My wife was out of town for the weekend, and a good friend of mine just so happened to be going to DC for the annual American Library Association conference. He had an extra bed in his paid-for by work hotel room and invited me to join him. One bus trip later, and I’m in DC.

Something many people don’t know about me: I was a teenage librarian. In high school I spent a year working after school in my high school’s library, and then two years working in my town’s public library in their children’s department. It was a formative experience that definitely helped set me on my future career path as an educator. Given that, I spent the $25 for the exhibits floor pass.

In a lucky coincidence, I saw that Melissa Techman was going to be in DC on Saturday for the conference. A year ago at NECC, I went down for a day and had lunch with a bunch of special educators and a few other “friends of sped,” Melissa being one of said friends. In some nice symmetry, this year I got to go out to lunch as a friend of libraries with Melissa, Diane Cordell (a long-time Twitter friend that I finally got to meet in person), Gretchen Caserotti, Cathy Jo Nelson, and Kathy Ishizuka. We had plenty of good food and better conversation, as was the case last year.

Kathy is the Technology Editor for the School Library Journal, and later wrote me an e-mail asking for my impressions of the conference. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

It’s funny, this is the second year in a row that I’ve been to the Washington Convention Center and only been able to see the exhibits floor for a conference. The floor is pretty much like the floor of any other large convention: it’s heavy on the free stuff and phony marketing interactions. On the plus side for ALA, this convention didn’t seem to have any strange cult-like booths like the SMART booth at NECC last year.

As a special educator,I was really disappointed on the floor by the assistive technology pavilion, which didn’t seem to really have much in the way of assistive technology at all that I could see. I’d imagine that people with reading difficulties are one of those underserved populations that could stand to have more opportunities for access, and there wasn’t much of that there.

I noticed a definite trend toward making friendlier spaces for the visiting public. Lots of furniture and shelves that look cozy and inviting. I noticed in one booth they were featuring gaming stations to try and get the teenage demographic back into libraries. In the same tone, it was nice to see a good-sized presence of companies that produce comic books and graphic novels there.

On a side note: I’m somewhat surprised by the number of companies that specialize in moving libraries.

Just from the bits and pieces I picked up on from talking to some people and listening in on some others, it’s interesting to see many of the same shared anxieties that teachers and librarians share right now. Increasing technology and decreasing tax revenues are big stressors on both groups, and I very much get the feeling that we’re in the midst of a major reordering of the way the world works for all of us. I think the concern for both groups at the moment is to get out in front of the changes to help guide them in a positive fashion.

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over two million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

I have been proud to donate in the past, and am proud to contribute yet again.  Last year they added my local Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This year the children over there will see the following books from me:

• Where the Wild Things Are
•  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
•  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

So if you have it in your hearts and wallets, I encourage you to donate even a small amount to this great charity that really contributes to better quality of life for children stuck in hospitals.

• BOYS who don’t play videogames at all are at greater risk of getting into trouble than those who play violent games occasionally
• The violent crime rate has gone down as video game play has gone up
• There is a correlation between playing M-rated games and aggressive behavior, but that does not mean causation.  More aggressive children could just be drawn to those games

These are all bits and pieces of info floating around in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.

In related news, It’s getting a lot harder for kids to get their hands on M-rated games.  In 2000, 85% of kids were able to get adult games.  This year, FTC Secret Shoppers found that only 20% were able to access them.  The video game business is the best content industry when it comes to shutting kids down from getting at adult content.

• Blue Beetle #26 – A nearly all Spanish issue, and a delightful story that I (mostly) was able to understand
• DCU #0 – a decent introduction to the DC universe as of RIGHT NOW before things go crazy in Final Crisis
• Immortal Iron Fist #14 – if they ever get around to making that Iron Fist movie, it should be just like this.
• New Avengers #40 – Rewind to past events we glimpsed or had some ideas about from before and get a clearer picture of how the Secret Invasion started
• Thor Ages of Thunder – this book was beautiful and touched my mythology nerd core in all the right places
• American Way – I bought this trade at New York Comic Con for cheap based on vaguely remembering some internet recommendations, and I was not disappointed.  It’s a real world approach to superheroes, placing them in the midst of the civil rights upheavals of the sixties.
• Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle – I was at Borders and saw a copy of this opened on the shelf, so I took the opportunity to sit down and read it before the movie came out this week.  It’s a 30 year old story, and it’s great.  It was also pretty shocking at one point.

TV:

• How I Met Your Mother – some decent fallout from last week which could lead to some shift in the characters
• House – Nice joke played on the peons this week.

Movies:

• Iron Man – Awesome.  Great summer popcorn flick.

Games:

• Just Cause – I wrapped this game up.  It was actually a pretty cool ending that made use of the stunt system nicely.  As I said before, a decent enough $15 game, but not much more than that.  Clocked time, 25 hours or so, but you could do all of the story missions in under 5 hours easily if you don’t run around liberating villages, finding collectibles, and doing sidemissions.
• Mario Kart Wii – I’m really liking this so far.  Beth also enjoys it.  She plays with the steering wheel, while I prefer the wiimote + nunchuck.

Books:

• Our Dumb World by The Onion – This has been bedtime reading for a while now.  It’s great parody of an atlas, as it’s very dense but often hilarious.  For example, this bit on Hong Kong:

An exotic seaport off the coast of China, the Hong Kong province is plagued by massive, well-choreographed brawls that break out almost daily on every street corner.  The dazzling, high-speed, and acrobatic violence puts every citizen at constant risk of being thrown off a two-story balcony onto a pile of cardboard boxes.

• The Incredible Indoor Games Book by Bob Gregson – I haven’t looked at this book in years, and it reminded me of some fun games that I was able to play with my students for PAT on Friday.

Comics – I read almost everything, so some highlights and low points:

• Countdown #1 -  I already trashed this.
• Fables #72 – Cinderella is awesome.
• Mighty Avengers #12 – If you’re reading Secret Invasion and not reading everything else Bendis is writing at the moment, you’re nuts.
• New Exiles #5 – I already trashed this one, too.
• Ultimate Spider-Man #121 – The only Bendis book you don’t need to read if you want to keep up with Secret Invasion, and it, too, is great.  This is a nice done in one story that wraps up the typical high school baby project for health class.

TV:

• How I Met Your Mother – More Robin Sparkles?  Thank you!  Bonus for The Dawson balding.
• 30 Rock – Some delightful continuity this week that’s going to lead to interesting places, and, even better, more Will Arnett on my TV.  It also had my favorite line of the week.
• Lost – Poor Sayid.

Games:

• Just Cause – While it’s certainly not a great game, it was worth the $15 I spent on it.  It’s a fairly simple open world game overall, but I just find the concept of freeing tiny villages from tyrannical rule very appealing for some reason and always want to do just one more.  A grappling hook and a parachute both go a long way to making the typical open world experience more fun.
• Crackdown – This was another $15 game, and it was way more enjoyable than I thought it would be.  I finished up the co-op campaign with Brian, and it was pretty fun.  Again, having a fun way to move through the open world with awesome jumping abilities definitely improved the open world gaming experience for me.