Administrivia, Retronyms, and a Beef

This year there are 1380 attendees at Internet Librarian, up from 1250 last year. There are 102 exhibitors -- meaning companies with booths in the Exhibit Hall.

The Publisher/President of Information Today, Tom Hogan, introduced IL attendees to a new word today. Retronym is "a word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development." The world had guitars, plain and simple, until an electric guitar was innovated. Now we call the original type of guitar an acoustic guitar. Other examples of retronyms are bar soap, mainframe computer, regular coffee, whole milk, classical music, cloth diaper, and day baseball.

Nancy Nelson, who was an editor for one of Information Today's journals, coined the term "Internet librarian" in 1993 as the title of a regular column in the magazine. “Librarians are becoming convinced that the Internet is desirable...” she wrote. Tom challenged us to enter a contest to find a retronym for a non-Internet librarian. One of the attendees sitting close to me muttered, "Unemployed librarian." Do you have a good idea for this contest? I'll submit it!

There is some grumbling about the lack of Internet access at the Internet Librarian conference. Web access in my hotel room costs $9.95/day, but that doesn't mean I have access to the web in the same hotel's meeting rooms. This morning it was announced that wireless access would be available in the main conference center. It didn't work in any of the meeting rooms in which I attended sessions.

This explains the delay in blog postings, folks. I have to come back to my room and plug in my computer!