geeky artist librarian

Moving Right Along

2011-02-21T19:22:00.002-06:00

Ahoy! Hallo there! Why yes, it's me.

Just thought I'd drop a line to say that both my e-portfolio and my new blog are now hosted at:
http://geekyartistlibrarian.wordpress.com/

...see ya there!

Thoughts on Academic Library Mission

2010-02-16T15:09:00.001-06:00

I was planning to write about how reading about the board of trustees duties this week coincided with the abrupt announcement of Dr. Bataille's departure... but I read a classmate's post that mentioned library and museum missions, and it sparked lots of thoughts!

When I first started my MS in library science in 2002, I didn't understand the academic library mission. Library missions tend to be more straightforward in public libraries than university libraries, probably for the same reasons that university missions themselves are complex and the subject of much debate!

At any academic library (meaning college & university libraries, not primary or secondary school libraries) there is definitely the preservation or "conserving knowledge" mission that Bogue/Aper describes. The weight of that mission varies from institution from institution--part of the variance is related to the institutional mission, part of it relates to individual library collections.

We're currently refashioning our UNT Libraries mission statement because it does not adequately express our vision of the libraries. We have a particularly rich preservation mission, because we have a number of unique collections in the UNT Archives (like university records and photographs), the Rare Books Room (old manuscripts, miniature books), the Music Library (LP's from the Library of Congress, jazz scores), etc. This is part of the "conservation of knowledge" mission that Bogue mentions, but it's also simply the physical preservation of old and valuable materials.

The "conservation of knowledge" portion is expressed in the UNT Digital Library, where all electronic theses/dissertations written by UNT students are kept; the same department is also working with university leaders on a digital repository to store faculty research and publications. The subject librarians for each department similarly work with their associated academic departments (for instance, mine is the Dept. of Philosophy and Religion Studies) to collect and preserve all publications by their faculty in that department, particulary print books.

But we have two more imperative missions. The first, perhaps most obvious, mission is to serve the students, staff, and faculty of UNT by providing the information that they need. This is done in all kinds of ways (reference question answering, workshops, collection purchasing, developing new services) and delivered in person, by phone, text message, IM, online chat software, email, fax--you get the idea, any format you want! This mission in large research universities tends to be focused more on support of faculty research, so that the books purchased are oriented more toward faculty needs than those of undergraduates needing term paper resources. Similarly in liberal arts colleges, the library collection tends to focus on general resources for undergraduates, and less in-depth materials that support faculty research (although this is often supported through services like Inter-Library Loan). UNT of course being a mixed-mission university, the libraries are similarly mixed in their collection and service focus.

Finally, the UNT Libraries have also been designated as a federal and state depository library. This is a designation that brings with it a broad collection of nearly one million documents produced by the government that our library is given for free, assuming we meet government regulations of a depository library. As a federal depository, for instance, we are by law required to serve any member of the public with our documents collection. This goes beyond merely helping people look up regulations on adoption or do-it-yourself divorce forms; our documents collection is rich with primary historic resources and many valuable maps and books that are worth thousands of dollars a piece. This is another key piece of keeping American democracy alive: providing the public free and permanent access to the documents that created our government and the documents that our government creates. It's all part of that famous quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the key to a democracy is having an informed citizenry.

So in a broad sense, our particular mission at the UNT Libraries is to preserve a variety of rich, unique collections, to support our university's students, staff, faculty, and to serve the general public. It's a thrilling mission to serve every day, let me tell you!!

I do have to mention that Bogue/Aper's comment on page 21 about digital library access pushed a few of my buttons. I'm a professed bibliophile, but I'm also a hugely geeky techie and love to play with technology--which comes in handy, since my title is Librarian for Digital Collections! One of my primary research interests is library support for distance learners, which goes far beyond mere email reference answers or e-book collections.

Bogue/Aper's statement about the future of libraries makes me feel conflicted, as this great debate in the library world always does. Page 21 says that "we are probably not far from that moment when we will not go to the library but simply purchase a computer disk or other information storage device... and take it home... and have every page of the library available at our intellectual disposal. Such convenience and power, however, may never replace the joy and wonder that comes from browsing the quiet and musty stacks of libraries."

Well... yes and no. Certainly our library catalog can be accessed online, as can many of the e-books, online gov documents, and databases that allow us to access the majority of our journal articles electronically. And that's fantastic--even working in the library, I love being able to email myself articles instead of walk down four floors to make a photocopy. But no, the printed matter isn't going anywhere soon. Full-text searching of our digital collections is a vast improvement on searching a paper index, but talk to any art student about trying to find a certain visual reference for a sketch, and that's much more easily accomplished by visually browsing tangible books than searching using a textbox online. And those unique collections at UNT libraries? We're digitizing them, but researchers will always want to look at the originals, to mine more information from the "real thing," and to touch the actual objects that past giants touched.

Bogue/Aper do acknowledge some of the physical pleasures of books in the "joy and wonder" part of that statement... but as a librarian I have to huffily protest the stereotypical image of "quiet and musty stacks!" My guess is that my personal appearance wouldn't fit into their standard definition of "librarian," either... but that's a conversation for another time and another class.

Hmm. Didn't mean to provide such a wordy post; the words "library" and "democracy" tend to get me very excited!

Ponderings on the "American Idea"

2010-01-26T13:19:00.003-06:00

I'm taking a course on the role of higher education in a democracy, and class discussion is bringing up interesting thoughts.

I was fascinated by "A Religious Idea Called 'America'" by David Gelernter (Bradley Lecture, Washington, February 13, 2006). Many of the statements the author makes solidify aspects of America that had puzzled me for some time.

The first of these is what the author refers to as "American Zionism." This is a particularly apt metaphor for this feeling that seems to be inherent in many Americans that America is the best country that ever is or was, a chosen country, perhaps even chosen by God. This is something that I never questioned growing up, but became abruptly aware of when I took my first trip abroad after my sophomore year of college. It seems bizarre now, but before then the "outside world" (meaning anyplace outside of America) was simply an abstraction to me. I believed that other countries existed, that people lived in them, but I didn't truly grasp what that meant. When I landed in Italy, suddenly the rest of the world was concretely real to me. I realized that the faceless people I had imagined living in these countries were individuals just like me, who were simply born somewhere else. I realized that there were other worldviews, other contexts from which to understand world events.

And that made me suddenly question America's historic foreign policy of helping (or meddling, depending on your perspective) in other countries' issues. Helping when asked is one thing, but as we all know, America has done more than that--just look to Vietnam or Iraq, to use the obvious examples. I can see why the potential to free a people and give them a democracy is an attractive idea, but is it our business to do so? Why do so many of us seem to think that it is our right, perhaps our divine right, to decide that a country should be governed in a certain way, and to invade and wage war to ensure that this is so?

I find it difficult to define ethics outside of a specific moral code (as is discussed in James Campbell's Understanding John Dewey, chapter 4, the idea of ethics as a secular moral code). I find it difficult to define "right" and "wrong" without a specific code or criteria. I'm sure that some of this difficulty is because I was brought up in a religious home, and my natural pattern of thinking has been defined by a specific moral code. However, regardless of my own beliefs, I believe that America as a country is defined by and exists in large part to protect religious freedom, and as such should be ruled in as secular and nonbiased a manner as possible. It's simply difficult for me to define how that governing should run, what moral code it should adhere to, without having something specific against which to judge that government's actions.

This post doesn't specifically relate to education thus far, but I have had similar intellectual struggles with education in similar manners. How can we teach a variety of worldviews, values, and perspectives in an honest manner to students? Is disclosing our own personal perspective a helpful insight, a cautionary disclosure of our bias, or a harmful influence that creates more bias?

The more I study and think, the fewer answers and more questions I have.

Busy Week...

2009-07-10T04:44:00.002-06:00

I'm currently at a conference on civic engagement and deliberative democracy called "No Better Time" at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. It's incredibly cool, and their conference logo this year was made using Wordle! On Saturday, I'll fly directly to Chicago for the rest of ALA Annual (hey, if anyone's free Tuesday morning/early afternoon, want to join me on an architectural boat tour?). Rather than flood my blog with live-blogging sessions, I'm posting notes on my wiki and brief thoughts/greetings/blatherings on my twitter feed.

I return on Tuesday evening and shall immediately collapse.

Mac & iPhone Tidbits

2009-06-17T11:49:00.003-06:00

Great quote:
"If we had a dime for every blog rumor about an Apple tablet we've seen, we'd have at least enough for a large soy-based coffee beverage from Starbucks."

-- Dan Ackerman, "Five things still missing from Apple MacBooks" from CNET.com

MacWorld reviews iPhone 3.0.

For iPhone OmniFocus users (and if you have an iPhone without OmniFocus, let me encourage you to check it out--it's the best task-management tool I've ever seen):
"The Coolest Feature You’re Probably Not Using"

-- Brian, The Omni Mouth

Going from 3G to 3GS?
"How to Avoid Paying the iPhone 3GS Upgrade Tax"

-- Brian X. Chen, Wired.com

In Other News...
Rebecca Blakeley has posted some fantastic resources for reading up on Iran and the current conflict, as well as background info.

Research Update

2009-04-28T13:58:00.004-06:00

I blogged earlier this semester about three projects I'm researching:

practices & experiences of academic librarians embedded in online courses
factors that affect the adoption of electronic reference in academic libraries
...and a project on educational background of academic library deans (with fellow librarian Annie Downey)

So the status updates on those three are as follows:

embedded librarians project:

finishing up the presentation portion of the project (organizing it as 6 case studies, with trends and discussion)
writing lit review for written portion of project
since this is for a client (as well as my class), I'm planning to format it as a thick binder with tabs for the lit review/trends, each institutional case study, and will also include a matrix of activities, as well as a summary of commonalities and differences in experiences across the case studies

electronic reference adoption study:

this is a paper for a statistics course, so it's a statistical analysis...
I downloaded the Academic Library Survey datasets from NCES (National Center for Educational Statistics) for 1996 - 2006 (though in the end for various reasons I was only able to use 2000 - 2006; I hope to include the other data this summer)
reformatting all the data and framing it correctly took quite a while!
I performed an ANCOVA for a binary response variable using the program "R"
I did some related analyses, and created graphical displays for each
I'm now writing the results as an article (it's my first quantitative methods article, and it's proving a bit of a tough writing job for me)

education of academic library deans study:

Annie's got us a head start on the lit review
we plan to do the majority of the data gathering this summer
we're currently working on an abstract to propose to ASHE for this fall

I'm proud of myself for actually taking the time to thoughtfully consider this semester's projects as future publications/presentations. And the more I work on the embedded librarians project, the more I see a future dissertation idea coalescing there... it's pointing in many directions, any of which could prove a fruitful topic. It's pretty exciting to feel that I'm not only researching useful topics, but that the last several semesters combined, I've managed to do at least one project each time on library support for distance learning, which I knew I wanted to pursue broadly all along. Huzzah!

And a brief note, in case I haven't mentioned it here before (I've been tweeting it alot): the task management software OmniFocus (and specifically the iPhone version, although I also have the original program on my Mac) has saved my life this semester. It's tracking my personal errands, house projects, work projects, school research, you name it. It's amazing, and if you have an iPhone it will be the best $19 you've spent.

And thus ends my flagrant advertising. (But seriously, busy techie librarians, try it out!) Or at least consider some form of task management software, no matter what computer or handheld you've got.

She's Alive!

2009-04-16T10:17:00.002-06:00

...just barely. Was in Houston for a whole week for the Texas Library Association's Annual Conference--thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being a Program Planner, and am now thoroughly enjoying not working on that at all for awhile!

In my personal life, we moved into a new house--in the middle of a semester of fulltime work, fulltime school for me... so that's why I haven't been around much. The general theme of my life at this moment is: "Eeek." And also, "Is it May yet?"

May 15th, I get a tiny piece of my life back. I'm looking forward to having the time to explore several class projects in more depth--two of them have potential as pilots for more in-depth research projects, and I have a separate research project I've wanted to work on for awhile now. All three revolve around libraries, and two of them are directly related to library interfaces with distance learning.

I'd better get back to all of it--just wanted to let this poor little blog know I haven't abandoned it!

Tips on Getting Published

2009-03-06T12:10:00.003-06:00

Great question in the comments today, and my answer ended up being so long that I'm going to make it an actual post. (Thanks, Joan!)

Question: Any tips on how to get involved with publishing. I've been a librarian for 2 years now.

Hi, Joan!

Note: with many thanks to Dr. Marc Cutright and his Fall 2008 EDHE 6500 "Essentials of Academic Publishing" course.

Well, what I did was subscribe to a couple of blogs that compile librarian publishing/presenting opportunities. When I found calls for chapters, articles, or book reviews that fit my interests or job duties, I always submitted something.

Here are the two I read the most:

Book reviews are a great way to get started. They are usually short (about 1,000 words is average), you sometimes get a book for free, and editors are often dying to get someone to offer to write them. Most faculty lean toward writing articles because they often count for more toward tenure--so there is a lack of good reviewers out there.

Look up a journal online that you read a lot, or that fits your interests/job well (for instance, I chose the Journal of Web Librarianship because I'm interested in digital collections and distance learning). Find the contact information for that journal's book review editor; they are often posted, but if not, write the journal editor and request that information for the review editor.

Write up a professional inquiry letter, expressing that you're interested in reviewing a book for them. You can suggest a book you already have in mind, or they may have a list of books on the website that you can choose from, or you can simply ask if they have books that are in need of reviewing. Sometimes they will give you a free copy; if they don't have one available, you can also contact the publisher directly and let them know you're reviewing it--sometimes they will then send you a copy. (I have had both experiences.) Sometimes you're on your own, although I've written five book reviews and haven't had to pay for a book yet.

In the letter, also clearly state your professional credentials. If the journal has a particular focus, mention how that is related to you and therefore why they'd be interested in having you as a truly qualified reviewer. For instance, when I wrote to the Journal of Web Librarianship, I mentioned that I am a digital collections librarian. When I wrote to the International Journal of Comic Art, I mentioned that in addition to my MLS, I have a MA in Art History and am an avid comic reader--pointing out that I have some critical, scholarly background in the visual arts.

The cardinal rule is to never, ever, ever, send out an unsolicited book review or article in its entirety, until the editor agrees to publish it. Just send out a letter first, inquiring if they are interested. I've heard horror stories where three months go by without a response from the editor, so the person sends the review/article out to another editor, who then publishes it just as the first editor decides to publish it, as well. Huge problem. If you've just sent a letter, there's no risk of mutual publishing.

That's a huge long mess of information, and trust me, I've got more if you're interested--just leave another comment, or email/IM/tweet me. I just took a course in academic publishing last semester, so it's fresh on the mind!

This Year in Publishing

2009-03-03T11:13:00.003-06:00

I kept wondering for awhile if any of my writing work would pay off. I've been writing and submitting things for over two years, and I'm just now beginning to see the results!

I submitted two encyclopedia articles two and a half years ago, and they are finally being published in the Facts on File Encyclopedia of American Popular Fictionm due out any day now (eee!). Two book reviews that I completed in 2006 and 2007 but had delays were also just published in the Journal of Web Librarianship, released in January at the same time my book chapter with Suzanne & Annie came out.

I've now got two book reviews pending completion--one submitted and one in the works, one for the International Journal of Comic Art, and one for ImageText. And then I'm working on two research projects, and one more on hold until summer, that I'm hoping to send out starting in May. Whew!

Presentations are certainly easier to pitch and have quicker pay-off, but I'm determined to shift my professional development toward publishing. I have a far smaller travel budget now, and even more so I simply don't have the time for traveling as much, with the course load I've got. I'm hoping to make a habit of having several writing projects going on at once, in order to produce a good body of work each year. We'll see how it goes.

I simply struggled for a long time to find things to write about. Book reviews are pretty simple (and I really enjoy them--getting encouraged to read and discuss books, what's not to love?), but my article ideas tend to require an inordinate amount of research time that it's difficult for me to commit at the moment. Two of my current research projects take quantitative analysis, and one is a qualitative study.

I'm curious to know what other academic librarians are publishing.

Are you writing similar research-oriented articles?
Or focusing on library issues and practitioner-type pieces?
If you have faculty status at your institution, are your articles ranked by type as far as tenure or a performance review?
How pressured do you feel to publish--or are you motivated to publish for your own reasons?

It's March Already?

2009-03-02T16:35:00.005-06:00

My personal and professional blogs are both suffering from my schedule, as you may have noticed. (Note to self: after my residency for this PhD program is complete, never again register for full-time courses... or, at least not while simultaneously working full-time and commuting a couple hours a day.)

I keep thinking of blog posts but not writing them down--so here are a few of the things I'm working on at the moment:

fleshing out our WW poster collections page (inspired by the Northwestern's great pages)
adding a FAQ page to the WW poster page (we get a lot of questions about purchasing reproductions and finding information on artists)
uploading all those lovely CRS reports from Wikileaks
I finally downloaded the UNT Libraries LibX toolbar, which is quite handy for showing me which books that I'm browsing on Amazon are held at UNT
researching the practices of librarians embedded in online courses
researching the adoption of electronic reference in academic libraries, and how this was affected by a variety of factors
...and a project on educational background of academic library deans with fellow librarian Annie Downey, which I think is pretty much stalled until summer

Oh, and there's something in my job description about managing digital collections and answering reference questions? Yeah, that too.

Hmmm. It is May yet?

Time to Archive!

2009-01-19T17:39:00.002-06:00

The End-of-Term Harvest(EOT) project partners have been busy harvesting things before the
inauguration tomorrow. I'm also getting ready to add more content to the CyberCemetery, because who knows what website changes we'll be seeing in the coming days! I'll be on the watch for agencies or commissions that end with the Bush administration. I welcome any help other librarians (or interested folk) are willing to give--please let me know if you hear of a particular website that is being taken down and needs to be quickly archived.

I hope you are all able to watch tomorrow's historic ceremony!

The Prodigal Blogger Returns!

2009-01-08T11:13:00.003-06:00

I'm up to my ears in web updates, email, and things I haven't remembered that I've forgotten, so I'll make this quick. I just had to share that you can now purchase Academic Library Outreach: Beyond Campus Walls; my print copy arrived on Tuesday! It's my first published book chapter, so I'm a little beside myself--my deepest thanks to my coauthors, Suzanne Sears and Annie Downey. They provided the real "meat" for the chapter, I just helped mash it all together.

And today I got a second surprise--I received three copies of the Journal of Web Librarianship, Volume 2 Number 4--with not one but two of my book reviews in it!

Thanks to my Essentials of Academic Publishing class last semester, I've already got another book review I'm shopping around, and nearly done with a paper. And then there's the research project Annie and I have started on... whew! Never a dull moment.

Hopefully I can stick to my writing schedule despite this semester's near-insane course load... my publishing class had me doing well with at least an hour of writing each week day, but I fell off the wagon in November. Ah well, here's to the second try!

December

2008-12-13T05:38:00.002-06:00

In my daily agenda book, there are three or four little post-its with ideas I've been hashing around and other things I'd like to blog about. Unfortunately, November and December visited me with a certain vengeance--too many work projects and final schoolwork projects only begin to tell the story.

Today begins three glorious weeks off, weeks away from both both and school. I would love to think that I'd use this time to catch up on this blog... but eh, let's not push me. ;)

Today I also get on a plane to meet my husband in Kharkov, Ukraine. He's been there for the past month (also visited for a week in September and another week in October). We plan to let him wrap up work there and then spend a few days vacationing in Kiev, then spend the night in London on the way back, and arrive back in town the evening of Christmas Eve. (I will try to periodically check my personal email a bit while we're gone.)

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, a great New Year, and any other holidays you're celebrating... like No School for a Month, that's one of my personal favorites.

Officially a Mac

2008-10-16T11:40:00.003-06:00

And it's done! I went with the 13" MacBook, will be upgrading to 4GB RAM in the next week or so, Adobe CS4 will be shipped to me after release (yay!), and Alex couldn't resist getting us a family MobileMe account.

Last night, we charged and started up the MacBook, which is dubbed, like my previous two laptops, Interceptor. Um... yeah, there actually is a crazy story behind that. Our computer naming scheme is... sigh... Star Wars vehicles. You can't blame one of us more than the other for that; Alex and I really are that equally geeky.

Our machines, old and new:

Alex's desktop: Executor (Darth Vader's flagship, a Super Star Destroyer)
my old desktop: Jadesfire (um... it's from a Star Wars book, let's leave it at that embarrassing revelation)
our Wii (yeah, it counts!): Tiiderian (after the shuttle Tiderian, and Wii's two-i-name... yeah)
my laptop(s): Interceptor (after the TIE Interceptor--because it's small and maneuverable, get it?)
our router: TieBomber (mostly because it's small)
the printer machine: PrintBoy (okay well it had to fall down somewhere)
Alex's hoped-for MacPro: he's currently debating names, but my favorite option is Death Star

And now, having completed my Statistics midterm and updated the blogosphere on my current computery-ness, I shall depart for work and some presentations that need brushing up for next week.

I'm a PC... No Wait, I'm a Mac!

2008-10-15T15:14:00.002-06:00

I've done a lot of research and thinking and pro-con-ing over the last two weeks, and now that Apple has finally shown its hand, I'm close to a decision. Yes, I'm joining the Apple Cult, after many years of wistful envy. Alex getting a MacBook Pro for his work machine, which often comes home with him, pretty much sealed the deal. For years, we've been trying to decide on some kind of primary media server and content backup system, and about all we ended up with were a few small external hard drives that I remember to backup to about once every six months. But with Time Machine on his MBP, as soon as Alex boots up, his machine is auto-synched and backed up to our external hard drive.

Um... sign me up.

And add to that:

If I use a non-Mac laptop and mp3 player, we have to rip all our content in more than one format. Or we rip it all through iTunes as mp3s--which I started doing, and now my non-Mac laptop is putting music in three different places: iTunes, Vista's "Music" folder, and the old-style Windows "My Music" folder, which I have unsuccesfully tried to nuke several times. This makes me crazy.
iPhoto, and Cover Flow, and everything else about Macs that is so darned gorgeous. Gimme.
Adobe CS4 is available for ridiculously dirt cheap both through my educational discount, and another $300 off for buying it with a MacBook or MacBook Pro. Again: Gimme.
LED screen.
Huge trackpad.
Illuminated keyboard.
Alex and I compared file-loading on both our machines last night. Yeah. Wow.
And lastly: the things automatically hibernate when you close them! This may seem a silly kind of a feature, but if you knew the amount of time I spend every evening booting my laptop up, waiting for everything to load, then waiting for Firefox to show up... yeah. And then I have to wait again, whether I hibernate it or shut it down. And hibernating it screws up my machine after about a day.

Alex has hibernated his Mac, without shutting down, for at least a month. GIMME.

All that to say: tonight at the Apple store, I hope to make my final decision. It's come down to this:

13" MacBook, 2.4GHz, +4GB memory, 250 GB hardrive
vs.
15" MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz, +4GB memory, 250 GB hardrive

The only real differences between these two machines are: screen size/resolution, weight (the 13" is a full pound lighter), better graphics card option, and the 15" has an ExpressCard slot that I could put a SD card reader into. But for the $400 price difference, I'm leaning toward that 13"! I can always hook it up to a monitor or two at home/work if I find I'm needing more screen real estate.

But any final Mac-user advice would be appreciated!

Confession

2008-10-06T12:56:00.003-06:00

Yes, when I received this message from LexisNexis this afternoon, what immediately drew my eye was not the message about the Congressional Record*, but those amazing shoes and how on earth I could get a pair.

Sigh. Bad librarian!

*NOTE: I am neither endorsing nor slamming the LexisNexis product. This is purely an admission of guilt, not an advertisement, review, critique, or other value judgement about anything beyond how awesome those shoes are.

Librarian Fangirliness

2008-10-06T10:09:00.002-06:00

I'm not saying I was obsessively bit by the Twilight bug or anything (yeah yeah, we can discuss the last book later).... but here's a little something from libraryland to further the girlish shrieks of delight.

Of course, it can't beat the Yoda or Batgirl READ posters... or the other DC ones, or all the LOTR ones, or Neil Gaiman and Sandman. But still.

I can see I need to add quite a few items to my Christmas wishlist... furthering my family's evidence of my intense geekery and nerdishness.

Thursday Meanderings

2008-10-02T10:10:00.004-06:00

Want to help NPR fact-check the VP debate tonight, using Twitter? Sounds like a cool project. Yet another fascinating use for Twitter--this application is not only addictive, but surprisingly useful. It's become my first web-based source for news, since I can glance at my page at any time of day and see headlines from CNN, NPR, stock analysis, NASA, State Dept., etc. etc.

My guest-blogging month is complete now at FGI; here are all the posts:

starr's blog

Now I've got to get on two PowerPoints for DC, plus finish getting an OPAL ready for next week. Oh, and there's that matter of getting the new nodes published on the ALA GODORT website. And and and... yeah. Deep breaths, one item at a time, eh?

And don't forget, fellow Texans, Monday Oct. 6th is the deadline for voter registration!

Book Review: Prince of Persia

2008-09-21T19:09:00.008-06:00

Prince of Persia is a dreamy, jeweled treat of a graphic novel. It provides two stories interwoven throughout the book, alternately sad, romantic, momentous and light-hearted. The storyline does not strictly follow the video game series on which it is rather loosely based, but captures the flavor of that world filled with princes, adventure, and sand dunes.

read an excerpt
watch the trailer

It would be a mistake to dismiss this as another comic rip-off marketing scheme. Don’t think of this as a video-game adaptation, regardless of how much you may have loved the 1989 video game. This is a work of art unto itself.

First Second Books once again shows off their high production quality here. The pages are thick and glossy, with brilliant color. The softcover is attractive and sturdy with glittery gold foil detail; First Second produces the best-bound paperbacks I’ve seen. The endpaper is decorated with a lovely map. The more books I see from this publisher, the more I purchase, as much for the production quality as for their unusual art and narratives.

The script, developed by original the game developer Jordan Mechner and written by A. B. Sina, is lyrical and surprisingly funny by turns. At times, the shift between stories is difficult to detect—but this is part of the point. The dialog in a few scenes sounded a bit modern for the setting, but in its defense, the characters that spoke in this style were the ones I connected with most.

The art is simple and expressive, and is best displayed in the many sequences that are completely wordless. These read like poetry, and nontraditional panel shapes are used to great effect. LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland create memorable characters, and even produce a flicker of empathy for the villains. I love the loose, fluid feel of the line; it’s balanced with strong color that evokes various moods with alternating cool and warm palettes.

The violence is fittingly graphic and a few well-placed moments of horror give the story serious resonance. My favorite sequences were those that told portions of the backstory in a flat style that recalls medieval Persian illuminated manuscripts. These scenes conveyed the feeling of an ancient legend, while lending authenticity to the setting.

My only complaint is that the narrative runs a fine line between poetically ambiguous and frustratingly vague. The story feels pleasantly dreamlike, but on the last page I feel slightly dissatisfied, as if nothing has actually happened. The plot is circular rather than traditionally resolved… but in the end this is a good thing, as it encourages me to immediately pick it up for another reading.

If you’re looking for a fairy tale that has gravity enough for an adult, I highly recommend this novel. And do yourself a favor and buy a copy, because it’s a tale you’ll be returning to sooner than you think.

Note to parents: There are scenes with violence, including numerous beheadings, and some suggested nudity. Most of this is tamer in execution than I’ve seen in most graphic novels today, but the context of the action—killing infants, beheading women and the elderly, cutting out tongues and eyes—is such that it may be disturbing for young ones. No profanity here, but I’d still say this merits a PG-13 rating.

FGI Blogging & Fall Classes

2008-09-21T10:25:00.003-06:00

Rather than re-post my recent FGI blog posts here, I've simply including a link to the feed.

In other news, I'm reading two comics, graciously donated to me by First Second Books. I'm reading Drawing Words, Writing Pictures, a textbook on creating comics, and Prince of Persia (based on the awesome old video game). I'll be posting my thoughts when I finish them--I plan on reviewing one of them here, but will likely submit the second review for publication. So far, I am enjoying them both quite a bit--as usual for First Second, the text and art are fantastic, and the printing quality is stellar.

My posts will again be haphazard this season, as I'm thick into another semester of full-time school plus full-time work (after this spring's also-full-time load, I will have completed my PhD's residency requirement, and perhaps be able to take it a little slower). I have to say, though, that despite the incredible amount of work this is taking, I'm enjoying all three classes--even, to my surprise, my required statistics course. Granted, I don't enjoy all the homework, but thus far the instructor's recorded lectures are doing a great job of illuminating the dull textbook.

My "Finance in Higher Education" course is heavy on the required reading, but it's such fascinating and practical information that I appreciate it. But by far my favorite class is "Essentials of Academic Publishing." For one, it's hard not to enjoy a class where your professor mentions publishing as welcome "bling" on your CV. For two, who wouldn't appreciate a course where your final project is 1) of your choosing, and 2) something that you'll be able to use professionally, since it involves getting something academic published? For three, I just love writing, and being able to read about it, write about it, and discuss it with others is great. The class is forcing me to make time for writing--huzzah!

Now, if only I had classes that forced me to make time for exercise, healthy cooking, and cleaning house... hmmm.

FGI Blogger of the Month

2008-09-03T20:50:00.002-06:00

That's right, I'm pleased and honored to report that I'll be guest blogging at FGI this month!

I'll probably be redirecting some posts to that content for September, but will resume regular content here in October.

Hmmm... I expected to be newsier than this, but I'm just back from vacation and my head's buried in my statistics textbook, and the brain cells really have nothing more to give at this point. Ah well, try again tomorrow, eh?

Summer = Travel

2008-08-27T17:41:00.002-06:00

I've lost count of how many times I've traveled this summer. The professional experience has been great, but it's made the schedule hectic, and made it very difficult to keep up with everyday-type work. I'm looking forward to returning to a more normal schedule at the end of next week--by normal, of course, I mean that I'll also be returning to taking a full-time courseload. I'm sadistically excited about this semester, however, particularly about one course titled "Essentials of Academic Publishing." Practical, interesting, immediately applicable--right up my alley.

But in the meantime, I've got one last trip to make. This, finally, is the vacation trip--not a semi-"vacation" tacked on to one of my or my husband's work trips--just six days in New York City for fun.

I look forward to returning in a more work-ready state of mind... and to a regular schedule. Hooray for fall!

Extra, Extra: .Gov Harvest!

2008-08-20T14:40:00.004-06:00

Yep, UNT has joined the efforts to harvest the Bush Administration's "webstuffs." Not only can you read about it on the Washington Post (also on NextGov), but you can read a fun quote from my boss Suzanne:

"When Bush took over, the second that he was sworn in, the White House Web site went from being this massive collection of important links to a picture of Bush and his biography and a picture of [Vice President] Cheney and his biography," Sears said. "We don't want to see that happen again. . . . It's just very important for history's sake that this material is archived the way that the printed material has always been archived."

In other news, Murphy's Law states that any time the Washington Post calls about your Digital Collections, you will be out sick and your boss will be interviewed instead. Ah, well--such is life, eh?

Upload in Progress

2008-08-13T10:08:00.006-06:00

...expet more content to pop up throughout the next few days, but here's the beginning of information from my presentation. This is all going up on my wiki, as well.

"Preserving access to government websites: development and practice in the CyberCemetery"
-- by STARR HOFFMAN (University of North Texas Libraries, Denton, USA)

link to full paper
link to full presentation: PDF, (Powerpoint TBA)
photos from presentation (TBA)
other documents related to the CyberCemetery:

IFLA: Presentation Done!

2008-08-13T09:00:00.004-06:00

Well, that was a fantastic experience! I was fortunate to share the session with five great panelists working on very similar projects, and we had a bunch of insightful questions--some of which had me jotting down notes to consider later. I got to meet some people interested in our CyberCemetery--always great to be able to share and exchange ideas. In fact, I even got to meet someone from the Congressional Research Service, which of course had me geeking out a bit, as I do whenever I see something stamped with "CRS."

Note to any attendees or those otherwise interested: I"ll be posting the Powerpoint for my presentation later, and I'll happily provide other documents as you're interested. I know one woman was interested in the metadata schema we use for CyberCemetery websites, so I may just post the current version to my wiki to make it accessible to everyone. I'll link all of that content back here--I think it also might be good for me to include the questions and answers I got, for future reference. And I hope tomorrow to be able to type up and post more of the notes that I've taken in other IFLA sessions (including the other presenters from my session).

I also have to add that that IFLA's wifi connection here is quite nice--it actually inspired me to drag my laptop down here and I'm currently taking notes. Er, back to those notes.

(And also: Quebec is beautiful, I must come back!)

Bienvenue from Quebec!

2008-08-12T15:59:00.002-06:00

My first day of IFLA was fantastic--attended sessions on statistics & measurement, access to genealogical & archival data, and library partnerships. I think what I'm enjoying most, besides the mostly excellent presentations and good speakers, is that these presentations are giving such a broader world view than a session at TLA or ALA. TLA and ALA are valuable, and certainly relevant in a "close to home" sense, but these sessions keep nudging my brain into those "ah-ha" moments of remembering that no, the entire world does not operate like the United States. It's refreshing and encouraging and exciting and a little wild to wrap the brain around sometimes.

Perhaps as a result of so many cultures and traditions being thrown together, I'm also noticing less library jargon being tossed about--another refreshing aspect of this conference. The only thing that threw me for a minute was the prevalence of the acronym ICT, which I puzzled out is information communication technology.

One interesting tidbit I took from one of the morning speakers... He's from a public library in Norway where they are hand-gathering statistics on how people use the library, whether they are performing activities in groups or alone, and how long they spend on each activity. What really interested me is that they count "computer activities" separately for those on the library computers, and those who bring their own laptops (as well as those who work at each type of computer alone or in groups). I hadn't ever thought of counting laptop vs. library PC use separately before, although it seems obvious now. (Of course, now that we're also checking out laptops, that brings a potential third category for UNT to track.)

All right, I'm off to find a quick dinner and then back to work some more on my presentation for tomorrow morning.

How Is It August?

2008-08-07T18:49:00.002-06:00

Yes, you, too can create your own READ poster.

I got the green light for some travel funds for IFLA next week in Quebec City, so I'm in a flurry of preparation. I was already trying to catch up after having been at Interagency last week, and now knowing I'll be gone for another week is... yeah. I'm racing to complete this year's Albino Squirrel Calendar, catch up on emails, and get some things posted to the GODORT wiki.

I got all the month pages completed today: that just leaves the "other" pages (6 of them), the cover, and listing out all the relevant dates to include for each month.

At least my IFLA paper has been written for months--but I do need to pull some screenshots together for an interesting Powerpoint... and to reduce my 6-page paper into something that I can state in 15 minutes or less. Slowly, since there will be simultaneous translation.

Interesting... this summer, my blog has become my to-do list. Sigh. At this point, folks, I'm just crossing my fingers until September--the return of a regular schedule (albeit one that includes three classes), and only one professional trip (that I know of). Whew.

I was hoping to blog about how awesome Interagency was, and all the fellow librarians I met (particularly the geeky crowd), and maybe even the touristy DC things we did on the weekend... Yeah. Just like all my to-do photo editing and uploading, it will just have to wait.

Oh! One fun tidbit, however: the book for which Suzanne, Annie, and I wrote a chapter, Academic Library Outreach: Beyond the Campus Walls, is set to be published this December, a month earlier than expected! Hurrah!!

Dilemma: Photo Release Forms

2008-07-22T17:35:00.002-06:00

I was so glad to see the Librarian in Black point to this issue. It's something that nags at me a lot, because I'm a librarian by career and a photographer by hobby--as well as being the frequent graphic designer/photographer for various library projects. And yes, for patrons to take photographs or videos in Willis Library, they are required to stop by the Administrative Office first.

I can certainly understand people's reticence to have their kids show up in photographs all over the internet--and in fact, that's one reason why I almost never tag kids in my Flickr photos with full names. In fact, I rarely do this with adults--when I do, it's usually colleagues that I photographed at a work-related event. I'd rather have very specific tags, for my own use, but I'm also reluctant to be the reason that someone's embaressing or silly moment shows up top in a Google search by their potential employers.

I'm frustrated with how awareness of this issue has cramped my photography in the past two years. If I'm taking photos involving children in a public place, but I don't personally know them, I tend to take photos from the back or side. I try to take images of adults in groups, and if they are individuals, again try to get them without a full front view of their faces. But perhaps I'm being too cautious.

I'd like to take photos freely, without worrying about release forms--but I'd also like to take photos knowing that I'm not making my subjects uncomfortable. Meh.

And on that note, I'll get back to web updates and my current graphic design projects: library calendars and reading fesitval posters. Perhaps if I cross my fingers very, very hard, Photoshop won't crash my system this afternoon.

Note: GovDocs librarians or those in the DC area, I'll be in DC for Interagency from Friday, July 25 through Saturday, August 2. Anyone who wants to do lunch or site-seeing, let me know.

Presidential Elections Display

2008-07-16T13:49:00.005-06:00

My ever-amazing student assistant just finished a big display on presidential elections for our floor. It features related items available on our floor (with call numbers!), including related CRS reports, lists good web resources for more info on election, politics, and government (of course, FGI's on there), and has a section about our department including a group photo, floor map, and how to contact us. This is in the display case that's visible as you exit the elevators on our floor.

It's lovely to give someone the barest formation of an idea and see them go happily run with it! Particularly when the results are so great.

I love this part of the display--the thought of the candidates actually duking it out makes me laugh...

Back in Denton

2008-07-15T18:55:00.002-06:00

Actually, this is my second day back in the office, but I'm only now sane enough to post. The whole Anaheim/Abilene/Austin thing kind of threw me for a loop the last two and a half weeks. I'm whittling down my to-do list, but being as I have another week-long trip (Interagency in DC) at the end of the month, IFLA in Canada in August, and a personal trip to NYC at the end of that month, I doubt I'll make dramatic progress on my projects until September. Whew.

I primarily wanted to say that I now have all the Austin trip photos up, or you can just view the TLA ones. Take note: there has been no cropping or editing of any kind yet, so these are a bit rough.

I'm still working on the ALA photos... in fact, I didn't even finish editing/uploading the photos from my vacation-y time on day 1. Sigh. All in time.

Amidst my myriad projects are a couple of more recent and short-term things:

propose and prepare an OPAL on designing a GovDocs website
prepare a proposal (and/or article?) related to one or two aspects of Gaiman's Sandman
draft a new copy of the Texas Depository Library contact list (then send it out to our state list-serv for further corrections)
prepare this year's UNT Libraries Albino Squirrel Calendar
design this year's Denton Reads promo materials
go through my long list of possible articles, and pick at least two to begin writing

If I list more than that, my ears might start smoking, so we'll leave it there, as the projects that are most immediately on my mind.

Anyone else feel like the summer that was supposed to be their downtime ended up being more stressful and/or busy than the spring was? I had about two weeks of relative peace and quiet, but that's it.

The Peril of Digital Collections

2008-07-09T10:20:00.002-06:00

You know you're in trouble when your current institution is digitizing the yearbooks of your alma mater. Yes, UNT is digitizing not only UNT yearbooks, but also Hardin-Simmons ones. I'm doomed.

Yes, yes my hair was down to my waist my freshman year. And yeah, I looked about 12 years old.
And here's proof of my nerd-cred: president of both the art fraternity (for two years) and the english fraternity.
I was also apparently a Who's-Who (really?), but didn't show up for the photo--though my pals James, Dave, and Kathryn did.
And finally, a record of my time as a resident assistant my last semester, one of my best college experiences.

Ah, the memories...

...Where Am I?

2008-07-09T10:07:00.002-06:00

I'm kind of wondering this myself. I didn't so much unpack my ALA suitcase so much as stuffed Alex's dirty laundry from his St. Petersburg trip into it, and we took off to spend the holiday weekend in Abilene. We had high hopes of doing laundry while we were there, but ended up sitting around playing video games and trying to stop our heads spinning in between business trips.

We got back Saturday, and Sunday I had to get up and do the laundry in order to re-pack for the business trip I'm currently on, TLA Annual Assembly in Austin. Got here Monday and am leaving tomorrow(--I think; is it really Wednesday?). I'm on the Conference Programs Committee, so it's a lot of proofing, discussing, lias-ing with my groups, and finally scheduling. It's been a nice trip and I've had fun, but I am quite ready to get home and get re-acquainted with my husband. (After all, I've got a full two weeks home before I'm off to DC for Interagency).

At this rate, it almost--almost!--makes the Fall semester seem less intimidating. Sure, I'll have fulltime classes again, but maybe less travel. Maybe. One can hope. I love travel, I love being involved in professional groups and getting things done and learning... but man, it will be great someday when my life's purpose doesn't seem to be redefining the word "busy."

On the other hand, my husband is convinced that it's simply a part of who I am, and that if I had evenings without homework or articles to read or write, that I'd have a mental breakdown. He may be right.

I must say that I am learning the value of the word "no," however. Slowly, to be sure, but I am learning to wield its power. After all, I've got to make time to get home and discuss Battlestar Galactica with my husband--there are some things in life that are just non-negotiable.

To Take, Or Not To Take?

2008-06-29T12:34:00.002-06:00

That's my dilemma at each conference. Do you take the entire bulky program book with you each day, in case you find yourself needing to change a session--or do you go by the pocket planner, which has titles, times, and locations, but no helpful blurb to enable your decision?

I generally just take the pocket planner. I highlight the main session I think I'd like to attend for each time slot, and then circle 2 - 3 "backup" programs of interest for each time. However, I'm running into the problem this time that my backup programs are often located so far from the original program, that if I change my mind right before a session starts, I'm out of luck. Or I simply can't re-examine the blurb to determine if it would be worth hiking two blocks or getting to the session ten minutes late.

Actually, the personalized schedule you can print out from ALA is pretty compact--mine, including the 2 - 3 alternate sessions for each time, was less than two pages. Since it's already small, it might be nice if we could choose to print the session blurbs in the same document.

Another option would be to include a map of the entire area--the conference campus--and highlight all housing and all conference meeting/program locations. I looked and looked for this info in the conference guide, but didn't see it. (Let me know if it was actually there--I may have just been blind.) Since I tend to stay in non-ALA sponsored hotels and walk a lot to/from conference, an area map is helpful--and it lets me know ahead of time when conference sessions are too far away from other locations for them to be feasible in my schedule.

All right, well I just enjoyed a video chat with my husband, and got a bit of work done using the convention center's wifi, so I'm off to find some lunch and an ATM. Then I'll probably work some more until my next session--I have state library association business that I really need to take care of before I'm back Monday evening.

Saturday

2008-06-28T20:26:00.002-06:00

No creative title tonight... I'm just too darned tired to think more.

I went to four programs today, and they were all really interesting, but the best was definitely the LITA session on Information Technology and Information Rights of the Individual, with four scifi/fantasy writers. The highlight was that Cory Doctorow spoke (allow me a fangirlish "squee!" here), but each of the authors were fantastic: Eric Flint, Vernor Vinge, and Brandon Sanderson. In addition, Tor Books generously handed out bags with catalogs and a book by each author to the first 150 people (there were easily 400 in the room). I got there 45 minutes early, and thus got one of the prized bags and a seat on the second row. Plus, the authors generously stayed after the program to autograph everyone's copy. I scored waaay better at that one session than the time I spent in the Exhibits Hall today!

But the best part was simply hearing them all speak on the topic. I took notes, so I'll be posting them a little later, along with my notes on the other sessions of the day.

I don't think I'll be posting more photos until I get home, though--I simply don't have time to keep up with my content at the moment.

Suffice to say--if you get a chance to hear any of those four authors speak, go!

Happy Hour

2008-06-27T22:10:00.002-06:00

Met quite a few other librarians today, wandered through Downtown Disney, caught up with my husband, who is now back in the States, got a bit of work done, and met up with the GODORT crew. I stayed to chat quite a bit longer than I had planned, caught up in a conversation about (what else?) shared regionals. It was particularly nice to be able to chat for quite awhile with Jesse and Ellen.

The venue this year was, I thought, quite a bit better than '07 in DC. It was still a bar in a Marriott, but this one was much roomier, and there was a lot of seating, which made it easier to navigate, as well as hold actual conversations.

I had briefly considered going to the Gaming event after the Happy Hour, but I ended up staying later than expected. I've also got to look over my schedule for tomorrow one last time, so here I am, back at the laptop.

In Anaheim!

2008-06-26T23:27:00.003-06:00

Well, after leaving my house at 4:30am, flying out at 6:40am, getting to LAX at 7:40 (California time), and then spending a fun, long day sight-seeing around LA, Hollywood, and Santa Monica... I'm wiped out.

I did manage to pick up my registration materials at the Convention Center--I'm always glad when I can get that done the day before conference truly begins. Since the shuttles weren't yet in operation, I walked the 1.2 miles there and the 1.2 miles back... which was pleasant and gorgeous, but perhaps not the best situation in which to wear high-heeled sandals. Ah, well.

I've been going through the program guide and exhibits guide this evening, and I think I'm about done for the night--just want to see if I can manage to edit and upload a few photos to my Flickr account first.

Observations thus far:

wish the shuttles ran on the preconference day, although I'm sure it's not cost-effective
am very pleased to have free wifi not only at ALA, but for once in my hotel room (usually I just get wired connection for free, staying at Marriott locations)
also very pleased to have had my Residence Inn room upgraded for free--I'm in what they call a "penthouse suite," which is insanely roomy, particularly for one person. I have three--yes, three--closets in this place.
I have far too much "extra work" to be doing in the evenings when I'd rather be vegging, having fun, or editing/uploading photos. Meh.
I've already met several interesting and fun people; Matt from Melbourne with Biblioteca (shared the shuttle ride from LAX), and a woman from Library Journal with whom I swapped thunderstorm stories.
I'm already sunburned on both shoulders... and now get to spend four conference days toting my laptop backpack on those very same shoulders. That was spectacular planning on my part...

This isn't even all of the selected photos from today.... but it's a start.

Blogging ALA: Prep!

2008-06-25T15:55:00.004-06:00

I'm always amazed at the necessary last-minute flurry of activity. It's only exacerbated this year, since in addition to my daily work, my last-minute GODORT stuff, my TLA stuff, and personal things like packing and dropping off yet another vehicle for repairs... I'm also trying to finish writing up a summary of my work this year for my performance review, while simultaneously preparing to re-apply for my current position (which has been re-posted as a permanent position, since I've been a visiting librarian for the past 2+ years).

Whew.

If you want to reach me in Anaheim, I'm at the Residence Inn Anaheim Maingate, which is something like 1.4 miles from the Convention Center, and I'll have my cellphone with me. I'll try to do the typical email check, but that gets harder and harder each conference, as I get busier and busier.

Let me know if you'd like to do lunch, or something, though! If you don't already have my cell, email me at work (the gmail account linked here will probably languish while I'm gone).

Have fun, kiddos!

Truth-O-Meter

2008-06-24T16:31:00.004-06:00

PolitiFact.com has a remarkable tool for finding the story behind candidate's comments, particularly attacks on their rivals, called the Truth-O-Meter. A lovely bonus is that they even fact-check candidates' videos!

I have to give props to my student assistant (aka CRS Report Ninja Assistant), Claire, for finding this on the always-informative FreeGovInfo. She's putting together a presidential elections-themed display for our floor, and we're trying to showcase documents, informational websites, and common questions about elections (a FAQ that will include an "ask us more!" spot with our department's reference contact information).

I can't wait to see what she comes up with, based on her awesome sketch and the bang-up job she did on a CRS-report-themed display and a World War posters display.

CFP: Reclaiming the Comic Book Canon

2008-06-24T16:21:00.000-06:00

This panel sounds awesome... I'm considering sending in a proposal to this. Thought I'd send it out for other possibly-interested parties, as well.

CFP: Reclaiming the Comic Book Canon (NEMLA, due 9/15)
Location: Massachusetts, United States

American Sessions at
40th Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
Feb. 26-March 1, 2009
Hyatt Regency - Boston, Massachusetts

No longer exclusively the realm of fanatic collectors, outcast misfits, or sneering speculators, the comic book is now entering art galleries, multiplexes, and book clubs. But when they become the lucrative, marketed, popularized property of all, what gets lost? Moreover, what of the authority? This panel looks to compare the late 20th century rise of the graphic novel and comic book series, particularly the new discourses being employed by the widening audience/market for the form in the present context. How have standards changed? What machinery has been put in place concerning the analysis of the comic book, and how does that now reflect back on its creation?

Submit a 500-word proposal and brief vita to panel chair A. David Lewis by 9/15/08.

Include:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)

A. David Lewis
Boston University
Department of Religion
145 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Email: adl@bu.edu
Visit the website at http://www.nemla.org

Prepping for ALA...

2008-06-23T18:16:00.003-06:00

I've had some correspondence regarding this blog lately, and I fully intend to respond before Thursday, but at the moment am trying to keep afloat and put out fires.... something that sounds metaphorically impossible, but I assure you, it's not.

I've been working on my ALA schedule for the past couple of hours, always a complex and confounding process--and, as usual, the most interesting sessions seem to be scheduled for the same times. Ah, well--compromise is a skill, I suppose.

Also a, shout-out to my fellow blogger and GODORT-er, Rebecca Blakely of McNeese Library, who is moderating a session on gender and race messages in Disney films, which I would dearly love to attend... were I not in a GODORT Publications Committee meeting at that time. (See my dilemmas?)

I will be arriving in Anaheim a day early, Thursday morning. I plan to take a mini-vacation to see friends, get to the Santa Monica pier, and soak up some of my native state's atmosphere. If you'll be in the area and have some free time Thursday/Friday for some adventure-seeking, let me know and maybe we can hang out for awhile.

Anyone else dreading the mail lines at the Exhibits Hall? With the added checked-baggage airline fees, I'll bet many more of us will be in that line this time around. I guess if nothing else, the line will be a good place to start all that ARC reading...

Wordle

2008-06-18T15:15:00.004-06:00

(aka: Tag Cloud goodness.)

Michael Stephens was blogging about Wordle, and being that my email inbox was empty (for about 1.2 seconds), I thought I'd give it a try. My Flickr librarian pals tried random words or their resume, but I just went the boring, easy route of using my del.icio.us account.

And I have to say, it's a pretty accurate depiction of the topics that most occupy my thoughts.

Except maybe that "shoes" don't appear on here as often as you'd expect...

Shamelessly Promoting New Library Merchanise

2008-06-16T14:41:00.003-06:00

Get your own Cyber Cafe pen with the Albino Squirrel logo, now at the UNT Willis Library!

And can I just say, I am totally excited that they have a comfy rubbery grip in a lovely shade of UNT mean green? Okay then, consider it said.

My Boss, Depository Library Council Member

2008-06-13T13:04:00.005-06:00

Now that it's official and the press release is out, let me finally burst out with the news I've been waiting to say: my boss, the incomparable Suzanne Sears, is on DLC this year! Yay!!

Of course, this means I'll be a bit busier for the next three years as well, helping to take on more departmental responsibilities when she's away. But it's exciting and huge news and I'll be interested to be so close to a council member.

(And yes, this would fall under the "docs nerd" category of posts to this blog.)

Dallas Library News

2008-06-13T12:14:00.002-06:00

You've just got to love your local NPR affiliate, don't you? Well, I do--not only do they keep me up to date while entertaining me on my daily two-hour commute, but Dallas's KERA also provides a blog with updates for artsy, cultural happenings in the DFW area.

And this week they posted not one, but two library-related updates on that blog:

Dallas Public Library opens a branch location in NorthPark Mall
DPL also updated their website and OPAC (now with book cover images!)

What more can you ask from a group that endorses libraries, infuses news with perspective and humor, and provides personalities like Terry Gross and Garrison Keillor?

Odd Patent: "Stuffed Horse Convertible to Unicorn"

2008-06-09T19:18:00.003-06:00

No, I am not making this up. It's one of the weirdest things I have ever read--my dad somehow found it while looking up patents related to his work... um, which is engineering. Not engineering unicorns--he was as flabbergasted by the results as you might expect.

The killer is not that the patent is for a stuffed toy horse with accessories that make it a unicorn--which seems a bit odd for a patent to begin with--but the fact that the point of it all seems to be the story. The, er, rather eccentrically goofy story. A story with excerpts like this:

"Hi! My name is Sir Whitney. I'm a horse and my colors are all mixed up... My legs are brown and white striped which makes me look like I am wearing shorts and leg warmers."

...One day, Sir Whitney decided to trot to his favorite field to smell the daisies. "This spot looks comfy," he snorted as he sat down. "Eeeeeouch! jumpin' caterpillars!!! what was that?" Hollered Sir Whitney real loudly.

"Great grumbles, can't anyone get any sleep around here?" squinted Sadie, the groundhog. "What did'ya do to my Hornicorn?"

Also, it kills me every time the applicant refers to the stuffed horse/unicorn as "the fanciful main character."

Yeah. I read this at my parents' house this weekend, and ended up laughing so hard I had to sit down. Aren't Gov Docs great?

New Display Photos Up

2008-06-04T10:22:00.003-06:00

We've been doing a "favorite/most interesting docs" display for several months now, and I started documenting it for June. Each month, a staff member picks one or more themes and makes a display with themed documents in the "comfy seating" section of our floor.

I'm currently pondering my own choices for August...

Facebook's Spring Cleaning

2008-05-22T10:48:00.002-06:00

Good news for us Facebook lovers: they're cleaning it up in June, organizing all that stuff on our profiles into separate tabs for information, feeds, photos, etc. I for one will be ecstatic to see my profile page be a little less.... yeah. A little less, period. And I won't have to get rid of my iBook account to do it!

Microcosm

2008-05-20T19:47:00.001-06:00

I've always found it interesting that our docs department, like many, is essentially a microcosm of the library as a whole. We process, catalog, shelve, work a reference desk, etc. It used to be that one of the only functions we didn't perform was the digitization itself. Now we're doing that, as well, although just for one particular project.

A really awesome aspect of our library's Digital Projects Unit (DPU) is that they work on a lot of grant projects in any given year. It's great because, of course: important materials are digitized, our library/institution gain prestige, and it's one of the only parts of the library that is actively bringing in money. However, the nature of grant work means that the DPU's schedule of projects is quite different from any other library department. Grant work typically has a specific deadline and is also a profit-maker, both of which translate to getting a lot of work done in a short period of time. These bursts of productivity occur at various, often not predictable, periods during the year, meaning that DPU prefers to complete library projects in the quiet periods between grant projects, or for various brief spurts during those projects. This works well for the "slice and dice" projects of thick volumes (meaning simple metadata in small amounts) where we're either not preserving the original materials or we're having them rebound (in either case, the pages can be sliced from the original bindings and scanned by an automated process). Past projects of this type from GovDocs have been the FCC Record and the Experiment Station Reports.

However, some things either can't be sliced or, more often, they are very small pamphlet-type documents. These require more detailed metadata than a serial like the two projects above, as well as requiring more metadata per inch of documents (DPU calculates project based on inches of material, rather than pages).

In GovDocs, our problem fitting into this workflow for our A-Z project (cataloging and digitizing all pre-1960 documents) is two-fold. First, we hired a student primarily for this project, and it's hard to keep him on steady work when we've got complete metadata records waiting for scanned documents. Second, not knowing when DPU will have one of those "open" timeslots means that we end up keeping items off the shelf longer than our designated 30-day period. That's already caused a few issues with the Farmer's Bulletins, when patrons have requested them.

Our department's suggestion to resolve the issue for all parties was to have our student spent part of his time scanning the documents in the DPU. However, DPU doesn't have enough compuer workstations--but more than enough scanners, so they graciously sent one over to our student's station in Docs. So far, this seems to be an excellent solution--we can keep the workflow moving at our own pace, and our student can continue to work his regular schedule, without needing to be worked into the DPU rotation. And this way, DPU can concentrate on our "slice and dice" projects, which work better for them instead.

Snaps for UNT's CRS Reports Archive

2008-05-14T16:08:00.003-06:00

I just had to mention that UNT is listed as the top website for CRS reports, according to this OhMyGov post by Andrew Einhorn.

Yay--and thanks, Andrew!!

Free Comic Book Day 2008!

2008-05-01T16:26:00.003-06:00

I first heard of this awesome experience while in the Star Wars Line in 2005. (Yes, believe it or not, I was geeky enough to sleep, eat, work, and do my homework in line at a theater for three weeks, but somehow wasn't geeky enough to know that there was a holiday where places gave out free comics. Go figure.)

In any case, this Saturday is the big FCB Day, coming to an independent comic store near you! Click on the image above to be taken to the website, which answers all your questions ("What... they're really free?" Yes, Viriginia), and also provides a handy comic-book store locator for those of you not already on a first-name basis with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Er, does he actually have a first-name? (Oh indeed he does: Jeff. Why, thank you again Wikipedia, haven of pop culture trivia.)

But I digress... Go enjoy yourself some free comics, and if you don't read comics (the mind boggles), then get an issue or two for your geeky friends and/or patrons. While I was at TLA, I attended this great session on graphic novels with Gene Luen Yang, Tuan Nguyen, and Laura Jewell. One of the library-programming suggestions was to ask your local comics shop ahead of time if they'll donate their extra FCBD copies to you the day afterward. They'd made great giveaways for teen programs and such (I'm pondering using them next year to lure geeky college students through our doors).

Review: Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother"

2008-04-22T15:27:00.003-06:00

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother (to be released April 29th), and it was amazing. Yes, it's marketed as YA (young adult) fiction, but this is a serious--as well as enjoyable--book on a serious topic. It's about life in San Francisco after a terrorist attack that prompts the government to turn the city into a police state with constant surveillance, loss of freedom, etc. A group of high school hackers fight back, and make a lot of poignant arguments about freedom and fighting for what you believe in.

I read this book in about five hours total, I think--all of which were spent commuting on DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) to and from the TLA conference (which I blogged over at the TLA Blog). I highly, highly recommend it. And if you'd like a short taste of it, Cory's got a mp3 of himself reading a selection of it, available for free download. (Caution: novel (and this excerpt) contains some profanity and graphic scenes.) You can also read more of his podcasts here.

And here's high praise from one of my favorite authors:

"I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can. Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless."

-- Neil Gaiman on Little Brother (full review here)

Chatting with Gene Luen Yang

2008-04-17T12:48:00.002-06:00

My current Facebook status: Starr is SQUEE! She just got to chat with Gene Luen Yang while getting her copy of "American Born Chinese" autographed.

We ended up, I realized, talking about homemade tamales and how my family was probably the whitest family who ever had a Christmas tradition of making authentic tamales. I think this came somehow out of my telling Gene I was born in CA (he's from Oakland) and first read his book there... and then something about only being able to live in states without winter and with authentic Mexican food.

Man, I can babble. (Shudder.)

It was awesome, though--he's easy to talk to, and I got to tell him what I really wanted, which was how glad and impressed I was that his faith shows through in this book. I kept thinking, while reading it, "Is he saying...? That seems like a Christian theme..." --the dedication of his book gave another clue, and then his website shows more of his Catholic comics and the fact that he teaches at a Catholic high school. (I also asked him how he manages teaching and writing comics--he said it's particularly hard right now, and he's going to be teaching just part-time next year. Kudos for him! Yay for making a living off of art!!)

This makes up for all the other authors that I've missed autographing at TLA and ALA conferences. Plus, I think this is the first comic I've ever had autographed... haven't had that many books autographed, actually. It's been, ahem, mostly action figures. Of Star Wars characters. But then, I've been going to scifi conventions longer than I've been going to library conferences.

Now, if I could just get one of my Gaiman books autographed... I'd pick Death: The High Cost of Living, for sure. Oh wait, Stardust. Dangit.

Er... and I'm actually doing quite a bit of blogging, and soon should have a whole load of TLA photos up on my Flickr page--it's just all at the TLA blog at the moment. I'll probably update those links here next week--I'm primarily linking to content that I post on my wiki, anyway.

Gene Luen Yang at TLA!

2008-04-11T12:36:00.004-06:00

I'm preparing for TLA's Annual Conference next week, printing fliers, picking out sessions to attend, and jotting down oh so many meetings on my schedule. (Speaking of which, I'm particularly happy it's in Dallas this year. I get to sleep in my own bed, see my husband each night, and I'm finally going to get to make use of Dallas's growing public transportation system. Yay!)

I was looking through the Friday 10am sessions, and blinked a bit when I saw a session, not only on graphic novels, but featuring Gene Luen Yang, the author of American Born Chinese, one of the best comics I've ever read, and the first graphic novel to win ALA's Printz Award, as well as to be nominated for the National Book Award, as a speaker!

I first read this novel a year ago, and was lucky enough to finish it while on vacation in the Bay Area--after which we promptly visited San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, where a few panels of Yang's work were on display.

I can't really explain the wonder of this work--you'll just have to find out yourself. I highly recommend purchasing a copy for yourself, and one for your YA or graphic novel collection; its clever weaving of three narratives makes it as suitable for college and adult reading as it is for teens.

LE@D Video Shoot (aka Goofy Librarian Skilz)

2008-03-25T16:44:00.005-06:00

I used to work for the Center for Distributed Learning at UNT, back before I thought it was a grand idea to both attend school full-time and work full-time. In any case, they were a grand crew of people who had the amusing pleasure of finding out lots of my previously-hidden geeky secrets. Thus, I soon gave up my pretense of being a dignified young professional and acted more like my goofy self in their company.

Thus, when their LE@D (Lifelong Education at Desktop) program needed to shoot a video starring a goofy librarian... I was the first person they thought of.

So yesterday, I spent the morning over-acting my goofy heart out, while being followed around the third floor of the library by a mass of professional-looking camera equipment. The video's scenario is that I'm a librarian trying to take an online LE@D course, but I can't find the time to take it--I'm being interrupted at the reference desk, circulation, public computers, the breakroom, and finally make my escape to a stall in the women's restroom to finish. (I'll post a link here when the video's done on April 1st--both because you all deserve a good laugh and because I'm making a habit of humiliating myself online as much as possible.)

I'll say one thing--I now understand why, in addition to needing a script and camera, it's so important to have a director. You can read, "Starr looks up at patron and seems mildly frustrated by the interruption," and it seems simple, but when it comes to actual expression, body language, etc.... it's surprisingly complex.

So, er, I won't be running off to La-La Land anytime soon to pursue an acting career. But it was certainly an enjoyable experience, and Dr. Arlita Harris, the visionary behind the whole project, not only made it fun but graciously sent me flowers afterward. A big thanks to the CDL folks for thinking of me!

Where Do the Days Go?

2008-03-10T13:15:00.002-06:00

Goodness, I don't usually leave you hanging for a month. Suffice to say, between my personal life (putting house on market, 9 hours of doctoral classes, building addition) and my professional one (meetings, email, website admin-ing, two chapters to write), I'm a tad... stretched... at the moment.

As Bilbo said, I feel "like butter scraped over too much bread."

I'll return. Promise.

Unexpected

2008-02-11T10:52:00.000-06:00

Okay, I really didn't expect to spend 10 1/2 hours at work Saturday. Sure, I was working the weekend reference shift, but that's only 11 to 4. I came in at 9:30 to get some more work done... but I had no idea that I'd be spending an extra four hours on a single reference question.

Which kind of blew my good intentions, as far as homework, out of the water. By the time I got home after 9pm, I was too brain-dead to accomplish any of it. Sunday, I got a bit of it done, but we also had some construction we had to get done... so my regular reading got done, but I haven't been able to do any decent amount of work on my two research projects.

Sigh. So much for good intentions.

Technology, Facilitating Organization

2008-02-09T13:12:00.000-06:00

I finally finished uploading my notes from ALA Midwinter, which can now be found on my wiki. Now, as for the photos from that (as well as from our Las Vegas vacation the week before), I have no idea when those will hit Flickr. My guess is either spring break or this summer.

I have to say that our Outlook email migration went better than I expected. The extensive ability to customize color codes and define rules is incredibly helpful, and with the combination of tasks and appointments, I'm beginning to wean myself off of my paper-based agenda, which I typically carry everywhere. My husband's mentioned the possibility of getting me a smartphone, in which case I'd be able to access my Outlook there and completely eliminate the paper agenda.

I tried this once before, I think around 2002 when I had a Dell Axim 5 PPC (pocket PC). The problem with that one, though, was that I didn't use Outlook for my email, thus it was mainly a place to store contacts. After I finished my thesis (which I wrote primarily on the PPC, instead of buying a laptop), I gradually got to the point where I no longer used the PPC. At that point, it became a small word processor and glorified e-book reader, both functions that it's really good for, but it wasn't as compelling to use. Now that smartphones come with waaay more memory, and data plans are less expensive, having the added capabilities of email, web access, calendar-ing, and listening to mp3s would be quite welcome.

It's funny, because I've been one of the biggest nay-sayers to smartphones. I think they're great in theory, but the main thing is that I take my phone everywhere, and I have small pockets that smartphones typically don't fit into. However, now that I struggle to lug my paper agenda everywhere, and considering all the features built into smartphones, I think it might be worth it. Maybe I can get one that comes with a lanyard ring, or a pocket clip, or something.

The other huge reason I'd love a smartphone is that my husband's company produces an suite of mobile phone office software, called QuickOffice, that interfaces with MS Office on your PC. You can open and edit every type of MS Office document on your phone, including--my favorite--giving PowerPoint presentations directly from your phone. No laptop needed. Granted, I have a nice, small-ish laptop that travels pretty well, but sometimes you just don't want to lug it everywhere. With QuickOffice, I could forgo the laptop on short trips or within the library, and could still type notes in my wiki or give presentations--all from my phone! Egads!!!

My theory is that Alex's company should want to pay for a smartphone and data plan for me, since I'd be using it at conferences all the time and talking up how awesome their software is. I somehow doubt they'll see it as quite the incredible marketing opportunity, but you never know. Worth a try, right?

Welcome, Wacom Tablet!

2008-02-06T09:54:00.000-06:00

Better late than never.

It's been almost 18 months since my husband gave me a Wacom Graphire CTE440S tablet to use for drawing/graphics on my computer... but at that exact time, I became so overwhelmed with professional development activities at work, that I gave up my previous hope of starting a new hobby with an online comic.

However, I've been doing so much graphic design work in the past year at work that I finally broke down and brought it to the office. Hooked it up this morning, and am hoping to break into Photoshop with it this afternoon (I have some calendar pages and posters to get done by the end of the week, anyway).

So far, it's an odd substitute for my old mouse, particularly since I have two monitors side-by-side, which isn't exactly how the tablet's set up to operate. But I'm willing to feel clumsy for a few days, until I adjust. It's a small price to pay to finally feel like I have some dexterity in Photoshop and Illustrator.

To-Be-Published... Again!

2008-01-29T19:45:00.000-06:00

Swift on the heels of December's announcement that Suzanne, Annie, and I will be publishing a chapter in a book about academic library outreach, I got the new this morning that my abstract has been accepted for the upcoming book, 9/11 in Popular Culture. My essay will be titled, "Drawing on Tragedy: 9/11 in Comics and Graphic Novels." I’m looking at an issue of Spiderman, the comic version of the 9/11 Commission Report (so it’s kind-of a government document), and a compilation of artist responses to 9/11.

I figure the really interesting bit will be that this essay/chapter will tie together my backgrounds in literature, art history, and govdocs all in one.

And, um, since I just posted a lot, that’s it for now.

The Doctoral Experience Thus Far

2008-01-29T19:43:00.000-06:00

After two weeks of classes having begun, I finally attended my first F2F (face-to-face) class session for the Higher Education PhD program. I'm currently enrolled in EPSY 6020: Research Methods in Education (which is a fancy name for "basic quantitative/qualitative statistical research;" this couse is online), EDHE 6510: History of Higher Education (online with 4 F2F meetings), and EDHE 6780: Educational Resources (meets Monday evenings). Last night, I went to 6780 and enjoyed a lively discussion about endowments, grants, and the ethics of fund-raising. We had some particularly interesting discussion regarding the place of athletics and alumni in university fundraising--I can tell I'm really going to enjoy this class.

I've been enjoying the reading for 6510, but to be honest there hasn't been much yet. It looks like the readings and the assignments get heavier at the end of the year, which to be honest is fine with me. I'm trying to get our house on the market by mid-March, so I'm occupied with cleaning, boxing things for storage, and painting. I anticipate that around the end of February, I'm going to hit a huge clash between fulltime librarian-ing, fulltime doctoral student-ing, and readying our house to look its best. Not to mention that whole husband/family/friends side of life... yeah. Good thing I'm enjoying my classes so much at the moment!

I keep desperately seeking new ways to carve out blocks of time for myself. To be honest, my two-hour total commute each day is a kind of welcome break from all these tasks, but at the same time, I keep furiously thinking that I'd rather be spending the time working on homework or something else useful. If only I could get someone, for free, to record themselves reading my textbooks, and then I could play that in the car during my commute... Any other suggestions? I used to think I ought to borrow language-learning CDs from the public library, but that ends up being an additional source of information, without actually helping my work/school/home-responsibilities bind. At least music relaxes me, and NPR feeds me the news.

I certainly welcome any further ideas on better uses for my commute. :)

Abilene--Literally a Whirlwind Trip!

2008-01-29T19:42:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, I woke up at 5am to leave my house at 6am, in order to meet Suzanne in Denton. We drove to Abilene and due to some ferocious Fort Worth traffic, didn't make it to HSU's Richardson Library until 11am. We had a great--though brief--chat with my friend Ellen Simmons, who is the govdocs librarian there. This is the second library visit I've made with Suzanne--we went to see David Rankin in Commerce last semester, and Suzanne went to visit with Tom Lindsey at UTA earlier this month (sans myself). It's oddly helpful to walk through other libraries' govdocs collections--by comparing them with ours, it's somehow giving me a more complete view of depository collections and what the core items are in a depository collection.

Ellen treated us to a fantastic lunch at the Cypress Street Cafe, an Abilene legend. Then I dropped off a Wii Guitar Hero guitar with my friend Jared on our way out of town--geeky errands, you know--and after just 3.5 hours in Abilene, we were on our way back out of town! (We had to leave so abruptly because I had a class that evening, and Suzanne had to drive to Tulsa that night.)

But as for “whirlwind,” it wasn’t just that we spent less time in Abilene than it takes to drive there… one-way… “whirlwind” signifies the fantastically enthusiastic/crazy wind that was going on. Yes, windy even by Abilene-ian standards, which is a bit terrifying. (This morning it was even worse in Denton: winds at 56 mph+ and grassfires that made the whole city smoky.)

It was nice to see my alma mater, though, for however brief a time.

Midwinter Progress Report

2008-01-12T10:04:00.000-06:00

Notes from Midwinter:

GODORT Steering I meeting
GODORT Update: "Libraries in the Digital Age"
general notes (primarily reminders for myself)

Photos from Midwinter (flickr)

On My Way...

2008-01-10T13:54:00.000-06:00

...I'll shortly be departing for the DFW airport, Philadelphia, and ALA Midwinter. I'll try to send some updates soon--this past week was a hectic mash of dealing with post-holiday work and preparing for ALA, but there is news to be had.

And here's the first bit: the Texas Library Association has used several of my photos of the Transforming Texas Libraries Summit for their cover image for this month's edition of the Texas Library Journal! Woohoo!

The real cherry on top was my husband's laughter when he saw that, as he predicted, they used my hotel-bathroom-mirror self-portrait for my photo credit. Ah, well. That's what I get for making myself so public on Flickr and continuously photographing myself in ridiculous situations.

A big thanks to my pal Kristen for first breaking the news, to Gayla for bringing a copy to show me (while mine was on its way), and to TLA for using my images. Won't this be a fun addition to my portfolio?

Countdown to Launch

2007-12-21T08:57:00.001-06:00

Well, it should be all ready--cross your fingers. I had to give up playing Guitar Hero in the Digital Projects Lab yesterday in order to finish (dang), but we've finally got the manual and training completed for the move to our new internal communication system. I.E., instead of emailing out a Word or PDF attachment each week for the library's internal newsletter, we now have a CMS instance (we're using Plone, which is also the CMS for our library website) devoted to the newsletter, which also uses a controlled keyword vocabulary, organizes by department, and is searchable.

I don't know what took more effort, really, figuring out what CMS to use and the keywords and how it would all operate, or writing the whole training manual explaining everything. Although to be fair, I wasn't the programmer on the CMS end, so that was probably the worst of it.

I'm doing a little finish-up work communication remotely right now, and in the afternoon will be taking off for my nice long two-week holiday, which will be split between San Antonio, Las Vegas, and our home in McKinney.

May you all enjoy a great holiday season--rest up, eat well, and make merry!!!

Getting Published!!

2007-12-11T21:24:00.000-06:00

I'd planned to be too busy working to blog, but this was too good not to share:

I'm going to have a chapter in a book published!! Woohoo!

Suzanne (my awesome boss), Annie (our awesome Outreach Librarian), and I submitted a chapter proposal on academic library collaboration with public libraries, and I got word this morning that it was accepted! Yes, I did a little happy dance. It's to be published by Libraries Unlimited sometime around January of 2009, and it's an entire volume about outreach in academic libraries.

So... now if we can just get 5,000 words written before the end of next March, we're set.
Yay! (Happy dance again.)

Comey of Errors

2007-12-10T12:23:00.000-06:00

The whole Houston trip was an interesting saga, briefly summarized here:

nearly missed plane from DFW
workshop was amazing, met some interesting people
got four fantastic hardbacks of Tufte's work
stuck in traffic for an hour and half on the way to Houston Hobby
missed 6:30 flight--last flight of the day!
spent 45 minutes trying to find another flight or lodgings
was picked up by a family member
back to the airport at 4am, flew to DFW at 6am
drove directly to Denton for work to meet 2 of the 4 deadlines from last week

Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not get any sleep.

Anyway, this is my week of playing deep catch-up at work, so I'll still be lying low on the blog-radar. I'll try to post more info about the workshop next week.

TLA Transforming.... Photos!

2007-12-04T15:43:00.003-06:00

I've got quite a few photos up now from yesterday, and will be editing the rest and posting ASAP.

TLA Day Two: Closing Session

2007-12-04T15:41:00.000-06:00

One person from each of the six groups summarized their discussion, action items, big ideas.

Ideas that crossed groups:
- collaboration among libraries, across Texas
-- one central place for training, templates, practices, communication, assessment
-- "staffing consoritum" of expert, non-librarians
- collaboration within the external community (outreach and listening)
-- administrators do this
-- admin. empower young librarians and staff to do this
- state-wide library card
-- also state-wide database collections
-- federated search = exists already in the Library of Texas (LOT)
- train/staff in non-traditional library skills like marketing, communication, advocacy
- user-focus

TLA Transforming Texas Libraries: Day 1

2007-12-04T07:58:00.000-06:00

It's beautifully easy to get to the Hilton from the Austin Airport--less than a mile away. I ended up taking a shuttle with Dreanna Belden, Sue Compton, and a bunch of other TLA-ers. Dreanna and I had lunch and got to visit with several colleagues. The restaurant service left something to be desired, but the food was fantastic--we had sweet potato soup and blueberry/peach salad. Then we registered and ran down to the General Session with two library futurists: Joan Frye Williams and George M. Needham.

Here's a boil-down of what attracted attention in the General Session:

user's point of view
constituents and civilians
make quality convenient
make it easy (aka "easy is not stupid")

Here's my summary of each of those points:

The primary focus of the session was that to better serve our users, we need to take their point of view. Stop patronizing patrons and making them learn our system.
Think in terms of constituents (includes community that doesn't use the library), and civilians (people who aren't in the library world). Get their perspective and step outside of the librarian mindset.
Our constituents are using what's convenient--they don't care about quality like we do. So to bring them to our quality resources/services, we need to make them convenient.
Our users aren't stupid--but we make them feel that way in our libraries. We shouldn't make users feel ashamed or dumb--we need to make our libraries and resources easy enough to use that civilians can use them independently, with confidence.

There are large sheets of paper posted around the main ballroom--one sheet for each group to brainstorm on, and sheets near the door where we posted keywords from the first general session, which were later collected into a tag cloud. I love this idea--it's textual and visual, and creatively stimulating. Yay!

Then we broke into individual groups.

Group 6, Work Session 1
I'm in group 6, which is tackling library structures. Our conversation veered away from this issue, partially because we weren't sure to define "structure" in terms of physical building, an organizational structure, etc. We reacted and brainstormed instead on ideas related to the general session. We talked about how to start changing ourselves. (And incidentally, Ellie Collier, our TLA blogger for this task force, is in my group.)

After that, we had a short break, during which I chatted with some fellow Denton-ites, Melody Kelly, Eva Poole (director of Denton Public Libraries), and Shawne Miksa (UNT SLIS prof). It was a fun chatty time, and then we all went down together to the dinner and final speaker of the day. Dinner was fine (not as good as lunch, for then chicken for 100 people tends to turn out that way), and the speaker, Kathleen de la Peña McCook, was interesting. Her focus was on library involvement in the community in non-library groups and human rights advocacy. I'm not entirely sure how I felt about everything she said--she made some very strong, passionate statements that made me think, however.

And then I came upstairs to my room to catch up with my husband, write these thoughts down, edit my photos, and be frustrated at the lack of in-room internet access. I could go downstairs to use it, but I'm already in my tracksuit and not entirely sure that the internet access is worth traveling four floors for. I believe I'll set my alarm early instead and update my online life before our next work session starts at 9am.

There was so much thought that this has stimulated already--I wish this was three days instead of two. It's going to be difficult to process all of this into something useful in such a short period of time. At the same time, I know most of us can't afford the time of a longer session, particularly this late in the year. Ah, well.

TLA Group 6, Session 1

2007-12-03T17:47:00.001-06:00

Group 6, Issue Category F
"Transforming the Library Structure"

what struck you as key or most exciting?
- user focus
- "real time"
- convenience is important
- idea of opening the closed circle
- sense of urgency
- valuing librarians as professionals
- complaining attitudes need to change
- how patronizing we are toward are constituents
- concept of the zone of mediocrity
- people are starving for time
- libraries as idea labs
- the front door experience--what you see when you first come in
- change in the balance of time and resources

already doing:
- Christina's library puts staff on the desk--tiered system
-- reevaluated how she felt about it
-- been using the "on-call" model for awhile; physical and virtual reference
-- librarians do use the chat services for a few hours a day
-- librarians on-call that are called will move the question away from the desk to answer it
-- if they can't answer it, then they move to a subject specialist--but that's not very often
-- problems sometimes--staff people don't know when to let go of a question
-- new librarians do need to have desk time to gain experience with answering questions
-- some librarians are not willing to give up the traditional reference model, and don't have initiative to go out and do outreach, pro development--you need to carefully repurpose them
- think of it as "triage"
-- take care of urgent, easy questions at point of need (shelvers and directional questions)
- but what if "i need this book" wasn't the real question--reference interview may be missed
- look at potential outcomes: can repuporse the professionals so that they can focus on the big showy issues, questions, services
- on the other hand, the staff that are repurposed may feel more meaningful and have more variety; lends toward retention
- another element; we need to level with our users; let them define what they want/need
- are we patronizing staff by saying "train them to be me"
- not everyone has to be an expert--not every situation requires it
- former sales manager -- sales call focus on satisfying the user's need
- using librarian's knowledge and skills to help users be self-reliant
- "let me take you to a pro" (a value-added statement)
- participatory engagement --not all one-sided
- get away from the defensiveness of being professionals
- create a system that's intuitive that users don't need classifications numbers anymore -- the whole idea of designing anything in the catalog is to get the info, not to get the system to users -- goal is to get what they want, not to teach them a system
- web 2.0 users creating own subject tags--that's part of it, but it's a whole philosophy; natural-language searching, etc.
- "bookstore signage" for subjects above the LC numbers, to enable browsing
- librarians as a culture tend to be introverted; they aren't greeting people or smiling even when encouraged to. it's partly the people our profession attracts.
- measures: show our value to the community; we need to look at the real values that we add to the community. School: better grades, passing, academic libraries: learning outcomes, public libraries: help to the community. Substantive measure, not just "feelgood" measures like "do you like your library." Dollars are the direct measure; surveys are indirect.
- ROI calculators on your library's webpage. (Dynamic ROI on page?) ROI isn't outcome.
- it's not always easy to locate a book in a bookstore, either--how is the book categorized?
- engaging community -- step out more -- have a flickr account and engage community to tag the photos; people who were present for historical photos add their information to them;
-- collaboration between community libraries and librarians; denton reads formed collaboration that lead to public library depository interactions; utilize different missions/collections.; need formal ways to collaborate
-- "staff share" between different libraries to give new perspective
-- learn about our communities!!!! ****
- motto: "we are all the library" -- community
- grade yourself on your outreach
- what are we doing in collaboration? What's the purpose and impact? measure the outcome and success--does something concrete come as a result?

- (university president) why do your libraries want and need to change? what is it that's compelling us to change? ideas are great, but you can't change the individual, can you? you need to get the leadership involved--it's consequences that get people to change.
-- relevance and survival. faculty change how and what they teach/research, and it's the same for libraries.
-- mission -- serve our users
- territorial: we say "at YOUR library," but we mean at "our library" -- how can we truly make the library *theirs*
- how are you going to convince the masses? as in, other librarians? repeat this session/training/etc. in your home library to inspire them.
-- how are we going to get the users to take the survey?

action item:
- get away from the idea that we are the information specialists, if we agree with what the speakers said.
- know what is expected of us. your constituency may tell you something that you don't want to hear--you need to be prepared for that.
- decide we want to change.
- define what we are now and what we want changed.
- define our value from the user's point of view.
- come up with a survey format to survey users, for all libraries. we have OCLC for the bigger picture, but we also need a local survey. feedback, specific community information.
-- create different options or models for ways to accomplish change.
-- #1 is define your constituency.
- develop a triage of staff to handle user needs
- enable independent library users. change to -- develop a library that can be used independently. don't ignore the higher-level user groups, though.
- increased collaboration.
- increased outreach.
-- training/materials to help other libraries do outreach and collaborations. they need to cross library-type barriers.
-- texas-wide or other large-scale public media statement of "this is who we are and what we do"

question:
how do we change ourselves in order to transform our libraries?

what does "ourselves" mean? what part of us do we need to change?
- don't see constituents as active, savvy info searchers -- back up and let them try the search themselves
- give an understanding that we're not special, separate, or first -- we need to provide good customer service
-- "what would i do to make myself come into the library?" find out how they want to be treated. account for different users and generations.
- look at what our users need; think like the user
- go to a library that isn't yours to get that feeling
- there isn't a one-size-fits all
- define what makes a good library by what a constituent thinks makes a new library -- create the appropriate measures for each library (differ by type, maybe by individual libraries)
-- there are some quantifiable measures, but we also need valid user opinion surveys
-- perception of us by our entire community, whether they use us or not
- change by becoming part of the bigger, non-library community, learning what they need and expect and want and use
- year after year, committing to reinventing yourself
-- you can't predict, but be flexible and regularly reassess
- idea of the generation gap or different personalities (changers vs non-changers) -- can we bridge the gap to show that people inherently are more alike than that
-- another instance of where we need to stop generalizing
- there's some dis-ease that we're not providing service that we need to provide -- that's an institution by its nature wants to continue itself (short term = not changing), but long-term means you have to change; an institutional momentum toward not changing

TLA Transforming Libraries: General Session

2007-12-03T15:59:00.000-06:00

TLA Transforming Texas Libraries Summit
Monday, Dec. 3rd, 2007
(opening General Sessio

President of TLA, opening remarks and introductions; (Joan and George)

faciltator, L. Weatherby
- goal is to take advantage of the talents/knowledge here to make changes in libraries
- goal for each of us to leave this room inspired, enthusiastic, and feeling responsible to personally make the changes needed to transform libraries in our state
- ask yourself during this talk, "what am I going to do about this? how can I contribute?"
- there are a variety of ways for people to contribute
- this room is "the idea lab" --paper posted on walls around the room
- some ideas have already been posted there; more will be added as the summit goes on
- absorbing info will be critical for us; we all come from diff. backgrounds and perspectives
- as you listen, have an open heart and inquiring mind to what they have to stay
- suspend your judgement about what you might hear
- carry an in terest in the question they raise
- may be provocative and challengning--we're allowed to disagree
- step outside your personal frame of reference and perspective, say as a librarian
- put on the hat of a library user, of a different role in the library, of an IT person
- as you listen, make notes on words that trigger really strong reaction from you, whether negative or positive
- what comes to mind? what words are important to you?
- after the general session, we'll quickly move into the small group sessions

George ---

"Transformation Starts at Home"
transf. starts with individuals, not institutions
transf. is also about how you see yourself
some "inconvenient truths" about the library world and the way we work today

Joan ---

librgaries just get what everyone else had, five years later
easy to be a libvrary futurist
questions are good and pragmatic
but we need to broaden our focus/vision
not just how we should tackle the job of running a library, but what does it mean to be a library, and what relationships should th elibrary have with people around it?
-- Who are we supposed to serve, and what do they value? --
OCLC data is very helpful for this
we need to think about what people value, period -- not just what they calue in their library
-- how do we contribute to our constituents' quality of life, work, and learning on their terms? --
how do we get credit for caring about what they need?
peopl value real-world things -- how do libraries contribute to them realizing their desires?
"constituents" = other terms describe people who alreayd amde it into a library (user, customer, patron)
we need to think in terms beyond the library, to those we need to serve that don't come into the library
"civilians" =anyone who doesn't have library training/background
people who think it's weird to alphabetize your spice cabinet
students and faculty are civilians
think about where they're coming from
this question tells the quality of life from *their* perspective

George

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is optional."
most of us entered this field not to be change agents, but because we loved books or we wanted to help people.
most of us are conservative--conserve materials and ideas
to serve, bring enlightenment to the masses
conservation : the balance btwn. attention and resources has turned 180 degrees
librbaries used to be the place where all the resources were held
we expected that people would take the time to learn classifcation systems.
info was scarce and expensive, and time was unlimited--now that's the complete opposite
info is now ubiquitous and constant
but time is limited, and it's become the new currency--save them time, you'll have their attention
we still expect them to register and navigate OPACs and master A/Is, and to phsyically come into the library to get the good stuff

Joan

calls for a shift in our roles as librarians
info is hard to find; the library is complex; we like it that way
it makes our users need us to bail them out--we're the heroes
we think of librarianship as a helping profession--that's almost a colonial view "enlighten the ignorant"
librarianship is overrun with A students
are you convinced that the faculty also don't get it?
do you think that all non-librarians need our help?
this is how our constituents see us: as *serving* them, making them free of the librarian
most of our students don't see the rel. as need or dependency -- so we should stop thinking of it as a helping profession
most people fail to see any linkage btwn. living full productive lives and following library procedures
given the level of confidence people feel in info seeking, most people would feel insulted that we feel they need our help

George

book: "Pattern Recognition"
five areas that describe places where OCLC could have an impact:
social
economic
technology
research and learning
libraries
three trends\
selfservice
disaggregation
?

self-service: most people feel confident online
what's changed is the variety and opportunities people have to manage tasks previously done by experts, like travel agents, stockbrokers, insurange agencies, pharmacists, and librarians
- decline and fall of the expert -
- "cult of the amateur"
- "
main difference btwn experts and civilians is access to info

JOan

in denial that our reference desks are declining
civilians don't use subscription db's because they aren't designed for civilian users
google is designed for civilians
most info-seeking now is self-service
we will never control discovery again
self service is not the same as no service
don't abandon them; just do a better set-up job
puts the constituents in the driver's seat
enables them to retain their feeling of self confidence
once someone is using the library and has succeeded at basic activities, they are more than twice as likely to engage staff for help in further work.
-- how can we set up the library to make it easy for our constituents succeed? --
most people start "i know this is a stupid question, but..."
but what we should be hearing is "your set-up just made me feel stupid, incapable, ashamed."
we shouldn't insist on proving that people are stupider than we are.
all library use is essentially voluntary--people have choices.
they want ways to use th elibrary that doesn't conflict with their own idea of themselves; let htme achieve success on their own terms.
make it easy to find stuff! way too much clutter in libraries--esp. signage
use civilian termonology, not "microforms"
we have to have directions for people that don't make them learn a second language
look to retail, the way they lay out their space, "power paths" and "nodes"
why aren't we borrowing ideas from people with the R&D money?
consti. need to know that we are laying out this place for them; some of them think we like the complexity and being needed
zone staffing: (roving, etc.), open your mind to responsibility for help/problems (not just "on desk")
think of our job not as individual tasks, but as a whole experience for civilians
there aren't a lot of experts in this staffing model
everyone knows the basics; don't just refer to another person
anything that we set up for civilians to do themselves, then all of our staff people need to be able to help with that task
resistance to enabling shelvers, etc, to answer questions
new descriptions, "manger, 1st floor" not "head, adult services"
success insurance: info at point o fuse, focus on how materials are consumed, not just delivered
provide a place where we aren't thought of as gate-keepers
don't make people jump through hoops--const. are treated like we assume they are criminals (locked-down)
design for what usually happens, not what might happen
take analogies from other people/idustries
set it up in a way that people are familiar with; make bibliographic instruction unnecessary--where else do you have to take a course in order to use the building?

George

disaggregation and recombination --
what are we as librarians, if we aren't aggregators?
google instantly delivers -- not just website, phone number, map, address
iTunes; no longer have to buy an entire bundle of info that you don't want; you also get better browsing/discovery features
over 600 million copies of iTunes software has ben downloaded (2 for each adult/child in the US)
eBay allowed individuals the power to widen your market, own retail
now can sell to the entire world
reaggregating info ("mashups") --the other half of the equation
people are becomign their own librarians
creating their own stuff out of provided content chunks
personal iTunes library = reaggregation

Joan

conflict for traditional libraries
control for how collections are created and consumed away from librarians
-- how can we make library info more exportable and re-mixable? --
"edgelessness" = we're very edgey in the library world
is it okay to do that? will it dilute our role?
recombinat resources: library data must be fit to use outside our library systems - mainstream formats, gadgets, APIs, import/export, open up tagging to enable user input
don't get rid of the catalog--but open to tags
enhanced discovery: make it easier for civilians to find info
usually civilians don't start with library
change some of the things we do--quit thinking of the OPAC as the primary way in: search engines are the primary connection
put things out where people will find it, where they already are
undersatnd how people like to receive their info -- small bits of info
download call numbers to your cell phone to wander stacks with
digitize and caption what we can, and if we put library out in the non-library sites, we are more likely to be discovered

George

last of three dominat threds: collaboration
this is the librarians' biggest untapped asset
"Collaboration is an unnatural act commiteed by non-consenting adults."
on the other hand, libraries have had years to work on library collaboration like ILL
we learned that it's possible
we like to reduce redundancy
spread beyond our own institutional borders

Joan

-- how can we extend the library's reach via interdiscplinary collaboration? --
we read about action happening anywhere
we mistrust the political system
need to identify places where librarians and politicians can collaborate
we play nicely with librarians, but not anyone else
don't "educate" civilians, collaborate with institutions that have constituents in common with us
abundance: if we want to collaborate with people just like us, we need to stop bad-mouthing
other people hear us talking about what we don't have
we need to talk about our abundance of things to offer
allocate the resources we have where the demand it
deliver things quickly where we can, to have a positive to point to when we want to partner
rations at the library -- restrictions on what you can have, the more you want it (length of time at computers, etc)
we focus on the "just in case" and the deficiencies
if you're a partner that says "yes i can make that happen" you'll get more partnerships
radical trust -- NPR/museums/libraries report "partnerships for free choice learning"
single descriptor of libfrarians in that study: "defensive"
we don't focus on building relationships
we also think of collaborations as lifetime committments
you don't start a partnership with a MOU
everyone needs to participate -- don't say "partner" when you mean "sugar daddy" - "give me money and then go away"
there are ways to play nicely; quit being the victim in the process

George

many speaking engagements after the report came out
the one Q they got was "What next?"
followup: "OCLC perceptions"
result of a survey of 3,400 people
in six countries, online, only in English
logical question: why? why do this kind of survey?
heard a lot of comments from librarians that it's interesting, "but our users are different"
"their users trust the library more than Google or other websites"
no way to prove any of this true
many libraries perform their own surveys -- some good, some bad
OCLC decided to do something different--to ask people what they think
an international study, to test some of the things they heard
covered perceptions of libraries and other info services/providers
compared libraries and search engines
(give stats from the OCLC report)
96% have visited a public libgrary
57% use libraries several times a year
72% hold a library card
90% of students have library cards
--a lot of lying may be going on, like flossing and drinking
ratings of information from various sources
ratngs of which sources they have used -- dramatically different
-- 5% use the "ask a librarian" service
**do you stop at the very best supermarket, or the one where you don't have to make left turns?
convenience is key to our lives
"in this world, convenience will always trump quality. it's our jobs as librarians to make quality convenient." ***
this is not the way to build customer loyalty
we're in the zone of mediocrity; people aren't passionate about us one way or the other
book challenges are at least an indication that someone cares about the library and their materials
do I really believe that the info from the Medco website is better than from a pharmacist? no, but I don't have to wait in line, it's there 24/7, and it's private

Joan

the customer is not broken.
it's a bad strategy to create a whole service on the notion that people need to change their minds.
-- how can we highlight and reinforce librarians' status as professionals? --
why do librarians insist that the best use of our time is looking things up for people?
how do we highlight our status even when we're not used to look things up?
get the pros off our desk. there is no other profession that puts its best and brightest people at the front desk.
we are deploying ourselves like entry-level clerks
not a big fan of roving reference, either--librarians hounding people
also promotes the "you're helpless" idea
dispatched service for medium to large libraries
the person at the desk assesses which part of library services is appropriate to help the person
librarians "on call" -- see Stamford's model
working on-call--you can get actual work done, keep your head down
the rule of "don't hold up the line" -- don't tell people when you can't find something
it's the wrong way to get people to be forthcomign about their needs, to ask in a line
redeployed reference -- where do you put those ref. librarians?
pre-mediating and pakaging info, creating FAQs--setting up the library (candy store)
doing real reference with someone, sitting down (appointments)
working in an expert setting, not a front desk
homework insurnace -- spelling, etc. "check your work"
learning specialists -- understand how people learn and use from info
consti. specialists -- target audiences and know how they do their work and services that would support their process **
outreach!!! underut. because we're on desk too much *****
"upselling" - approach how we use this time differently
empower everyone in the lbirary to help with basic tasks, close every engagement with suggestions for more info or get intro'd to one of our pros (librarians) -- const. feel well-taken care of
need to introduce people to the new idea of librarians, professionals
not people who answer the "where's the bathroom" questions ****

George

roles of libraries -- worded in non-library language
provide these services in a language that people can understand--this is a good basis

Joan

enough with "info place"
info is not the primary industry we should be in--those jobs are being outsourced overseas
if we are a learning and reading place,
-- how can we enourage, stimulate and support learning and reading? --
our role is to facilitate the const. productive experience--thjey do the work
libraries are not set up as inspiring destinations
should be clean--many libraries are not--look with the eyes of a first-time guest
it has to be nicer than home
hospitality-- not as big a problem in TX, but signage is still "Don't" and "no" heavy
word things helpfully and positive
a lot of learning happens in a n improved setting
need th eability to make stuff up
not all things can be solved with the procedures manual
need a view, something pleasant to look at; outside is best, interior can work
many libraries are obscured by stacks
create an opportunity for users to create their own pleasant experience
image of Google--pleasant space to think in
needs to include the element of surprise -- much learning circulates around the alteration of expectation
kids are sent to the library for detention -- their view hasn't changed
a place where you actively *do* stuff
we are a "rule-ish" culture in libraries -- focus on creativity processes, desired outcomes from the perspective of the constituents
if we don't change our approach, we have no right to be surprised when there are views of mean old broad librarians
encourage libraries to try new things: UK is calling libraries "Idea Stores"
"comfortable and friendly surroundings"

George

a new OCLC report--sharing privacy and trust (Oct 2007)
more than 6,000 people surveyed, in foreign languages as well
included six counties again
included pool of 372 library directors for comparison
compare librarian views to civilian views
not even on radar in 2003: social networking
sites where people can post extensive personal info and interact with people (share ourselves)
social media is where people can contribute and view content (share content)
how have these sites got people to participate?
*why* do people use these sites?
"my friends use the same site" - 80%
second reason: "the website is fun"
-- is the library website fun?
things that people share: primary is subjects of interest, b-day, personality attributes
library directors less willing to share info than the public
"what do you consider important to keep private?"
social security number is #1
library director levels almost double importance on privacy
we must become less dogmatic about this
we are engrained in the days of paper records; we don't do data mining on what we have--we don't look at our own statistics
Walmart is successful because they have what people want in correct quantities, when they want it
we should stop making privacy decisions for people

Joan

thnking of th elibrary as a closed system--our const. put info in, but we don't use it
we need participation
social network data
technology supports participation
const.want to part. out in the open
-- how can we strengthen our const.'s involvement withtheir libraries?" --
people are willing to take blogs as authoritative just like national news broadcasts
the people's voice in a democatric society should be a good thing
7 million products, just one score--all reviews aggregated together ***
individual perspective can make info more valuable and credible in some cases -- finding out the real recooperation from those who have been through a surgery
we don't have to publish everyone's overdue list
2.0 services: FUSE (yahoo's description), find, use, share, expand
libraries neglect share and expand, as if it has nothing to do with us
supporting this as a process is important
help our const. engage with us in the ways they benefit
virtual outreach -- non-libray blogs, youtube, wikipedia, delicious, secondlife -- non-library online spaces, with value added
people really look in WIkipedia
usually the #1 link from Google
real-time activities buzz: people check social websites hourly,
"right now" what is happening?
live circulation activity: "book Feed" at Yorba Linda -- most frequently used thing on their homepage; confidential ***
serve up what's going on in ways people can engage with it
put things related to NPR up on the webpage where people can see it right now
podcast part of your activities
where can you go to get a good wireless signal? "right now"
parking camera to show available spots (web cam)

George

we feel the need to overcome the past--
library brand -- we tried to distance ourselves from "books"
but this is what people see about us and what people will always think. this isn't a bad thing
there is not a corporation that wouldn't kill for that kind of brand identification
we're bored with the idea, but hte public isn't
what kinds of things can libraries do on social networks? "create bookclubs"

Joan

-- how can we leverage the books brand? --
"'ing' the 'thing'" books = reading and learning
a lifestyle association with books = successful in life
clearly affiliated the notion of success with libraries, books, reading
book setting, "i'm smart, i have this lifestyle"
people think of books as sociable -- discussion groups
books as artistic objects
a lot of aspiring writers that want the library to support their writing efforts
want to post their content for others to share -- we've put this on the side
reading maintains your brain
"power your body, power your mind"
tie to pop culture and media -- poopooed in the academic library in particular
many people expect librarians to look down on pop culture
evangelists for reading and learning, recommend books/media

George

one big wildcard: what happens when technologies kick us in the listserv?
ebook readers
this is not going to change the world right now, but there will be a 2.0 and a Google version--are you just counting down to retirement?
survey about finding info on four key topics: library was last in every one; in 1947
the library did not even then have a franchise on information
so why are our problems not insurmountable?
what do you want in your library? these are now services/materials that we provide
how can we get there today? --listen to users--
Google focuses on the user
must become user-centric institutions
"...we must build as if the sand were stone."
create new missions and services

Q/A time
how do you reach people that are not online in the OCLC surveys?
direct field work supports these results with real-world people; 75% of Americans are online somewhere; people who use info in one format use it in other formats; if they chose not to use online, they might not be using other forms of info

are we going to address the digital divide?
what about social responsibility in a democratic society?
if we "dumb down" our systems for just in tume info, what about people who want to do more research or don't have online access?
there is a role to serve all your consituents, including non-online users. but when you talk to someone who is on the far side of the digital divide/literacy, and ask them what they look for, they say give more computers/access, not ignore that side.
rationing this access is a big mistake.
when you talk to constituents, they want help to get a piece of it--check out laptop. they want to be a part of the mainstream.
just because something is simple and easy doesn't mean it's stupid. "hard is not smart."
we need to make more and more things available for handhelds--these are less expensive than a laptop or PC and have greater penetration in the world. we can have print and electronic.

did i hear faculty referred to as "civilians" and not "constituents?"
use those words somewhat interchangeably. const. is the community you serve--but civilians are not librarians.
each of those words have their own connotations.

you said it's not a good idea for shelvers to not answer questions, but it's not a bad idea for librarians to be in the back room. could you talk about that a bit more?
we're afraid that someone without our pro background will mess it up--we don't train them, we control. that's not the best way to leverage a professional. quality-check, but don;t do it yourself. "this will go to hell unless I do it myself." treat yourself as if you're a precious resource, and train those around you to realize your vision. we don't have enough time to give good service--we limit our reach. one way to increase pay is to be clear that your vision informs everyone around you.

i agree. but the reality is that much of our profession is stuck on how we were taught how to do it in school 25-20 years ago. i work in a univeristy. there is the fresh, new idea people and then the poeple who have been there 30 years and know everything. i need to bring those two camps closer together. our constituents are those not just at the university, but outreach is a huge part of what we should be doing. we have a huge stake in educating our public, making sure they are literate. we need to connect the dots. how can i bring them together?
there are two things about change that we forget. we start with the idea, but you need to start earlier than that: 1) honor the past. 2) create a sense of crisis. people change because there is osmething in their way or some disaster.
also, when we evaluate employee performance, we seldom include "have you learned anything new lately?" team fresh young with an older person and make each learn something from the other--their job is not to convince or convert each other, but to learn from each other. accountability issue: training need = performance is poor. articulate training around learning from the people around you.

didn't hear the world "school" mentioned much?
in teh school environment, the faculty and library need to be organized as if they are in the same business (they are). they are stil sending kids into library for detention--shouldn't be a penalty box.
we've expanded what a creative learning strategy looks right now. very much teaching toward the test at the moment. we need to articulate outcomes in ways that the state and teachers care about. all you can do is re-set the arguement to "i will improve your outcomes." tell the kids: "save time, get better grades" and "hang with your friends" if the library is cool. homework insurance works well in school libraries.

Step Up, Texas Bloggers!

2007-11-28T16:31:00.000-06:00

If you're planning on attending the Texas Library Association 2008 Annual Conference in Dallas on April 15 - 17, and you're a blogger or interested in blogging... let me know if you'd be interested in participating as a conference blogger. I'm going to be one, and I've been asked to seek out recruits, as well--the blogging will start months in advance of the conference, and include things like attendance tips, resources/restaurants in the area, etc., then during the actual conference we'll be blogging sessions and events we attend.

Let me know if you're interested!

'Tis the Season

2007-11-28T15:33:00.000-06:00

Yes, to be jolly, but also to heighten that usual sense of the word "busy." Ah, how well I know it after having spent over two decades enrolled in some form of school.

And I've got a bit of good news to post: I've been accepted into UNT's PhD program in Higher Education! Yes, I'm back for more--but as my husband supportively points out, this degree has that helpful distinction of "terminal," meaning that I could, conceivably, one day be done with school. (No, really.)

Why, you ask, particularly as I've argued in the past that most librarians don't need PhDs, and that often it doesn't seem to be worth the time or money invested in the degree? Well, because much as I currently love my job, I know my ambitions and my dreams, and I'd like to be able to move not only into library administration, but potentially into university-wide administration. And it seems pretty par for the course to have a PhD attached to your name in those positions.

Why in Higher Ed, instead of an Information Sciences doctorate? Well, I'm attracted to that program, it looks quite interesting--but at the end it seems to me that a Library/Info Science PhD is best if 1) you want to teach at a library school (I don't), or 2) you are interested in a highly-focused area of library science research that you'd like to pursue (I'm not). I want to administrate, and I'm going into Higher Ed because that's a good, practical preparation for university administration--lots of helpful courses on academic finances and of course the ever-present statistical information (which, being a documents librarian, I'm actually looking forward to). And I'm interested in researching library support for distance education--support both in terms of library services and library materials--and thus, I've already got a potential dissertation topic.

I embark upon that adventure in January 2008. In the meantime, our emerging technologies group at UNT is more deeply discussing options for standards in technology competencies for library employees... we're trying to see if that's a good road for us to take in the Libraries.

And of course there's a desk full of stacked papers requiring my attention--Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday and it's great to rest, but I'm mighty tired of moving some of my "to-do" items from week to week in my calendar. I'm pondering a work-fest week in the second week of December, to try to wrap up a lot of this end-of-the-year deadline stuff (and then hope to write an article or two in that "spare time" over the Christmas break).

Next week, though, it will be hard to keep up with the normal swing of work--Monday and Tuesday I'll be in Austin for the Texas Library Association's Transforming Texas Libraries Summit, which has a lot of potential to be interesting, and then Thursday I'll be in Houston for a fantastic workshop on the visual presentation of data (no, it's really not boring!!) by Edward Tufte. My father, an optics engineer, attended this presentation a few years back and said it's about the best one-day seminar he's ever been to, and promptly bought me one of Tufte's books that Christmas. I've been fascinated with him ever since, and since my current position deals a lot with both graphics and statistics, this seemed like a good training opportunity.

Also, I'm on the Conference Program Committee for the TLA 2009 conference--we're beginning to brainstorm sessions and speakers. If you know of anyone who would be a good speaker on graphic design and/or library marketing, please let me know. I'm particularly interested in organizing a session on that general topic, as it's something that's quite relevant to work I've been doing for UNT, and I'm sure it's a problem for other libraries as well. Or if you have other session ideas, things you'd like to be educated on, people you'd like to hear speak--please just let me know!

Whistle While You Work

2007-11-16T08:13:00.000-06:00

You can now access the materials from the 2007 Fall Depository Library Council conference online. I've added DLC's pdf version of my slides and handout to my wiki page, in case anyone doesn't have MS products (yes, O Wise Mac Users, I'm speaking of you).

This week was the usual blur of meetings, only with the heightened franticness of the knowledge that next week will be missing two workdays. This is good, in the vacation realm of getting to relax and hang out with family--and kinda bad in the eternally-behind mode of work.

A few days ago I rather trepadaciously told Alex that I'd like to spend most of one day this weekend getting some work done (primarily web updates for GODORT, but also some other professional-development stuff that doesn't find its place in the daily work routine). He answered with relief that he'd been wanting to do the same thing, as well. Folks, this is when you shake your heads at each other, think the word "workaholic" -- but don't dare to actually utter it, lest one of you decides that things need to change--starting with this weekend!

Ah, well. Sitting side-by-side with our laptops is about the same equivalent of quality time as sitting side-by-side watching a movie, right? Only the sarcastic comments aren't about plot lines or shoddy acting, but about the persnickety-ness of technology and various work assignments.

The couple that works together... um... you got me there.

Why You Should Befriend Your IT Dept.

2007-11-05T12:41:00.000-06:00

Besides the obvious necessity for keeping those that run all our technology happy, and thus getting some bang-up fast/awesome service, there are things like this.

One of our IT guys, who is an English grad student with a penchant for comics (thus our friendship--he loaned me the rest of Planetary over the summer) just dropped this by my office:

He made them for friends around campus to wear today. How cool is that? (And if you're totally wondering what this is about--it's Guy Fawkes Day. Go read/watch V for Vendetta, and you'll get it.) Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

A case of Mountain Dew and some friendly words go a long, long way, people.

Noteable Secrets

2007-10-30T19:36:00.000-06:00

I know, I went straight from MIA due to travel to MIA due to performance-review-time. Hopefully this will all be done next week.

In the meantime, enjoy this delightful example of why you should submit FOIAs: a book on secret Pentagon badges.

Technology: Not Always Progress?

2007-10-22T17:54:00.000-06:00

I agree with most of what Rob Neville says in his post, "10 Reasons Why eBooks Suck."

This isn't to negate the fact that there have been times when I've been tickled to find a page I needed scanned in on Google, or when as a distance learner I've been able to read entire volumes while at home ~~in pajamas eating bon-bons~~ responsibly learning about librarianship. (Ahem.) But those circumstances are far, far fewer than the instances that I read in print--either my pleasure-reading of print comics or novels, or the printed-out copies of online articles that read for work and for class. If I need to read something, and not quickly scan it, 80% of the time I'll print it out (excepting email, and in that case if I think I'll read it again, I often print it, as well--with my sincere apologies to trees).

Interestingly enough, I own an e-book reader. Oh, not a dedicated one--but I have a Dell Axim Pocket PC that we bought a few years ago... I think it was 2002. I primarily used it to write my thesis and other grad school homework/research--basically it was like a mini-laptop that I could carry in my purse. I eventually stopped using it because 1) I got a "real" laptop in 2005, 2) I started editing images a lot, and 3) the built-in battery lost its "oomph" after three years. But while I had it, it was handy not only for homework, but it was a handy-dandy e-book reader, too. I downloaded scads of public-domain stuff like Little Women and Ivanhoe, and it was nice to always have a wide selection of reading available in my purse. The back-lit screen also provided a nice solution for reading in bed at night. But if I was at home or at work and print books were handy, I always turned to them. I see ebooks and ebook readers as tools of necessity (or of necessary convenience), but not of pleasure.

Anyway, I don't need to re-state Rob's arguments here--I suggest reading his blog post. But I think it's worth noting, from a "Librarian for Digital Collections" who is a tech junkie and Library 2.0 fan, that sometimes the old-tech solutions are really the most practical.

Plus, as noted ad-infinitum elsewhere, bibliophiles like myself can't get over the feel, look, smell, and other tangibility of books. Until that's somehow available electronically, give me print instead.

Where in the World is Starr Hoffman?

2007-10-22T15:12:00.000-06:00

(Not to be confused with Carmen Sandiego.)

So... I've given five presentations and been in four different locations in the past two and a half weeks. Forgive me if I'm slow in responding to email, calls, or even vocal communication--I'm a bit dazed at the moment. (Going through several hundred email messages this morning didn't help ground me further in reality, either.)

Audience at my CRS reports presentation in DC, October 15th.
We estimated about 125 attendees--thanks so much, everyone!

I can't chat long--must get back to the email and general work catch-up, of course--but I must say a huge "thanks!" to everyone who helped me prepare my presentations and to everyone who listened, particularly all the great feedback I've received. I am so appreciative just of the experience to give these presentations, all of which were fabulous, fun, and a learning experience--all those comments were just icing on a very large cake. And thanks to my family, who gave me three days of vacation in the middle of this madness, and who were quite understanding about my crazed schedule and need to be constantly revising PowerPoint files.

And now, back to the long process of getting back into the swing of things.

Not Home Yet...

2007-10-18T23:39:00.000-06:00

So, the San Antonio trip/presentations is done, the DC trip and presentation is done, we picked up Bryce, and now we're in Abilene. It's been a packed two weeks! And for once, I've been mostly off-grid--which is both disturbing, and nice. I've been rediscovering the use of the phone for things like checking museum hours, and enjoying the silence of a hotel room with nothing but a comic book in hand (the internet connection having gone bad, and me having not the energy to complain). But a break from email, even for just three days, was a great way to relieve some stress (momentarily, however, as there will be four times as much to deal with when I log in tomorrow).

The DC trip was fantastic--I had a great three days of vacation with Alex and all four of our parents, seeing many thing I didn't have time to see before. And then the FDLP conference was really great--it's nice knowing so many people now. Plus, my presentation went so well and was so packed (upwards of 100 people!) that I was asked to give it again in KC in the spring--w00t! And since Alex's parents stayed while I was in conference, Alex had people to go out and have fun with, which left me feeling at ease about attending meetings I needed to. And even gave me a few hours after my presentation to decompress with that comic book mentioned (Jack of Fables vol. 1, which was as great as I expected). Then I watched part of two of my favorite movies, Star Trek: First Contact, and Stargate (not as great as the series, IMHO, but still awesome, particularly the beginning).

Now I'm in Abilene for HSU Homecoming (i.e. what passes for vacation for us busy folks). I'll be slowly catching up on work and personal email and homework, but I don't expect to be fully back on the grid until Monday. I'm trying this new thing, called unwinding. And unplugged.

(By the way, I do plan to post more about the presentations in SA and DC, as they were both great experiences and things I learned from.... just not while I'm vacationing!)

Midnight Pizza and Blogging

2007-10-11T12:47:00.000-06:00

...That's what I'm up to. I'm here in DC (well, Arlington, VA, but who's counting?) with my husband, my parents, and his parents in a 2-bedroom, 1-fold-out couch suite. We're eating pizza because that's about the only thing still serving people on our time zone / travel schedule.

I wanted to blog about the fantastic time I had Monday, giving three related Library 2.0 presentations to the San Antonio Public Libraries staff... and post photos... and all that... but I was busy catching up at work and preparing for this next trip. But if you'd like to see the completed presentations and handouts, they're on my wiki.

I'm going to spend the next three days sight-seeing with family... and probably catching up on work/homework at night in the hotel. Then I'll be attending the Federal Depository Library Program Fall Conference, Monday through Wednesday. I'll update when I can... probably mostly I'll be adding conference notes to my wiki.

"Students Commend Librarians"

2007-10-10T18:12:00.000-06:00

It only slightly shocks me that in an op-ed piece in our university newspaper praising librarians, the writers mention Dewey... when we use LC.

Ah, well. The sentiment sure is nice!!!

Banned Books Photos

2007-10-05T17:13:00.000-06:00

Just thought you might like to see some images from the past week, since I didn't have time to upload them earlier.

Sweet Success

2007-10-04T20:53:00.000-06:00

Our presentation at the DPL North Branch last night was a success! I've got the photos to prove it... but probably won't get around to posting them until, you know, a nice sane month like November.

We spoke collectively for about an hour to an audience of five--and were then pleasantly surprised that they kept us another half-hour-plus with all their questions. We had two UNT faculty members in the audience, a government activist, a librarian, and--wonder of wonders, a high school student. Who wasn't dragged there by force, but actually stayed afterward to ask a very perceptive and involved reference question that Suzanne is now working on. Sian, who has been working with Suzanne to coordinate these kinds of cooperative academic/public library presentations once a month, was thrilled at the turnout, and we were thrilled at the interest. I had never given a presentation where every single audience member had at least one question.

I also found a fantastic opportunity for a book chapter related to the very kind of library outreach that Suzanne and I have been working at. Sure, it's one more thing to add to that list of "to-do," but it would be so, so fantastic if we were accepted.

Now, if I could just get my next slate of PowerPoints completed... I've been trying to snatch time to work on them all week, but have been sidetracked by an application essay, a minor metadata crisis, and the usual plethora of email. My brain periodically sends me wry observations such as, "well, it's job security, right?" I'm trying to ignore these and work.

But I can't wait for Monday--wow, that's a surprising statement. But this Monday is the SAPL program--Theresa Ybarra sent me their program yesterday, and it looks so fantastic that I immediately told two colleagues all about it and how, hmmm, wouldn't it be great if we had something similar. Ah, how I love libraries.

Pardon My Hacking Cough

2007-10-03T17:51:00.000-06:00

...Actually, it's not that bad. It just feels that bad. But after two days home sick, I'm back at work.

And I'm about to give the first of my 5 (6?) presentations this month, in a little more than an hour, at the North Branch of Denton Public Library. Melody Kelly (my boss's boss), Suzanne Sears (my boss), and I are going to give a three-part talk about censorship of government information, in honor of--you guessed it--Banned Books Week. If you'd like to see my wiki notes, handouts, or lecture text, you can always snag it off my wiki.

I've got my three presentations for San Antonio Public Libraries mostly done (not that you'd know it from my wiki page--for once I've been hand-writing my notes)--save for the screenshots, which of course will require no less than three hours of struggle and some mild cursing at my laptop. The Library 2.0 technologies and the "Keeping Up as a 21-st Century Librarian" talks both came together really easily--it's more the basic tech competencies for librarians that I'm struggling with. I think it's because I have an hour, so I want to do more than say, "this is what you ought to know--now learn it." But then again I only have an hour... and I can't possibly teach the intricacies of ten basic tech competencies in that amount of time. I'll have to find some kind of happy compromise and point them to some great resources to follow-up on their own.

In any case, I am very, very excited about the SAPL event. And my mom's looking forward to attending; I've been telling her than since she can't get Wordperfect 5.0 installed on her computer, and she hates MS Word, she really just ought to use a wiki. It's got the simple, code-revealing mark-up she wants (without really realizing that's what she wants), plus she can access it from any computer without having to save it to a USB drive or floppy or whatnot. And she can have all the old versions backed up... yeah, she's wiki-bound, I tell ya.

Well, I'd better sign off. I need to finish printing those handouts for tonight and down a few cough-drops.

I Am A Digital Librarian... I Am A Goof

2007-09-25T21:25:00.000-06:00

Wow, I'm on LibraryStuff!

Of course, I'm making a goofy face... on my bedroom floor... without any makeup or grooming to speak of. But then, you were looking for the real me? Well, that's probably the ticket, then.

In real life, I don't have time to blog about how little time I have. Let's just say that thus far with Alex in Finland, I've spent two 14+ hour days at work and look like I'm in for more, if I'm to accomplish several major deadlines that are looming in front of me. I have six presentations (six!!) scheduled for October. And that's really in addition to what's been taking me 14+ hours.

Boundaries. I respect you people that have them.

Easy Come, Easy Go

2007-09-19T07:32:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning, I got a message from my husband just as I arrived at my desk. He's going to Finland this Sunday, and he has never had a passport.

My heart leapt for about two hours on the double-adrenaline-rush of acting as GovDocs librarian trying to help Alex get a passport, and also thinking Finnish thoughts and trying to figure out how to squeeze in my own trip with him.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Not only is the cheapest plane ticket I (and one of my info-maven friends) could find around $900, but my passport just expired three months ago, I can't find it or our marriage license, it would cost about $470 to get it renewed in time (assuming I found those documents), and during the six days that Alex will be gone, I have an important meeting with administration--along with my regularly-scheduled I'm-already-far-behind work.

Sigh.

But we did manage to get the passport documents and service taken care of this morning, and I've already created several wiki pages of helpful information for Alex's trip, along with plans to make several more. I am nothing if not a thoroughly librarian wife.

Happy Constitution Day!

2007-09-17T12:48:00.000-06:00

Our GovDocs Department went out to Wooten Hall this morning, home of PoliSci majors, to hand out pocket constitutions. We had close to 300 constitutions at 8:30 this morning.

By 9am, we were nearly out.

That certainly beat our projected goal of handing out 300 by 10:30! I guess we'll have to buy more next year.

We printed labels with our department name, URL, and phone number, and placed them on the front of the Constitutions in the hopes that it sparks more traffic at our public service desk.

We've also got a lovely constitution-themed display on the first floor of Willis Library, where we stashed a few more constitutions.

For more Constitution Day fun and learning, check out NARA's Charters of Freedom Exhibit. It's got high-quality images and text transcripts of the Constitution and other founding documents.

The Glow of Promotion

2007-09-13T18:40:00.000-06:00

Today, UNT's Women's Studies Program held a ceremony to honor all female faculty promoted at UNT this year. I took photos, because, well, I'm a big camera dork, five of our librarians were promoted, and also because I was one of them: promoted to Librarian II (a year early--woohoo!!). Our president, Dr. Gretchen Bataille, and our new Provost, Dr. Wendy Wilkins, also came and spoke at the ceremony--it was quite nice.

Favorite GovDoc of the Week

2007-09-13T07:23:00.000-06:00

The United States Senate Catalogue of Graphic Arts

You can also access it online... but I highly recommend getting your hands on these gorgeous print reproductions.

After finding this randomly in a LexisNexis search, we couldn't locate our print copy in the catalog. Our amazing staff managed to locate it, update our catalog record, and it's sitting on my desk in all its large-format hardback full-color glossy-paged glory. Government + art + history + books... there is nothing I don't love in this equation.

It's got a whole section just on old political cartoons--with one that rings true today, featuring Uncle Sam riding a snail labeled "U.S. Congress." The cartoon is titled "The Lightning Speed of Honesty."

Ah, some things don't change, eh?

UNT's Rare Books Room Celebrates 25 Years

2007-09-12T18:04:00.000-06:00

The UNT Libraries' Rare Books Room recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. To celebrate, they displayed a large exhibit of their "best of" from the past twenty-five years. Last Friday, I came up with my Nikon and took an hour to shoot the whole exhibit before they took it down. I haven't yet edited or weeded any of these photos, but they're on flickr for your enjoyment!

Loving LexisNexis (Database Training)

2007-09-12T16:29:00.000-06:00

Since LexisNexis recently updated their "Academic" database--oh the joy of full Shepardizing citations!--we invited our lovely LN representative, Priscilla, to come train our Docs and Reference librarians in it. I took notes on my wiki, primarily because I can't remember anything longer than five minutes unless it's written--but the other librarians expressed an interest in them, so I posted them to our library wiki, as well.

Which got me to thinking... maybe there are other librarians who'd like them, too! So, just in case you're wondering about the amazing depths hidden within the LexisNexis databases, here's a place to start:

I have to say, I learned a bunch during this two-hour session, and I'm amazed at the wealth of information. I could have been using Congressional and Statistical a lot more, had I realized the treasures within.

My Beef with the Press

2007-09-12T00:24:00.000-06:00

Ah, the great love/hate relationship of... any organization, I'll bet... with the press. They promote us, they're necessary--and yet often they misquote, misconstrue, or as in this example, completely twist the headline to not match the story, but purely for the shock value (and therefore snagging themselves more readers).

The title of this article, which I found on the front page of Yahoo News?
"Despite demand, libraries won't add PCs."

Yes, the article goes on to explain that many public libraries don't have the facilities (either the room, the outlets, or the power grid) or the budget to support additional computers. But is that what the headline connotes to you? Doesn't it rather sound like libraries are uncaring, irrelevant institutions? Wouldn't that make you, as a potential patron, mad?

Well, it made me mad just to read it, as a librarian. I'm really steamed that this is the instant message that the Associated Press is sending out to our patrons. Thanks, AP, thanks.

On the Meaning of "Fall"

2007-09-11T20:01:00.000-06:00

...With the crazy pace of work at the moment, my thoughts are that "Fall" doesn't designate the autumnal season when leaves fall off of trees, as much as it describes a quick, dangerous plunge. Ah, another school year begun.

It really is enjoyable to have students on the campus again, and to get more real action at our reference desk. But my mounting "to do" and "should have been done five months ago" lists are becoming precariously long. I could use a couple of 60-hour work weeks to catch up... only 1) I've got a husband I'd like to see more than occasionally, 2) I've also got my classwork to contend with, and 3) I, um, just don't want to. Ah, well.

On the bright side, although October will be filled with travel and presentations... it will be filled with travel and presentations! So it means more of being busy (and less time to catch up on it), but it will be fun and rewarding. I'm particularly excited to get to present in my hometown of San Antonio--it's nice to have such a great reason to go back. Plus, I get to talk about Library 2.0--and what's not to like about that? Spreading the word about blogs, wikis, and the greatness in general of the social internet... now that's more like it.

Today was UNT's Fall Convocation, which is a ceremony for faculty and staff at which our president gives a sort of "state of the university" address. It's not required, but it's quite informative (and features free breakfast), and I was pleased even more than last year with President Bataille's address. She mentioned the UNT Libraries' NEH/LC grant for digitizing newspapers, for one, but also she's an incredibly interesting and sincere speaker. Even when she's citing statistics, she makes them relevant and relatable, not sleep-inducing.

And--this was the really fantastic part--I got to speak to her in person. I stayed afterward awhile talking to a colleague, and when I turned to leave the Union, I saw Dr. Bataille standing with just one other person. When they finished talking, I walked over to introduce myself and tell her how honored and glad we were that she came to the Libraries' annual New Faculty Reception last week. It was nice to speak with her, even if briefly!

Then I was invited by Melody Kelly, our Associate Dean, to sit in on a library Strategic Planning meeting. It was a kind of follow-up activity to the interview I did with her yesterday, which is for the SLIS course I'm taking, Advanced Management of Information Agencies. It was interesting sitting in on a real meeting after having discussed the history of the plan--now that I'm actually full-time, I get more out of courses like these by seeing the theories implemented in my daily work.

Which reminds me... I've got lots more e-mail to get to. Ciao!

Plugging Away...

2007-09-06T00:21:00.000-06:00

I hope to return to more regular blogging soon. I'm currently knee-deep in things to finish, so I'm going to try and push through in the next two days to see if I can have some room to breathe next week.

I say this, but there's a proof of the library calendar that I need to edit as soon as possible. And we all know how quickly graphic design problems are to solve, right? Right...

Gettin' the Word Out

2007-08-23T08:33:00.000-06:00

Another plug for the UNT Digital Collections in ALA's e-newsletter, American Libraries Direct: this time, it's the Portal to Texas History! See the yellow-ish column on the right: the Portal is the Digital Library of the Week.

...And now, back to my regularly-scheduled Hectic Week from Hades. The comfort, as always this time of year, is that eventually it will be September, students will be settled in their classes, and my life will be my own again. Ah, the joy of academic libraries and life on the academic calendar. At some point in my life, I may begin to think of years as starting in January instead of late August--but I doubt it.

Playing in the Pro League

2007-08-17T14:52:00.000-06:00

This has been a great week for me, professionally. I've been invited to speak on Library 2.0 themes at the San Antonio Public Libraries' staff development day, finished a book review for JWL on an amazing guide to writing web content, and was just informed that my proposal for an educational program at the Fall DLC meeting has been accepted.

Hooray! (Oh wait... does this mean I actually have to write the presentations now?)

Incidentally, if you need a good guide for writing online content, buy Ginny Redish's Letting Go of the Words. In fact, just go out and buy it regardless--even if you think you don't need this book, it's unbelievably useful and so clearly written that it sparkles. I, who groan at the thought of trying to read something on top of my already-hectic schedule, flew through this book and enjoyed every moment. You need this book. Just trust me.

And while you're ordering things, get a subscription to the Journal of Web Librarianship. If you're a librarian who uses the internet, this periodical is relevant, no matter how web-savvy you are (or aren't). And if you're a librarian who doesn't use the internet... maybe you should start reading up on that.

Blog for $

2007-08-14T11:27:00.000-06:00

Want to get paid for blogging? Check out these opportunities.

And now I return to my regularly-scheduled hectic day.

Happy St. Lawrence Day!

2007-08-10T15:32:00.000-06:00

Today, our Head of Archives hosted a St. Lawrence feast-day BBQ celebration at the library. (St. Lawrence is the patron saint of librarians and archivists.) To celebrate his feast day, we ate grilled meat (well, barbeque works when you're in Texas) in honor of St. Lawrence's martyrdom by being grilled.

When I was still working on my Art History MA, he was one of my favorite saints, primarily because of the great quote attributed to him while he was being grilled, "Turn me over, I'm done on this side." Ah, those crazy, crazy saints. Take a course on hagiography (the study of saints) and suddenly you think jokes about cephalophores are amusing. (Then again, we're talking about historians here... huge, huge nerds to begin with.)

In honor of St. Larry, here are some pertinent links:

Among my other favorite saints:

St. Anthony of Padua: patron saint of finding lost things (and also finding husbands)
St. Veronica: owned a miraculous cloth portrait of Christ, so is fittingly the patron saint of photographers, as well as the subject of my MA thesis (vernicle images)

Not a Cheater

2007-08-09T17:38:00.000-06:00

Ah, yes, the scorn of many book clubs and bibliophile traditionalists--audiobooks. This article describes the scorn some book club members face when they reveal they've listened, rather than read, the latest selection. I myself feel a tad odd when I list audiobooks on my "recently read" list--but I am firmly in the school that listening to an audiobook is just as much reading as is cracking open the physical volume.

My theory is, people that scorn audiobooks as "not as much work" as reading the book, clearly don't do as much actual work as I do, which is part of what accounts for the very little time I have to read. Then again, most of these people would probably also not classify my comic book habit as "reading." They're right--it takes much more visual effort and brain power to concentrate on a script that is both text and image--which is why when I'm tired, I read books, and only read comics when I have enough energy to concentrate.

I only wish that we had a broader selection of popular titles at UNT. Or else that the McKinney/Denton public libraries were more on my way to work. Or that they had a courier service directly to my office. And also if all my textbooks, and professional books I'd like to read--if they were on audiobook, that would rock.

Yeah, I know I sound like a big whiner. But that's what you get to be when you commute ten hours a week, watching your free time melt away like pecan ice cream.

Mmmmm, ice cream.

Seen Any UFOs Lately?

2007-08-07T18:00:00.001-06:00

My new boss just emailed me a link to this story about government documents--this guy has been sending FOIA requests for any documents relating to UFOs since he was 15. They're up at The Black Vault.

...This reminded me of a recent photo posted on BoingBoing.

And yes, I'm still kicking. I'm about 75% done organizing my new office, and my new boss has been here since last Wednesday--I think things will just begin to settle down once school starts, which of course will incite another 2-3 weeks of hectic-ocity.

In the meantime, I'm trying to catch up on emails, conference notes, ALA GODORT web stuff, TLA GODORT web stuff, new content for the CyberCemetery, a new CMS for our internal library newsletter... and too much more to list.