London Calling: International Internet Librarian

I’m pleased to say Free Range Librarian is now worthy of PR enquiries. In my capacity on this blog as Queen Of All She Surveys, I’ve been asked to announce an upcoming conference, Internet Librarian International, which is “a unique conference for information professionals who want to update their skills and learn about new strategies, products, and technology for finding, organising, and managing information resources.”

This conference combines three things I like: the Internet, librarians, and London. More to the point, I can make this an evidence-driven flack attack; Michael “Tame the Web” Stephens went to IIL last year, and he had a great time. If Michael liked it, a lot of us would like it. Read his blog posting, where he looks dazed but happy–probably how I would feel attending an international conference about the Internet.

How wonderful it is to rank among the PR-worthy. After the Webcred conference (much blogged on FRL), I remarked to a Very Famous Journalism Professor that I had posted a comment of his on this blog, and he replied, nice, but he hoped he would get some attention from The Shifted Librarian. How swift the fall from much-in-demand Filtering Guru to the biblish equivalent of Nora Desmond! See me slinking down a staircase in an outfit worthy of Lipstick Librarian, whispering in my husky voice, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Dempsey…”

Location, location, location: I haven’t been to London since 1984, when I was a USAF jet engine mechanic stationed in England (at RAF Lakenheath, half an hour north, which had a sign over the gate: “In Time of Peace, We Train for War.” Hooah!). A nice place to visit, though I wouldn’t want to launch a jet fighter sortie there. Very tempting to put in a proposal to talk about LII’s migration activities from proprietary software to database-driven open source–or, who knows, How I Became a Famous Podcaster. If you go to IIL, please blog it!