After a ridiculously long travel day yesterday, I am safe and sound in my hotel. I can’t say I’m ready to plunge into the mind-numbing schedule of ALA, but it has been interesting being here so far.

I went out to buy water this morning and decided that I am not going to take photos of New Orleans while I’m here. I might revisit that decision, but somehow, while I was looking at all of the rebuilding, breathing that “mysterious-can’t-be-healthy” air, seeing the decay, the still-visible devastation in places, it just seemed wrong to take photos like some kind of tourist.

Anyway, I’m here and ready to work (after a nap — I missed my flight yesterday morning and didn’t get to my hotel until after 1:00 a.m., then I spent an hour trying to connect to the Internet with no success and finally went to bed around 3:30 a.m.).

So, it’s shower time (it’s really hot and humid outside!), nap time, work time, and maybe go meet friends later. But, before I go, the reason I started this post…

It’s great to be a librarian! Read on (article from the Associated Press)…

Librarians rolling up sleeves to mop, clean, gut

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Librarians from around the country will roll up their sleeves and break a sweat during their national meeting that begins Thursday, mopping libraries, moving furniture and even gutting and building houses to help revive their hurricane-damaged host city.

Nine-hundred of the anticipated 18,000 people coming to the American Library Association’s annual convention donated an extra $10 and signed up for volunteer work Friday or next Tuesday. That’s $9,000 more for a fund to help Gulf Coast libraries hit by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

It’s a first-of-its kind effort for the organization, whose meeting will last five days. But, as spokeswoman Larra Clark noted, “It’s a unique situation.”

The ALA is New Orleans’ first major convention since Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, and it’s one of the nation’s biggest: fewer than 3 percent of 6,000 meetings in the Destination Marketing Association’s database bring as many people, DMA spokeswoman Kristen Clemens said.

The ALA’s volunteer program filled early, said Jonathan Betz-Zall of Aberdeen, Wash., who will be gutting houses Friday. “I’ve been boasting to people: ‘This service project is completely oversubscribed, weeks ahead of time,’” he said.

Librarians across the Gulf Coast already are getting help from their counterparts through the relief fund, which has raised $330,000, and the ALA’s “adopt-a-library” program, which has matched 300 libraries and library systems nationwide with others hit by the storms.

Seventeen libraries or entire systems signed up to help Cameron Parish, which had four libraries open and a fifth nearly finished when Rita hit Sept. 24. Rita flattened three, including the new branch.

“The day of the evacuation, they were painting the interior. I was like, `Oh, man, this was so exciting!’ I never dreamed that was the last time it would be standing,” said parish library director Charlotte Trosclair.

Cameron Parish was among 25 Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama public library systems seriously damaged by Katrina and Rita. University and school libraries also suffered major damage from those and from Wilma, which hit Florida on Oct. 24.

Trosclair said she doesn’t yet know the full dollar damage to her system. Besides buildings, it lost about 80,000 books, plus DVDs, CDs, periodicals, microfilms and such. The books alone would cost about $1.2 million.

Blaisdell Memorial Library in Nottingham, N.H., (pop. 4,200) sent $3,000 — and one of the T-shirts that, along with a book sale and a community soup supper, helped raise the cash.

“When we get this, we just get all teary-eyed,” Trosclair said. “We can’t imagine people from all over the United States doing this for us.”

The ALA’s onsite volunteering includes work at the New Orleans Public Library’s main library and five branches, four colleges and universities, four private schools, a public school and two libraries in Jefferson Parish. It also includes work with Habitat for Humanity, Common Ground, Second Harvest and Operation Helping Hands.

Jennifer Lang, a member of the ALA’s black caucus, organized a caucus project to help gut and clean houses in the hard-hit Ninth Ward.

Hennepin County, Minn., children’s librarian Wendy Woodfill is giving her last day at the convention to the week’s biggest hands-on project: an “extreme makeover” at the Children’s Resource Center, a public library in New Orleans that was able to reopen soon after the storm.

Woodfill wanted to do something for a children’s collection, she said. And though she chose the CRC partly because she can start at 7:30 a.m. and leave at 3:30 p.m. for her plane back to Minnesota, she was disappointed there weren’t any projects in Mississippi.

“I have relatives who live in Waveland,” she said. “They lost their library completely and are avid library users.”