Things are going a bit more slowly than I expected.
The morning rain was supposed to stop by noon. It didn't. Now, it's raining and lightly snowing, with a touch of sleet mixed in for good measure.
Did I ever tell you that Upstate is delightful in early April? Yeah, we have mud season here, too.
Since books don't like to get their little book feet wet, we're waiting for a break in the weather and planning out our next loading move in the event the rain keeps on falling.
When we load the van, the trick is making it all fit inside in a non-hazardous way. In other words, avoiding driver and front passenger concussion or decapitation from flying wooden bookcases is the basic idea. That’s one of the reasons we use uniformly sized boxes. That way, it’s kind of like an exercise in bricklaying. Done right, the weight is equally distributed and nothing shifts (too much).
The first things to go in are the aforementioned folding wooden bookcases, and that’s already done. Next are the boxes of out-of-print books, the contents of some of which I drew your attention to earlier this week. Maps, manuscripts, ephemera bins, display panels, folding tables, table covers, bookends and book stands – they’ll all go in last, along with the luggage, the LCD projector for my talks and other odds and ends.
In between, we’ll pack the “new” in-print books.
What sort of things, you ask? Well, we’ll have copies of a new book by Christine Rose (FASG) on using military bounty land records. The book was just was released two weeks ago. If you think that this would be outside your “area” since you had stay-at-home New England ancestors, you’d be dead wrong, especially if one of your guys served in the Rev. War, the War of 1812 or anything before the Civil War and thereby received a sale-able warrant. We’ll also have Ms. Rose’s books on courthouse research and courthouse indexes, her book on nicknames and her handy book on the Genealogical Proof Standard.
You also find a stack of Elizabeth Mills’ “Evidence” and “Evidence Explained”, as well as her “Quick Sheet” guides to source documentation. And yes, we’ll also Diane Rapaport’s “New England Court Records.”
Then there are the new GPC “At A Glance” laminated reference guides (much like the “Quick Sheets” in style and format) on Irish, Scottish and French Canadian research.
Of course, we’ll have many of the NERGC speakers’ books. There will be books by Colleen Fitzpatrick, John Colletta, Maureen Taylor and Leslie Huber. We’ll have books on a variety of ethnic topics - Irish, Italian, Welsh, Scottish, African American, Hispanic and …, oh, well, you get the idea.
Plus, there will be a number of new books that we’re fond of, but that you may have never heard of, since they’re not talked about much in genealogical circles. Nonetheless, they’re great references.
You can see them for yourself when the Exhibit Hall opens Thursday night. Now you know why we have four (count ‘em, FOUR) booths.
In my next reincarnation, I’m going to concentrate on rare stamps. Or maybe autographs. Anything lightweight that doesn’t require a strong back and a van to get ‘em from place to place.
Here's hoping your booth sells out and all you need to bring home are the empty boxes!
ReplyDeleteThat is truly a thought devoutly to be wished.
ReplyDeleteSadly, however, 30 years' of experience has taught us that, while the in-print stuff might disappear (at least some of the titles), the out-of-print books (really interesting but unfamiliar) are less likely to sell out. Generally, most of us O.P. types expect to haul at least 60% of the books back home, even if 10,000 people dropped by to browse!
Secretly, we hope that the large, thick-ish, heavy ones all find new homes...