Moving Right Along

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!

December

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

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.

Confession

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

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.

How Is It August?

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!!

The Peril of Digital Collections

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...

Wordle

(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...

Odd Patent: "Stuffed Horse Convertible to Unicorn"

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?

Free Comic Book Day 2008!

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).

Chatting with Gene Luen Yang

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.

LE@D Video Shoot (aka Goofy Librarian Skilz)

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!

Why You Should Befriend Your IT Dept.

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

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.

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

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.

Favorite GovDoc of the Week

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?

Happy St. Lawrence Day!

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:

• St. Lawrence e-cards
• Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Wikipedia article

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)

Seen Any UFOs Lately?

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.

Quick and Dirty

• Still trying to recover from work stacked up before ALA.
• Getting my feet wet as Web Admin for ALA GODORT.
• Madly slapping content onto our new library website (go check it out!).
• Interview with Gene Ambaum of Unshelved to read.
• Moving offices this week to make space for new boss (yay!) in less than two weeks.
• Did I mention the work from before ALA? Okay, I'll go work on that.

Update: dangit, I knew I'd post the wrong link. Okay, the new library website link now works.

2007 Book Cart Drill Team World Championships

I video-ed the first team in the competition (didn't have enough memory space or battery power to do anything but stills for the other three):


More Book Cart Drill Team Links:

• my flickr photos
  
• Lexis-Nexis Blog Post
• American Libraries' Flickr Set