Thanks to the recommendation of Sue Polanka (of No Shelf Required fame), I picked up a gig from the US Embassy in Moscow to go talk about American library issues. Over the space of 6 days, I'll give four distinct talks on 9 occasions. The most requested one is about ebooks. Digital publishing may be taking off in Russia, and the United States is a little ahead of the game. But I'll also be talking about 5 trends in US public libraries (a focus on early literacy, ebooks, community reference, library as place, and access to technology), censorship (as discussed in my book "the New Inquisition"), and "chasing the library patron" (strategies for increasing library market penetration. I hope to learn as much as I can about Russian libraries, and to blog about that for American Libraries upon my return.
I've never been to Russia before, so that's exciting. I even get to take a train trip from Moscow to Nizhniy Novgorod and back.
One would think that Moscow at the end of November would be pretty cold. But it's only about 34 degrees there -- pretty warm for a place as far north as that. To someone born and raised north of Chicago, that sounds quite tolerable.
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Enjoy yourself there:)
I wrote a blog about my Russian Experiences here: What To See in Moscow