Ten days are more than enough in London. I am so ready to go home.
Today was a good day. We went out to Cambridge and heard presentations from ProQuest and the Royal Society of Chemistry. All were very good. ProQuest talked a lot about their project with the Paley Center, putting the center’s seminars, interviews, and show/movie clips online in a database, all with transcripts and subtitles, and indexed. You can even download clips, edit them, and email them. It’s pretty neat and launched today, in fact. I think it’s only available through universities, and maybe the NYPL.
After the talks, Anthony took us on a tour of Pembroke College Cambridge, his alma mater. It was very pretty.
After the tour, we all went off on our own, basically splitting into two groups. Of course in library school there are a lot of women. Today it hit me that I’m used to hanging out with men, between MB, YP, my brother online, hell even my boss. Of course there are all my other good friends, but I don’t see them as much.
So when I somehow ended up in the group with three men and one other woman in her mid-40s – ie, a grown-up – I felt a huge sense of relief. I think it helped that there were just five of us as well, instead of a giant group with three or four conversations going on at once. It was very relaxing sitting there with our drinks and chatting.
For dinner we went to Queen’s Head. It was a very nice pub. I got the fish and chips since I’ve been wanting to try it all this time.
It was GOOD, especially after having had a drink. I got a nice big piece of cod, and the batter was crispy and thin. The fries were tasty as well. 9.95 pounds. That plus 2.75 for the wine made a total of 12.70 (they gave us lunch at ProQuest).
While hanging out at dinner was fun, I was ready to go back way before most of the others. I’m definitely someone who needs her quiet time. It’s tough to spend a nearly solid two weeks with the same group of people, and to be away from home.
Tomorrow is a lecture in the morning and a visit to the Nature Publishing Company in the afternoon.