rowanf | Library trade show chatter

My first session this morning was on Visualization Tools for Patents. The first speaker was Dr. Kerryn Brandt from Rohm & Haas, a materials company of some sort (polymers mostly but also Morton Salt). He talked about using Micropatent and Aureka for visualization. I have MP but not Aureka and I was interested to see what I can do. I think I'll look into whether I can get access. The other two speakers talked about STN AnaVist and Thomson (it was Derwent) Data Analyzer - both of which are Windows programs and so not of interest.

After that session I spent most of the morning getting through half the vendors. I talked to IEEE, ACM, Basch, Info Today, Brodart and basically a lot of the usual suspects. I did notice that there were several Chinese and one Japanese info provider there. I think that is a first. I picked up a brochure from the Japanese folks. I sat down at the Wolthers Kluwer booth to listen to a presentation on ProFusion, a project management product for whose who publish esp. large publications with lots of articles, adverts and whatnot. It was interesting but not particularly relelvant to my work. But it was a chance to sit down. As it turned out I was the only non-employee in the audience and thus by default I "won" an ipod shuffle. *laugh* Thank you tired feet! I then went and got a chair massage courtesy of Reuters and decided that I was about trade showed out (and carrying too many magazines and such). I dropped stuff at the room and went in search of the Pizzeria Uno I had spotted last night and totally pigged out on a Chicago Classic. *moan* I really, really miss Uno's!!! Now I'm off to hear Gary Price talk about new web tools and then to the GLBT Caucus and the evening's vendor parties.