Category: 
Mother ship touches Home base Chicago
After what I hope will be the worst drive of my life we reach Chicago. My food poison reached worst stadium and I had to spend nearly 4 hours of the night trip to Chicago banged against bathroom walls trying to sit on toilet. My prayers were heard and we did reach Dominican University alive, where friendly security allowed us to stay overnight on campus. First thing in the morning was calling Michael Stephens to please come to the rescue with some proper medicine, which he did and which made it possible for me to get in front of his class, with Jaap and Geert to tell something about the tour and what we are doing in Delft with DOK, our own public library.The class was quit surprised when a whole group with Jenny Levine, Catherine, Stephen and our trio entered the room, but jumped to the occasion and came up with great questions. In the end we came up with the idea of spinning the bottle on the university floor with a few students and our group, thus giving our view on the library of the future. Wow, what great material. Fine people with vision, these upcoming librarians of the 21st century. Very hard to say goodbye after only a few hours. But we will meet up with Jenny and Michael in Monterey and play a mean Wii game in the mother ship. Turning our nose southward we hit the motorway towards Champaign Urbana and the Mortenson Center, where we have an appointment with Barabara Ford. Barbara has an amazing career and has, as director of the ALA, had the honor to meet President Bill Clinton. She has seen many changes, but definitely sees a great future for libraries. They are doing a teriffic job on cataloging all the new media . That is a big thing in the Netherlands as well. We did some footage (in dutch) on a Fobid Conference in september in The Haque . Whether it is about gaming or other technology, where Linda is working with in the Undergraduate Library or the education of librarians of other countries, where it is difficult to have internet access. It made me realize that the future we are thinking about is so different from the future in other countries. We need to explore and keep our course, but we should never forget and help those who are behind us. John Woods, did I already say you have our admiration? Free access to the web everywhere with reliable, objective information if you want, and good education programs. Wow we have still a lot work ahead of us.
You can also view & download the Quicktime Version below.
Comments
This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Erik, Jaap, and Geert! We had such a great few hours with you here in Chicago. We wish we could kidnap you and keep you here for a few days! But the Library Bureau of Investigation never sleeps and you have a long way to go so good luck on the rest of the drive!
Erik, you were a total genius to come up with the Future of the Library Spin the Bottle game - the students loved it and we loved it!
Hope you are feeling better and joyfully travelling west in your covered wagon!
Thank you for my LBI t-shirt! I will wear it in pride!
Wat een heerlijkheid deze reis. Met jaloezie en tranen in de ogen keken collega Droog en ik naar de beeldne van wild bunch in hun witte paleis. WOW……..en auw dat we daar niet bij zijn. Geniet and tour on.
M + E.
What a nice surprise to hear Jaap’s voice straight from the US high way. Just back from Berlin,where we visited the Berlin staatsbibliotheek, we noticed that they could use a bust from the boys of the shanachietour!
There’s still a lot to do for the LBI !!
Boys, I wish you a lot of succes, I am proud of this crew, stay healthy en please keep on telling stories.
a close relative
Hi you bunch. As I remembered, good old Billy Bragg once said that being a libary member in the US was an act of communism. Nowadays it seems to be an act of being world citizin. Keep on showing and sharing ideas and future visions.
We are looking forward to seeing you tomorrow! Where are you? Do you need some help parking that thing? Come hungry - we’re going to have tamales!
I wonder what the proper medicine of Michael was?
You go guys!
Hey guys, doing great as I can read it. Erik, have you not tried the good old medicine I took back in Ireland when we had that, well, what they called fish and chips in Ballyshannon (if my memory serves me well) and we described as “greasy salty nondercript stuff”. Anyway, my stomach fell apart but the good old “hot whiskey” helped a lot.
It is great to see that you can really reach out to people over there and truly share ideas and visions, and to see how welcome you are warms my heart and shows that we in Europe have some ideas about the United States that need to be corrected!
My personal excuses for now. It is obvious that you recieve openminded warm people. Great. Keep having fun, take care and keep me posted. AND BRING BACK THAT GUITAR. The thought of leaving a guitar behind………..
Can’t anyone over there help Erik.
Erik, Geert and Jaap! Thank you so much for coming to our LIS 753 class and sharing your library with us. It was exciting to hear about the things you are implementing and doing. I enjoyed participating in the “Future of Libraries” bottle game and look forward to seeing the footage online. I hope the rest of your tour goes well and will read about your progress on your blog.
Great video guys! Amazing and inspiring in itself.
Pilgrims on a mission.
Love the video, Jaap and Geert! Good job!
@ Kathryn: thanks
We are at grand Junction Colorado tonight eating at the Red Barn. Video of song will be posted tomorrow.
I love the stories, the movies are great. Fantastic tour.Keep up the good work. Wishing you a safe and inspirational trip.