Reviewing the Situation

September 2, 2009 at 2:06 pm (ethics, professional development, reviews, traditional library services)

I love reviewing books.  If this librarian thing doesn’t work out, my backup dream is that some publisher, somewhere, is going to read one of my reviews, recognize my untapped potential, and pluck me from relative obscurity in the mid-Atlantic to a life of Dorothy Parkeresque wit in a large city (I’m partial to points west, but I’ll take Manhattan).  Slain by my critical insights and enraptured by my keen understanding of what makes for good fiction, I will be the darling of City X’s literary circles.  Then one of my cats will meow in my ear and I will awaken, disappointed that we didn’t get to the part of the dream where I’m playing poker with my BFF, George Clooney.

Ahem.  That is to say, I’ve been meaning to write about book reviews ever since  LJ sent me a package that contained the mother of all conundrums:  the ARC of Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Year of the Flood.  Now that the review’s been published, I can tell you that it’s a fine line between detached library professional and gobsmacked drooling authorcrush fangirl.

I’ve reviewed for Library Journal since 2005, when my colleague, the late Cathy Duhig, encouraged me to apply. Before I found my way to library world, I’d been on my way to a PhD in literature, so when asked for my area of expertise, I wrote “literary fiction.” It didn’t occur to me that loving sci-fi and horror (which I do) could make me as qualified to review those genres as a background in literature and theory made me to review literary fiction (which it does). I know better now, and would like to sink my teeth into some genre reviewing. However, having that epiphany while staring at the ARC of someone you idolize doesn’t get your review written!

So, first you read. I stayed up late and swallowed the novel whole, because I knew I would need as much time as possible to write the darned review. My thoughts went back and forth on a variety of points for which I still don’t have great final answers:

  • What library on the planet isn’t going to purchase this novel?
  • Is that first assumption true?  If that’s true, what is the purpose of reviewing a popular / critically acclaimed author?
  • I’m completely besotted with Atwood.  Should I send it back?
  • How on earth am I going to do justice to this?

The recent switch from “recommended for” to “the verdict” didn’t help matters any.  There are some things about “the verdict” that definitely work for me:  I get the opportunity to be wittier, for one thing, which one can’t always do with the phrase ” recommended for.”  But reviews are supposed to be more than an opportunity to flaunt one’s writerly chops, and I worry that some of the reviews’ usefulness to librarians might get lost.

Unlike most of the other review journals, LJ has always been “for us, by us.”  PW is for publishers, really, more of an awareness tool.  Choice is still for librarians, but it’s mostly for academic librarians, except when it comes to the useful links, with which I beef up our delicious account.  Booklist only publishes positive reviews, so you can approach it cheerfully, confident that whatever you find inside is probably going to be a win for your library.  Kirkus is for Oscar Wilde and other malcontents, and I say that with great love.   But LJ has always been the review tool of my heart because it’s where I go to get the down and dirty, the good-bad-ugly from my peers.

I’m all for being more inclusive, and “the verdict” will definitely expose our work to a wider readership, which is, I suppose, a good thing.  However, the phrase “dance with the one who brought you” keeps coming to mind; after all, it’s not the casual reader who is going to shell out for those LJ print subscriptions.  At least, not the casual reader who saunters through the door of my public library.  To remain a viable reviewing tool, LJ reviews need to keep librarians as the core audience.  Otherwise, why print it at all?  Why not just have it entirely online?

Don’t answer that!  But do break both legs to get your hands on The Year of the Flood, especially if you care about our fragile world and its possible tempestuous futures. 175 words simply couldn’t do justice to the goodness that lies therein.

And there, I suppose, is the writerly challenge! Anyone can blather on for pages about Atwood’s genius (and many will, I’m certain). But can you get to the heart of the matter in 175 words? Almost as difficult as executing good haiku!

When next I get a moment to write, I want to do another sort of review. I’m coming up on my 2-year anniversary in my current job, and I can’t quite believe it. I want to talk a little bit about patterns and changes, as well as my goals for the year to come. These matters may be tempered by the presence or absence of a state budget, but, I assure you, we will get to them.

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Re-entry. Also, character.

July 21, 2009 at 5:42 pm (23ThingsN@, Emerging Leaders 2009, collection development, ethics, leadership, philosophizing, professional development, reviews)

Re-entry

The work doesn’t stop just because you go to a conference!  Between catching up on what I’ve missed, and the inexorable forward progress of projects and meetings, I’ve been a busy bee – far too busy to blog. It’s been a great exercise in applying all those leadership lessons from EL. Quietly and subtly, of course. :)

Today, though, with my official ALA report complete and good progress made on most of my major projects, I can afford a quick end-of-day check-in.

The key item on which to report is that this is the last week of 23 Things ‘n @, and while we’ll have to wait a bit for the exit survey results, the comments on this week’s post are, for the most part, positive. Here are my gut instincts on what we could do differently next time to improve the learning experience:

  • Cap registration.  Following 250 blogs and trying to make sure everybody felt supported / listened to was pretty darned exhausting, even for four people as awesome as the members of Team Celery Stick.  Smaller cohorts would allow us to give people more individualized attention
  • Offer various “flavors” of “thing” for each skill level.  Example:  When talking about YouTube, have the absolute beginners FIND a video, have the fairly comfortable folks EMBED a video, and have the really advanced folks MAKE and POST a video.  No value judgments – just OPTIONS.  A lot of really highly-skilled people dropped out, and while the program sort of wasn’t aimed at them, we have a responsibility to make sure our advanced learners get even more opportunities to advance.
  • Recruit graduates of this cohort to help teach the next cohort – not only would this spread the work around, it would give graduates of the first cohort the chance to enhance their skills by passing them on.

Just some gut thoughts.  I’ll have survey results/excerpts for you soon, I hope.

Character

It’s funny how, sometimes, there’s a theme to everything you do in a particular week.  During this ALA re-entry period, the theme in my work life appears to be character.  Or maybe it’s just because, for professional reading, I’m knee-deep in The Speed of Trust. Whatever the case may be, I’ve been paying particular attention to situations where integrity and other elements of character have come up, and been more aware of my own actions.

You’ll pardon me if that sounds cryptic.  There’s nothing specific I can put my finger on – I’m just noticing these things more – again, possibly an aftereffect of Emerging Leaders.  There seem to be a hundred thousand opportunities to demonstrate character/integrity at work, every day, especially during challenging economic times.

The Pennsylvania legislature, for example, continues to astound me with its blatant disregard for electronic resources.  Yesterday they passed a version of H.B. 1416, the most recent budget proposal, that completely eliminates funding for AskHere PA and the Pennsylvania POWER library.  Although it would be easy to hit the ceiling and break out the pitchforks and torches, I am determined to remain classy.  Ergo, rather than begin any partisan mudslinging, I’ll simply let you compare all the budget proposals on hand and draw your own conclusions. Needless to say, if this version of the budget ultimately triumphs, it’s a huge blow to library service in PA…and it drives me crazy that electronic resources are seen as “extras” or “pork” in the budget, when they’re actually a lifeline to thousands of people statewide.

But it’s not just the big issues; character is revealed in the little things, too. It’s in the way we talk to our colleagues, the way we share (or don’t share) information, the way we seek (or don’t) for win-win solutions. Everything that comes up in a day is grist for the mill, an opportunity to be classy or not so much.

And here’s the kicker: how do you choose to behave when there won’t necessarily be a reward for good behavior? Salary freezes and benefit cuts are the new normal, so it’s not like there’s a financial incentive to behave with integrity. If you take away the monetary rewards, and the future looks uncertain, what’s your motivation to show up, do a good job, treat your colleagues fairly, etc.?

As ever, I have no answers. I simply ask prickly questions! Some people have religious beliefs to guide their choices. Others have personal codes of morals or ethics that aren’t necessarily grounded in a higher power. What criteria shape your choices? What does it mean to you to be a librarian with integrity?

On a slightly more fun closing note, I now have 1/2 an intern to help me with my tasks! I say “1/2″ because she’ll be splitting her time with me and someone in another department. She’ll be here until the end of August, and she’s already been a huge help to me today – finished mailing out those Mango bookmarks, started weeding our LibraryThing account, and got a crash course in collection development with some catalogs I brought back from ALA (independent publishers, mostly).

From a leadership point of view, having an intern is fun-scary – I had to do a lot of planning to make sure she’d have things to do, and I want to be conscious of her having a good, well-rounded library experience (and not just do all the LAV scutwork – not ethical!). But it’s mostly a great opportunity to model the profession for somebody who is actually studying something else, and not necessarily going on to be a librarian.

So, I’ll probably have more to say about that as the month goes by. For now, though, I’m bound and determined not to blog until I get caught up on these darned EREC oommittee meeting minutes. We are now two meetings behind, and it’s not fair to blog when I’ve got actual accountability things to finish. What an incentive to be done, though!

Oh, and once it’s published, I have a thing or two to say about the last book review I wrote, and about book reviewing in general. You’ll see why…..

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Reading 2666

June 26, 2009 at 3:01 pm (personal, philosophizing, reviews, social justice, traditional library services, wikis)

If reading is like dating–and I rather think it is–then there are books you date casually, and books you marry.

Reader, I married 2666. We were only together for 9 1/2 weeks, but it was worth it, and I will never be the same.

I have to confess, though, I might not have picked up the book so soon if if fate hadn’t intervened. My reading list is very long, and I am still working on titles I jotted down in 2006. Very rarely do I “jump” titles, but after I overheard someone in a coffeeshop brag that he could skip the novel because he’d read the Wikipedia entry, I figured a jump was justified.

Clearly, I need to stop hanging out in coffeeshops! Bad for the literary heart.

The Wikipedia entry isn’t bad, for what it’s worth. But it’s certainly not the same as making the committment to reading the novel. Wikipedia will tell you what happened; the novel will show you. Wikipedia will explain who the major characters are, and what their signifcance is. The novel will gradually reveal these things to you, in a slow, sensual fashion, as if unwinding seven veils. Wikipedia will explain the relationship between “The Part About the Critics” and “The Part About Archimboldi”; The novel will unfurl, like a rose, so slowly that you almost can’t stand it, and by the time you get to the last 100 pages, you’ll be reading at breakneck speed to see how it could possibly end in a satisfactory manner.

This is not to say that it was an easy read. Wikipedia summarizes the violent aspects of the novel, but there’s a difference between being told something is violent and watching said violence play out. There were times I had to put the book aside and pick up a fluffy vampire novel, or cheerful romance, just for balance (a colleague reported a similar experience – he had to retreat into graphic novels for a bit while reading). Anyone who cares about the status of women in our world today will be moved by the plight of the women of Santa Teresa, literary stand-ins for the as-yet unsolved victims of the Ciudad Juarez serial killer(s?). Death after death after death, until the reader can barely stand it – a perfect literary representation of the sort of real-life violence that we often choose not to see, because our hearts cannot bear it. Likewise with the mesmerizingly-horrible scene in a diner, where a group of police officers crack joke after offensive joke about women. As you read, you can hardly believe what you’re reading. The text is visceral – it hurts. And yet, doesn’t that happen, somewhere, every day in America, and around the world?

What would happen to our world, I wonder, if there were no more novels to serve as mirrors and critics of the human condition? Could Wikipedia ever evoke our sympathies the way an author can? Somehow, I doubt it.

Be that as it may, you may not be inclined to engage with the darker aspects of human nature. Not every book is for every reader, after all, and the whole point of “the user experience” is that everybody reserves the right to design her/his own. But if you are willing to dance with dark themes, to luxuriate in long, sprawling sentences and langorous prose, to walk down a complicated, twisting road to discover who the mysterious Archimboldi is, and why he has come to Santa Teresa, well…you are in for a brain-bending treat, dear reader.

I racked up a dollar in overdue fines while reading 2666; it seemed a small price to pay for the expansion of my mind and the profound stirring of my soul.

So, there’s that.

My resolution not to give any more presentations this year crumbled in the face of invitations (and a request from management). Next week, I’ll be back with summaries and slides.

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Alchemy by Numbers

April 29, 2009 at 5:04 pm (Twitter, blogging, creativity, databases, humor, professional development, reviews, virtual reference)

A whimsical twist on the workday chronicles:

Number of library staff countywide registered for 23ThingsN@: 240. Eek! Pass the smelling salts…

Number of Twitter followers as of right now: 92

Number of Eleventh Stack visitors so far today: 114

Number of total visitors since the blog’s creation: 54,003.

Number of people registered for next week’s NetLibrary training sessions: 33

Number of nervous breakdowns I’ve had while planning those sessions: 19.

Number of awesome committee members I serve with who help me whenever I ask: 10 [did I mention we have the best committee in the whole county? :) ]

Number of exciting announcements I hope to be able to make very soon: 1

Number of things remaining on my to-do list: 145

Number of those things that can reasonably be accomplished before I go home today: 5

Number of meetings arranged this week: 2

Number of meetings that had to be arranged with multiple updates because Outlook is a royal pain in the nether quarters: 1

Number of e-mails in my in-box: 31

Number of things I’m avoiding: 1

Number of hours of OTR I need to burn: 11

Number I’ve scheduled: 7.5

Number of books I promised to review: 6

Number of books I’ve actually finished reviewing: 2

Number of questions I’ve tried to answer on VR this shift, but haven’t snapped up fast enough: 4

Number of questions successfully answered on VR today: 1

Number of librarians currently staffing AskHere PA: 34

Number of additional projects I’m considering taking on: 1

Number of people who will be needed to talk me out of it: 7

Number of library blogs to which I subscribe: 12

Number of non-library tech blogs to which I subscribe: 1

Number of reference questions worked on this week: 3

Number of hours invested in those questions so far: 4

Number of questions for which the answer was easily available online, and deliverable within 48 hours: 0

There you have it. If you wrote up your work day in numbers, what would it look like?

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Book Review: Slow Reading

April 14, 2009 at 12:26 pm (Library 2.0, collection development, professional development, reader's advisory, reviews, traditional library services)

First in an occasional series of reviews for books published by Library Juice Press and/or Litwin Books. These are volunteer reviews, written gratis, done in the interest of getting coverage for library issues and publications that don’t always get as much professional press as they should.  Any omissions or errors are my own, and do not reflect the intentions of either the author or the publisher.  As ever, though, I pull no punches, but call ‘em like I see ‘em.

The Book:

Miedema, John. Slow Reading. Duluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2009. 78 pg. ISBN: 978-0-9802004-4-7. $12.00.

Summary:

In five short chapters/essays, Miedema defines slow reading and mounts a cogent defense of it in the face of technological advances that frequently predict the death of print.  Stressing the need for multiple reading experiences and ways of learning, Miedema’s short, yet powerful, book, should be required reading for library school students and library management who do not hold the MLIS, and have therefore been removed from the professional discourse around ways of reading and service to readers.

Analysis:

Face it:  if you had a dollar for every time you heard one of the technorati say that “print is dead”, you’d be able to thumb your nose at your 403(b) and set sail for the sun-drenched island of your choice.  Alas, until now, the response to such a deeply ignorant statement has been the sputtering incoherence of thousands of library workers who know better, but can’t cogently explain why because we’re too busy picking our jaws up off the floor or scraping our exploded brains off the ceiling. 

Thanks to John Miedema, those of us who recognize and advocate the value of books and paper now have a catchphrase of our own, a scholarly framework within which to compose our arguments, and a physical object to wave in the faces of those who would march us off to twopointopia willy-nilly.  “Slow reading,” a term grounded in the same ideology that informed the Slow Movement, is defined and contextualized by a body of scholarship from library science as well as literary criticism, and exemplifies a middle way that acknowledges various ways of reading and meaning-making in a calm, reasonable fashion.

Chapter highlights and key talking points include:

  • The roles of pleasure and comprehension in reading
  • The role of readers’ advisory, charmingly called “an uncertainty principle of library science.”
  • The truth behind such myths as “the paperless office” and the ways in which digital technologies have caused various aspects of the traditional library to thrive rather than perish.
  • Specific features and processes that distinguish reading print from reading online.
  • “E-books as metadata for print books” [a personal favorite section here - reviewer = biased]
  • A short history of the Slow Movement and its implications for reading and libararies.
  • Bibliotherapy in the context of “The Psychology of Slow Reading” [another underappreciated aspect of reading, IMHO]
  • Tips for becoming a slow reader [this short section could, and probably should, become its own book].

One of my greatest fears about librarianship is that we’re in danger, as a profession, of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  One of my frustations with our profession is that those people with opposing viewpoints or alternative solutions express themselves either so stridently that their opponents cannot find an entry point, or so quietly that their voices go entirely undetected.  Slow Reading strikes the perfect balance between these two extremes with credible scholarship and a concerned, yet measured, tone that allows the reader to accept Miedema’s arguments and weigh them against his/her own personal and professional experience.  This book is an essential purchase for library science curricula as well as public libraries in communities where one can obtain an MLIS.  It is also strongly recommended for medium-to-large academic libraries with strong programs in the humanities, as much of the research here will interest scholars in that discipline. 

In fact, I believe in this book so much that I will gladly share my galley with one lucky Alchemy reader who wants to learn more.  If you leave a comment on this entry between now and 4/16, you will be entered into a drawing to receive my review copy, gratis.  In fact, I’ll even pay for postage if you happen to be a faraway librarian.  Sorry, though – I can only make this offer to one reader – as the old-school record commercials used to say, if you don’t win, “You’ll have to get your own.”

Next regular update will be a project update and possible commentary on the astonishing head-scratcher of a National Library Week that’s off and running with a bang (Amazon FAIL) and a whimper (RIP Judith Krug :( ).

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Booked up

March 31, 2009 at 5:35 pm (nonfiction, professional development, reader's advisory, religion, reviews, social justice, traditional library services)

Literally AND metaphorically.  This past week has been the usual blend of alchemical-wonderful, but there’s also been a lot of reading going on.

I review for both LJ and the SRRT newsletter, which is an interesting exercise in contrasts.  LJ’s short, severe 175-word limit forces me to be specific, whereas with SRRT’s 500-word relative ramble, I can be a bit more poetic about a book. For LJ I review fiction, which guarantees my degrees in English and the time spent learning how to read a text critically will never go to waste; it also really forces me to think about library budgets, appeal factors, etc. and make sure my review gets packed with the sort of helpful details a selector in a hurry might need. For SRRT the focus is on non-fiction works that somehow address social concerns. This somewhat selfishly allows me to praise wonderful books I am already reading anyway, and that might not get many reviews in the professional or popular press. 

Due to an overcrowded plate, I actually just turned down a review opportunity from SRRT, which disappoints me beyond belief, because I was going to review Sarah Miles’s Take This Bread, a memoir in which a lifelong atheist with a background in political and social justice work experiences a radical conversion based on the principles of actually feeding the hungry, as opposed to just talking about it (or, heavens forbid, forming yet another committee or study group about it). If you have ever said the words “liberation theology” out loud; live or work in a community where hunger is a critical issue; belong to a faith community that would like to be more active in feeding the poor; or wonder how on earth anyone managed to reconcile faith and action in a hands-on practical way, you should read this book.

I’m still slowly making my way through that package of galleys from Rory Litwin, which is fitting given that the first book I’ll review here is all about why reading slowly is a darned good idea. You might be asking yourself, though, why we’re bothering with book reviews anyway, since newspapers are dying and nobody reads anymore, and besides, won’t Google scan it? The answers to those questions will also appear in the review. For a sneak peek at topic to come, click here.

ETA: I nearly forgot to mention that I’ve also contributed a review to Litterbox Magazine, a new local online literary journal that will go live tomorrow (I’m telling you today so you don’t think I’m joking. :) ) The book I reviewed, Literature and War, is another example of the kind of book that doesn’t get nearly enough ink, and the kind of assignment that lets a librarian fulfill his/her ethical obligations while discharging her/his professional ones.

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Personal, political, inaugural. Also, professional reading.

January 21, 2009 at 9:36 am (Learning 2.0, Library 2.0, ethics, intellectual freedom, news, nonfiction, personal, philosophizing, professional development, reviews, web resources)

Yesterday some of my peers and I paused to stand shoulder to shoulder with our patrons and watch the inauguration ceremony. It was a beautiful moment, amplified by the fact that those physically present at the event were joined by both in-person and online gatherings all over the country. Participation and interactivity were the order of the day, and anybody who couldn’t be present or wet-wired can already watch the video on YouTube. O brave new world!

One passage from President Obama’s address feels especially pertinent/relevant to libraries this morning:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends–hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism–these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

There you have, in a nutshell, a testament to librarianship. We have an arsenal of tools for providing information. We support, with our collections, programs, services and staff, the best and highest values a democracy can offer. We toil, quietly and not-so-much, in the service of something greater than our individual selves. And I’m confident that librarians of all stripes–special, medical, public, academic, bloggers, pundits, vendor-folks, technomages, futurists, dreamers, leaders, managers, and infinite hybrid variations of said types–will be able to put aside their differences and work together in support of our new president’s goals, which are really the ones we never lost sight of.

Why not aim high, if you’re bothering to aim?

On a more practical front, I’ve been trying to clear the decks and tie down the loose ends before I vanish to attend Midwinter conference in Denver. This has meant meetings, spreadsheets, number-crunching, and a lot of time in the book order room. I will probably still take work with me, but that’s a post on work-life balance for another day! For now, a quick recap of 2009 professional reading so far:

    Mobilizing Generation 2.0, Ben Rigby. This is the book you want if you need to either justify 2.0 dabbling to your boss, or explain it to co-workers who are not entirely convinced.  Rigby explains how emerging technologies can benefit a non-profit and provides specific examples of how various organizations have used blogging, Twitter, and other tools to advance their missions.  You’ll find the companion website here, and those hankering for quantifiable data will be interested in the social network ROI calculator created by Care2, and highlighted in Rigby’s text.

    Future Savvy, Adam Gordon.  The author admits right out of the gate that futurists get heckled a lot for being wrong and/or non-methodical.  The rest of the book goes on to make a case for GOOD forecasting, and explains how organizations can do that.  Very, very, very interesting!

    Out Front With Stephen Abram, Siess & Lorig, comps. I am just now getting around to this because the wait list for our copies has been quite long. Quality inspiration and leadership advice, however, is worth waiting for, and I’m encouraged that so many of my colleagues have read this too. Good fodder for an unconference, I’m thinking.

    Leading With Kindness, Baker & O’Malley. The theoretical underpinnings of the leadership and management I see around me every day.  When it comes to leadership, the kinesthetic approach trumps the readerly, I think.  However, the more books about the human element of leading people we have, the better.

So, there’s that. I’ll be blogging Midwinter, of course, recaps rather than live sessions. If you’re going, and would like to meet, please ping me. If you’re not, I’ll do my very best to report on things I think would be useful and helpful to you. What might those things be? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

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Failure, laptops, and more professional reading.

December 18, 2008 at 12:41 pm (Library 2.0, MySpace, creativity, humor, innovation, leadership, philosophizing, professional development, reviews, social justice, theatre)

Part I:  Failure

Failure at failure confirmed.  The reality of public service is that there’s very little time for serious writing and reflection.  What makes this a catch-22 is that if I returned to academe, I’d have plenty of time for writing and reflection, but fewer opportunities to practice that which I’ve written and reflected upon.  Or so it seems.

At any rate, I only know two things for sure about failure:

  1. If libraries operated by the same rules as Friday Night Improvs, you’d see more innovation and creativity.
  2. Beckett should have the last word.

Part II:  Laptops

Ah, TTW.  Is there no end to your inspirational properties? Apparently not. Is it too late to change my goals for 2009? Because if there’s a way to make our reference area more laptop-friendly, I’m on it. Not that we aren’t plenty laptop-friendly already! But why settle for good when you can be amazing?

Part III: More Professional Reading

Checked out: Mobilizing Generation 2.0. Am hoping it will give me more insights into the folks who are going to be my adult patrons in a relatively short time.

Returned: MySpace for Moms and Dads, which definitely merits a stand-alone review, for various reasons. I’ve made a note of it, but you may have to nag me.

Onward and downward!

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October: Projects and Whatnot

October 9, 2008 at 5:42 pm (databases, humor, leadership, memoir, music, personal, philosophizing, presentations, professional development, reader's advisory, reviews)

The last few weeks have been pretty intense.  The fall semester’s in full swing here in Oakland, and when your library is the peanut-buttery filling between the crusty loaves of Pitt and CMU, you’re kept hopping.  A lot.

I think the best moment, though, was when we had six reference librarians at the desk helping with the elementary school tour group that ended up staying all day, doing research for their History Day projects.  Imagine reference service as a basketball game.  Zone defense, as opposed to person-to-person, of course.  It was awesome, in multiple senses of the term!

Other things October hath wrought:

The database committee met to vote on some renewals, and entertain some suggestions I had.  Most were approved.  Essentially, I want to expand the committee’s charge to include not only the selection of databases, but also the promotion of electronic resources and training both staff and patrons to use them.  This was met with much more support and enthusiasm than I expected, so once again I’m back to the brainstorming board, dreaming dreams and scheming schemes.

LJ and SRRT both sent me new books to review, so I’m knee-deep in reading and note-taking there.  Given that this is an “extra-curricular” kind of thing, it’s challenging to make room for it in a day, especially when there’s so much guilty pleasure reading to be done.  All the same, this is one of those things that, ultimately, falls under “service to one’s peers,” so I’m definitely down with sacrificing a lunch hour or five.

Speaking of school tours, I just gave one this morning to a writing class from Pitt.  The focus was on finding magazines and journals, and also covered how to research publication markets.  Secondhand info from a colleague, who had a friend in the class, relates it was a job well-done.  It’s nice to be able to put one’s pre-librarian teaching experience into service for the institution, and there’s just as much of a need for BI and LI, I think, in the public sector as there is in academe.

The PaLA presentation (dun dun dun!).  My chief concern is making us all look good while still being faithful to the notion that Library 2.0 is going to look different at CLP than it does at other institutions.  Why?  Our patrons have different needs.  The digital divide is a big concern here (see above about BI and LI), and while we’re taking strides in the technological realm, there are still a lot of traditional library services that our patrons need and want.  The key is balance, a middle path.

As I have commented elsewhere this week, moderation is not “sexy,” per se – it does not boost one’s Technorati rating, or vault one into the library blogosphere spotlight.  It does, however, help staff achieve goals and objectives, and helps everyone who works in a library deliver excellent service.  The profession needs dreamers and doers.  I perceive part of my job as negotiating a middle ground between both kinds of folk.

There’s more (there’s always more), but I would like to make a plan for tackling tomrorow’s tasks before I go home.  What are you working on?  I’d love to hear.

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Reading suggestions for a snowy Saturday

December 15, 2007 at 4:23 pm (Library 2.0, blogging, fiction, nonfiction, philosophizing, reader's advisory, reviews)

Having completed my Meebo feasability study, I’m between 2.0 projects at the moment. Next week I’ll dive back into RSS, and I really want to finish my blogging plan. Of all the 2.0 initiatives we could pursue, I think it’s the easiest to implement, and the best possible use of the least possible amount of staff time.

For now, though, it’s a slow, snowy day at the reference desk, and we haven’t talked about books for a while. Ergo, I give you some readerly suggestions for your weekend.

  • For the foodies, Laura Schenone’s The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken details the author’s search for her ancestor Adalgiza’s infamous ravioli recipe.  Part cultural history, part confessional, Schenone’s prose is warm and accessible, and her search for order, structure and stability (in life, as well as in ravioli) are bittersweetly compelling.
  • Prefer your family dramas fictional?  For madcap adventures in a warmer climate, try The Hummingbird Wizard, by Meredith Blevins.  The Szabo women don’t mess around when it comes to their men, and they certainly don’t let a little murder stand in their way.  Hapless Annie, her adversarial mother-in-law, Mina, and her boozy, bluesy, sister-in-law Capri try to solve the murder of a man all three of them loved, in different ways, and for different reasons.  Snarky, sexy, and funny as all get-out.
  • For a more complex fictional adventure, you might like the linguistically complicated, dreamlike atmosphere of The Labyrinth.   Catherynne Valente builds a sumptuous world in which a woman (perhaps) tries to find her way out of (possibly) a labyrinth (maybe).  Steeped in uncertainty, this lush, complex train of symbols reads more like an epic prose poem than a novel.  That’s not a complaint.
  • If Valente’s work left you a little dazed and confused, you might want to turn to Joan Gould’s work for a little clarity.  Spinning Straw Into Gold examines the various phases of women’s lives, and explicates the fairy tales (both classic and contemporary) that can hold the clues to navigating through each stage.  Who knew getting married was a bit like being a selkie?  What’s a selkie, you ask?  Pick up this book, and find out.

If my book picks aren’t your cup of tea, check out what other CLP staffers are reading this month. Book picks are one area where I think a blog would definitely be an asset in our library system – think of how many employees we have, and how diverse their tastes are. We could offer the public a little something every day. Just one more 2.0 dream to have as the snow comes wafting down…

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