UP in case you don’t know, stands for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I had been there before, but merely driving through, though I did manage to get my second highest bowling score of all time there (164!). This time I went up to do a half-day talk at the Upper Peninsula Region of Library Cooperation’s annual conference in Marquette, Michigan. I decided to add a few days to my trip since I rarely get to the UP and it’s lovely. Someone from MetaFilter noticed that I was going to be up near Michigan Tech and invited me to do a public talk there, so I got to take a nice drive out to Houghton Michigan and meet some folks there and see the public and MTU libraries. I took a few photos: here is the Portage Lake District Library. I’m still uploading my photos of the MTU archives. Thanks to everyone for showing me around.
My page of notes from the talks is here. I tried to go the extra mile and not just link to keynote and pdf versions of my talks but also hyperlink the specific sites I mentioned so that people could click through to them relatively easily. We’ll see how this goes. One of the things I enjoyed doing was checking out the digital archives that were available online: Keweenaw Digital Archives and the Upper Peninsula Digitization Center Collections. I love this photo for example, with all the people commenting on who the people in the photo actually are. I used this photo in one of my talks.
Hey, I’m glad you got to go up there – it’s one of the wonders of North America, in my book (no pun intended). Beautiful country, just like Vermont: with many of the same social problems, too. I’m sure you were a big help to them. Next time you go, be sure to check out the Mineral Museum at Michigan Tech. It’s damn impressive.