Christmas music quiz

OK, bibliosleaths. I am not setting the bar high here, as I scored a big fat one. I enjoy doing the brainteaser every Friday, though sometimes it is Tuesday before I get to it. In the last year, I've scored nine and ten, each once. More geography, please!

Welcome to the Friday Brainteaser from Xrefer, provider of the Xreferplus online reference service.

Christmas Songs

Here's a seasonal quiz about songs which were written for Christmas or which were hits at Christmastime.

Questions:
1. Which British group had a 1973 hit with "Merry Xmas Everybody?"

2. Which American performer had a hit in 1994 with "All I Want for Christmas is You?"

3. What was the title of the Christmas song organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to raise funds for Ethiopia?

4. Which song was a hit at Christmas 1988 for Cliff Richard?

5. Boney M had a number 1 hit all over Europe at Christmas 1978 with which song?

6. Who wrote the song "White Christmas?"

7. Which English electric-folk group had a British hit at Christmas 1973 with the Latin carol "Gaudete?"

8. Complete the title of Dora Bryan's 1963 Christmas hit: "All I Want for Christmas is a..."

9. Which American rapper had a 1979 hit with "Christmas Rapping?"

10. Which traditional carol was a hit for Mike Oldfield in 1975?


Answers:
Find out the answers here. You can forward this email to your friends using the link below. If they like it, they can sign up themselves using the "Subscribe me" link. After all, there's nothing like a little bit of friendly competition!

The l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-g n-o-o-o-o-w

No, I am not waiting for the library to close on the Saturday before Christmas...that would be s slow clock to watch. No, I've been reading The Clock of the Long Now (note: correct permanent link form--tada) by Stewart Brand. I have been reading it very slowly on my lunch half hours, more like twenty minuteses. I have never been very good about going to lunch on time, or taking breaks. I arrive on time. I would work late cheerfully if I could. I like to say I have a flexible sense of time.

The subtitle of this book is Time and reponsibility. It's fascinating--looking at time not in minutes but in aeons. I wish I could remember which blogger recommended it, so I could thank them. I am tempted to think it was Blake, though I have no proof. Anyone care to look? In any case, my clock has run out, as someone else has placed a hold on it (the book, not my clock) and I cannot renew. I'm on page 85 of 173. So dense with ideas that it has tken me six weeks to get 85 pages. I am kind of glad that I have been reading it slowly, as these are not the kind of ideas to take in in one gulp. But I may have to break down and actually buy it.

I don't think it will be on www.paperbackswap.com--how's that for elitism? I do want to keep pondering kairos and chronos, and the interplay, checks and balances of nature, culture, governance, infrastructure, commerce and fashion. Not exactly light party chatter. Back to baking Xmas cookies!

AND not OR strikes again

Oh, I can learn! I spent four solid days in training this week. It was more than a little odd, sitting in a room while someone explained confidentiality of library records, the cornerstones of intellectual freedom, and the Children's Internet Protection Act. I defintely atoned for some sins this week!

But I think I did learn some important things. The most important was that in keyword searches in the Millenium client (the backend, not the OPAC), the default operator is OR. So when I went looking for "medieval warfare", I was getting any record with either term, not records with both. I was thinking, "boy, they bought a lousy product!" I keep thinking I should have figured it out. I mean a keyword search for "cornwell predator" brought up nothing but garbage, when the author or title did bring up hits (but too many for this lazy librarian to want to sift through.) But when I asked others, they told me that Millenium client is lousy for keyword and subject searches--just use the OPAC. But of course I find shifting from OPAC to Millenium another drag...

So the keyword thing is solved, though if I see Millenium at ALA, I may ask them why the default operator is OR. Walt Crawford has made "AND not OR" something of a mantra. When I discovered that was my problem with the keyword searches, I felt a little like Grasshopper in the old Kung Fu show when he fouled up by not following David Carradine's wisdom. Or something--Luke with Yoda? I also managed to bop "and not or" into collection development/intellectual freedom. I tried morphing that into this morning's staff meeting, but I doubt anyone was awed by my profoundity on that one. But I will continue on my little crusades...

The continuing subject search weirdness in Millenium remains inexcusable. You can search on any subject you can dream up, however, if it isn't the accepted LCSH heading, you get a see reference that isn't clickable or anything. It may even tell you see alsos, but if you want to go there, you must leave your current search and type the see also reference into the subject box. Say it's U.S. History with all its magnificent subdivisions, you may have to do quite a bit of typing. And remembering, as the see also reference may have disapeared. What, you weren't thinking you might need to look in more than one of those see references?

It is not exactly easy/intuitive to find the perfect LCSH, I am not the first to note (wink wink nudge nudge). And I am not going to purchase mammoth volumes that will need to be updated just so I can find the right heading. Innovative Interfaces must have put all their development money into the web OPAC, which has clickable tracings <3<3<3

I do want it all--I have to use the client constantly as I am frequently looking to place holds on materials from other libraries. Plus I am still doing the "what do we own on this subject dance" as I wade up to my armpits in collection development lists

Tintinabulations of 2005

Ok, for a new low, I am linking to another blog I am doing: tintinnabulations of 2005 It is in lieu of the dread "Christmas letter" I usually send out. I can't get it together to actually print and photocopy this year. But I decided I wanted to do something. As usual, I've had all these thoughts running hither and yon, and I have all these folks scattered far and wide that I like to connect with, if only once a year. So tintinnab is born and sent out into the world.

I realized about two minutes into it that unlike Biblioblather, tintinnab is decidedly an unprofessional blog. The letter has always (approx. 10 years) had my "best reads" of the year, so there will be a little biblio, but more blather.

Speaking of biblio, I finished Anansi Boys at lunch today. (As expected, I have forgotten the syntax to make that a permanent link. I'll have to say five hail Lorcans I guess.) I like Anansi stories, and I like Neil Gaiman. Some of the jokes were forced, the Island dialect seemed off, and the plot was completely predictable. But it was still a good read. Fat Charlie worked well as an anti-hero hero. I think Gaiman creates the suspension of disbelief really well, though I can't pinpoint how. It seems likely, or likable or not unlikely even when it gets fantastic. So it's nothing mind-bending; kind of comfortable, light amusement. Even if the ending was pat, it still pleased me to encounter a happy ending.

An odd thing I can't help ponder: only 5 other people have bookmarked Baker & Taylor's "public library landing zone" aka TitleSource 3 in del.icio.us. I use del.icio.us all the time--home, work, Philly, California--it is one good constant that let's me find things. So, aren't there lots of other public librarians using del.icio.us to access bookmarks in multiple computers? Or not many with collection development responsibilities? Are there lots of people still trying to a) remember lots of URLs and/or b) willing to type them in over and over? They trust that their favorites will still be on a machine tomorrow morning, because no one's ever ghosted their machine overnight??? Well, if you haven't used del.icio.us and are curious, feel free to look at the accumulation at /lislemck!

Gallery :: Katrina Deployment :: 17

My brother is currently deployed by the EPA in preventing the freon gas from some 800,000 refrigerators from being released into the ozone, or lack thereof. In the midst of the wreckage, he took time to snap this pic and send it to me...

I have finished reading Bait and Switch. I am SOOOO glad I didn't read it while job hunting. I got depressed enough on my own. The way Ehenreich maps things out, anyone over 40 who leaves a paying job is out of their mind. It is terrifying. I did like the way she looked at the job seeker's mindset, and exposed the "career coach" creeps for playing a shell game. In my many librarian hats, I was formerly the head of a job and career placement center. In the course of collection development and weeding, I had time to delve into a lot of the ideas with which Ehrenreich takes issue. She goes after the personality type tests big time. She doesn't really go into the occupational classification scam as much. Most of the occupational classification today is based on work from the 40s and 50s, largely about the military-industrial complex. It is like LCSH were developed in war time and didn't change--not that they are to be held up as nirvana, but they do evolve (slowly slowly).

On the career tests I took so I could advise jobseekers on how to do them, I invariably came up as a fur designer. Holland, the father of job classification, had barely a "creative" job classification. As I remember, my Holland code was "creative clerical". Now creative shelving is one thing!

Though sympathetic and deeply disturbed, I did have some doubts about Ehrenreich's methodology. But it's not a pretty picture. The fact that the author did not start expressing anger, outrage, or offer aid until the very final chapter bothered me. But then I remembered the horrible loss of self worth I experienced in my job search. The depth of doubt and fear that loss of place and income in this society stifles anger. It all turns inward. Perhaps that is part of the message our society uses to keep the unemployed in line. Jack Straw, anyone?

Overheard in Philly

I have been getting a little homesick for the sounds of Philadelphia. Maybe I just haven't got an ear for the patois here. Last night, at the sublimely silly Ocean Beach Christmas parade , I found the announcer's pronunciation of "dog" so it rhymes with "log" amusing. Of course, Californians think "dawg" is funny. I wonder when it will sound natural and/or I will lose my accent?

UFOs (Ubiquitous Findable Objects)

Apparently, I share a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with Peter Morville. I didn't make it all the way through the article when I got stopped by that. I find Morville interesting, even though his ego, as seen through Web4Lib, seems enormous. Maybe I do better with the interpersonal sensitivity? I'll never think of myself as a scientist. I'll fall on the art side of the library-science-or-art? debate most likely. Thank god it's not a very sharp sword to fall on. Maybe because I rely on intuition to find objects? Seriously. I do better walking up to the shelves and making a stab than I do trying a subject search in Millenium. Of course, by the time I have found THE subject heading and then narrowed the results to our tiny fragment of holdings, enough time has elapsed for the patron's kids to drag them off to a far distant corner of the children's room. Book will probably not be findable. Our shelves are in parlous order, and apparently no one marks items missing on any regular basis.

Working with a small slice of libraryland is very different than working in a hulking behemoth of 3 million volumes. I have been weeding reference. How interesting! We own barely anything on countless subjects (3 shelves on serial killers, though), but we keep ELDERLY medical directories. Egad. I keep thinking how much nimbleness matters. Not just speed, but grace. For those of you not acquainted with my real world manifestation, nimble and grace are not the first descriptors you would assign me. But I like to think that nimbleness of mind will make up for it. I am REALLY hoping to gain insight into our implementation of Millenium's mind soon. Because as good as my intuition is, I can't track all the UFOs.

I finished The Good Wife by Stewart Onan last night. I really liked reading an interior novel across 25 years. Maybe it's just my age. Plus the setting. I have driven through Owego, New York at least a thousand times in my life. It's on the back way from Binghampton (and points south) to where I lived from ages five to eleven. My sister, who qualifies as a good wife indeed, still lives there. Today is her husband's funeral. So, as so often happens, my reading was tinged with outside things that no other reader can likely experience. But the poverty and boredom of a rural area, plus the change over time from a culture around hunting season and football to chain stores and TV seemed well-drawn to me. I don't know how it would affect another reader. Too close for comfort here.

My posts have been few and far between, I know. Apologies, sweet readers. I have little free time to blog. Or read at all. It is killing. Note that I did not go back to bed for an extra hour on this, my late night at work. I almost miss the intense boredom at MFPOW, as that is how I got involved with blogs in the first place...they've started a blog at MNPOW re: their electronic resources. Not a single comment on it. Should I be the first to try and start a conversation, or wait until I pass probation? Hmmmmm.

Hangin' and bangin'

When I was little, I liked to hang upside down on a chair, feet in the air. I mean for like hours. I'd forgotten, but my brother recently reminded me, and said he'd wondered what I was thinking about. I remember liking the difference in perspctive. If you just looked at the ceilings like floors, our house looked like the interior of a space shipe a little, like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think I still like to find those other points of view. Right now, I am trying to wrap my brain around The Clock of the Long Now. Now there's a new perspective. Time and responsibility. The impact on centuries. I like what it does for book budgets. :)

I had an intensely insistent/realistic/whathaveyou dream last night. One of those ones you think you've woken up from, but you fall right back into it in moments. I found an email in my Outlook account that I wasn't supposed to receive. (Shades of something?) It said I was being transferred from my branch to a collection development position at HQ. I was up part of the night worrying about how the staff whould handle it, and would I have time to finish reorganizing my predecessors' files, and what about the new magazine shelves? And the lake and the ducks! I swear I woke up the Boyfriend to discuss, but he claims no recollection. Even in my sleep, I was telling myself that I don't even know how to login to Outlook Web Access at MPOW. Aside: Much as I loathe Outlook, it's kind of a relief that they have it, since I do KNOW it. Tiny bit of gratefulness.

I've been pretty conflicted about the new job. I HATE driving 25 minutes to and fro. I KNOW that it is a minuscule commute compared to many. But I don't even like cars. I was late leaving on Saturday morning, and there I was screaming down the freeway in the Prius doing over 80 m.p.h. Unthinkable. Because I haven't internalized the schedule yet. It does keep changing. It's kind of the reverse of MFPOW. I am in that situation where I have ideas, I can see areas for improvement, but there are so many other areas where I lack knowledge, that I am afraid to do anything. But I guess the dream helped clarify that I am ok on my main roles: the staff, who have had too much transition of late; organizing and administering the paperwork; making the collection and the facility meet the needs of the community; and admiring the lake and the ducks at every opportunity!

Well, it does keep me busy. I have nary a moment at work to read Web4Lib or LISNews (note: URL change par excellence) or my Bloglines...what to do? I do not wish to moulder!

PS I have no idea why a slider bar is clinging to the middle of this post I keep hoping it will go away. If it doesn't, could someone lend me a clue why this is happening and/or how to fix?

Still searching...

Here's the previously-discussed picture. Confusion still reigns with Millenium. I am now scheduled for training in December. By then, I must have figured it out on my own or there's just no excuse. Meanwhile, I gave myself the treat of a little Marion Chesney, The Miser of Mayfair. 167 p. Short and tart. Fluffy but not meringue. Now I'm on to more serious things.

Searching but not finding

I am getting Dewey back. Not to two or three decimal points (except in art), but general centuries and decades and even some years. Five years away and I felt completely fogged in last week, but now it's beginning to make that imperfect sense. I like the fractures and crevices and canyons, though some of it is just to scratch our heads. I often bill myself as the librarian who can't remember authors or titles or call numbers. I can find them. But it is quicker if I can just walk to the shelf. I can't wait to really know my new collection. Some of this is my desire for a sense of mastery. I like to be good at my job. I will be.

I wanted to put up a picture of the lake next to my library, but I can't find my camera. Here's a pic via Google. I think it is old, as the gazebo roof is not that red, and I don't see any of the desert willows that are all around. I couldn't find anything more current. Which brings me to today's topic: Millenium by Innovative.

I do not want to sound too crabby/picky, even if that is my nature. Here I am, just the most cursory training in a new-to-me ILS, and I am stubbing my toes, and getting tripped up wildly. In front of the customers. Title and author searches work fine. I can limit by location easily. But the subject search is soooo weird. I don't know what we own, and I don't remember the precise Dewey number for birds of prey, for instance. Today, I tried for books on the venus fly trap. I got lots of listings for books on the planet Venus. Put the phrase in quotes, same results. Flytrap gave me bupkiss. I ended up doing a title search on flytrap. That worked. But it was pathetic.

I can't do keyword searches any better than title. I try putting an author's last name and a major word in the title. Don't do that. Retrievals are just incomprehensile. Using the "advanced" keyword to do fielded searching is cumbersome, and doesn't seem to work either. There must be a better way! Which is why I am reading the Millenium page at home though I am tired...will have to report back.

Oh, another addition to the great unfinished books of 2005: A Long Way Down. IMac is being sluggish so I won't link. I know it was supposed to be humorous. I just wasn't getting the jokes. Sigh.

The first day of the rest of my life...

OK, mission accomplished. I went to work yesterday as a branch librarian. In the newly purchased car, driving to work (a very novel experience for this city girl) with the navigator telling me how many miles to my next exit (only two freeways, TG), I considered how for me, yesterday was my real California beginning. Not that my personal life is unimportant! But I've been on something of an extended honeymoon, for chrissakes. Which is kind of weird, all by itself. The adjustment period was good, as I can't imagine coping if I'd started two weeks after I got here.

Anyway, my new MPOW is downright cushy. Lovely facilities, lots of staff, supplies, acquisitions budget stuffed. It's a little hard to believe it's a public library. My staff greeted me with flowers and a cake. The Friends vice president almost hugged me. I am very welcome. They don't know me, of course, but still, it was nice. I spent most of the day with the acting branch librarian, a temporary appointment who has been on loan for several months. Right there, the difference between library administration's was apparent. At MFPOW, the vacancy would have been vacant for months, and the staff and public left to cope. They even have substitutes for the support staff. My former head of support staff would think she'd died and gone to heaven.

I did spend a little time on the reference desk, and learning Millenium. So refreshing to learn a new ILS--it has been quite a while. I placed four holds (only one for myself). I made a point of getting a card early on. Priorities. Plus I really helped a patron looking for historical fiction. My depth of knowledge was far superior to that of the other two librarians there. So that eased a little of my fears about reader's advisory.

Oooh. I fisnished The Last Days of Dogtown. Not a bad read, but kind of precious. A lot of telling how wonderful a characer was, without showing. I still haven't figured out why the main character was the main character. I am jaded. Off to get ready for work!

Wrong train, platform, planet?

EDUCAUSE Review entitled "Libraries: Standing at the Wrong Platform, Waiting for the Wrong Train?"

Reminder to self to read this...fascinating discussion over at Web4Lib. A recent experience for me was requesting The Search by John Battelle in August. It is the LISNew Book Club title for October-November. It's still on order at the local publib. I give up. I will buy it. Read it. Then give to publib. I am of such cheapness this is killing, but then again, I do want to read it. On-demand ordering would suit me fine, in this instance.

Document delivery issues at MFPOW (my former place of work; going to have to make if OOMFPLOW--adding "one of"--at some point. How silly can these get? Ask Offspring about FF7SFTIPC--Final Fantasy Seven Stick Figure Theater Intellectual Property Concerns. Yes--a nineteen year old with IPC!) were incredibly layered. It really bothered me that someone writing a letter or sending an email got far better treatment than an actual physical human standing in front of you or on the phone...

Unrelatedly except for wrong planet aspect: I got my criminal background check from my soon to be employer. I requested a copy out of curiosity. Nothing criminal in seven states under my actual name. Good news. They also checked under my first name with my former spouse's surname. (I hate that that is even a possibility in a computer's mind. I never used that name, not even socially. Divorced 10 years. But there's NO ESCAPE.)

Then here's the bizarro one with no emotional load: I was once issued a store credit card with a typo in my surname. Had the store fix it pretty quick. Completely nonexistent surname with a history of one month maybe? Now there is a criminal background check on that non-existent person, as well. So I apparently have an alias.

All this checking, but they still don't know about lislemck. I am tempted to stand on my balcony and say MUWHAHAHA, but I am not teh evil.

I library, you library, they library: amo, amas, amat

Yipee ki yi yi! My medical clearance finally made it through the San Diego County bureaucrazy and I head for orientation this Friday. On Tuesday (Monday is my free day), I will again be a librarian. I know there is something very wrong with me, because that makes me sooooo happy.

I was getting concerned that my medical history was just too bloody interesting, but by Friday I was kind of psychicly whispering the words "law suit" in the general direction of the HMO jobber for County physicals. Et le voila.

Working is not just health insurance and paycheck, welcome as they will be. I define myself by my job. While gainfully unemployed, I have been reading library journals, wrapping my brain around questions of access and document delivery, putting myself through Open WorldCat paces, even attending a library volunteer breakfast. OK, I read some stupid books, too.

I want huge praise for getting the syntax right on that link. It had better just work! I really want to just point at something and have the link with the correct syntax appear so I can copy it. Call me a lazy biblioblogger. Keeping track of my reading through LibraryThing plus reviews on OWC, with links here may be just too involved. Will have to keep considering.

[Eek. I attached the review to an audio book! Problem with user continues...]

Keep meaning to post about paperbackswap.com. I love it. I have so far received one book, and sent four off to happy new homes! It is just terrific. List nine books (of course, you have nine paperbacks in good condition that you can part with). Get one credit. Request a book. It arrives in days. Someone requests one of yours. Print out a wrapper, slap on 4 first class stamps, and toss it is the mail. Get another credit. I may never buy again. Of course, the romance list is deep. I am hoping scifi will improve. I think mystery readers are in pig heaven. But there is lots of stuff, and you can put in requests. I think it makes great sense. However, I am NOT going to reverse the current trend of not owning books! At least not yet. It is very different, just having a few books (i.e., ten or so shelves). It does make moving a lot easier!

God, this post just wanders and blathers on. I may die at this orientation on Friday. For one thing, I already sat through four hours of it two weeks ago, when I thought I was starting the last time. Get this: the trainers have to read from a script, as the County insists that everyone hear the exact same thing. The trainers had my deepest sympathy. I have done lots of these kinds of trainings. It is the really dry stuff--the chain-of-command, ethics policy, governance. You can enliven it with interactive bits. But this training didn't even have an ice-breaker or audience polls or anything.

Now, of course, I have my deepest sympathy--I am going to hear the exact same boring stuff for the second time. They said last time that we weren't allowed to read in the training. I am deciding how I can best hide the fact that I am reading. A long time ago, someone told me that the purpose of elementary education was to teach children how to be creatively bored. After college, I decided that the purpose of seminars was to teach us how to look like we are awake in meetings. My usual policy for the last ten years, when attending training, was to try and learn SOMETHING, ANYTHING at every training. It kept me from complete boredom. But to sit through four hours of an identical training two weeks apart? How unethical could reading be?

More on OWC, reviews, and links

I found this snippet in a comment Lorcan Dempsey made on Free Range Librarian:

You can link directly to the review as follows:

http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/1594200637&tab=reviews

Posted by: Lorcan Dempsey [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 12, 2005 08:16 PM

Interesting. Can I remember that syntax? Maybe. Here's my In Her Hoes review. Have low expectations, ok? I was just trying to get everything to work. Plus I spent YEARS doing three-sentence book reviews. I wonder if I could write something along the lines of the On Beauty (which I have reserved) review in Lorcan's link. We may never know.

Finished business

I just finished Towelhead . OK, who is applying these subject headings? CIP is no better. This is a novel about child abuse. Physical, emotional, and sexual. The child is a thirteen year-old girl, who is abused and/or neglected by her mother's boyfriend, her father, her next-door neighbor, her boyfriend. Is it because she is a teen that no one wanted to use abuse headings? Or did they only read the first chapter? The two editorial reviews I looked at on Amazon neglected to mention or barely hinted at the abuse. The customer review by Jana Kraus that I found pretty much hits the nail on the head.

I probably would not have read this book if I had known it was about child abuse. I thought it was about Arab-Americans during the first Gulf War. It is, but only as a setting. I also have to say something about the cover design. The book takes place in a brand-new Houston subdivision, not a shanty. Jasira should not be wearing a dress like that--she should be in jeans and a T-shirt. The cat should be white. Oh, that's supposed to be a Lebanese flag there! Another issue: "Daddy" and Jasira keep talking about how Lebanon is on the African continent, but that they are North African, and therefore "white". Huh? Did I mislearn my geography? Is the Middle East part of Africa now?

Completely unrelated: I finally fixed the LibraryThing javascript placement in my Blogger sidebar. I assume 90% of you read this via an aggregator, and therefore never see the sidebar, but it is fixed and of a coolness. My mother and I always discuss our reading. Now I am tempted to send her here, or to my LibraryThing catalog. Somehow, I don't know if either of us is ready for that.

Visible dampness

The forecast called for rain yesterday in San Diego. People were all excited and talking about it. Around 3:00 am, I heard a patter. Lasted less than five minutes. When I got up at 7:00, another gorgeous sunny morning. A few splotches of wet on the balcony railing. In the afternoon, it clouded up. I was watching baseball. At least that's one way I can tell it is October. The boyfriend reported rain. I looked outside. No visible rain. When we went to the car later, there was visible dampness on the car. Not on the pavement. Friends commented on the start of the rainy season. I know it will actually rain here at some point, but yesterday did not count!

I finished Good Night Nobody. No Open Worldcat link. :(

My review of The Mermaid Chair (how's that for a long URL?) never did appear. I keep wondering if I did something wrong or if it was too negative (I believe the title was "Not the Bees' Knees). I tried again with In Her Shoes. Le voila, it appears! Not much of a review, but still. I guess I flubbed Mermaid's Chair. Too bad, but I wasn't recommending it. I liked the landscape descriptions, but the plot was sooooo predictable. Character development was excruciating. And give me a break. Falling in love with a monk? Antique family secret makes everyone crazy? Who was supposed to be interested?

Meanwhile, though I liked the title and the opening jokes, Good Night Moon fell flat pretty early on, and I wondered how I ended up reading it. Spoiler alert: It broke the cardinal romance rule of the girl getting the guy and living happily ever after. It turns out that still matters to me. If I am going to read fluff, it had better have a goddamn happy ending. I am not that fond of romance-mystery, even in the hands of Jennifer Crusie. I had great hopes for Jennifer Weiner, even though I didn't much care for Good in Bed.

God, some of these subject headings slay me. Overweight women--fiction. Is there a subgenre on that one, like there is Mothers--fiction--dead? Is it the mothers who are dead or the fiction? I worry that I am becoming a curmudgeon. I also have too much time to read, as the starting date for the new job has been pushed back another two weeks. Grrrr. I am not suited to life as a housewife! The next visible dampness may be tears. Pray for rain.

Forget Blogs - New York Times

Forget Blogs, Print Needs Its Own IPod (see bugmenot.com for username and pword.)

via LISNews, with gratitude, as ever.

I am not sure that another appliance is the answer to newspaper ills. Maybe a feed of Google News headlines on my cell phone? Though my cell phone knows not of such things. Apparently we can receive text messages, but not send. How 2000. But I thought "America is hooked on "companion" media, a pet platform that sits in the corner and pays attention to you when you pay attention to it," was very interesting. (My dog says those aren't good pets; the two-way street is what makes it a relationship.) I am just experiencing cable TV, Netflix, and iTunes for the first time. So far, I am not completely charmed, though with my turntable out of commission and no real XPN (don't get me started on streams being altered for compliance with DCMA), iTunes is growing on me.

Speaking of Google News, Miss Eli reminded me of the excellent newsmap, the coolest implementation of a Google API I have seen. Unfortunately, it eats RAM for breakfast. But if they could get that on a phone, maybe Treo would beckon. OK, IMing the Offspring from the grocery store line might be fun. But not essential. Will digital paper create the killer ap for news? I have also been receiving the daily paper at home for the first tme since childhood. I love it and I hate it (where did I put that section from Thursday? it was either the first section, the San Diego section, or business...off to the online version!).

Mermaids, the reader and OpenWorldCat

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: The reader and OpenWorldCat

Woohoo, to quote Thomas Dowling. With a tip of the hat to Roy Tennant and Web4lib for getting me the info soonest.

So, of course, I ran right over and put in a review of my most recent reading. EEEEEEE. How cool is that? Except my review is not there? Maybe there is a holding period? To be continued. The Mermaid Chair was unfortunately not the bees' knees.

I am officially adding Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country to the longer and longer list of unfinished books for 2005. Unreadable, and I did try as I did pay for it! It's book one of a trilogy. I caanot believe anyone would want to read three of these. Maybe if you really like a lot of descriptions of jewelry? I much prefer Regency costume details.

I'm off to put together Ikea bookshelves. Yeah--soon the LPs will be out of the milk crates! Because soon I will be working...I realized how badly I miss the bibliosphere at an interview last week. Someone walked by with a book truck and I wanted to wrest it from them.

Copyright claims continue--but I want access!

We’ve Not Seen the Last of The Copyright Class Action

This does not look good. My dream of having the pre-Tasini indexing of newspapers back EVAH just died a little more. I still have yet to see anything telling me that the defendants are going to put back the indexing that was destroyed after Tasini. I have no issue with the freelance writers getting paid for the electronic versions of their works. I used to be a freelance copywriter, so I feel this kind of deeply. I have low expectations for the defendants to just do the right thing.

As a librarian, I want to weep over the lack of access to these articles. They were expunged from all of the databases--not just the links to the articles, but the indexing. That's DIALOG, Gale, Ebsco, Lexis-Nexis. The artices are on the publication microfilm. But you go to microfilm after you have a citation, usually. So it's like these articles never existed. Black holes.

Electronic newspaper indexing has become our historical record. The Proquest Historical New York Times product is a wondrous boon to students and researchers. BUT NOT IF IT HAS HOLES IN IT! Maybe there is some PHd student somewhere looking for a topic? Find me those articles. Index them. Don't link to them electronically (you can't). But give me another way to access them. Hell, analyse what's missing from the historical record. Then maybe the Times and their friends will be willing to pay a settlement based on worth.

Another lousy day in paradise

Vonnegut, on politics, presidents and librarians - Yahoo! News: "please notice when you are happy.'"

I am sure I am something like the 500th librarian to blog this article. Still, Vonnegut. I just tried looking for a novel or short story I remember reading in early high school, something like Willard and the Bowling Trophies. I cannot have imagined it. Very surreal. Must have been Vonnegut.

It is another incredibly beautiful day here. My big plans are to wash the kitchen floor and go watch the sunset at Dog Beach with dog and the Boyfriend. My family likes to say "another lousy day in paradise." We said it all the time at my parent's home in Florida, but also at every beach or garden or vista we encounter. I realized today that it translates to "I am happy", though I notice the locals sometimes seem to resent going to work on these beautiful days. Well, I spent much of the day enmeshed in the bureaucracy around getting a new job. Still working on the medical clearance. It doesn't seem to comfort MDs that I am as healthy as a horse.

In other good news, I am sitting on a chair at a table typing on this iMac. This may not seem big news, but I've been sitting on an ottoman pulled up to a coffee table for 3 weeks. So if I haven't answered email or comments, please understand. I did not/could not type more than 3 sentences without muscle spasms!

I am happy, even if I complain about my l-o-n-g vacation. And I think those of us who are public librarians should feel proud and pleased as punch with our work, day in, day out.

Blood and guts

Nota bene: Two months have passed since I wrote this post. I waited for rather obvious reasons. I am no longer employed by the employer. I had already given my notice when this happened; it had nothing to do with my decision to leave that employment, or to remain a public librarian.

The worst scene I have ever seen played out in a library happened at MPOW. I am writing it down in part to calm myself. What happened for me was that L, a librarian who used to work in my department, came rushing into my office. He said something terrible had just happened and that my good friend D was very upset.

I didn't wait for more info or anything, just got downstairs as quick as I could. On the way, L told me that a patron had hauled off and punched another patron who was bleeding badly. L had called security, who had arrived rapidly and were calling the police to have the assailant arrested. When we got downstairs, the assailant was standing at the reference desk. It was surreal. He was wearing sunglasses with one lens missing, so at first I thought he was the injured party. Then I saw the three security guards around him. I looked across the room and saw D talking to an unknown man who was covered in blood, I mean shorts, shirt, just dripping, and he was holding a sodden wad of paper towel to his eye, kind of pacing.

OK, I am squeamish. If the offspring bleeds, I faint. I never look when they take my blood at the doctor's office, which they do like to do. I do not watch movies with the words blood, death, horror, murder, etc., in the title. I have always been this way. I can't watch Murder, She Wrote. So this afternoon, I was almost instantly nauseous. However, I went over to D and the patron. The patron wanted to leave the library NOW. D was insisting that he get medical attention. The police and paramedics had been called. She got him to sit down. In no time, she was getting him to tell her about the trip to Russia he is taking on Saturday. He was at the library to use the PCs to check his reservations.

The police arrived and started taking information from everyone. Since L is the only person who saw the attack, he had to go with them. The police take the assailant and L to the police station to file charges.

The EMT finally arrived. Our Russia-bound patron still did not want to go to the hospital. The reference desk phone starts ringing, so I ANSWER. Do we have the Philadelphia Inquirer for 1966 on microfilm? A question I can answer! Do we have the Jewish Exponent? Yes, from 1942 on! I ask the patron if he can read Yiddish, as we have an older Philadelphia title. He doesn't, but no harm asking. He is thrilled we have the Exponent, and will be down to use it tomorrow. We exchange civilities.

I called D's close friend A to ask if she can take D for a walk, with a very brief explanation. She said sure, and arrived shortly. D was still shaking a little, but said she could not leave her department uncovered. I told her I would cover to the best of my ability, though my gov pub training was many many years ago in a galaxy far far away. But somehow, I was game.

Custodial workers appeared IN THE AFTERNOON and started cleaning up the blood. Patrons appeared courtesy of the online reservation system, and took the places of the previous two users. A woman came up and asked what years did governors Ridge and Thornburgh serve. I found a answer on the state web site, via the governor's mansion's history. I do not know how I got there; it did work. The patron asked about other gubernatorial terms. I answered; she went away happy. More phone calls. Just as a walk-in patron asked me about using the 1920 census, D returned. Good thing, as the census is in a locked work area. D got very involved helping the patron.

More reference transactions. L returns. I go back to my department, too dazed to concentrate on anything, so I work on cleaning out a closet. (Everyone needs a hobby.) I don't really reflect. But when I get home, I call a sibling. She has had a bad day, too. She says, "Good thing you are getting out of there," and "that's what you get working with the public. I'm glad I'm behind a locked door."

It was scary. I have never experienced anything like it before in my ten years as a public librarian. But I also got to experience guts firsthand. Everyone's first concern was for our patrons. The security guards handled their end perfectly. Seeing D use her reference interview skills to calm the injured patron and get information out of him was beautiful. I cannot praise L too highly for having the presence of mind to get me. I do not say that because my contribution was so important, but I think it really did help D. I am glad that the way I made a contribution was by serving the public to the best of my ability. With great teamwork, in under fifteen minutes the public could not tell anything had happened.

I have always joked that I enjoy working with the great unwashed. I joke that every homeless person in Philadelphia knows me because I give them their newspapers. They say hello to me on the street all the time. It makes me feel safe, part of the community. We do serve as something of a day room for citizens with mental health issues. I know from experience that the quality of mental health care in this country for PAYING customers is not very good. I tend to be pretty forgiving, unless a patron is disturbing another patron.

Today went far beyond that. A person with severe behavioral issues attacked an unsuspecting patron without provocation. The administration has already said he will be banned from all agencies. I am hoping he goes to jail.

I am proud of all the people who had the guts to do the right things today. I am proud of the professionalism, from custodial on up. Tomorrow, I will thank them all again.

Even as I started this post, I had second thoughts about it. Portraying MPOW in an unkind light. OK, I needed the catharsis. But I think there is something bigger than that here. Call me crazy.

[Web4lib] Open Content Alliance announced

Subject: [Web4lib] Open Content Alliance announced
The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo's vice president of search content. Other participants in the alliance announced Monday include Adobe
Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., the Internet Archive, O'Reilly Media Inc., the University of California and the University of Toronto.

More at:

NYTimes article: <http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-
Online-Book-Project.html>
Project Web Site: < http://www.opencontentalliance.org/>
UC Press Release: <http://www.opencontentalliance.org/UC.pdf>

Roy Tennant
_______________________________________________
Web4lib mailing list
Web4lib@webjunction.org
http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/


--

We'll have to see if this constitutes an end-run around the copyright issues that are plaguing the Google project.

What if someone copyrighted something and nobody read it? Is there copyright zen?

bbbbbbbbbutnoreally

OK folks, I passed the background check for my soon-to-be-employer! Besides the usual felonies kind of thing, they said they were checking my moral character. God knows what they found out. Guess they looked in the wrong places. Now I get to do the drug screening! That doesn't worry me--all my drugs are prescription. The health place did ask if I had ever tested positive for TB. I said yes. Do I have any documentation?

No. I tested positive for exposure to TB ten years ago, at my last employment screening. It was not a big surprise, as I had been doing volunteer work among the homeless and people with AIDS for years. The City of Philadelphia did an X-ray. No sign of TB. A positive test for TB doesn't mean you have TB. (Note: Go Ask Alice is blocked by some filters because it provides information on sexual health to teens. Don't get me started.) I did not get documentation from my former employer ten years ago. I didn't know I should. Knowing the bureaucracy there, I will never get it now.

So, it may be interesting to see how this plays out. Let's hope not.

Library Journal - The Rescuers--Politicians of the Year 2005

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to see those two smiling faces on the cover of Library Journal. Even though the article seems a bit of a whitewash of the situation and the administration, I am very pleased to see Nutter and DiCicco get well-deserved praise. They put their reputations and their mouths on the line for Philadelphia libraries. Hear, hear!

LibraryThing!

A new toy:

Eek. I made Blogger mad:
Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed: ...language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.librarything.com/jswidget.php?reporton=lislemck&show=random&num=5&covers=none&header=1&tag=&css=1&style=1&amazonassoc=">

You can also try going to www.librarything.com and looking for lislemck's catalog. I tried putting it in the side bar, but eberything got wonky! I have spent many hours today ironing, but I am not done. Bah. I loathe ironing, but packing work clothes in suitcases for one month=many wrinkles. Another interview tomorrow. What to wear? Plus orientation for San Diego County on Friday, when it is hoped questions about health insurance will be answered. Assuming I passed the background check...

So I haven't felt up to much blogging. Didn't want to overwhelm the biblio with the blather. Plus it is not comfortable sitting on an ottoman at a coffee table and typing. I am OLD. Plus I am not at a library. Questioning my librarianness. Writing posts in head while ironing. The reading has been unsatisfying, though I am still hoping Guen will pick up...

we make money not art: Japanese Universities Hiring Manga Professors

Just what is needed (are you reading this, Miss Monster?):

According to asahi.com, Kyoto Seika University created the first school of Cartoon & Comic Art in Japan in 2000. That was the beginning. This spring, additional three universities created similar schools and courses for students to study manga, anime and games.

Osaka University of Art recently created Character Creative Arts Department. The dean of the department is comic artist Kazuo Koike and at least two of the 23 professors are well-known comic artists (Go Nagai who created Mazinger Z, Devil Man, Harenchi Gakuen, etc. and Machiko Satonaka who created Ariesu no Otome, Asunaro Zaka, etc.).

This April, Takara Zoukei University created School of Media Contents with a focus on movies, animation, and games. Professor Reiji Matsumoto is a well-known comic artist who created Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999, etc. He recently did some anime work for French band Daftpunk.

Finally Otemae University recently created a manga and animation course. Monkey Punch is a professor there.

Well, at least someon's making money!

We-make-money-not-art

via BoingBoing

Yesssss, we have Firefox!

Life is so much better already. Plus I got a job. Not the dream job, but employment with fringe benefits (how much longer can we call medical insurance fringe?). I will be branch manager at a small branch in East San Diego County. Boyfriend says I will learn my Christian romance authors. Hmm. We shall see.

There is soemthing definitely wrong with me. I consider downloading Firefox more newsworthy that a job? Scary. First paycheck, I am buying an ibook. No, must buy a car first! Soon, though. Then I can sit on the balcony with the dog, admire the trees, and blog...

8 days ocean-to-ocean, part I

I keep thinking about what I want to cover in this post. I finally realized it was more than I could cover in one post, and so I am just starting off.

The beginning may be a very good place to start, but that would not be my style of blathering. I will tell you off the bat that our highest price paid for gas was $3.409/gallon. That was in New Jersey, in the middle of the beginning, and, boy, did paying $45 to fill the Ford Taurus rental's tank give me pause! However, there was no choice but to continue on. Do you know that when you look at gasbuddy.com for Arizona, it displays the entire state on one page? Is this because gasbuddy isn't popular in AZ, or are there only a page work of filling stations there? IAC, fuel for the trip cost approximately $310. If there is a class-action suit against the oil companies for price-gouging after Katrina, let me know!

OK, we did spend 4 days and 3 nights beside the Atlantic Ocean in Wildwood Crest, NJ. My extended family heads there every year for the last week in August. Unfortunately, the offspring could not join us as she had to start college (!) that week. Very tough. But the boyfriend found the only motel on the South Jersey coast that takes dogs several years ago. I'd made reservations back in March, before my life plans had changed. Maybe other people would not consider 3 nights with extended family in Wildwood Crest the best start to a cross-country trip. But it was exactly what I needed: a chance to decompress a little after packing and divesting like mad, and a chance to spend time with the clan before I won't see them for a while.

Boyfriend rented a surfboard for the post-hurricane waves. Waves were all blown out. That sounds callous. It was an ill wind. I am so glad I had no TV in front of me most of that week. I saw enough. We have a good friend in New Orleans. I was looking forward to staying with him at ALA next June. He is safe in Nashville, but his house is likely gone, and his final semester at Tulane Law??? We sent him info about Cornell, but haven't heard back from him.

Agh, Blogger munched a longer version of this post not once, but twice! Must download Firefox! Must install printer! Must look at OS version. But right now, must go back to being beachfrau...

Forgot!

One: having received more comment spam, I have enabled a word verification thing on comments. I know there are issues around word verification and the visually differently-abled. I am sensitive to that. Please let me know if this impacts your ability to comment. You can email me at library.lisle at gmail.com.

Two: i have attempted to take the word "blog" out of the blog title just to make it shorter. I have no idea what the impact will be, or if it even worked! Really must do other things, but let me know if I have screwed up everything! Thanks.

The unbearable whiteness of being and unrelated miscellany

Check out The Whiteness of Wi-Fi. I got there from an Utne Webwatch article . I've moved from one "majority minority" city to another. I need a tan! No, that won't help; fact is I can pass for WASP (which I am not), or Dutch at best. A group I worked with a few years ago posed the question, "What can we do personally to end racism?" At the time, I felt the best way was via my interpersonal relations. I still think that is important, but we need to address the larger institutional issues/policies. I was sorry neither article mentioned the excellent Media Tank, who fought the good fight and won for Philadelphia.

Arg. Either Blogger has changed or I can't access edit functions via Safari. One day soon I am downloading Firefox. But I should not complain. This is not my computer, but I have good access plus the new apartment has free wifi from an unknown source. Thank you internet deities and thank you big time to the unknown source. I never complain about free wifi. I used to tell people my ISP was my upstairs neighbor, Zach. I was worried about missing him. Actually, I do miss him, and it is weird saying my ISP is an unknown source!

I must away to iron outfit for interview tomorrow. Had a different interview yesterday, and another scheduled for Friday. Let's hope having a full dance card pays off. I am tired of interviews. One day unemployed, with one more paycheck expected, and I am making myself crazy. OK, you say I was already crazy.

Still plenty to do unpacking and organizing! Oh, if anyone is in the San Diego area, or knows somene who is, the 8x8x5' crate stuffed with my worldly goods arrives here 9/19 and we would be happy to treat any helpers to beer and pizza! There's an elevator! But long halls. Must look at handtruck prices. Saturday is my birthday, so we could make it a party...well, at least have cake. I do not like birthdays, and prefer them to pass unregarded, so do not think this is a shameless plug for cards and prezzies. The no prezzies rule remains in effect!

Toads, hummingbirds, cadillacs, open pit mines, the wild weary west

I am sneezing from the dust and cobwebs in here, but doing my best to provide a brief update.

I have gone for more than one week without internet access. Oh wait, I got to check my mail once in Columbus in a family room with an 8 year old who wanted to play video games, and a 4 year old who wanted to cuddle. But besides that, eleven days. I cannot bear to open my Bloglines, not even for Doonesbury and Boondocks. Sob.

I have kept a small log in a steno pad in the car, but of course, I don't have it now. If none of you knew, the Ford Taurus consumes gasoline in large quantities. I believe our highest price was $3.40. Now I want a Prius, even though the name bothers me.

I will fill you in on the beauty of Fallingwater and the OCLC campus, the toad the dog shouldn't have eaten, losing all my pre-St. Louis pix when I tried to turn off my flash at the top of the arch (what does FORMAT mean, huh?), the glory of Cadillac Ranch and Texas rest areas, sitting among a swarm of hummingbirds, wanting to sleep for days due to a mild cold (ware cuddly 4 year olds!).

Tomorrow, we make San Diego. I still don't have a job, but I now have 3 interviews scheduled for next week. Just need to unpack outfits, purchase steamer (?), take large breaths and dazzle.

Oh the ineffableness

Alright, I am definitely going to layoff the 3 am blogging as soon as I can. Really. I would rather sleep. The dog would like it, too. But in the meantime, no biblio, but much blather...

The move thing is going swimmingly. The containers arrived Thursday right on time. I got the permit to park them in front of the building, the police put up the no parking signs on time as promised, the neighbors moved their cars. Just flawless. Understand that parking is a blood sport where I live. Cannot underscore the karma involved in pulling this off. Incredible. I even found two brand spanking new padlocks in the bottom of the toolchest. Some forgotten gift with purchase. Finding anything in the condo at all in the last few weeks is amazing. Do not take you eyes off anything, including your doughnut.

An assembly of the best friends ever took it in shifts to help me as I packed and packed and packed. Truly exemplary. Thank you. Thank thank thank you you you. Entire contents of apartment were weeded, sorted, and packed by the time boyfriend arrived at 5:20 am Sunday. Then, around noon, more friends and family gathered to load the container. Eleven people did it all in slightly under three hours. There is not enough beer and pizza in the world to express my thanks. They were flawless. I'm thinking if I were staying, I could hire them out. Three hours. Plus we got everything into one 5x8x8 foot container. Understand that a 46-year-old clutter-prone packrat got four rooms into what, 480 cu. ft., though the math is suspect. Something like that. I will accept all kudos graciously. Money is a great motivator, i.e., two containers=twice as much money.

In amongst all of this, so many goodbyes, so many really nice nice experiences. Kind of a high emotional tenor; terror mixed with hope, brutal physical labor, mountains of trash and discards. Freecycling and curbside donations. So much stuff. I am taking a vow not to accumulate so much stuff in future. Stuff is not where my wealth lies.

Now it's off for three nights at the beach with extended family, i.e., more emotional tenors, sopranos, altos, baritones, bass. But for once, I can almost bring myself to say, "It's all good." Then I remember I still have to clean this place. Oh well, karma points for that, right?

Saved from oblivion

I just found the set list I jotted down during Patti Smith's closing set at the WXPN All About the Music Festival in July. I was about to throw it away, but realized what it was just in time. Since I got up at 4:30, I decided this meant I finally got to blog it. (Boyfriend is snoring down the house, plus I am wired for sound.) It's also my last Sunday morning with Keith Brand and Sleepy Hollow--the most interesting music mix EVAH. But I digress.

Imagine sundown overlooking the Delaware River and the Philly skyline as backdrop. L'heure bleu morphing into gray and silver, river, clouds, sky. Red and purple glints off the cimbals. Patti Smith with Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Dougherty, plus a drummer whose name I didn't catch. Old friends. The original black-haired indies, now with silver hair but still punk.

Opening: Dancing Barefoot. (I got up and danced barefoot in the grass.) Ghost Dance (We Shall Live Again chorus); Redondo Beach (as intense as ever); Southern Cross (with a long trance break); Camden riff--tone poem composed for this event?; Free Money; Like A Rolling Stone (great cover!); The People Have The Power; Rock and Roll Nigger; and of course, Gloria. It was glorious.

Can't take you home with me and the offspring on the ferry. Patti provided a soundtrack for both our lives. It's fascinating seeing her songs reach young people. Of course, she got in an anti-war message. The middle-class middle-aged women were there lipsynching the lyrics with me. It was still empowering--I think that's the thing about Patti.

Who's a boo?

That is the question I pose to my dog at least five times a day. She still hasn't answered. Sorry for the dog aside, but I am dog tired and she is being neurotic and in constant physical contact. She doesn't like luggage. Or furniture being moved. Or the doorbell ringing repeatedly. Or me keeping strange hours. This is all stressful and exhausting. It even interferes with naps! Dreadful. On the up side? Comforting her comforts me.

Today the PC, printer, scanner, tablet, speakers and headphones moved to Norristown. I am allowed to borrow this ibook until the end of the week for everyone's continued sanity. I have been very touched by the concern people have expressed about my state of connectivity. I am also concerned about what that says about me. I can live without a Treo, I swear. I am merely spoiled. I don't NEED the net, you see. Agh, I sound like every junkie I've ever known. Something to ponder in the red states, I suppose.

Ok, that last paragraph was a pathetic attempt to distract from the fact that the offspring and most of her possessions went with the PC. This is a bigger issue than connectivity. Or it is connectivity to the nth degree. I am having empty nest kind of in reverse, since I am the one really leaving the nest. Quite shocking. I expected the offspring would come with. Keep forgetting that fully-developed-human-who-is-captain-of-own-destiny thing. Did I mention she got her learner's permit? We have to do all this and more all at once. We know no other way.

So I am already figuring I must adopt a teen or teens in San Diego soon. There are bound to be some unsuspecting innocents available. It is the only thing that made saying goodbye to "my" teens at MPOW bearable. My belief in positive youth development is the veriest snare.

Oh, the reason I am allowed on to blather this evening, even though I have to pick up Matt at the airport at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow? Believe it or not, I have failed to finish another book! Definitely a record setting year. I left The March by E. L. Doctorow on the bedside table, thinking it was safe because it was too disturbing for bedtime reading. But any port in insomnia, right? Well, I was doing ok with the bullets in the brain, and the dismembered parts floating in the swamp, and the surgeon doing brain surgery, etc. But clunky dialogue, grasping transistions, no sympathetic characters? Feh. Better to pet the dog.

Forgot, read a putrid romance while flying back and forth. Too lazy to go look at the cover...and do not wish to give it the least nod anyway. Actually bought for $6 and it sucked! Already got SDPL library card and boyfriend placed hold on new Sue Monk Kidd--what a nice way to live! No word expected on interview until 9/1 or 2...deep breaths and visions of a universe in harmony.

Harlequin Shojo!

AlterNet: WireTap: U.S. Teenage Girls Prefer Japanese Heroes

Article is mostly dumb. Have they been under large rock? But Harlequin is going to publish Shojo manga, via Dark Horse, in the US. EEEEEEEEE!

Four hours in O'Hare

I am willing to pay $0.65/minute for internet access, it turns out. I would share some pix of beautiful (like gorgeous) libraries in Chula Vista, CA, but I don't have my cable. I fly out Sunday for an interview yesterday, then left last night...red-eye with 3.5 hour layover at 4:00 am in Chicago. The place with 'net access for hire did not open until 7:00. My plane boards SOON...to continue in Philly...

Two days later and the worst of the jet lag seems to be over. Hoo boy. Ran out to San Diego for an interview. Cross toes; everything seemed fabulous. Like a visit to the future: self checkout, marketing, wifi, cafes, teen areas with couches, daily story hours, discussions of information literacy. I am jealous, as well as wishful.

Plus I got to sign the lease on the new place and see it! It has big trees, two pools, hot tub, tennis court, business center, gym. A very different planet. The apartment has lots of closets, lots of kitchen cabinets, good countertops, and a balcony shaded by big trees. Boyfriend moved in yesterday and found free wifi and basic cable already in place. This could all work!

A library farewell

I am not sure I can ever really say good-bye to a library. I sort of carry them around in my head: that one at some Catholic school where I spent a summer reading the lives of the saints--just fascinating for a nice Presbyterian girl. Of course, the one over town hall in Upstate New York. That library is gone, but I can get there in a minute any time. The stacks at Butler. The geology library. The geography library at Barnard--OMG, the flood! Waaaaa. I have been on such intimate terms with several libraries that I literally had touched every book.

I never came close to touching every book in the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia. I loved the fact that there would always be more books than I could read there. I am truly happy in a building with three million volumes. But I did indeed say good-bye. You know the old saw about leaving something some place so you have a reason to return? Well. After I spent all day packing up my desk and saying farewell to all kinds of friends, I got home and realized my purse was still in my locker! The guards did let me in.

I am excited to be moving to San Diego. Even though I try to be thoroughly pragmatic and anti-romance (the interpersonal kind, not novels!), I am letting a bit of wonder creep in. Every once in a while, I allow a glimmer of thinking maybe this will all work out. Maybe I will get a job in a library with a growing tax base and a forward-looking administration. Maybe boyfriend and I will live happily. I think driving across country will be fun, and that the dog will like the winters even more than I do.

The Free Library has a saying, "Art has always been in Pepper Hall." It is code for "we will never change." The picture above is the fabulous ceiling of Pepper Hall. The skylights were painted during World War II, then covered with plywood chicken coops in the 80s. The plan for the expansion and renovation of the Central Library calls for the skylights to be restored. Yippee! In the new plan, the art will no longer be in Pepper Hall. Maybe other changes will follow. I won't have a ringside seat, but I am sure I will hear.

Inside CDL: Metasearch Infrastructure

Inside CDL: Metasearch Infrastructure

Oh for the time to read this. No, must write memo on department's preservation needs! Someone wonderful will blog it, I know. I'm just leaving it here as a reminder to read it. Once I am at a California library?

Thanks to Roy Tennant and Web4Lib, as always.

Insomniac anonymous

Awake here at 3:44 am, since around 2:30. Trying to make it useful by typing up talking points for the non-speech at tomorrow's (today's!) work bon voyage party. Definitely not something I learned in library school.

Tone is so important. I still need a reference! There are issues around why I am leaving that I cannot mention at all, not even here :( So I am painting a rather rosy picture. Mostly, I need to thank lots of people, my staff, my friends, my mentors. (There are people I will not be thanking, but not too pointedly.)

I will take lots of pix and post them on Flickr. Party pix and beautiful old building pix. You can guess what my Flickr username is.

Meanwhile, I had another phone interview tonight. Cross your toes, as the cost of that COBRA health coverage is truly breathtaking. This spring, when it was still a big secret, I took lots of heart reading Caveat Lector, Information Wants to Be Free, and Random Access Mazur (see the blogroll for links). Now, Dorothea, Meredith and Rochelle are all ensconced in their new homes and positions. Color me pea green with envy.

They are all recent LIS graduates. I keep thinking that there needs to be job search for the over-forty librarian somewhere. People whose resumes are maybe a little too deep. Like, should I have put that my BA was awarded in 1980, before some LIS grads were born? I have been applying for such a gamut of positions. Though I drew the line at entry level. One interviewer actually suggested I consider a Librarian I position. Could not do it.

Then there's the over-forty blogger. I read the statistical study Walt Crawford did at this month's Cites & Insights. It was fairly interesting, though I am terrified of looking at the blogs I don't know, since I will end up adding them to my ever-burgeoning Bloglines subscriptions. I recently discovered Library Dust. Consider this is a recommendation. Also look for Michael's essay on "Homeless in Paradise" on WebJunction. Michael is indeed over forty. As is Walt. And Karen Schneider. I wish Walt could somehow have done a breakdown by blogger age, though I know it would be fairly impossible. There are days when I feel like Methuselah in biblioblogland. I know that the age should skew higher as the technology is embraced more widely. Meanwhile, I cringe a bit thinking of being a voice of the over-forty blogger. I am not unhappy at all to be middle-aged. I am thankful for the wisdom I have earned, some of it the hard way. But just as the next-gen librarians have issues around the "lack of experience" Catch-22, us geezers may have too much experience, and are not that thrilled to be up against folks who have been wired since, like junior high.

I used to like telling people that I first touched a computer in 1974, if you consider feeding in a card stack "touch." Now, although I am still proud of that Snoopy calendar on that green bar paper, I am not looking to regale newbies or new employers with that information. I guess the DEC workstation in 1981 is off limits, as well as the absolutely fabulous Xerox workstation in 1989. Ah, computers, I have known ye. But I can't market those long-ago skills! Even much more recent ones are kind of embarassing, residing as I have in something of a technology wasteland. Mind you, I still consider it fortunate that most of my colleagues and supervisors are unaware that blogs are updated frequently. Most of them, if they came here, came here once. Sweet, huh? Oh right, maybe that was a comment on the content, as it were.

Time limits

Limits can be helpful--thank god I know how to limit results in all kinds of databases. But living under a time limit is something different. "You, young lady, are allowed exactly fifteen minutes to post all those deep thoughts you have been thinking and then BACK TO WORK!" Argh. What deep thoughts? More like runoff from the babel in my brain, but quick!

I want to get in here some expression of sympathy for public library patrons whose computing needs are supposed to be met with one one-hour session a day, six days a week if they are lucky. I mean seriously, I do understand that this may not be enough. Don't think for a minute that I could do it. Give me almost any reason, and I personally will extend your session. Job search, family crisis, homework assignment, inexperienced user, what have you. Do not tell me you just want to surf around some more. I can't justify that one, due to the twenty people behind you. And really, you should be able to check your email in an hour, at least the really important stuff. Yes, you have to talk to me, and before your session ends, thank you kindly.

Eek, brings up being unwired while on the road to my new home. Boyfriend will be unsympathethic. I can do it, I tell myself. But some part of me says, "I will miss me." How's that for daft? May end up "blogging" to a spiral-bound notebook. But who will comment?

Exciting news: Traloo, tralay, the 45s not only sold on Ebay, they have been purchased by a loyal BBB reader who is also a pal from LISNews! w00t! w00t w00t W00T! Online community in action. How cool is that? I CANNOT BELIEVE. Thank you Mock Turtle! I hope you do find gold in them thar hills. Or create art, or something.

Someday, in some way, there will be a post giving Patti Smith's set list from 7/24, plus a lengthy paean to LISNews. Both are very good places to visit.

Status: Anxiety

Getting rid of 3/4s (5/8s?, 13/16s? Agh, Whatever is the biggest fraction you can think) of my possessions turns out not to be the hardest part of this move. I am saying goodbye to a lot of people I really like or love. It may not seem shocking to you that this would be difficult. But it is for me. I moved a ton as a child. My father was an engineer. It's akin to being an Army brat. Or an oil brat. Or a foreign service brat. You learn to detach at an early age.

I have been in Philadelphia for ten years. It is true I have lived in four different domiciles in Philly, but they were all within a mile of each other. One zip code. This is the longest I have ever lived anywhere except NYC and environs. I spent nineteen years in I think 12 places including Hoboken and Jersey City. Bunch of different zip codes. I worked in Manhattan the entire time. When I left J.C. ten years ago, it was as a refugee. I was fleeing. Of course, leaving Philly is bringing back some of those feelings. Like I ever need reminding.

I haven't been handling this stuff too well. I have said the wrong things to the right people and the right things to the wrong people. I have managed to mangle my own feelings as well. Even though the Alan de Botton book was very thought provoking, I have not made great strides in thinking philosophically. Meanwhile, I have been denying myself books! You see how crazy I have been making myself? But there is so much to do, and so many things I want to do. I definitely need to read ...the thoughts are broken... (I don't want to get the link from Bloglines because I don't want to lose the twenty-two posts waiting for me, but I DO recommend it, and truly, I will read/respond when I can! When is that, she wails...

Homeless in Paradise

WebJunction - Printer Friendly Content

Word. Completely applies to homeless in the birthplace of liberty as well. I met Michael at ALA at the OCLC bloggers' do...he seemed like a great guy. Now I wishe I had talked to him more...

Google Isn't Everything

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

All right, who told him?

"Swallowing a cuttlefish" while others "pirouette around"

Library Books Are OK, But Here's What Google Should Really Be Concentrating On

Well, the headline threw me once, and again. He's talking about Google Print, though he seems a little behind the news. In any case, he is making the case that Google is wasting resources digitizing old library books. I cannot agree with that. I agree that access to the deep, hidden or opaque web is something else we want and need.

"Web pages that are spawned on the fly from database queries, and/or are hidden behind the CGI'd, Session ID-URL'd moats of password-protected and fee-accessed Web sites." Frustration. Those "page cannot load" messages, et al. Some users are beginning to express the belief that if information does not turn up in Google within ten hits of one or two keywords, then it does not exist. This terrifies me.

I had to work hard on Saturday to convince an intelligent young woman that MPOW's subscription databases could get her more and better info than the big G on her search topic. I did convince her, and possibly made a convert. But I know she really just wanted to do it herself. Even though I was nice and helpful and showed her how to do it herself, it was clearly not the same. I think she will turn to a librarian next time she really gets stumped, but only if she has no other choice.

I do not want to be the user's last resort. We need to find ways to bring information to them, to be where the user is (as the OCLC 2003 Environmental Scan said), to make it feel more empowering. Google Database is a possible answer, if G can outmaneuver those damn pirouetters.

P. S. Library books are more than ok.

Saint Hiram the Hebrew

In my current "purge all unneccesary possessions" cycle, I decided to gift a library trainee of whom I am particularly fond with my antique library stamp holder. Someone gave it to me while I was in library school. His response:

I would love the stamp holder!  my branch has something like it, and I've admired it.  I still stamp cards and books, and I actually enjoy it.  It's satisfying in the same way that typing an angry letter on a manual typewriter is. Thwack!  Thwack-thwack!  So there, take that!  Whenever one of my colleagues makes fun of me (which is often, and always good-humored), I raise a stamp threateningly and warn them that they're about to be taken out of circulation.

I have something a little less tangible for you to take along:  a patron saint named Saint Hiram.  I recently created him.  One of the Library Assistants at my branch is very culturally Catholic, and I'm impressed that she can invoke the name of a saint who specializes in interceding in whatever situation she happens to be in at the moment.  So I decided that we needed a good Jewish saint, and that, since no saint has yet claimed patronage of gravitational lensing (my brother's dissertation topic), Saint Hiram will step in and take up the slack on that one.  Another Library Assistant, a very funny man and a gifted poet, wrote this "Prayer to Saint Hiram the Hebrew:

Although the Pope in Rome may not approve
Nor think that it should ever well behoove
The Holy Church that Hiram might be sainted
(Who with meek Jesus is but ill acquainted),
I haggle ever humbly nonetheless
That Hiram intercede in my distress!
And if I do not get my way with Hiram,
I'll call upon the Lord above to fire him! 

By BG

I should warn you, though, that so far when I have asked Saint Hiram for help, he's told me to get off my lazy tuchas and fix it myself.  Sigh.

I thought being gifted with a Jewish saint to call on was wonderful, and I had to share the poem.

Now to find homes for all the other incredible ephemera. I mean the stuff too weird to put on the Psychic Shopping Network. I may need to call on Saint Hiram.I've launched my first Ebay auction ever. So far, I've made my starting bid. Which will at least save them fom the curb. Now, about the wedding china...

Continuous Partial Attention

There's a name for watching Now on PBS while checking the Phillies score on AM while weeding bookshelves while talking to offspring while reading IM messages!

Dog says what we have here is complete impartial inattention. Time for a walk! Read this meaty beaty big and bouncy article when you get the chance--more than just my nonvirtual address is changing. (But thank gods and goddesses that that isn't!)

Continuous Computing Blog: Social Machines

via blg3 at BlogJunction

What's the subject?

Library Journal - Research at Risk

Wow, sign me up to carry a spear! Oh, I am not an academic librarian, dagnabbit. This article does such a great job of explaining some of the problems with keyword searching. I refuse to allow that it doesn't affect pulic library reference service.

I have always stumbled a bit trying to explain why the catalog is better than Google or Amazon. (In some iterations, it is not. Chagrin.) I have had to explain the concept of controlled vocabulary to patrons and staff, like it is an idea from Mars, or some as-yet undiscovered planet. Most of our newspaper electronic resources have little to no subject headings. We have a new product that gives you a hit list with "near" spellings. So far, I can't make out how they decided what was "near". I was very excited to see 18 hits for my surname in historic newspapers. It turned out they were for McKinney, M'Henry, MacKenna, etc. No cigars. So this product and its family may seem to promise much to genealogists, but deliver disappointment.

But there's much more meat to the article--read it! Pick up a spear. We are interested in better access to information. That does not have to mean "dumbing down".

Google's relevance ranking of keywords is not the same as conceptual categorization of sources accomplished by LCSH. The difference is finding "something quickly"—isolated, unstructured, and disconnected information—versus gaining a systematic overview of the conceptual field.

Sex sex sex sex love

Just a quick bib note, now that I have your attention. I finished The Inner Circle. Even with the prurience factor, I found it kind of flat. Completely lacking in humor (or did I not get the jokes?). Boyle usually does amuse me; Budding prospects : a pastoral is laugh-out-loud funny. By the way, I heart the Worldcat subject headings on both of these--someone had fun classifying these.

In any case, the offspring and I really liked Kinsey, so my interest was piqued. Boyle makes the point that Kinsey (the person), for all his interest in sex, left love out of his equations. But it is there in human interactions, whether sex is involved or not. This is as close as I am coming to a Stephanie Klein post. You can find my comment. Sigh. I am in favor of both sex and love, but you are not getting many details here!

Whole Lot A Shakin' Goin' On

Yesterday, I tendered my resignation at MPOW. I am "following my bliss" and moving to San Diego to live with the boyfriend. My last day at MPOW will be August 19. Then I am taking 2 weeks to pack up and go to Wildwood Crest (a dry-as-in-no-alcohol Jersey Shore town) with family for three nights. The boyfriend is arriving to help with packing and to go "down the shore", as we say hereabouts. Then we will come back to Philly for a quick clean-up, and then head west in a rental car with the dog (who will never fly cargo).

The offspring has decided to stay in Philadelphia. She will be living with my co-ex-wife (a very close bond) and her little sister, while attending community college, assuming she learns how to drive by then!

I am putting my condo on the market. I met with the realtor who sold me the condo Monday night. He is recommending I list it for over $300,000. This blows my mind. Let's hope the bubble doesn't suddenly burst! I don't have a job yet in San Diego, but I have an interview next week. Cross your fingers and toes.

It is weird telling people via my blog. Seems harsh. Even though I won't be moving in blog terms. But it has been killing me not to talk about this. I predict that I will not be posting as often for a bit. As it is, we've been having connectivity issues here, plus there will be some electronic migration.

If any of you know a place in San Diego near the beach that takes dogs, please let me know ASAP! Or of job openings or people willing to network. Or friends wanting to make new friends. I am kind of terrified taking this big a plunge off a cliff, but at the same time, I am excited. Tempus fugit, no time like the present, etc.

Do you remember Patti?

I am going to the WXPN All About the Music Festival tomorrow. I have been looking forward to it for months. It is one of the great, good things in life. $5 a ticket. I've gone most of the years I have lived in Philly. Tomorrow, I will see/hear some of my favorite locals, including Mutlu, and the big acts, Indigo Girls and Patti Smith and her band to close.

Strangely enough, I found a poem today that I wrote around November 1980. It talks about Patti Smith in a rather oblique way. It is about a friend of mine who was murdered in November 1979. We used to listen to a lot of Patti together. Anyway, I typed up a copy to give to her tomorrow. There is a members meet-and-greet thing with XPN, and I am willing to stand in line. I had planned to say hello anyway. I don't want her to sign anything or anything, but she has been very important in my life. So I will give her this poem:

Do You Remember Patti?

In the apartment of mushroom-colored doors,
Swing back and forth incessantly
Ushering in Swedes, gossip and baked dishes
The room with one too many windows
Elves swayed and talked about the movies
The leaves fell and the wind would rush up from the river
Telling horror stories about New Jersey
Until Linda would protest
All light not meant to be taken that way.

The frog in the silver shrieking radiator
The magic wand near the rabbit on the bed
He would wake her up early on a morning to be slept late
Let's make cookies on the counter, watch something on TV
Do something wild as long as it is late
Escape into albums near the middle of the afternoon
Soft kisses in the living room before the doors swung open again
He never did return the albums.

So much for poetry
No more old hymns
he died in a room at one-ninety Claremont
A great place for parties
Athena making John and John making piss
Now another year is over
Tossed up bricks in the snow
Read Auden in green grass
Black thoughts can rest assured
Faint pink marks on the upper arm
and bruises around the neck killed Russell
They buried him in Florida
And I won't go to any more parties, but I do.

ProQuest to Offer RSS Feeds

The Shifted Librarian: ProQuest to Offer RSS Feeds

More coolness! Thank you, Jenny <3

Why didn't my ProQuest rep tell me this last week? Nevermind.

Now, thinking cap on, how do I get to LITA Forum? May have to be long-term goal...

Eastman House and ICP collaboration

Amassing a Treasury of Photography - New York Times

"...an ambitious project to create one of the largest freely accessible databases of masterwork photography anywhere on the Web..." Coolness.

Dar Al Hayat

Dar Al Hayat

I found this site when I was looking around for Arabic language newspapers for a display. It's pan-Arab and published in London. This happens to be a letter to the editor discussing the author's recent censorship by a different publication. (Reading between the lines, a Saudi newspaper.) I found it interesting, particularly the note about history and truth being hidden in the British document archives.

I think Westerners have difficulty understanding many things about the Arab world. That is not meant to be an apology or rationale or anything for terrorism. But think about how different our thinking would be if the first time we had access to unfettered news information about our world was in what, 1990? 1995? I wish I was at work and had better access to statistical databases. But we can guess that there has probably been little over a decade of widespread access to news media that is not heavily censored by government. The only subscription I had that was not heavily censored the last time I lived in Saudi Arabia (1979, and I understand censorship is much more stringent now) was the Times Book Review. Even that failed to arrive at times, or had articles blacked out.

Thus, the major challenge faced by the written media today is to present an attracting material to face this massive competition. We all know that the chief satellite media breakthrough was achieved by the US CNN channel, in providing live news to the Arab citizen, who was absent during Gulf War I. It succeeded in delivering a real image to an individual, for whom truth was not part of his daily life, except when the British documents archives were opened 30 years after the event.

Please do not cease/non-drivel reflections

...the thoughts are broken...

Wow, the link to Mark's book in Open Worldcat took me to the ebook! Am going to dabble--chapter heading "To classify is human" lured me in.

Of course, the whole "what am I, invisible?" thing hooked me as well. I dunno. I have been reading Status Anxiety by Alan de Botton. De Botton is about my level in reading about philosophy. The parts about how others view us and why it is so important to us, on so many different levels--I am really hoping I can become more philosophical without becoming a misanthrope. Better men than me, and all.

[Web4lib] RE: library automation vendors

Apologies in advance for how icky these email posts look. You know I'm really into the content when I sacrifice looks this much.

Web4Lib has just been burning up the last few days. First there was an incredible Google thread (where does Google "end"?), now a one that rocks on library automation in the largest sense. If either of these things floats your boat the teensiest bit, you really need to hit the archives (http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/) then subscribe already!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Walker <dwalker@csusm.edu>
Date: Jul 19, 2005 3:07 PM
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] RE: library automation vendors
To: "Suzanne M. Gray" < sgray@umich.edu>
Cc: web4lib@webjunction.org

>> So I wonder what is it that libraries
>> are going to stop doing to invest in
>> usability testing and interface development?

I don't think we really need to *stop* doing things to invest in
usability testing and interface development.  We just need to scale-back
our activities in other areas.

I would also perhaps put that question on its head and ask: How are we
already underutilizing our collections and resources in reference and
instruction precisely *because* we are not putting resources into web
development.

Let me explain:

>> It seems that a lot of this work is being
>> done on an ad hoc basis by committees.

This is a great observation on so many levels, and true in many places.
I know several libraries where the library web site and all the new
systems, like link resolvers and federated search systems, are being
worked on and managed by committees of librarians.

In too many libraries, we're pulling non-technical people off of the
reverence desk, out of cataloging, and out of instructional sessions to
assist with the interface and roll out of these systems.  These are
people who don't have the expertise to really do those tasks well, and
committee structures make that doubly ineffective.

And so here's the real kicker --  You can't escape the rapid growth and
increasing reliance on web technology in libraries, or the fact that our
users regularly struggle with it every day.

If we don't hire talented, tech-savvy people to do programming,
interface design, and usability testing, then we have to pull
non-technical people away from what they do well to work on these tasks
-- tasks for which they usually have no training or expertise, thus
hurting both the usability of these systems *and* those areas they
normally work in.

Likewise, too many instructional and reference encounters these days
simply involve interface explanations.  In order to even make sense out
of the dizzying array of databases and disconnected local systems in an
academic library, you have to focus a fair amount of your time helping
users with mechanics -- click here, look there, select this, don't click
on that because that's not what you want, etc.

If we spent more resources making our systems easier to use in the first
place, we wouldn't need to do that.  We could focus our reference and
instruction services more on helping users with the really challenging
aspects of research.  Right now, we're doing a lot of (unnecessary)
bad-interface explanation, and loosing whole groups of users because of
it.

Investing in the right people in the right places can let everyone do
their jobs more effectively, even allowing libraries to do more with
less people.  Sound utopian?  I don't think it is.  We've made these
type of decisions here, and are already reaping the rewards.

--Dave

=================
David Walker
Web Development Librarian
Library
Cal State San Marcos
760-750-4379
=================
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