PAM International Membership Award

Do you know a great physics, math, or astronomy librarian in a developing country? Tell us about it! Nominations are now open for the SLA Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division's International Membership Award; the award provides a two-year membership in SLA and travel to the SLA Annual Conference. Read more, including nomination deadlines and contact information, on the PAMblog.

Recently Read: "Between the Stacks"

I haven't posted book reviews much here before, but I think that might change. I just finished "Between the Stacks", by Barry Bowes (Landesman, 1979) and quite enjoyed it. Set in a public library in the UK, it follows the trials and tribulations of the staff at the Pike Lane library, told from the viewpoint of the (interestingly unnamed, throughout the book) senior assistant. It's quite amusing, while also illustrating the frustrations of the reference interview, being the unpaid babysitters, and many other well-known PL issues. The issues at Pike Place frame an introspective journey by the main character, who's trying to evaluate his future, both personally and professionally.

It's not an easy book to come by; there wasn't a copy anywhere in my state (thanks, ILL!). Amazon has a few used ones from international sources, and I'm pondering placing an order, but we'll see. Even Library Thing, with its gazillions of books, only shows four copies. If you do have access to it, though, give it a read!

Ssh.

Found via LISNews, this video of poet Jon Goode reciting his poem "The Librarian" just gave me goosebumps. Yes! Not just an ode to the power of librarians - the power of ssh - but a philosophical musing on honor, infidelity, war, and much more. Give it a watch.



(yes, I'm catching up. And yes, I'm a weather wimp: highs only in the low 70s last couple of days, I wore a coat to work this morning!)

The $900,000 Librarian

Holy cow! A collector at a recent Christie's auction in New York spent $902.5K on a photograph by artist Cindy Sherman". Read the article over at Forbes.

"Sherman poses as a librarian, gazing beyond the shelves of books that surround her. [...] There is a certain kitsch appeal to the black-and-white photos, but the underlying message is more serious and draws attention to female stereotypes in our society."

via LISnews

Warning: Political Ranting

ObDisclaimer: My rants! No one else's! Nyaah!

* 1st Presidential Debate: Rude much, McCain? I have to admit: for a long time I liked McCain, and not because he's one of my state senators. But ever since this whole race started, he just keeps dropping in my estimation. Watching the debate - just the rudeness he displayed to Obama - floored me. Shame! (But, hey, at least there was a debate, and the grandstanding from earlier in the week came to nothing.)

* Bailout Whining: If Pelosi's speech didn't actually change the bill (and, erm, it didn't), then why should what she said affect how folks were going to vote? Regardless of how I feel about the bailout bill itself (which I promise not to get into here), this whining and finger-pointing about "Those almost-votes didn't vote because of what she said, waah, waah" reminds me much too much of my 3-year-old son's schoolroom. Grow up, people!

* "Gotcha" journalism: If you don't want what you said quoted back to you and it shows you up badly, oh, I don't know, check your facts first. Or, gee, don't say it at all. (I laughed and laughed when McCain told Obama "That's not something you say out loud" and then Palin pretty much said exactly what Obama had the next day. Priceless.)

* The upcoming VP debate: Can. Not. Wait. I don't think it's going to change much race-wise, but boy, is it going to be entertaining (one way or the other).

Friday Fun

Today: T-shirts! All from the folks at Instant Attitudes.

• Want!
  
  
• Don't we all?
  
  
• For the other coffee-holics out there
  

I hear there's this thing called "fall" happening in other places. Right now, we've got 90° temps with mostly sunny skies. Yay!

This is a sexy librarian look?

My first reaction: outright laughter.

You are looking at a preview of the fall line from designer Marni: "The Italian label offered its take on sexy librarians this season."

My second reaction: More laughing, with a bit of a wince.

Thanks to the.effing.librarian!

Three Beautiful Things

Thursday Edition!

1. Having a song sung to me on the way to work in a little piping voice about a monster, a starfish, a shark, and lava dragons.
2. Learning that the name of the spider we've seen in the bushes every day this week is, in fact, Darth Vader.
3. Hearing from two friends that their babies arrived safe and sound and everyone is healthy, happy and tired. Congratulations, Kevin & Linda and Chris & Jen!
   

Brain Break!

Thanks to Hedgehog Librarian!


EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Dr. Dewey Decimal!

ScaryGoRound has a new Tshirt available for order: Dr. Dewey Decimal! Also be sure to check out Books Rule from the same great shop. (thanks, Jeff!)

I love it when fall arrives in the desert; sunny days in the low 90s, clear nights in the low 70s or high 60s. From now until March, this is the weather that makes living here worth the summer heat!

Shopping, Marketing, and Fantasies

Yes, it's another catchup posting!

• Check it out! Shelf Check has a store now! The Twitter button especially made me laugh.
• Coming out next month: The Shanachie Tour book and DVD! If you haven't had a chance to see the DOK guys speak in person (they're inspiring), this is the next best thing. Highly recommended!
• Shelf Talk has a great post about Fantastic librarians, or librarian fantasies? "Could it be that librarians’ staid image is now bursting the seams of naturalistic fiction and spilling forth into the realms of imagination and empires of wonder?" Love the post, and now I have a few more books to read, too.

Currently a pleasant 86° and sunny.

Call for Papers: PCA/ACA

The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association Annual Conference will be held April 8-11, 2009, at the New Orleans Marriott in New Orleans, Louisiana. Scholars from numerous disciplines will meet to share their Popular Culture research and interests. Prospective presenters should send a one-page abstract with full contact information by November 30 2008.

Fredricksen Library Bookcart Drill Team

Brilliant! Be sure to check out the Fredricksen Library Bookcart Drill Team as they do an awesome quick-change from Marian the Librarian to Queen! (I can't seem to embed this one properly or I'd have done so...go check it out!)

Friday Fun

Two funnies, and a not-so-funny:

• Consider this before you move to Arizona. (It's so true! thanks, Abs!)
• The Procrastination Flowchart (thanks, Mike!)
• That dratted stereotype of the bun and glasses is even stuck in politics! I swear, if I hear one more talking head refer to Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin as looking like either a sexy or naughty librarian, I'm going to throw something. Arrgh! So I've joined a new group on Facebook: "Sarah Palin is not a 'sexy librarian'." Help the Tragic Optimist take sexy back!
  

Weather report: Jurassic Librarian isn't far off on his solar system chart; we hit 101°F today, supposed to hit 102° tomorrow. I hear there's this thing called "fall" happening in other parts of the country...

Food Meme: Nom nom nom!

Snagged from WarMaiden and HedgehogLibrarian... I've not done one of these "list memes" before but... it's food! The idea is, that this is a list of 100 foods that every omnivore should eat sometime in their life. The idea is to bold the ones you've eaten. Being not only omnivorous but foodiily-adventurous, or so I think, I thought I'd give it a whirl!

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (No, but I have had shawarma from one, would that count?)
16. Epoisses (Assuming it's the cheese, no. If it's something else, well, then, no.)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I just don't do raw tomatoes. Blech.)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche (OMG, this is fabulous stuff)
28. Oysters (tried 'em once, skip 'em now)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (on the want-to list)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (Cognac, yes.)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O -Shots
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (I ate a bite of a grasshopper once, though. It was all I could bring myself to eat.)
43. Phaal (I don't have the guts, ha ha)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (thanks, Chris!)
    
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (I love eel!)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (Still don't see what the fuss is about.)
    
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (one bite, once. VERY salty.)
53. Abalone (in Chile, many times. Very tasty!)
    
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (I don't like gin)
58. Beer above 8% ABV (it would seem yes - Chimay)
    
59. Poutine (another on the want-to-try list)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (wait, what, the clay? No.)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (find me one and I'll do it!)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (I did live in Hawaii, where you're not allowed to say you don't like Spam)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa (lordy, do I want to try this one; I love North African food)
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

So... not too bad, eh? Some of these I had to look up, and for some things like the venison, snake and (hey, it's not on the list!) javelina I have to thank some friends of my folks who retired out in the middle of the desert. Oh, and pigeon pate. That's thanks to them, too.

Now I'm hungry!

Rex Libris, Stereotypes, and All That Jazz

Hi, all - I'm back! I've been saving up a few things but rather than stuffing them all into one big posting I'm going to dribble them out over the next couple of days, get back into the regular-post thing :-D

Check out "When Stereotypes No Longer Apply," an ACRL blog posting by Melissa Mallon. Good stuff, and good comments, too. Yes! We need to move towards a time when it doesn't matter what the librarian looks like, but what the librarian does. (Bet it doesn't happen anytime soon, though.)

I simply cannot stop singing this catchy tune: Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library! Michael Porter (Libraryman) and David Lee King have done an amazing job. Check out the lyrics, too, if you miss a few during the video!

Just in case you haven't read about it (or heard it) yet, the group My Morning Jacket's recent album release "Evil Urges" has a song called "Librarian" on it. I think I've already commented on the lyrics.

After a small delay, Rex Libris issues #11, "R'lyeh Rising", and #12, "Space Balls... of Evil!" are now available. Go forth and get!

How I became a librarian meme

(Sneakin' one in under the hiatus blanket...) First outright tag for a meme - tagged by Christina! Thanks! Started by Jill, the question was what got us interested initially in our fields of interest? Lemme 'splain... no, that would take too long. Lemme sum up...

I've always been in and around libraries (my mom was a career librarian until her retirement last year; my dad was career Air Force so we were always on the move, but wherever we were, there was a library). I fell in love with astronomy in 7th grade Earth Science and knew I'd be in the sciences one way or another when I grew up (I read my first copy of Jastrow & Thompson when I was 15). I originally went to college on an Air Force scholarship to study aerospace engineering, but a game of ultimate frisbee gone really wrong ended those plans, and I switched my study focus to astronomy, which is what I wanted to study in the first place (I will always miss Dr. Tom Swihart, my most excellent advisor). I landed a student job at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, which led to my first post-college job with the Mt. Graham International Observatory. I moved from there to the new Gemini 8m Telescopes Project (which became the Gemini Observatories when it went operational), and one of the things that I took on was managing the engineering documentation.

I really got a kick out of it, and was also contemplating going back to school - these two things finally clicked together and I headed down the street a couple of blocks to the School of Information Resources and Library Sciences. I met with Dr. Charley Seavey, who became my advisor, and it's all thanks to him that I even made it through, as the philosophy and social epistemology stuff really threw me off (I did great in statistics, though!). But make it through I did, with a focus on technical librarianship (fairly new at that point, this was back in '97-'99), and I graduated with a job offer in-hand from the Gemini Observatory in Hilo (Hawaii) to come out and set up the new research library. I jumped in the deep end at that point - up until then it'd all been databases and engineering archives!

Although I will always treasure the time I spent in Hawaii, the two years I spent out there setting up and managing a traditional library really brought home to me that I was much happier in the computers - webmastering, DBAing, things like that - and with engineering documentation. When the time came to move back to the mainland, I looked around at other large astronomy engineering projects, and hit up my current employer for a job. (Obviously, it worked.) I love being part of something no one's ever done before, and the skills I've built along the way have made me especially suited to dealing with both scientists and engineers, managing various electronic documentation systems, juggling configuration management issues, and configuring new web site management systems. That's what I spend my days doing now; I do order an occasional book, and snag journal papers and conference proceedings for the scientists and engineers, but I'm quite happy in my life as a systems librarian and intend to do so for many more years :-)

OK, so that's a bit long for a sum-up, but believe me, it's shorter than the whole story! I'd be interested in answers from Hedgie, G, Emily, Stephen, and Effing, if they'd like.

Hiatus, I has it

I know things have been sporadic at best for the last month, and particularly quiet lately. They're going to remain so for the next few weeks; I'm near the end of a rather large and sticky project that's taking most of my focus. I hope you'll stick around, because I already have things planned for next month that I hope you'll find interesting!

In the meantime: be safe, have fun, and keep those links coming; I promise I'll post a big 'ol summary when this is all over!

Happy Dancing People

How did I miss this?!?! July 22nd's Astronomy Picture of the Day (always amazing) was actually a movie. Of people. Around the world. DANCING! I defy you to watch this without smiling. (I was smiling so much by the end of it that my cheeks hurt!) As a lifelong dancer, I heartily applaud Matt Harding and his team for this production. Thank you!


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Pop Goes the Library: The Book!

Congratulations to Sophie and Liz, the great minds behind Pop Goes the Library, on the publication of their book! Now you, too, can gain insight into how to use pop culture to jazz up your library services - and have some fun along the way. To top off the publication, they've gone social-networking-mad; there's a blog, a wiki, a Flickr group, and a Twitter account , and a Facebook page in progress. w00t! So pick your way to learn their secrets :-)

Librarians FTW!

Thank you, thank you to the 1,213 librarians who participated in my recent re-survey "Do you look like a librarian?" - you all ROCK. There is a ton of new data to sift through, and then the fun part starts: comparing it to the survey data from 2001. Any bets on if, or how, things have changed? (I'm expecting that they have, just not sure how.)

I'll be sharing the results at a future date; keep your eyes on this space!

Random Music

Only just this afternoon noticed some interesting stats in my music player; it may reveal heretofore hidden facts about me! Top 5 artists by number of tracks:

• 203: The Cure
• 158: Nine Inch Nails
• 153: Depeche Mode
• 116: Duran Duran
• 113: Dead Can Dance
  

Artists 6-10 are Tangerine Dream, Andreas Vollenweider, Secret Garden, Durutti Column, and Hossam Ramzy. Make of this what you will.

100°, 27%Rh, 23%PoP. Feh.

And now, a moment of squee

So, I was browsing a list of what sites are being run with Drupal. I knew The Onion was a Drupal site, but was very surprised to find out that Warner Bros, Nike, FedEx, and a whole huge heaping pile of others were too. Very cool!

Should we ever have more than a dozen users at a time, at least I know the CMS I chose can handle it :-D

The Librarian Song

Found thanks to Just Browsing browsing through YouTube, I present Joe Uveges' "The Librarian Song." Be sure to listen to the whole thing :-)

"Librarians come in all shapes and sizes,
Full of facts and figures,
and a few surprises..."




A balmy 97° with 60%Rh and a complete who-knows for rain...

Library Day in the Life

Every once in a while I do a SysGrunt here (a nod to RefGrunt), and now there's a "Library Day in the Life" meme going around the library world. So here's another SysGrunt , aka "A Day in the Life of a Systems Librarian", for 17 July 2008:

Arrive at work. Get snagged about slow network access speeds in hallway.
Open office, fire up computer.
Another complaint about slow network speeds.
Make coffee.
Reboot router.
Check email.
Router reboot didn't help. Neither did server or workstation reboots. Now what?
Seems tied to single software package. Send email to tech support.
Many conversations in hallways about slow access and what to do about it.
Download SP4 of EDMS package.
Upgrade CAD package from 2007 SP3 to 2007 SP5. Learn that the rest of the team has upgraded to 2008. Sigh.
Wait for 2008 package to download from web site.
Start catching up on backlog of library journals while files are downloading.
Wait some more.
Check email.
Finish upgrade.
Open macro editor, stare at vendor-supplied VBA module. Panic.
Batch dump a directory listing with 18293 lines to feed into macro for renaming script.
Start directory sort and renaming list.
Listen to complaints about not being able to listen to streaming radio today.
Spend rest of afternoon working through renaming list. Uncross eyes.
Flee.

This meme was started by Bobbi over at Librarian by Day... good idea, Bobbi!

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog

Watch it. Go watch it now. Then tell your friends.

Really.

2% "Other"

Over on TCM's Movie Morlocks Blog, Moira Finnie has posted a fun graph ("The World of Work According to Classic Movies") and then headed into a great summary and review of librarians in classic movies titled "One of the Invisible Professions on Screen". (Librarians fall into the "2% Other" category on the chart.) More recent portrayals of librarians show up in the comments, too. It's worth a read not just for the summaries, but for the enjoyable way they're written. (thanks to Folderol.)

Currently 101° and no rain in sight.

All Hail Biblia!

If you aren't already reading Warrior Librarian Weekly, now's your chance to start! The most excellent Biblia (aka Amanda Credaro) has included a photo and lovely little mini-resume about me on the front page of Issue #256 (yes, my hair's still purple), and links to You don't look like a librarian!

Thanks tons, Biblia!

Take My Survey, Please!

(Insert bad stand-up comedic sounds here...)

No, seriously, folks, I'm looking for librarians to give me input to a survey about perceptions. I'd really appreciate the help. Pretty please with sugar on top?

Thanks.

(Addendum: This is the same survey I sent out about a month ago; I'm hoping for more input. If you've already participated, thank you! If not, please consider it.)

I <3 Rex

So. If you've been reading this site for any amount of time you know I have a thing for Rex Libris, the world's most awesome, bad-ass butt-kicking librarian around. Well, the new web site for Rex has been rolled out (so go check it out!), and to top it off, SLG Comics is offering a FREE COPY (yes, you read that right) of Issue #1, "I, Librarian" - you just pay for shipping.

I can't wait to run down to my local comics shop and pick up my copies of Issue #11 ("R'lyeh Rising") and #12 ("Space Balls... of Evil!") as soon as they're released. I'm keeping my eye on the site... and passing the time by browsing through the new Rexopedia.

As the cool kids say on twitter, I <3 Rex.

Hot from the Doorway

One of my engineers just this minute told me that his cousin's wife went to SLA, too (first-timer). "She's a meek, quiet little thing, the perfect librarian type."

Sigh.

Literary Tattoos and the LSW

OK, not together... well, not yet, at least... but I wanted to mention them both today!

• Literary Tattoos, Books category. A lot of patience went into some of these inscriptions... reminds me of the Skin Project, "a story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers."
• Hey! The Library Society of the World now has a website, in addition to the wiki! (Bonus: it's in Drupal.)
  

Speaking of Drupal... things are going swimmingly. I couldn't be happier! I'll actually be embarking on a new Drupal installation in the coming weeks, this time implementing web-based forms (a whole new module set to investigate!). I'll, no doubt, whine about the whole thing here :-D

It's only 96° so far today, with a 30% chance of rain (and 30% Rh; just enough to feel sticky.)

A big 'ol catchup

You may already know about some of these, you may not; I've been bookmarking them to chat about once the SLA furor was over. And now that time is here!

• OK, one more thing about SLA: The Washington Times nicely summarized the conference in an article amusingly titled "Library Techies: Beyond the Dewey Decimal System."
• A paean to my personal fave Rex Libris, "In Praise of Librarian Warriors" is a nice little review by William Alexander over on Powell's Books Blog. If'n you don't have any Rex yet, get some!
• Over at The Ledger (FL), correspondent Jennifer Fickley-Baker enters the whole "guybrarian" fray with an article titled "'Guybrarians' - An Overdue Phenomenon at Many Libraries, and a Fine Career Choice." Sadly, it seems Jennifer never actually looked at the Librarian Action Figure... but regardless, it's a nice article from the guys' point of view. (I think.)
  
• Two days after the above article was published, Brainella the Librarian pitches in on the whole titles thing (and made me chuckle).
• ALA has just recently concluded, as well, and Denise Hamilton (at the LAObserved blog) points out some excellent short stories about librarians in her post "Sex on my mind as librarians take over the Anaheim Convention Center." I'm going to have to look these up!
• Lastly, a bit of humorous stitching: Sexy Librarians embroidery patterns are now available.
  

The monsoon season has started, but no rain today, I think. Currently 102°.

My Recent Wordle

My Recent Wordle
Originally uploaded by desertlibrarian

Here's a wordle of my latest blog postings, heavy on the SLA stuff. Thanks to nengard for the info on the tool; it's pretty nifty!

We'll return to posting about librarians, pop culture, and systems stuff tomorrow :-)

SLA: Wrap-up

Due to a camera glitch I have few photos of the conference, but thankfully plenty of other folks stepped up! Here's some collections:

And, of course, you can just search Flickr for all images tagged sla2008...

This posting wouldn't be complete without a link to the video of SLA Librarians Gone Wild! (And this was taken early in the evening. Trust me, it got wilder.)

SLA Day 5: Wednesday

Wednesday morning came much too early after the dance party Tuesday night; the Astronomy Roundtable, which I moderated with help from Michael Blake, kicked off at 8am. Bless SPIE for sponsoring the coffee service (thanks, Kevin)! After some Info-Expo non-conflict time, which I used to finish packing and check out of my hotel, it was time for the IT Division Board Meeting. I'm just dipping my toes in (as chair-elect of the Information Systems section), so this was my first IT board meeting; it's made up of a lively bunch, that's for sure! Next year should be interesting :-)

Then it was off to the Closing Session with a closing keynote by Seth Godin (better notes than I took by jbaumga here). Funny and informative, all at the same time! I twittered the things he said I liked the most (and borrowed this idea from nengard):

After he was done, it was time for the Annual Meeting, and watching folks flee the session was quite interesting. I hung for a bit more and then headed off to the hotel to meet my folks and start my vacation!

SLA Day 4: Tuesday

(Way behind in posting; will catch it all up today!)

Today kicked off with the PAM Business Meeting; I said my two cents (well, a bit more than that) as Division Treasurer noted it in more detail over on the PAMBlog. I ran around for a bit afterwards catching up on email and getting more coffee; then I headed to the Tech Support Roundtable where I hobnobbed with a bunch of other systems/IT librarians and learned a lot. (Thanks to Anna Burke for the Office 2003->2007 how-to link, and I also learned about summize from another attendee whose name I've sadly forgotten.)

Then I played hooky for a little while.

After a lovely lunch at the Sound View Cafe (mmm, crabcakes) I headed off for the Blogger's (and Webmaster's) Social, hosted by Blogger Extraordinaire Nicole Engard. Fun and socialization was had all 'round (we overflowed the original table and pretty much took over the bar area!) and I can highly recommend the mango mojitos and the satay.

Thus fortified, it was off to the Sheraton to set up for the IT/PAM/LMD dance party, "Under the Sea Prom Night". What a blast! Photos are starting to show up scattered about the place; here are mine and Jill's , more will show up soon I'm sure!

I didn't quite make it to midnight; the energy reserves failed around 11:30 and I staggered back to the Roosevelt to try and get some sleep before the early start of Day 5!

SLA Day 3: Monday

Today kicked off with a great session called "The Science of Coffee" by Dr. Joe Vinson. Entertaining and also packed with real science. Check out his Coffee Science and Information Center web site! Then it was off to the exhibit halls again to finish schmoozing with and thanking the PAM sponsors.

After lunch, it was the PAMwide Roundtable; new format this year, a series of short presentations. Flora Grabowska talked about open access publishing initatives; Susan Koskinen talked about SCOAP3; Pat Viele discussed information fluency in physics; then Tony O'Rourke updated us about the IOPScience developments. (Tony's always a fun speaker.) After the break, Mandy Taha, the 2008 International Award winner, spoke about science in Egypt and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. (Be sure to look for her handouts on the SLA web site!) To round out the session, Joe Murphy talked about Library 2.0 issues.

Then, after a short break, it was off to Von's Grand City Cafe for the PAM Bookgroup and a yummy dinner. Thankfully everyone seemed to enjoy the book I picked, and I've gotten the nod from the chair-elect to run book group again next year :-)

Then it was off for the PAM Open House, over at the Sheraton. I could hear the noise as I got off the elevator! What a great party!

Monday in Seattle was gorgeous weather-wise... just lovely. I had to go shopping to get a short-sleeved shirt, I was so hot in my heavy winter shirt... gorgeous surprise!

SLA Day 2: Sunday

Sunday morning came much too early after the late night Saturday; at 7:30am I was at the Leadership Development Institute. I learned a lot about the SLA Innovation Laboratory and was really floored by everything that's in there - congratulations to the SLA staff who put it together! Then it was time to dash across town (so, of course, I dashed in the wrong direction for about five blocks, so it was a much longer dash than originally planned) for the Newcomer's Lunch at Tulio's - very nice, and very well attended by a batch of first timers! Afterwards was the PAM Board Meeting, also at Tulio's.

Then it was back to the convention center for the Networking Reception - damn tasty nibblies this year, I have to say! - and then it was off to the Nite Lite Lounge for a LSW meetup. My goal to find a dive bar to be rowdy in seems to have succeeded! A subset of us went out searching for food, and let me tell you, finding an open restaurant at 9:45pm in Seattle on a Sunday night is hard. Thankfully the Fox Sports Grill took pity on us, and fed us - best! restaurant! evah! It was weird eating dinner hours past my usual bedtime, but it certainly didn't affect my sleep :-)

SLA Day 1: Saturday

(finally have a few to catch up on blogging!)

Saturday was all about the flying and the ferrying. Had a good flight in and arrived stunned to sunshine! Got to the hotel - nice enough room, and less than a block from the convention center - and was able to get registration out of the way right off the bat. Then it was off to the Washington State Ferry for our Early Bird dinner out to Bainbridge Island. What fun! The ferry ride was quite enjoyable (I spent most of it looking at the water... what a novel occurrence!) and dinner at Madoka was lovely. It was a good start to the conference.

The sun is shining, and I am stunned

So, Seattle is gorgeous in the sunshine! This is, and I kid you not, my first trip up here in the summer and what a difference! I'm staying in the Roosevelt Hotel, and first impressions are quite good. It's also less than a block away from the convention center, which is fabulous. I'm going to head over to Pier 52 and take a ferry to Bainbridge Island for dinner - whee!

Hello, SLA. Commence conferencegoing!

Currently in Seattle: 63° and sunny. Currently in Tucson: 106°. Whoa!

Put a bell on that librarian!

OK, on the off chance you've always wanted to meet me and will be at SLA, here's where I'll be. Look for the purple hair and ever-present cup of coffee.

Saturday 14th: Arrive in Seattle, check into hotel, head to PAM Early Bird Dinner. (NTS: Bring dramamine for water taxi ride.)

Sunday 15th:
7:30-noon, SLA Leadership Summit meeting
12-1:30 PAM Newcomer's Lunch
1:30-3 PAM Board Meeting
3-5 Info-Expo Reception
5-7 Opening Session
7-9ish LSW Meetup @ Nite Lite Lounge; join us!
After that, IT Mystery Night Open House

Monday 16th:
9-10:30 The Science of Coffee (but of course!)
Non-conflict time - will probably be either in the exhibit hall or Blogger's Alley
1-2:30 PAM RT and IT Business Meeting (split, because I want to hear the PAM International Award Winner's talk - she's from the Alexandria Library!)
3:30-5 either Wonderful Wacky World of Wikipedia or Games for Training
6-7:30 PAM Book Group
8ish-9:30ish PAM Open House
After that, IT SciFi Night Open House

Tuesday 17th:
7-8:30 PAM Business Meeting
9-10:30 either New Faces of Special Libraries or Using Tech to Deliver Training
11-12:30 Tech Support RT (geeky librarians venting together!)
Non-conflict time (same as before)
3:15-4:45 Social Tools and the Enterprise
5:30-7:30 Bloggers and Webmasters Social @ Wild Ginger
8-who knows when: Under the Sea Prom Dance! After helping set up, I'll be at the front door from 8:30-10, then jammin' down on the dance floor. (Look for the loud fish shirt and tiara.)

Wednesday 18th:
8-10am Astronomy RT
Non-conflict time
12-1:30 IT Board Meeting
2:30-4:30 Closing Session

After that, it's time to run away for some vacation time with my family! But if you see me, don't be shy - come on over and say hi. See you there!

Uh oh.

I am gonna be in so much trouble...

• Forecast high today, Tucson: 105° (we've hit 102° so far)
• Forecast high today, Seattle: 55°. Long-term forecast suggests temps might actually get up into the 60s.
  

*whimper*

Monday humor

From the interesting online comic Cat and Girl...



Ha, I say, ha! (thanks, Tad!)

Random Musings: Friday Edition

Just wanted to share some tidbits from the week, from all over the tag map:

* My Drupal site is now live. Finally. *wibble*

* "Bikes, books and busting stereotypes," over at the Gloucester Advocate, is a great article about the Biblio Turismo tour and the folks behind it. What a neat idea!

* As an astronomy geek, Tag Galaxy is just - well, it's just darned spiffy. What a nifty cool groovy way to search Flickr images.

* Real Job Titles for Library and Information Science Professionals. Well, the title sums it up pretty well. If your job title isn't here, contact Michelle and she'll add it!

* As a gamer geek married to a World of Warcraft addict, the fact that a Librarian Guild has formed in WoW just makes me feel, well, all warm and fuzzy.

Weather update: hello again, triple digits! Today they're saying a high of 99°, but I think that's just to line up with the forecasts of 100° Saturday, 101° Sunday, and 102° Monday. Who knew the forecasters were funny this way?

Resources for SLA2008

Gearing up for Seattle, for the 2008 Annual Special Libraries Association conference - woo hoo! Busy as ever but it's going to be a good time. A couple of references I've recently bookmarked:

* The conference wiki

* Not for Tourists - Seattle edition

Lots of info in both these resources.

88° and sunny... the forecast for mornings for the foreseeable future.

New Survey for Librarians

Help a girl out! I'm interested to see if there have been any changes since the last time I asked librarians what patrons thought of them, back in 2001. So I've set up a new survey to find out. Please consider taking a few moments and sharing your thoughts with me!

Thanks!

Monday tidbits

Just some random bits to share:

* The new Indiana Jones movie has a hilarious scene in a library (well, I thought it was hilarious) involving a motorcycle and a reference question.

* From Playing for Keeps, by Jane Waterhouse: "Kitty Katz, everyone's idea of a librarian---each angular, beige part of her neatly tied with pearly ropes from which hung glasses, cardigan sweaters, even keys." (p.231) As Pat (who sent it to me) says, "I don't feel beige..."

* My Drupal site goes live (finally!) in the next 24 hours. *wibble*

Back to the nervous triple-checking, and closing my window; it's already 86° heading for 102°.

Librarian Glasses...

...on a necklace! Interesting. From Tatty Devine, via Shiny Shiny. (Not sure I'd want to spend $44 + S&H on one, though...)

Twitter Away at SLA

SLA is officially encouraging twittering at the annual conference! Nifty. Read the details over at Daniel Lee's blog (he's from the SLA Innovation Laboratory, amongst other places). Hopefully by the time the conference starts, Twitter will have sorted out the problems they're currently experiencing... Follow along on the SLA2008 twitter feed.

Currently 92° and sunny.

Random Friday

A random collection of things I've been keeping lying about:

* Changing from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress? Ha! (thanks to Jeff)

* Bookhunter. "The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It's a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal of library equipment to find the book and the mastermind who stole it. "

* Weirdly addictive, is Typeracer; also kind of fun to see my wpm score. I cannot imagine the 149wpm current high scorer; does s/he burn through keyboards on a regular basis? (I'm a bit more prosaic at an average of 84wpm.)

Cold, grey, and rainy today. Hard to believe we hit 103° three days ago; we haven't even hit 70° yet today.

Library War: Summaries

Thanks to the most excellent TangognaT for posting episode summaries and a few screen captures! Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are done and I'll be watching for more.

Ice Break on the Rillito: 2008

Yep, today's the day, folks: we've just officially hit 100°F for the first time this year. I believe we're going to actually go past it a bit - last forecast I saw was 103° - but today's it. Bye, bye, spring - hello summer!

My prediction, not that it's very difficult to do: another 100 days of 100+ degree weather. Not starting just yet, but in, say, another month? Yep.

Old Maids, Policeman, and Social Rejects

In the latest version of The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, v.9, no. 1 (Spring 2008) is an interesting paper by Maura Seale titled "Old Maids, Policeman, and Social Rejects: Mass Media Representations and Public Perceptions of Librarians." Some serious analysis went into this research paper, which discusses the "five categories" of represented librarians (the old maid librarian, the policeman librarian, the librarian as parody, the inept librarian, and the hero/ine librarian). After reading it through, I have to say Ms. Seale is spot on; although almost of her references are older ones (late 90s-early 00s) I can find examples of each and every one of those categories in a media bit presented within the last year. I also have a few new articles to go check out, thanks to her reference list!

It's worth a read - check it out! (Originally via popculture-l; thanks to all the folks who also sent it along to me.)

Scary

Scary (Passion Quilt meme)
Originally uploaded by desertlibrarian

There's a nice little meme going about the biblioblogosphere to make a square for a library-themed Passion Quilt. This is my contribution... As usual, I'm late to the game, and everyone I would have tagged has already done one, so check out http://tinyurl.com/4h8qtk to see 'em all.

Urban Dictionary: bite me.

(Note: Links will more than likely contain NSFW language.)

So, thanks to Library Bitch, I was introduced today to the Urban Dictionary's definition(s) of "librarian". While I quite like Definition #1 ("One to be worshiped") I can't say much for #10 ("a librarian is a weird usually older(middle aged) lonely woman"), or many, many others. Read through 'em and be sure to cast your vote.

89° and slightly overcast. Whee.

More Made of Win

If I can keep knocking out the small-yet-annoyingly-frustrating issues like this, I'll be golden!

Today I figured out the display ordering rationale in the image gallery module. It's such an easy module to use that I didn't want to discard it in favor of custom-built views for every single gallery every time one was created or modified, or (and I admit it) learn how to modify the php template, but not being able to display the images in the order I wished - or use a specific thumbnail to identify a gallery - was really getting on my nerves. So today I played around with a test gallery, tested file name, title, etc etc - and finally realized it sorts in an absolute, last-in-first-out order. Now that I know that, I can work around it; I just have to remember it down the line. As usual, it's a very small thing that was causing my much larger frustrations... but now I've gone into all my galleries, rearranged them to the engineers' satisfaction, and it's all good. Hurrah!

I've also taken the "oh, boy, here we go" step of sending a final review statement out to all the staff. We are, finally, approaching the last step before going public with this and being done with this task! Woo hoo!

79° and sunny. :-D

Today: Made of Win

Today has been a pretty good day.

1) After battling the front page display of my new web site for a while, I threw it out to a local CSS expert (thanks, Mark!) and to the Drupal4Lib community. (I wanted dual background images, one at the upper left and one at the bottom right, and no matter what I did the front_page module was only showing one image.) I got a lot of great suggestions to fidget with things and arrangements, which led me to think about swapping which images were called from where. When I flipped the body and wrapper background images, it worked! Not only did it work, it works across every browser I've tested so far, even IE (!!!!), and under both Windows and Linux. (I'll test from the Mac when I get home, but I expect it'll be fine.) Needless to say, a happy dance was performed :-D

2) I got to play with javascript and replaced the static image on our main web page with a script that randomly displays one of eleven images. Makes me happy, and more importantly, it seems to have made the scientists and directorate happy. Thanks, JavaScript Source!

3) I get to shop for all the table decorations for the big "Under the Sea" party at SLA. Hee hee!

Currently 84° and sunny. (expect to see that a lot in the future, ha ha)

Social Events at SLA

The calendar is rapidly filling up:

* PAM Book Group, Monday evening
* Blogger's Social, Tuesday evening
* LSW Meet-up, time and date still TBD.

Plus open houses, early-bird dinners, and the much-looked-forward-to Under the Sea PAM/IT dance! Thank heavens we'll be in the City of Coffee...

Random Video

Busy, busy, busy - here are some things to keep you occupied...

* Thumbs down: Erik the Librarian. Seen around the net, and in Library Journal...4 episodes posted so far. The summary says "Erik is a reclusive, introspective, yet very vocal librarian on a perpetual quest to make himself understood." LJ said "...it's a low point in the ongoing wars against the librarian stereotype. [...] Actually, he's obnoxious, manic, grating, and aggressive to the point of stalkerish." And, you know, I just can't top that. (I also couldn't watch anymore past about halfway through episode 3...blech.)

* Thumbs up: Library War. "The action comedy anime adapts Hiro Arikawa's popular novel about battles fought to preserve libraries when a new law threatens to clamp down on freedom of expression in 2019." I watched the video (no, I had no idea what they were saying) and just hope it gets released here with subtitles! Reminded me a lot of Yomiko Readman, aka The Paper, from Read or Die. (Watch it, if you haven't!)

* Two Thumbs Up! "Blood In The Stacks: Ravaged By A Vampire Librarian." (No, really, it's totally SFW.) Since even my stick people are sometimes unidentifiable, watching this vampbrarian (ha, ha) come to life was wild!

18 Sexy Trips to the Library Stacks

Entertainment Weekly celebrates National Library Week in their own film-based way.

Spring is on the way out; today it's supposed to hit 95°. Thus begins summer's approach...

What She Said

Y'all know my stance on the whole MLIs-librarian versus non-MLIS-librarian thing. But Mary Carmen really hit it with her post "You Call it Being a Professional; Some of Us Call it Being an A$$hat". She links to several other blogger's posts as well, and I certainly can't say it any better.

My mother forgot more in her 37 years as a non-degreed librarian (and yes, I believe she is now a retired librarian, not a retired paraprofessional library worker, dammit) than I will ever know. She, and librarians like her, taught me a lot about how you should treat fellow workers. I hope I live up to her lessons.

A Librarian at War

I found Shelby Monroe while researching a different topic, but I have to mention her here, and what she's doing. Miss Shelby, as she is known, is a librarian embedded with a division in Iraq. (Yes, you read that right.) She decided it was important to tell the daily stories of the soldiers in Iraq, and show pictures of the regular citizens, so she quit her library job and shipped out. Miss Shelby blogs about her experiences, and shares her photos, over at "101 Days with the 101st Airborne" and "Heads Down, Spirits Up!" (subtitled The Adventures of a Restless Librarian in Iraq).

What she's doing takes a huge amount of guts. HUGE. If you've read this for a while, you know I have a military background; IMHO it's one thing for a prepared (or semi-, as the case has been) soldier to go into a battlefield, but it's quite another to quit your quiet life far away from that chaos and willingly put yourself into it, then share the day-to-day realities of that chaos. I'm in awe.

Miss Shelby, thank you.

Random Things

Lots going on, very busy; just wanted to share a couple of things with you!

* Philip Flick emailed me last week (and I'm sharing with his permission): "I was closing down a bank account in one town because I was moving to another town where I was just hired to work at the public library. He asked me what my occupation was and I told him librarian. He offered the title, "media specialist". Then he commenced to say that sounded much better than librarian, because of all those things you (are supposed to) think of when you think of the term 'librarian'. I am sure I did not provoke him to this, all I wanted was to close my bank account, not hear some discourse on what stigmas there are associated with being a librarian. One thing about the incident that I thought was weird was that he never even bothered to 'catch himself' in the process of his insult. He just carried on and thought that his assessment of the profession was the norm." So, yeah, there's that image thing impacting our daily lives again...

* Judith Seiss (yay, OPL!) alerted me to "What is it about librarians?", a brief discourse from Millard Filmore's Bathtub on "racy" librarian blog titles.

10:30am, 71° - yay spring!

3BT: Tucson Spring Morning

1) Not needing a jacket on the way to work.
2) The lovely light smell of the new-blooming trees and bushes.
3) A free extra shot of espresso (and a kiss on the cheek) from the corner Coffee Dude.

Aaah, spring...

Conan the Librarian...again!

Conan the Librarian just keeps popping up - this time in an amusing action-figure vignette by Poe Ghostal over on Flickr.  I believe everyone who's had to deal with loud patrons has wished this at one time or another...

Blog Bits

Spent some time today reading blogs, and these caught my attention as things to share:

* I so want to work (and visit) here! Jenny Levine (the Shifted Librarian) talks about her trip to DOK . Wow. (I mean, what else can you say?)

* I don't know how Steven Cohen (Library Stuff) finds and keeps up with all this stuff, but he posted two fairly nifty Twitter tools: TwitterMap and Twitter Karma.

* Lee LeBlanc guest-blogged at Tame the Web about answers to his question "Why are you a librarian?" I really enjoyed the wide variety of answers (#32 made me chuckle).

Bronchitis is the pits. Special super cough medicine is fun. The weather is lovely. Yay!

Speed Bump: now in poster form!

One of my favorite librarian comics from Speed Bump has become so popular the author, Dave Coverly, is now making it available as an inscribed, color poster!  It's a bit spendy but would be very cool to have on the office wall.  (Hmm, gift idea!)

(Mr. Coverly gave me permissions to use this particular comic three talks ago... he's a groovy dude!)

IL2008 Call for Speakers

Bit late off the block with this, but in case you haven't already seen: the Call for Speakers for Internet Librarian 2008 is now open. Send in your ideas by March 26th!

Cold, grey and rainy here the last couple of days. Brr!

For the Guybrarians in your life

I loves me some effing.librarian, I have to say. His post on "to be a guybrarian" made me laugh out loud, but I'm curious... guys, do you agree with effing? Is this what you envision when someone calls you a "guybrarian"?

It. Is. Not. Snowing.

AL Direct notices me again!

My CMS article is mentioned in this week's AL Direct! How cool; even though I can't swing being a member of ALA as well as SLA, they still seem to like me! :-) (Thanks to Joe for letting me know!)

Shelving the Stereotype

The Houston Chronicle ran an article in late February on the changing face of librarianship: "Information isn't reserved for books", by Carolyn Feibel. Gotta love an article that starts off with the question "If Google and a librarian had an informational smackdown, who would win?"

Me, of course, I vote for the librarian.

Found via Folderol

CiL: I made the cover!

Wow. I had no idea that Information Today was going to use my article on choosing and implementing a CMS for their March cover! How exciting :-D Even more exciting, they've made it freely available online (although without the groovy graphics and tables and things). This makes my second article for CiL, and my second cover! What a lovely way to end a Monday!

It's a perfectly lovely 75°. Aaahhhh.... spring in Tucson!

Slog, Slog, Slogging Along

You may have noticed (then again, maybe not) that things have been somewhat quieter than usual around here lately. I'm continuing to slog through the new Drupal-based web site; am now nagging others for input to the image galleries (why post old images to a new web site?) and waiting on that, and the other big bugaboo is: the front page module.

You'd think, after reading the project page, that it'd be pretty straightforward. And for the uses I've done so far - basically, a link to log in, and a link to the sitemap for browsing - it was fine. But now I want to put an actual spiffy front page with a different look to it on the site, and danged if I'm not having a ton of trouble with it. The front page settings has a nice little box for you to use, and you can choose themed, full, or a redirect type. I've been using themed, which uses my theme from the rest of the site, but now I want to choose full and drop in a completely different page. I quote: "You can paste in the full HTML code for a complete page and include a different style sheet in the HEAD of the document if you want a completely different layout and style to the rest of your site." So, I do that, but does it work? NO. It basically seems to be taking my title and any other information in the head of the document (including the style sheet), stripping it down to plain text, and dropping it before any of my content. This leads to: a VERY UGLY PAGE.

I've had it for the day. Maybe whatever I'm missing will become clear next week...after a lot more coffee. Sigh.

More on the third "Librarian" movie

Bummer! Now it looks like winter '08 instead of fall... ah well, should still be a big bunch o'cheesy fun!

• TNT planning third 'Librarian' movie
• Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin Return for Third INstallment of TNT's Successful Librarian Franchise
• TNT Checks Out 'Librarian' Again

The thermometer says it's 70° but I'm cold... yes, I'm a weather wimp, I admit it!

McSweeney's Reasons

Discovered via twitter and laughed over openly, McSweeney's Ten Reasons to (be|not be) a Librarian is so very, very true... I totally classify things, I can't help it!

More from Rex Libris

My favorite a$$-kicking sesquipedalian librarian is back! Rex Libris #9 ("In the Grip of Ogpu!") came out just after Christmas, and Rex Libris #10 ("A Cock and Bull Story") has just been released... I love the standing order with my local comic store, I have them both to hand and will probably (finally!) read them on the plane this week.


Plus SLG Publishing has come out with another Rex T-shirt, which I simply must have! "Have YOU returned your library books?"

I loves me some Rex! :-)

LoginToboggan Rocks!

So, I've been fairly quiet lately about the whole Drupal development thing, primarily because I've been madly pulling in data and creating node after node after node. It's really shaping up nicely. One of the big bugaboos I've mentioned here before was the access restrictions; was having a very hard time getting that all sorted out the way I wanted. Well, I threw a help email out to the Drupal4Lib listserv and bang, I got a good half-dozen suggestions. One of them, LoginToboggan, is exactly what I was looking for! (The folks on Drupal4Lib rock, I tell you.)

It's gonna be close but I think I'll make the end-of-February goal for going live with the new site. The public parts of the site are 95% done; the private sections are about 80% but I feel fine going live with some of the older historical data not quite posted yet (provided, of course, I get it posted within a month). The next big thing facing me is the actual migration; I have a sparkly new server waiting for everything, but all I've done so far is make sure the latest version of CentOS is installed and everything's updated. I haven't even installed Drupal there yet... bleurgh. But I have, what, ten days left? I can do this!!

It's a blissful, sunny 72° and a lovely breeze is coming in my open window.

Another reason to choose a private school

Sigh. The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is having a very bad year... in addition to recommending closing some of the schools, they have now made the decision to cut librarian and counselor positions and increase class sizes. I've been pondering what to do when my son reaches school age and private schools are looking more and more attractive as the public schools continue to be gutted more and more...

Kirk Coulda Been a Librarian!

Found via the always-excellent LibrarianInBlack, check out this short clip from Star Trek: The Animated Series. Spock scores again!

After days of stunningly beautiful weather, another storm is moving in and it's 67° and getting grey and windy. Tomorrow will be much cooler...

Go, us!

US News & World Report lists Librarian as one of the best careers for 2008, along with several other librarian-type skillsets (such as Data Miner and Usability Specialist). w00t!

Library Career Romances

Found via Library Journal, Jen Wolfe's "Library Career Romances" and "Miscellaneous Librariana" are interesting and amusing glimpses into the world of the "career girl" novels from the 40s through 60s, and into more modern writings as well. Jen has obviously put a lot of work into these lists!

ALA Goes Drupal

Sayeth Jenny Levine: "ALA is planning to move its current Online Communities service to a Drupal environment during the next few months, so we've posted an RFP for the project at http://blogs.ala.org/ittsupdate.php . Please help us publicize this to relevant groups so that we get as many responses as possible." Interested? Read more at the ITTS Update.

SLA Arizona Chapter S-Az Meetup!

Nine frisky librarians gathered at Dirtbag's in Tucson last night to eat, drink, be merry, and network like mad. I received another three or four emails from folks who wanted to attend but couldn't. Everyone enjoyed themselves (and agreed, the onion rings are great!)!

Many thanks to all who attended: Cindy Coan, Laura Carscaddon, Cheryl Cullier, Melissa Morgan, Jennifer Swift-Martin, Jim Martin, Cindy Elliot, and Deborah Beaumont. Hope to see you all next time, too!

Can I respectfully disagree?

Don't get me wrong (that's kind of like "bless his heart" in the South, I think) - I'm very happy Mandy's happy with her job, and she thinks you should be too. I personally don't agree with #2, but I'd be interested to see how many librarians do hit I on the Myers-Brigg scale...

It's a freakishly-cold 43°. (Yeah, I know, I could be in Minnesota, but for Tucson in the daytime, that's danged chilly!)

I knew I liked Roller Derby!

Meet Dewey Decimator, a member of the Nickel City Knockouts! "Whatever you do, don’t make the Dew have to shush you." w00t!

thanks to Shannon for the intro!

It's a brisk 50° but the sun is shining!

Are you a librarian in southern Arizona?

If so, come join us tomorrow (that's Wednesday, January 30th) at 5pm at Dirtbag's Bar & Grill for some socializing, library talk, beers, and great onion rings! This is officially a SLA Arizona Chapter meetup but anyone's welcome to join us :-) we'll be in the back!

The down side of systems librarianship

Don't get me wrong: I love my job. (Can't you just hear the "but" coming?) But... sometimes the tech support side of things can be a bit draining. Although the top priority on my to-do list is to get our new Drupal site finished and ready for public release, I have spent all of one hour on it in the last two weeks; I've spent the rest of the time rebuilding crashed systems, installing or reinstalling software, testing and retesting network hardware to see why things are so slow (turns out the switch is flaky), updating NIC drivers, blah blah blah...

On the up side, I've certainly been busy during this time; but oh how I miss being able to get back into the Drupal groove...

Maybe next week. </whine>

It's a balmy 60° and sunny. There's rain in the forecast, but right now, it's veddy nice!

Librarian Dress Up?

Hmm.... part of me is laughing out loud, part is going "Bwaaahhhh?"

Check out "Librarian Dress Up", a Java dress-up e-doll (what is the electronic equivalent of a paper doll, anyway?) run by LibrarianPlanet.com, "Information for the librarian generation" (also new to me, and the URL doesn't resolve to that). Drag-n-drop to create your very own shushing librarian! (Note you can also strip her down to her unmentionables.)

Again, I say, hmmm. I'm going to go with "humor" on this one, I think. (A dress-up doll to eparker on LU for the link!)

Updated the next day: the Effing.Librarian, sick of the female-only stereotype, has created a Male Dress-Up Librarian e-doll! (Kinda.)

One for the Guys

Yes, apparently gender is still a big deal. Sigh.

56° and the sun's going down.

Steve Jobs: Not a Reader

OK, so this isn't really about librarian image, or systems librarianship, but dang, it got my attention: In a post-MacWorld-speech New York Times interview, Steve Jobs said "the fact is that people don't read anymore".

*phffft*, Mr. Jobs. Tell that to the hordes of people I see checking out books and reading magazines every time I go to my public library, or the even larger hordes I see whenever I go into Borders or B&N.

Hrmph. I don't believe his "facts". Hrmph, I say!

Who knew?

I spent some time this past Saturday afternoon (as in, three days ago) at a local toystore called Yikes! - fabulous place, I highly recommend it! Amongst all the groovy cool retro fun stuff they carry are the Archie McPhee line of action figures.

Can you guess what's coming?

So, I'm in the store, and a young couple comes in (early 20s or thereabouts). The action figures are on the front wall right by the door, so that's where most people seem to start browsing. The woman starts laughing, and says "Hey! A librarian action figure!" and the man replies with, "Huh. Who knew librarians got action figures?"

It's 54° and I'm cold!

It's Friday, so it should be funny...

"Press button..."

thanks, Sixten!

Where old software goes when it dies

Where old software goes when it dies
Originally uploaded by desertlibrarian

Adios, question generators! ("Good grief, you still have Windows 2000 installation software?")

Links Du Jour

Nothing earth-shattering here, folks, just three links of interest:

* Announcing the publication of "Sexy Librarian: A Novel", by Julia Weist, which "introduces us to Audrey Reed, a New York artist who trades her hip urban life for a job at a small public library in Minnesota." Haven't read it yet, but I'm watching the listserv discussions and contemplating reserving it at the library (or at least requesting a copy).

* The Woeful Librarian has posted an essay on "Perpetuating the Librarian Stereotype" that discusses a couple of other librarian-related news articles that I missed over the holidays and discusses their impact. My fave line is "Most librarians are ordinary people who just happen to have superb organizational, and research kung fu." Yes!! (Note: Slightly NSFW wording at the end.)

*A 3-pager from the Grand Rapids Press touts the fact that "Modern librarians are hip, tech-saavy". Right off the bat, writer Morgan Jarema says "But maybe the thing librarians do best is defy stereotypes." Yes!!

Currently 57° and sunny.

SysGrunt: New Year's Edition

Today's the first day with a full staff complement back in the office, and boy, did I feel it... So here's the first SysGrunt of the new year!

Greet everyone who's back in the office after long holidays.
Email.
Update a few web pages.
Software key install for user.
DHCP reset.
Software installation.
Staff meeting.
Build and compare Apple and Dell file servers for a replacement machine.
Talk with IT dude about non-server options. Get excited.
Email.
Lunch.
Research question.
External hard drive lookup for batch purchase - can we get volume discount?
Meeting with boss.
Software installation.
Email.
Discuss non-server solution with Big Boss, get OK to proceed (yay!)
Last hour of day spent perusing the blog backlog.
Run away!

So hi, everyone, and Happy New Year! (It's currently 58°, grey, and gloomy. Maybe it'll rain!)

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!
Originally uploaded by desertlibrarian

I hope everyone has a very joyous holiday season, and enters the new year with cheer in their hearts! See you next year...

The Year in First Lines

This not-a-meme is popping up everywhere; I'm running from Hedgehog Librarian's posting. You take the first sentence from the first post of each month for the year and post 'em... here goes!

January: Happy New Year, everyone!

February: Damn.

March: The Call for Speakers has been sent out for Internet Librarian.

April: Or, not...

May: OK, late off the block but I just have to share this: Librarian, by HauntedLove. (Still one of my faves!)

June: So, I'm in Denver now...

July: So, American Libraries also wrote me up in the June 20th issue of AL Direct, in the "Actions & Answers" section.

August: ...buried, inundated, overwhelmed...

September: Found via the ever-reliable LISNews, this article over on "Mere Comments" (a blog for Touchstone magazine) titled "The Librarian as 'Professional'" had me alternating between annoyance and agreement.

October: Hat tip to the 3BT blog...

November: (Catching up on my last few posts!)

December: So.

It seems that I have a habit of starting off my posts rather... shortly. Hmm. Also, so, so, so, ok, and SO. Ha!

Are you geeky enough to be a librarian?

Found quite a while after posting on the Librarian Avengers site, I just took this quiz, and scored a 13. 10-15 = "I’ve got some library school applications under my desk you big dork". Are you geeky enough? (I think I've got to work on it a bit!)

A small bit o'info: The centerpiece of my door art is "Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian". I get comments on it all the time... and if they're snarky, I kick the crap out of them.

60° and sunny... I'm such a wimp I'm wearing wool slippers, a long-sleeved T, a long-sleeved woolen shirt, and have a blanket on my lap. It's almost embarrassing.

Drupal pause, EDMS head-bashing

So. After such a flurry of happiness with my Drupal problems, I was cheerfully buzzing along getting all my missing documentation uploaded and linked in, and somewhat avoiding the issue of our EDMS. I finally got the go-ahead for reimplementation from our Big Boss but I knew it was gonna be a huge pain, so I postponed, and postponed... until I can't anymore, not really.

So (sigh) I'm putting Drupal on the back burner until the new year. It's fascinating and I'm getting a total kick out of it, but it's not mission-critical the way getting the staff back into the EDMS is. So a few days ago I started spending all my time working on the EDMS, with some good and some bad moments.

The biggest bad moment - and I guess all things considered it's not "bad", just "really really annoying" - is that there's a bug in the export system. So when I exported the workflow, user and group lists, cards, etc etc, it turns out that none of the passwords, permissions, notifications, etc were captured and brought over. Which means - yes, boys and girls, what fun! - that I have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. So far I'm a day and a half into it and only a third through the workflow. (A bit of history: this is a setup that took over a year to get worked out and in place, so having to recreate all the "who gets notified when what happens" and "who has to approve what for the next step" all at once is not a fun task.)

After I get all this sorted out, then it's client install time, and then the next fun part that's gonna take a lot of time: migrating all the files out of our shared file server and back into the EDMS. On the up side, almost all the staff starts their holiday vacations next week, so if I can get through most of this this week, next week there'll be hardly anyone to inconvenience with file moves - fingers crossed.

All this is a rather long-winded explanation (whine?) about why you won't be seeing any Drupal entries here for a little while. I'll post any librarian image things I come across, but everyone seems to be being rather quiet these days - I haven't seen anything come across in a while now! (If you've seen something, please forward it on to me... thanks)!

It's been raining for five days now, on and off, and it's been make-me-whine cold. ('Course, that doesn't take much, as I pull out sweaters if it drops below 70°...) But the rain is good, and needed, and it's a soft rain that hasn't caused too much flooding, which is a nice change from the summer monsoons. And hey, it's not an ice storm, so yay for that.