Oh dear, I’ve got a hard time keeping my eyes open, so I’ll just recount the facts. I’m sitting in my bed at the Latham Hotel, Philadelphia, where I arrived this afternoon (early-morning flight from London to Washington, then on with a regional jet). Not having slept very much last night, I felt like taking a nap right away, but I decided against it and took a 3-hour walk around downtown and Chinatown.

View from my hotel room

Chinese Friendship Gate

Chinatown Fire Brigade

Hello my name is… Jingumeicai??

City Hall

Rittenhouse Square

It was a good (if exhausting) start to the tour I’m about to take in the next ten days. Coinciding with the Mendeley beta 0.6.0 release early next week, I’ll be visiting a number of academic institutions along the East Coast. If you’re anywhere near and would like meet up, let me know!

Monday, Dec 1, I’ll pop in at Drexel University to talk to a librarian and hopefully manage to say hello to Jean-Claude Bradley.

Tuesday, Dec 2, I’ll be giving a demo of Mendeley at Princeton University. Afterwards it’s on to New York, where Thomas Krichel (founder of RePEc) has generously offered to let me stay at his place. Thank you, Thomas!

Wednesday, Dec 3, a demo at NYU, organised by Carol Hutchins (Head ot NYU’s Math Library) whom I got to know at the Science in the 21st Century conference a few weeks ago.

Thursday, Dec 4, I’ll take the Long Island Railroad to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. David Crotty (Executive Editor of the CSH Protocols) has kindly offered to take me on a brief tour of the lab, and also invited me to do an informal talk on Mendeley. Afterwards (and this is something I’m especially looking forward to) I’ll catch a ferry from Port Jefferson to cross the Long Island Sound, then travel on to New Haven.

Friday, Dec 5, a Mendeley demo at Yale. I’ve never been in New Haven, so I’ll probably stay there for Saturday as well and take in the atmosphere!

Sunday, Dec 7/Monday, Dec 8, I’ll be in Providence to meet Brandon King (and perhaps a librarian or two) at Brown University. Then, get a rental car and drive up to Hanover, NH. Update: Did a demo at Brown University’s Library on Monday morning!

Tuesday, Dec 9, a Mendeley demo at Dartmouth College. One of Dartmouth’s librarians, Ann Perbohner, recently named Mendeley the “Best Bet” for PDF Management – despite our still-early beta status! As you can imagine, we were happy as clams.

Wednesday, Dec 10, back down to Boston to have lunch with Aaron Swartz of OpenLibrary.org. Then catch a plane to Graz, Austria for a joint PhD students’ colloquium of the University of St. Gallen and my alma mater, the Bauhaus-University of Weimar. Update: Also managed to squeeze in a demo at MIT in the morning!

And that’s just my bit of the trip! At the same time, Jan will be in the Bay Area first, then fly to Indianapolis to demo Mendeley at the IEEE e-Science conference, also on Wednesday, Dec 10. We’ll certainly try to keep you posted with updates during the trip.