Boo...ks are Cool

Well... baby steps, right?

Librarified Minecraft

Hey look, I found a new blog to follow, Librarified! (At least go look at the design, it's lovely and very distinctive and fun.) Read about an awesome Minecraft competition at her library. There's even a review policy, which implies the author, Gretchen Kolderup, actually has enough people giving her books for free that she needs a policy about it. I guess I gotta do more book reviews! Or I suppose I should start by reading more reviews to figure out how to write good ones.

Which library bloggers do you aspire to be like? Which ones inspire you? This could be your comment of the day!

Central Archives and Library Opening

This is what I did yesterday! Well, I was there. I didn't actually do much except get woozy near the end of the speeches and scuttle away to duck into a side room where a nice man gave me water. There were a lot of people, it was hot! You cannot see me almost pass out in this overly wide video, but I am there in the background when the City Archivist, Paul Henry, is speaking. Look for me near the edge of the crowd to the right, speaking with three other women (you can also see the back of Alex from Only connect's blonde head - she finagled an invite for me, a mere student! I shook hands with many, many important people). Sadly, I am not wearing red (I am the brunette with a ponytail/glasses behind Paul Henry's ear).



I got to go on a little tour, eat sandwiches, drop some kind of cream cheese on my shoe, mingle with library folk (always the nicest folk around), and see Jim Watson. It was a delightful opportunity to get my face out there. These sorts of events are handy, not only for field-related chit-chat. When you run into people you met there, you have an excuse to go up to them at other functions and chat some more. (This sometimes leads to offers of tours of other library-related sites, which are very cool.)

The facility is quite pretty. The writing on the glass you can see in the video is from Samuel Champlain and Colonel By (I'm not sure on the last one, my event papers are elsewhere at the moment). The toolbox on stilts you can see in the beginning is actually a little house with alphabet letters cut out of it. There are shelves and shelves of new materials in there. It was like being a kid in a candy store with no money. Must. Not. Touch. The bay with the bins and conveyor belt is especially impressive. There are lots of windows all around. It looks like a beautiful place to work.

Thing 3 - Personal Brand

Time for Thing 3!

Thing 3 is all about 'maintaining a consistent image' and 'portraying an accurate reflection of who you are'. You are prompted to 'consider your core values and how you can convey those messages to those who meet you in person and those who find you online'. Things to consider include the following:

1. Name - Is it a nickname? Is it consistent across various platforms? If it's not your real name, try using something easy to pronounce.
2. Photograph - Do you want to be recognized when you meet face to face? Probably. Consider using a recent photo of yourself instead of a cartoon or other image.
3. Professional/personal identity - Do you want to merge the two or will you keep them separate?
4. Visual brand - do you have a clear visual identity? This could be the colours you use, a style of imagery, or anything that makes you stand out/be unique. It should also be consistent across platforms.

My answers bleed into each other, so have a big block of text:

I don't like attaching my real name to things online, where it can be around forever and ever. This is perhaps a product of being on the internet since I was fourteen. Never give personal info! Ever! Sometimes I toy with the idea of using my real name, but I can always go public later. And if you really really want to find me, you probably could. In which case you might be a stalker, which is not good. But at least I made you work for it!

Miss Scarlet was my favourite character in Clue. I always thought she was pretty and mysterious (let's face it, she's kind of a babe). Red is one of my favourite colours. Red is bold and memorable. I decided to start wearing red to any function with library folks I'd want to network with - a red cardigan or a bright red necklace. I thought that people might associate me with the colour; that girl in red seems familiar... That sort of idea. (I haven't worn red for the last clutch of library-related outings, for which I am sad. This means I am constantly peering into store windows looking for red things. Red things on sale, to be specific.) I wanted red to be a visual brand. The latest copy of my resume has a red sidebar. I changed my old blog's colour scheme to red and white, and from there stepped to transitioning between the old blog (Lagomorph Watson) and this new one, also red. I don't really expect anyone to pick up on the clothing choices, but I'm hoping it's working on a subconscious level. Is that silly?

As for images, I don't have a personal one at the moment. I'm sticking with the Clue theme for now, with a scan of Miss Scarlet's character card for my profile image and the black outline of a woman with a gun on my sidebar. I have some ideas for incorporating my real picture in, but I'll admit I'm shy about that sort of thing and I'll have to push myself.

I'm still trying to figure out professional versus personal. Mostly I try to be professional but hopefully amusing, and every so often I throw that out the window and put up a comic or link to a silly story. Okay, more than every so often. I try to think of what a potential employer might think if they happened across my blog; because I'm so new - I'm a student, not even out there very much yet - that I don't want to be off-putting until I've got some experience to back me up. On the other hand, I want my blog to reflect my personality. I do not care if it reflects what I had for lunch or how I feel about my dog. I don't even have a dog.

As for visual style, I like to keep things clean and simple, hence the basic colour scheme and use of white space. I'm more concerned with my blog being readable than pretty, and I want it to look like something you can leave on your screen if your boss is walking by. The lady with the gun might not work that way, but she's thematic.

In short: red, red, red, red.

Street Librarian in Portland

A very cool idea! Laura Moulton operates a project called Street Books, a mobile library that provides books for the homeless. It's bike-powered and uses cards for cataloguing.

Reading the comments attached to the article is... interesting. Quite a few are negative, some so negative that I'm not sure if they're sarcastic or not:

Portland - there's nothing we won't do to get more homeless people around here.

If we give homeless people books, what incentive will they have to get jobs and buy books like decent citizens? We should deprive these people of as much as possible, because to do otherwise just encourages them to go on existing. Maybe if we all try just a little harder to make their life more of a living hell, they'll go away and we won't have to (not) deal with them.

I see you are catering to the drug infested homeless camp to your left in the photo. might as well, clean and safe picks up their garbage every morning, Saturday Market scrubs up there poop and piss, drug dealers make deliverys to them as well as the Ned Flanders style Christans who bring them sandwiches and coffee. The only time they leave is to go to the liquor store up the block. God forbid they would have to go to the library to get a book on there own.

I... don't think they're trying to be sarcastic. Just when the comment thread was getting depressing, though, this comment showed up:

Sure, it's free to take books out of the county library, but you have to have an address to sign up for a library card.

Homelessness isn't the piece of cake some commenters seem to think it is. Think of an endless camping trip, only there's no toilet, there are no showers, you could be rousted and chased away from your campsite at any moment, and you have to deal with disdainful stares and comments from many of the people you encounter. You need an address to apply for most jobs, not to mention that you'll need to get yourself cleaned up before you can interview. You have no secure, safe place for your belongings so you have to carry everything with you at all times and chances are high that you could be a victim of theft or violent crime. Then there's the question of how you're going to eat.

I know too many people who were sure homelessness could never happen to them until it did. If you have a home in Portland to go to at the end of the day, you are LUCKY. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of taking that luck for granted and scorning the folks who weren't so fortunate, you could do something to share your good fortune with people who need a little help?

Postcards from the Edge (of the Reference Desk)

From Screwy Decimal System: Postcards from the Edge (of The Reference Desk). A series of postcards written by a 10-year-old for a postcard campaign in NYC protesting library budget cuts. They involve heads on platters and vague threats. (Don't worry, the one she finally wrote to send in was threat-free.)

Lisa Simpson and the Bookmobile

Reverend Lovejoy: “Oh hello Lisa! Can you recommend any books for my mobile?”
Lisa: “Ooh absolutely! Well you know, anything by Jane Austen.”
Reverend Lovejoy: “Jane Austen. Thanks Lisa, I’ll get right on it!”

(Reverend Lovejoy drives away and reveals his Book Burning Mobile.)



I snuck this one from The Lisa Simpson Book Club over on tumblr.

10 Funny Teen Books

Having mentioned the discussion regarding a Wall Street Journal article about the darkness of teen literature a couple of times, I was happy to run across Don Calame's Top 10 Funny Teen Boy Books.

When I'm on tour I'm regularly asked for the titles of funny books that might appeal to teenage boys. It's not an easy question to answer because, while there are a plethora of dark, supernatural, dystopian, vampire-werewolf-zombie-angel romance novels lining the shelves of the teen sections in shops and libraries, when it comes to humour - and boy humour in particular - the pickings tend to be slim.

Still, there are some very funny teen boy books out there (that will also appeal to girls, by the way). The best ones I've read so far appear on the list below. I've rounded out the list with a few books that aren't specifically YA, but I'm of the opinion that a good read is a good read no matter where someone decides it should be shelved.

I never had a problem identifying with male protagonists in books.

CPD23 Thing 2: Other Blogs

I've been poking around and adding other blogs to my Google Reader. There's a long list of participants, so it's hard to choose blogs to peek at! I've been going by blog names I like, mostly. Here are a few I've looked at:

• Lauren's Library Blog
• London Library Girl
• Nouveau Librarian
• Odd Librarian Out
• ook librarian
• Rachel's Smaller CPD23 Adventure
• Sarah Said Library

I'm still looking for others. Odd Librarian Out has a good idea - try to post one comment a day. That might help my comment shyness!

Hey, are there other students out there doing CPD23? Leave me a comment! Leave me a comment even if you're not a student.

23 Things for Professional Development

23 Things for Professional Development is a program for librarians (though I imagine you could apply tenets to other sorts of blogs as well). I am starting a day or so late. They really explain it best on the site:

So what is '23 Things' anyway?
23 Things is a self-directed course aimed at introducing you to a range of tools that could help your personal and professional development as a librarian, information professional or something else. Each week, we'll write about one or more tool from our list of 23 things and invite you to try it out and/or reflect on how it could help your professional development. Some of the tasks will be practical Things for you to try out straight away, and some of them will be less immediate: ideas to try in the future, or things you can start working towards now and realise in due course or when opportunity arises!

They have a list of Things to do. Thing 1 is to make a blog. I've done that already! I've had a blog on and off for maybe fifteen years or so. I am ahead of the game already. Or I guess I've caught up.

Thing 2: To start off your cpd23 blogging write a post about why you're taking part in the course. You could talk about where your career is now and where you'd like it to go, what you're hoping to learn from cpd23, which of the Things you're most (or least) looking forward to, how you feel about being a new blogger or how you'd like to improve your blogging, or anything else that relates to why you're doing this!

Right now I'm a student in a two-year library technician program. I've completed my first year. I started this blog in September 2009, when I was taking an Introduction to Library Studies night course. I thought it would help keep me up to date on various library-related things, which would in turn make me look so smart. I try to be professional without being dry as toast. I try to post daily, but that doesn't always happen. Which leads to another reason I'm taking part in 23 Things: post content.

Some days I don't find much I want to post about, or anything at all. By following this program, I will have at least twenty-three post topics. I haven't even read ahead, I don't know what this program involves save blogging and I think Twitter factors in somewhere.

Oh no, there's already a Scarlett Librarian. I should come up with something else.

Making Presentations That Don't Suck (Again)

I just like to post these sorts of things as a sort of bookmark, I suppose. How to make presentations that don't suck! I'm a little disappointed about the hot dog, though.

Internet Site Censorship in France

Sarkozy's latest plan for "civilizing" the Internet: a Great Firewall of France that government agencies to add URLs to without judicial oversight or public scrutiny on the basis of broad, nebulous criteria.

Well, that's pretty troubling.

Field Notes on Science and Nature

Field Notes on Science and Nature would quite possibly be my ultimate coffee table book. And regular reading, too, but look at those pictures.

Tension Scroll Bookshelf

I would like one of these Scroll Bookshelves, please. Bonus: hidden compartments!

Read More

Just a cute tattoo. Certainly a good sentiment! Also, that girl's hair really brings out her eyes. I've thought about getting a tattoo but have never been able to think of something so important/meaningful I'd want it on me forever.

Job Shadow

I got to job shadow at a public library today! My day included:

• Stamping things
• Folding pamphlets
• Talking to schoolkids about a summer reading club
• Eating pizza and cookies
• Riding around on the bookmobile

I had crazy amounts of fun. Maybe it's sad, but I like stamping stuff with a real inkpad and folding pamphlets. It's tangible stuff you can finish. Look, accomplishment! Right there! Plus I suspect I have always harboured a desire to stamp things in an official manner. I imagine doing either of these things for very extended periods of time would be less fun, but there's enough to do that you could break it up enough to be good with it.

Seeing the kids was pretty fun. They really do say the damnedest things. And it's great to see them enthusiastic, especially about reading. They seemed to enjoy my modeling swimming trunks for a guessing game, and I'm a sucker for getting a few giggles.

Supposedly library staff do not have pizza every day for lunch but I secretly suspect they do. That must be why they're all so funny and nice.

The bookmobile is a monstrous vehicle crammed full of books. Good books! The people who use it really really use it. The third seat in the back provides a bumpy ride. Sadly, the incinerating toilet does not make a FWOOSH sound when you press the button, but that was the day's only disappointment.

My feet hurt! Sneakers next time.

Working at a public library has a lot going for it, and I am very, very tempted.

The Library of Congress Twitter Project Continues

Remember that thing where the Library of Congress decided to archive twitter? They're still at it. While I've warmed up to Twitter since I posted about it last year, part of me still wonders if this is a worthwhile project. Just a small part of me. I'm more on board with Twitter being a reflection of society today (or at least society with ready access to computers).

Also to do with archiving internet junk: The Paleozoic Internet!

A Game of Spoilers

Also from the New York Magazine blog!

Game of Thrones Recap: A Newbie and a Superfan Debate That Huge Thing That Happened.

Game of Thrones (which sounds better than the official title of the series, The Song of Ice and Fire) has been adapted to an HBO show. It's doing rather well, with most of it being pretty spot-on, summarizing what needs summarizing and adding things in order to cut out vast swaths of pages. And if it's confusing, that's okay: the books are confusing, too, and I swear you're getting a simplified version with the show.

The part where Game of Thrones gets good is A Huge Thing That Happens that turns the genre standard on its ear and lets you know you don't know how this particular story goes. It's Huge. Absolutely HUGE, and until last Saturday everyone who'd already read the books were squirming in their seats, waiting for the newbies to the series to finally see that Huge Thing which makes most followers of the books such devoted fans. And it's been awesome to sit back and watch people toss out their theories while knowing what's going to happen.

The best comparison I can come up with is the big reveal at the end of The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader revealed he was Luke's father. I didn't see the trilogy until I was about fourteen or fifteen - Lucas had just rereleased VHS tapes with the original movie. My brother had gotten them for Christmas, so that afternoon we were holed up in the basement, spellbound. He'd seen the movies way back in the day. I knew what was going to happen, but I still loved every second.

In the age of the internet, you can get spoiled for just about anything. There's simply too much to keep under wraps: casting calls, scripts, reviews, reports. Writers sometimes put out fake copies of scripts for big finales just to throw people off the trail. It's always out there, being tempting. Sometimes you get tempted and go looking, and other times a random comment on someone's blog or journal just surprises you and you find out who killed Lilly Kane before you can see the damn episode not that I'm bitter or anything. While it would've been better not to know, I think, it was still interesting to watch the last few episodes.

And that's why I reread books, really. Because the second time around you can catch lots of little details you didn't the first time, and if you're the type of person to get emotionally invested in a story, you still get hit hard. (I required Kleenex at the end of episode nine of Game of Thrones. I admit it.) Getting spoiled isn't super awesome, but it's not the end of the world. It makes me sad when people refuse to watch The Usual Suspects just because they know the twist. It's the journey to get there, people!

(Awesome shirt designed by Olly Moss from the Threadless site. I have this t-shirt and I love it.)

Ode to a Four-Letter Word

From the New York Magazine site: Ode to a Four-Letter Word. Starts with F, rhymes with duck.

That word—which appears, like a crude jack-in-the-box, in the last line of every stanza—is why the book works, both creatively and commercially. Yet this popularity was not a foregone conclusion. Like sex, alcohol, nudity, and drugs, swearing sets off the great American seesaw of schoolmarmish horror and schoolyardish glee, and it can be hard to predict whether a writer who curses will wind up exalted or excoriated.

That just seemed like such an apt description. Anyway, food for thought regarding the use of language and the appropriateness of a good cuss word now and again. Words are meant to express concepts, yes?

Captain James T. Librarian

I really just want to go to bed. Behold:



The creepy smile at 0:15 amuses me. Also, Kirk would've been a terrible librarian.

"You can! Find... that book... in section... six! Hundred!"
Hitting on all the lady library patrons.
Throwing styrofoam rocks around.

MADNESS.

Throwing Books Out

There's a pile of books in my bedroom. They are mostly books my mother has already read: we both like thrillers and mysteries. She reads a lot faster than I do (mostly because I got hooked on computers and the internet at age fourteen and now only take time to read actual books before I go to bed, but I swear I used to go through them really fast), so this pile of books is ever-growing. It is a backlog. There are many. They are legion.

On my bookshelf, meticulously custom-built by a very handy neighbour to be so shallow as to only hold paperbacks, there are books I have read more than once. I cleaned out a big batch the last time I rearranged my bedroom to only contain multiple read books, but now there are clingers. There are books adding up, getting wedged onto the shelves. I'm really not sure I'll read The Magicians again, but it's on the shelf, stacked on top of two volumes of the Harry Potter series (have read multiple times, will probably read again). Next to that, Library of the Dead is sandwiched between On Stranger Tides* (will definitely read again) and the short story collection Fragile Things (should read again, don't recall what's in it). I don't think I'll bother reading Library of the Dead again, but it's there, cluttering up the works. I do not want to get rid of it. I do not want to get rid of any of the books. I do not want to donate them. I want to horde them forever.

Not all books, mind you. I finished one called Sizzle that I disliked so much I've been stalling on adding it to the 'books read' sidebar over to the right there. I could drop that sucker into a recycling bin, no problem. But MOST books... they linger.

I am reminded I must weed by a post by someone named Tom O'Hare in Brutish & Short, found while I rummaged about the interwebs for something to post about.

I realize that I use this weekly space to talk about my personal life too much, and I frankly don’t care. Because today, before I disclose the most wonderful things you missed on the blog this week, I would like to discuss books. And I would particularly like to discuss the newfound joy I feel when I throw books the fuck away.

I can't help it, I enjoy a foul-mouthed discussion. It's funny, read it over, think about the books on your shelf (or piled next to your dresser) and remember:

...Books are just words written on paper. They’re not fundamentally different from blogs or newspapers, except for the fact that both of those media lend themselves quite a bit more easily to the process of a) consumption and b) immediate disregard. In other words, you buy a book and you’re expected to keep it. Even after it’s gotten all of the use it’s ever going to get, you’re expected to keep it. Display it. Put it on your bookshelves and watch the gawkers gawk. Even if 90+% of those books will never be touched again, we feel a compulsion to hold onto them. To forefront them. To amass them, even though nobody will ever read them again.

* On Stranger Tides has nothing to do with the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that recently came out. Or, I suppose, very little to do with said movie. They bought the license essentially because the book and the movie shared two plot points: Blackbeard and the fountain of youth, and I guess they were trying to cover their asses or something. But anyway, read On Stranger Tides, because it is a wonderful book and I quite like Tim Powers.

The Girl With the Bad Cover of The Immigrant Song

I have a problem with Hollywood's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie:




WHY DID YOU MESS WITH THE IMMIGRANT SONG? Karen O, I expected better from you. Insert commentary on Hollywood remaking movies it doesn't need to remake subtitles book adaptations blah blah blah here. Don't mess with Zeppelin.

Diane Duane on Darkness in Teen Literature

From the sounds of it, this whole Wall Street Journal 'teen literature is too dark' thing is really getting talked about, at least in some circles. To the point where people are getting sick of it!

Anyway, Diane Duane (a YA author) has this to say on the subject:

What I found while doing one-to-one therapy with adolescent patients is that to successfully start working through their problems, what they initially needed more than anything else was confirmation and acknowledgement from those around them that the problems existed in the first place – that they weren’t unique or alone in their situation, that other people knew about it and that it was real. Books dealing with the problem in question were and are often a useful tool to help that acknowledgement get started, and even (in some cases) in getting a patient past their own denial that they had any such difficulty at all.

When I was practicing, such books were often painfully dry and didactic, and I wish there’d been more young adult fiction available on such subjects… for fiction (especially when done well) tends to lecture less than nonfiction and is more likely to be successfully internalized because you’re hearing, not a dry recitation of fact, but someone’s voice. Young adult novels that deal honestly with such issues unquestionably have value for teens groping their way toward understanding of how to tackle their problems. They invite them into the dialogue: they make the troubled teen part of the solution. And at the very least, they let their readers know that they’re not alone. There are times when that knowledge is enough to mean the difference between life and death. Here, without any doubt whatever, YA really does save.

What a gigantic quote. She has a lot more to say, too, if you care to follow the link. Again (I feel like I say this every time the subject comes up), the sense of feeling alone is a big problem for kids, or even for grown-ups, and having a book that makes someone feel less alone is often helpful.

Super Databases

Oh my gosh this is exciting: EBSCO and H.W. Wilson will be combined into 'super databases'. Among other features, it will include results for 'use for' and 'see also' terms of keywords, presumably removing a step for the user. I will miss access to the school's databases.

Search Engine and Navel-Gazing

I tried really hard to come up with a post yesterday so I wouldn't break my streak. I combed through a bunch of bookmarks and everything and came up with zilch, but today - today, my friends, I will post twice. I will remain on the wagon.

(I recently read a piece on Walt Crawford's blog about not posting due to obligation, but when you have something to say, and it made me think a little about the goal of this blog, to find something library-related each day. Is that useless? I don't think so. I can't claim my blog is terribly deep; most of my content is picked from other blogs. But really, no one has to read it. It's a useful resource for me. It's incentive to keep up to date on things going on in the library world, even if I don't have anything really meaningful to say about them. And I may not post about them, but I do read the material. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not posting for an audience so much as for myself. If you'd like to come along for the ride, you're more than welcome. Comment if you like!)

Right. Where was I? Oh. Look, a comic!

From Speed Bump.

Wall Street Journal Young Adult Literature Faceoff

Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote an article about how dark young adult (YA) fiction is for the Wall Street Journal. It has some pretty loaded language about censorship/banning:

In the book trade, this is known as "banning." In the parenting trade, however, we call this "judgment" or "taste."

I was chatting with a friend who works as a librarian at a high school.

Me: "While I understand censorship is not fundamentally bad, man, what an asshole way to phrase it."

My friend: "See, there's no objection by anybody to a parent making decisions about what their individual kids read. It's when they try to say what ALL kids should read that the asshole comes out."

The comments section of the article is a pretty interesting read, too, including this bit that just makes me wince:

"Young Adult" fiction is hack-work, ground out to a publisher's guidelines. Read, and give, real literature. It doesn't come in categories. For a 13 year old: Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities", with character development, good and evil, moral complexity, sentiment and love... There is lot's more, a library-full. Supernatural? The Turn of the Screw. Horror? Poe. She is the right age for Anne Frank's Diary (not some pathetic Judy Blume imitation).

A good rule of thumb: Nothing less than 100 years old (I broke that rule with Anne Frank). Classics are classics because they have passed the test of time. There are more recent works of merit, but you have to separate them from mounds of trash.

Why would teenagers want to read about people their own age experiencing lives they can relate to? CRAZY TALK. It's like forcing everyone to wear hiking boots. Yes, they're very practical and sturdy, but you're not always hiking and sometimes you want a shoe you can dance in. You may not need the shoes, but you enjoy them.

I can't believe I just used shoes as an example. SHOES. I feel like I need to go do kung fu and weld now to make up for it*. Ugh. But first, a response to the Wall Street Journal article: Positive Messages in YA. Also worth reading, Should Young Adult Books Explore Difficult Issues? from Christopher Farley at Speakeasy:

...Books such as “The Catcher in the Rye” which seemed radical in some ways for their times now just seem honest and traditional. Books that some critics once considered pathological or antisocial or worse are now commonly considered classics, such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Chocolate War,” “Flowers for Algernon,” “1984,” and “The Lorax.”

Contemporary books such as Walter Dean Myers’ “Monster” (which deals with murder and imprisonment), Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” (religion and revolution), Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak” (rape and depression), and the works of M.T. Anderson (racism, consumerism, and too many other things to list) may reap similar acclaim from future readers.

The worst pathological books will fade away with childhood. The best will live on and become permanent parts of the landscape of adolescence. I’m now going to let my son watch all the news he wants (within reason) and to read YA fiction to his heart’s content (as long as my wife agrees too). I’ll just be there to talk it over with him.

* I'm crossing my fingers that I can sub in my welding courses for my general elective. I'd rather have the free time to work on other things, and if the purpose of GenEd courses is to be well rounded, how do you get more well-rounded than a welding librarian? I don't know, if I was in a post-apocalyptic situation I'd want the person who could weld in my bunker, not the one that took the wine-tasting course. But that's just me, I like to justify things by how useful they would be in an apocalypse or zombie outbreak. Best incentive for exercising I've ever found.

Gaga the Librarian

I was trying to think of what to say about Lady Gaga's statement that she is like a librarian of glam, but thankfully The Annoyed Librarian did the work for me, making a list of the top 5 reasons Lady Gaga is not a librarian. Here is the first:

1) She can’t possibly be a librarian because she doesn’t have an ALA-accredited MLS. How dare she make such a claim! We all slogged through tedious courses with lots of group work for an entire year to make that claim, and she thinks she can can make it without that? People without MLSs saying they’re librarians are like people who aren’t God saying they’ve written the “bible” on something. It’s just not right.

Seth Godin On The Future of the Library

A link for personal reference: Seth Godin's blog post on the future of the library. I have a feeling I might quote it for a school project someday. It has some very good points, succinctly written.

The library is no longer a warehouse for dead books. Just in time for the information economy, the library ought to be the local nerve center for information. (Please don't say I'm anti-book! I think through my actions and career choices, I've demonstrated my pro-book chops. I'm not saying I want paper to go away, I'm merely describing what's inevitably occurring). We all love the vision of the underprivileged kid bootstrapping himself out of poverty with books, but now (most of the time), the insight and leverage is going to come from being fast and smart with online resources, not from hiding in the stacks.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it's fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

That is Exactly How Books Work

As seen on Closed Stacks:

Though it's sort of weird that the file name categorizes it as a demotivational poster, when it's anything but.

Lesbrarians, Censorship, and Equality

An article at Bitch Magazine that I thought was wonderful: Revenge of the Feminerd: Libraries, Lesbrarians, Censorship, and Equality. A good general post about some of the issues surrounding the profession and gays; I especially liked the bit about cataloguing:

Even today, “male nurses” and “women engineers” exist as subject headings. This is obviously problematic and an example of how classification systems sometimes lag way behind the times. The words we use are powerful, and the words that are used to define and locate people are often problematic and offensive.

Sandy Berman is a radical cataloger who was responsible for introducing subject headings like: two-spirit people (to replace berdache), intersexuality (to replace hermaphrodite), and transgender people. He also advocated for subject headings were less archaic: toilet (instead of water closet) and light bulb (electric light, incandescent). Until last year if you were looking for a book on how to make an Indian curry, the correct subject heading was Cookery--Indic.

Subject headings that Berman suggested that haven’t been adopted include: anal fisting, drag queens, feminist zines, erotic graphic novels, butch femme (lesbianism) and genderqueers.

Gender and sexuality often get mixed up by catalogers. I reckon this is partly because for many people these concepts are not different and partly because good subject headings don’t exist. The subject heading of "lesbian--identity" isn’t really appropriate for the new book Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, but currently there isn’t a better option. Catalogers need to create one.

This is an especially conspicuous blind spot, because I have searched the Library of Congress Subject Heading books (five very thick, heavy volumes) and there is some strangely specific stuff in there. I wish I had written some of them down. It was not unusual for us to find something odd and immediately share it with others in our immediate vicinity. Huge oversight, glaring omission, things we need to change, pronto.