Monday Memories--Medical Library Association Meeting 1993 in Chicago

From May 16 to May 19, 1993, I was in Chicago attending the Medical Library Association then headed to Mt. Morris to work on my publication project. As usual, the Veterinary Librarians had a great meeting. As I hopped off the shuttle from the airport on Sunday, I made a mad dash to the Shedd Aquarium with Melinda Saffer from Tufts who had also just arrived. We met up with our group which was having breakfast courtesy of the Aquarium Library staff. Then we attended a public demonstration in their new Oceanarium, and toured the facility with their veterinarian, seeing many of the back room medical facilities--even had to walk through a special tub of water to disinfect our shoes. There are huge lines to get in Shedd, so we were fortunate to be able to by-pass all that. (I still have the Shedd Aquarium T-shirt I bought.)

After that the librarians gave us a tour of the Shedd library, the largest aquarium library in the country. It was a lovely facility, and I jotted down some disease titles with which I was unfamiliar. The aquarium is on the lakefront only about a 15 minute walk from the Palmer House, site of the conference, so several of us walked back to the fabulous beauty of the flowering trees, Buckingham Fountain and all the yachts against the blue sky and water. And of course, there was the fabulous Chicago skyline, where every famous architect since the great fire has plunked down a building.

Then back to the hotel, registration, (my key was stolen and I narrowly missed an assault) lunch with friends, and that evening, Faxon (book vendor) took us to the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building. It was dusk, and as the lights of the city came on it was one of the prettiest sights I've seen. To show how chocolate improves the memory--it's been almost 25 years--I think it was a Chocolate themed buffet.

On Monday the distributor Majors (library subscription vendor) gave us a walking tour of Michigan Avenue with free T-shirts and breakfast. The Executive Committee of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section (I was treasurer) met for several hours hearing reports, discussing next year's meeting in San Antonio, what to do about journals from former Communist countries, etc. I attended a session after lunch, then walked down to view the new Washington Public Library, which is quite controversial, but was only two blocks from the Palmer House.

Monday evening Compact Cambridge, a company developing CD-ROM data bases (Compact Disk Read Only Memory) which were all the rage then, hosted an event at the Field Museum, and we toured many exhibits from Egyptian tombs to Guatemalan pottery. Between the time they had committed to this reception and the actual event, they had been bought out by SilverPlatter, another CD-ROM company, but the event was held anyway.

Tuesday the Veterinary Section had its Business meeting, and then its own programming. Two new products, one a prototype, were demonstrated. Tuesday was free day at the Chicago Art Institute, so David Anderson from California and I went together after lunch. There was a nice display on the 1893 Columbian Exposition, photos of its construction, "Constructing the Fair: Platinum Photographs of the World's Columbian Exposition" which I was very interested in. Grandma Weybright graduated from high school in June, 1893, so I'm guessing her trip there was a graduation present because there are some souvenir items in the Weybright collection from this exposition. Tuesday evening we had our section dinner at a Greek restaurant, Dianna's Opa, which I didn't think was very impressive, but everyone enjoyed it.

Wednesday morning I caught the shuttle back to O'Hare Airport, then the bus to Rockford where Mom and Dad met me at the bus, we had lunch, then went on to Mt. Morris. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent ferreting out missing titles, checking imprints, recording recollections, etc. for my personal library of farmers publication project.  Mom went to Washington to Julie Clark's graduation on Friday, so Dad and I did the Pine Creek tour and I recorded some of his stories--may call it "The Pine Creek Chronicles." (I wrote it up and distributed it with the cookbook I was preparing for the reunion that summer.)

On Friday I also had a three hour breakfast with Lynne and Sylvia. On Sunday we went to church and then out to eat with Aunt Marian and Connie Brebner. Dad drove me back to the bus on Sunday afternoon and I got home about 7:30 p.m. I returned to work on May 24th, and used two more days of research time entering data, making corrections in the data base and checking catalogs.

(Information taken from a letter I wrote to my parents June, 1, 1993,--and this is only part of it.  If you think this is long, imagine their boredom in reading it!  Somewhere I have photos.)