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.