like these are intrinsically vulnerable - they cannot, and will not, last forever. Despite being relatively common (in some cases millions have been printed, in others only a few thousand), these books yellow and crumble as each year passes and so their numbers diminish. Yet looking again recently at an old copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners (it’s now somewhere in among these pages), it’s incredible how well these paperbacks can survive. The paper, yellowing even the first time I read it, is even browner now, and the dog-eared cover somehow affirms the fragility of being, and yet the whole thing is intact. For a paperback to survive twenty or thirty years is a decent achievement. For paperbacks to survive fifty, sixty or seventy years, as many shown in this book have, well, that practically makes them worthy of antique status, and still they can be had, from a second-hand bookshop, for the price of a packet of cigarettes.
I was going to list some of the amusing titles in the book but it seems a bit cruel to do that, and not actually show you the covers.
More: another view of Penguin.
