My bags are packed…

Darn it! Spring’s finally sprung in Chicago and I have to go away!!! Well, at least I had one lovely day of walking the city streets without mittens and seeing all of the happy people sitting outside in street cafes. This is the best time to be in the city. When it starts to warm up, it’s like a different place. It’s like the mood of the entire city has changed, or at least the people in it.

I’m leaving in about 2 hours for the airport to head to my interview. Because of the craziness of scheduling a flight when everyone’s on Spring Break, I have one free day at my destination before my interview on Friday. Then I’m flying back the night of the interview (and won’t get home until 4 am Chicago time). I’m sure I’ll be in hibernation — or a coma — most of the weekend. 🙂 But I’m making the most of my extra time there. I’ve got dinner plans with a fellow blogger who lives in the area and is full of great ideas for how to use all of these cool new technologies in libraries. It’ll be a lot of fun to share ideas in person.

I’ve really enjoyed preparing these presentations for my interview. It helped me to organize my thoughts on subjects I’m very interested in (as well as giving me the chance to play with Macromedia Captivate, which I’ll write more about when I get back). Once I get back from the interview, I anticipate having more free time and I plan to turn my presentations into a series of blog posts on OPACs, Integrated Library Systems, usability, federated search, link resolvers, OAI, screencasting, podcasting, social bookmarking, and practical uses for other technologies in libraries. I can’t wait to get started!