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Kirsty reports from the London Book Fair.

First impressions? Wow.

I have never been to the London Book Fair before, and I’m not sure I knew what to expect as I approached the forbidding entrance to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre. As soon as I was through the front door, though, I was swept up in a mush of people and sound, everyone and everything seemingly zooming in a multitude of directions. After a minor panic of “where the hell am I going?” I found the ‘Exhibitors’ door, flashed my snazy LBF badge and that was it. I was in.

Chaos presented itself to me, albeit it suited and booted chaos, and I decided the first order of business was to find the OUP stand. L605 my post-it note said. “That’s all well and good,” says I, “but where on earth is it? And more the point, where on earth am I?”. There was no use looking at the map on the wall. There were so many people peering at it that I fear it might have well as been a Tube map for all the good that was to come out of it.

But, we bloggers are brave and hardy souls, so I took a deep breath and threw myself into the throng. As luck would have it, the OUP stand has a large blue tower in the middle of it, so I located it relatively quickly, accdentally swinging my laptop bag into only a handful of other visitors. It, like its partners around it, was a seething mass of table and chairs, and what I presume to be very important meetings. I wouldn’t disturb anyone, I would just go wandering. Who knew what bookish delights lay in wait?

And here is the highlight of Day One so far: crabcakes. Freshly cooked crabcakes, prepared before my very eyes. Look! See?

They were delicious. And as if that wasn’t enough, look what I, er, accidentally stumbled upon next door:

Champagne, you say? Well, all in the name of blogging! See what I do for you readers? Such a hardship.

Catch up with me over the next three days as I bring you the best of the London Book Fair 2008 - and especially check out the edited highlights of tomorrow night’s Oxford World’s Classics Official Launch! I can’t wait. I love my job.

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The local library is hiring for a three hour per week job because they got some money and decided to expand the library hours. This is great news. Unfortunately, they need to hire a person to help out during some of those hours and it’s hard to find someone who wants to make a commitment for a job that pays less than $25 a week. The library — which I have been working for helping them with their website and their OPAC — asked if I would train to be an on-call librarian there and that’s what I’ve been doing.

The funny joke about all my weird techie/bloggy/travelling stuff is that I started down this path because I wanted to live in the country and I didn’t want to be a teacher, work in the post office or be a police officer. I mean I like books, love to read and love to help people, but first and foremost I wanted to be a small-town librarian. This is the first “job” I’ve had where I actually did that. All my other jobs have been at larger libraries, school libraries or the weird circuit rider library job that I mostly do now. So I got to train on things I’ve never really learned before like how to use the circulation system and the barcode reader, how to operate the lift, how to transfer a call, how to keep teenagers happy but civil, how to call people and leave a message that their books on hold are are in without saying what the book is, you know the drill.

And, it should come as no surprise that this work was hard, and interesting, and engrossing and kept me so busy I didn’t check my email for three hours which is unusual for me during a work day. Michael Stephens and Michael Casey discussed the need for many of us with specialized jobs to switch off with other people, walk a mile in their shoes, or work a shift at their desk, to get an idea of what their real challenges were. Its good advice.

One of the librarians and I had a good laugh over thinking about the idea of IM reference for the YA librarian who has to monitor the teen computer area and is rarely near her own desk. There may be ways of making it work, sure, but in the abstract it was a totally ridiculous idea given how she works. It’s good for techie people like me to know that before we start offering our oh-so-helpful advice. Anyhow, I had a good but tiring day. Apropos of Banned Books Week I also like their title “Going to the Field” which reminds me of this part of one of my favorite poems by Wendell Berry.

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.