| Relocation |
[Jan. 21st, 2006|02:23 pm] |
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I began this blog a bit less than a year ago to get familiar enough with it to be able to represent blogging and its applications to my colleagues. Turns out, I really like it! Wanting to take the next step, I've set up a locally hosted WordPress blog: . Hope you'll follow me and replace Catablog with Remaining Relevant in your reader. |
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| Library Radio |
[Jan. 4th, 2006|12:38 pm] |
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I happened to catch an interesting segment on the WMUL's (Lowell) morning program, The Sunrise Show. It was the assistant director of the Chelmsford (MA) Library, Chris Kupec, being interviewed about book recommendations. I came in in the middle, but listened for at least 15 minutes, so it must have been a lengthy interview. Judging from the casual DJ banter, Chris had brought an actual stack of books with him and there was lots of discussion. Chris came across as charming, intelligent, funny and completely accessible; helping to dash the remote, austere librarian image ('course, it probably helps that he's male and free from the constant specter of bun and glasses jokes). The interview finished with him "plugging" his library's book discussion groups. This is outreach in it's best form. Using popular media to remind people - hopefully the people pron to asking me why I'm a librarian since, according to them, libraries are obsolete- that there IS timeless value in their public libraries... they DO provide a service that the internet does not. So, way to go, Chris and Chemlmsfod PL for understanding the importance of diverse outreach and marketing! |
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| Advent-a-geous |
[Dec. 24th, 2005|10:57 am] |
Having a December 1st birthday, I'm particularly enamoured of Advent Calendars. (I know it's approximately 24 days too late for this post.) My mom can't quite remember from year to year that I'd love for my birthday package to include one (preferably with chocolate, but I don't want to push my luck). The internet has saved her from the pressure. Here are two that I've been following for a few years:
Leslie Harpold's Advent includes a holiday tidbit and a family memory for each day. This is the first year she's solicited guest memories.
Also, advent-calendars.com, delightfully NOT as commercial as the URL might suggest, follows the annual adventures of Tate, the french cat- nice cartoons and story in French, English, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish. Check be sure to explore as far as day 17 to enjoy "Even the librarians can't find him, and they can find anything." YAY, Tate! |
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| Snow Day! |
[Dec. 16th, 2005|01:51 pm] |
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Is there anything more wonderful than a snow day off (Brian pointed out that snow days are better than calling in well.)? Yes! A snow day off spent baking two, yes TWO cakes for a best girlfriend's 30th birthday/Christmas party AND making a delicious mexican soup for lunch (and dinner... for the next two weeks... we are not men of half measures). AND saving the choice quarter of the soup's lime to go into your mid-afternoon T&T? For the curious, the birthday cake is a scrumptious, double-batch Boston Cream Pie all from scratch and served in my prized crystal torte dish with a birthday message in powdered sugar on top. If only I had a camera, I would show you on my flickr account, but I don't... maybe in a week or so. *crosses fingers* The Christmas party cake is a boxed (and let it be said that I generally opposed prepackaged baked goods... I'm a scratch girl) yellow cake with tubbed chocolate frosting decorated with red icing for novelty's sake. The most thrilling about this project? I was recently gifted my mom's old Kitchen Aid mixer - the one I remember her using while I squirmed on a high stool next to her. And this evening I will fill out Christmas cards while watching my favorite Christmas movie (White Christmas) and it's all very jolly. So jolly and so important to unplug like this that I think we should rename 'snow day,' 'staff development day.' |
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| passionate enough to become text |
[Dec. 15th, 2005|04:01 pm] |
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A colleague just send The Catalog Department to me. I think the idea of being 'passionate enough for text' is beautiful and true. I was also just discussing the pitfalls of IM and how communicating with it. How does it change the idea of and value we assign to 'face time'? He was worried that IM would become the new face-to-face - I think that it only enhances it. Same as telephone, email, telegraph, quill, and any other revolution of 'modern' personal communication. But, I find that many of my self censors come down in the remote format of IM - it's like making school kids wear uniforms - it strips us of our looks, our jobs, our status - and reduces each to their ideas and how they express them. Exposes them as disorderly, but passionate enough to be writing their own books. |
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| yahoo looms large |
[Dec. 15th, 2005|08:15 am] |
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Yahoo recently acquired del.icio.us and Flickr (ads are already starting to appear... sigh.), AND this morning I sit down to a message that konfabulator is also now also part of the Yahoo empire. This is okay, I suppose, as long as they don't bundle a bunch of s**t with the downloads as they do with their IM client. I am annoyed enough that when I downloaded the update, it erased all my settings and it took me a full ten minutes to figure out how to set the location. It's 0 degrees (why '0 degrees' = plural and '1 degree' = singular?) here this morning and I don't much need to know what it is in Palo Alto, thank you very much... I can't feel my toes. Anyway, I know I shouldn't be surprised, but one of the things I kind of liked about the social software movement was that it was so grassroots - I suppose it will continue to be by it's very nature, but... you know... I'm a librarian too... I hate change; expecially when I have no control over it. |
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| imitation is the sincerest form |
[Dec. 14th, 2005|09:47 pm] |
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I just saw audible.com's new ad campaign, dontread.org. I'm flabbergasted that they saw fit to spoof ALA's Celebrity Read campaign. (Perhaps I should say that I'm home sick today, so I'm slower on the news that usual. And thanks to Brian for pointing it out. After my initial round of obligatory indignation and shock, I settled on flattered and smug. Why? Well... you know it's a pretty good ad campaign when someone, someone with their own fancy advertising budget, piggybacks on it. PLUS, they didn't even get celebrities... duh! Way to go, ALA. |
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| World Summit on the Information Society |
[Dec. 5th, 2005|10:34 am] |
So, my uncle is an economist and he arrived back from the World Summit on the Information Society just before Thanksgiving. After dinner (and a number of glasses of wine) I gently questioned him about the Information Society Summit that I, as an information professional, had no idea about and had heard no buzz about in library circles. Reading between the lines about his trip and experiences in exotic, but not particularly welcoming, Tunis... I concluded that this is the same work that we, as librarians, do. And I was feeling at once resentful that we hadn't been invited and annoyed that we hadn't invited ourselves (this poses an interesting parallel to holidays with my family in general, but this is not the time nor the place). I'm not naive; probably there were a few librarians present, but why weren't they talking about it? Making sure those on the front lines knew about it? Why aren't we participating in this community on an international level? THAT my friends, is how we're going to stay current and relevant in a real way - not wringing our hands about Google Book or Scholar and anything Google-ish. Playing private-sector catch up with blogs, flickr, and wikis (oh my) will help, but he idea of social software is to participate in and facilitate community, well, in the information age OUR community is a global one - we're the users here and we have to demand inclusion. My real fear? The economists, lobbyists, and what have you are making these big decisions for us and the world is missing out on a perspective that we might provide.
As an interesting footnote, after Thanksgiving (and my chemical-high fiery-ness) had worn off, my outrage faded into christmas cookies and getting my work done (this, I suspect, is the culprit on a large-scale). It was Casey, my very favorite non-MLS (maybe luckily for him), library visionary, who reminded me, not directly, but by mentioning the much-touted $100 laptop. Like him, I clicked over to watch Andy Carvin's mini-mentory (look mom, I can buzz-word, too) and discovered it was created for the Summit. I think this is an illustration of our professional tendency to pay attention to things when they're already a force; a product, a trend, an initiative, an act. We need to get in on the ground floor. If we, as a profession, are going to participate in this 'information age' we're going to have to get our heads out of the sand. |
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| Surrendering control of our Stuff! |
[Nov. 22nd, 2005|08:44 pm] |
I just read today's post on MaisonBisson about XML and PHP as well as Casey's referenced post on LibDev, and they've got me wondering why it's taking library's so darn long to embrace these technologies and give the patrons what they really want. (Don't come at me with "How do you know", they've voting with their Google/Amazon feet, folks...) And I'm not leaving myself out of this, granted that everything I want to implement I must first learn, but I'm a smart chick - I easily could've done it by now. So, why?
It occurs to me that this stuff; web 2.0, social software, online communities type stuff - means that we have to surrender all control of our content. We are SO not the gatekeepers anymore. These technologies are asking us to offer up our wisdom, our knowledge, our POWER and allow it to be used in ways we won't necessarily know about, let alone endorse. That, my friends, is scary stuff. I no one can be blamed for letting it freak them out (well, allow me a little blame - buck up buckaroos, it's not so bad, really).
Here's what the fear is blinding us to: this is two-way surrender. Yes, we're giving up control, but we are also enjoying access to other good stuff that will supplement our content and together we're bigger and smarter and brighter than the sum of our parts... sometimes you have to jump before you knowing who's catching you... |
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| Ministry of Reshelving |
[Nov. 17th, 2005|08:15 am] |
There is an underground movement underway in our bookstores (libraries don't seem to have been targets, yet) to reshelve copies of George Orwell's 1984. Boing Boing picked it up, as did CNet AND there's a Flickr group. From a library perspective, this is interesting for two reasons.
First it's further proof (did we need that?) that our users are flocking to the "costco model" of librarianship - they want to do things themselves (Costco vs. Saks Model thanks to Gary Marchionini of UNC, Chapel Hill). They want control of the metadata and classification. I think we, as libraries, really need to answer this, and fast... AND the faster we do it, the better because our users want it SO much that they're resorting to petty vandalism to regain control of they're own information. If we can give them what they're asking for now, we can introduce it as a compliment to the controlled vocabularies we already do. So, something like, you search using natural language, you tag, and we'll show you how your tags match up with LCSHs and win you even more citations = best of both worlds. It seems a bit over simple, but the best ideas are, aren't they?
Second, we've been hearing about and talking about folksonomies and tagging online for a while now. And up to now, this has been a strictly digital phenemenon - this is the first I've heard of people showing signs of wanting similar control in the real world. This seems to me part of a trend toward an evening and closening (closening?) of digital and analog worlds. One is no longer consider the master and the model of the other - habits and trends inspired and formed in the digital format are now being passed into the physical and not exclusively the other way around. |
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