Author Archive
Carnival of the Infosciences #88: Call for Submissions
COTI is back in the LG!It has been well over a year since we last hosted a carnival and apparently I should have put up this call for submissions last Sunday since the carnival is now bi-weeekly. My apologies for missing that detail — I was actually proud to be up early on a Sunday posting this and it turns out I am still late.
Not to worry though as I have complete faith that the info carnies will be out in full-force with lots of submissions and sending us links to great blog posts from last week as well as this week!
This edition will cover all posts from January 21st to February 3rd and submissions will be accepted until 6 pm on February 3rd. I am up in northern Vermont on a ski trip all week so I am sure I will enjoy reading all the submissions by the fireplace after a day on the slopes.
You can send entries to janieh at gmail dot com or you can use the Carnival Submission Form.
Thanks for participating and keeping the Carnival going!
Ho Ho Ho
Janie, Ty, Amy, Pete, Robert, Marie and Cynthia
Note: Cynthia, the newest member of our blog team, is not in the photo. This picture was taken on the one and only day since we started blogging that the LG team was together in one room. We hope to get a new picture with all of us at some point in January if our schedules allow.
Welcoming Cynthia to the LG Blog Team
When Pete, Robert and I originally discussed Library Garden one of our original goals was to have voices on the blog team that represented a spectrum of views about libraries and librarianship. In particular, we wanted diversity in terms of types of libraries and also years of experience to ensure that we could have a variety of perspectives to add to our conversation.
We talked earlier this summer about adding a blogger that would represent the voice of a current LIS student or recent graduate and we have finally found one who is willing to join us. The bloggers of LG e are pleased to welcome Cynthia Lambert as our “newbie” voice.
I asked Cynthia to send me some biographical background information to put in her welcome post. Here is her response:
Cynthia Lambert
A bit longer:
I hate to tell Cynthia that her days as a cubicle -dweller may not be over. I am a librarian and I dwell in a cubicle most of the day. Do you?
Tetris, Library Arcade and Brownies
I was going to save these for a little “Friday Fun” at the end of the week, but I have a few spare minutes between meetings so I am sharing early. Here are three totally unrelated items that in the last 24 hours have made me sit back and go “Whoa, is that ever cool”.
The first is library-related: The Library Arcade at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. I have not had much of a chance to play, but will definitely be trying to master both of these games at some point.
The seconds is just pure geek fun: Mikontalolights created by students in Finland who transformed a school dorm in to the world’s largest Tetris game. Here it is in action:
And finally, a little something that I have added to my holiday wish list. I am an edge lover and Baker’s Edge is like an answer to my prayers (and I also wonder how come I didn’t think of this myself!). Isn’t it a think of beauty?
Happy Birthday Mark Twain
Last night Princeton Public Library had a standing room only crowd for a program that paid tribute to Mark Twain on the eve of his 172nd birthday.
Twain’s appearance at the library was performed by Alan Kitty, a local actor who has played Twain throughout much of his career. Last night’s performance of his original one man show Mark Twain’s Last Stand was the perfect way to celebrate the birth of this American icon — especially given that it was in a town that Twain himself visited and dubbed to be better than Heaven (at least for him).
Happy Birthday Mr. Clemens!
More photos from the night can be found on the PPL Flickr Account.
Ideas to Post Ratio
I was thinking this morning about all the ideas I have had for posts that have never made it to this blog. I have not kept count so I can not truly quantify, but I am fairly certain that if I tracked it in some way that the statistics would show that my current Ideas to Post Ratio (hereafter known as IPR) would be 10:1 at best. That is to say, for every 10 ideas I think I want to blog about only 1 actually ever gets fully written and posted here. I would like my IPR to be down around 3:1, which is where it probably was about a year ago, but somehow my days fly by and the fingers never find time to hit the keyboard to write what is swirling in my brain.
My ideas for posts tend to come when I am driving to work or when in the shower since they are often the only “alone time” I get in a day (working parents with preschoolers will understand that the shower is a sanctuary of peace). I sometimes fully write these posts as I lather and rinse, refining them as I dry off. Then I open the bathroom door and somehow my brain loses all those sentences that I formed in my steamy sanctuary before I can actually find time to sit down to write in the late evening hours.
I am making one of my New Year’s resolution early this year, which is to better my IPR so that I am at least in the 5:1 range instead of my current miserable ratio. In fact, I might even start to track my ideas so I can quantify this (and to keep me on track for my resolution).
Anyone else having this same issue lately? I have an abundance of reasons why my IPR stands where it is, but really no good excuse. I would also love it if others would share their IPR here — partly to make myself feel better and partly because I am curious.
Library Garden is the Annoyed Librarian
The mystery is solved. Look no further: We are the Annoyed Librarian. The theory that the Annoyed Librarian is really a hive mind or a team of bloggers is true and it us, the bloggers of LG, who are really the AL. Yes we tend to write about 2.0 stuff and customer service, BUT that is all just a rouse to cover up our real identity.
As a group, we have many different things that annoy each and every one of us on a daily basis and the diversity of our jobs gives us lots of content for writing as the AL. One of the team will start a post, then the rest of us will add a paragraph or two (that is why all AL posts are so long — a large blog team means long posts when you write round robin).
We have discovered that it really is a lot more fun to be annoyed and anonymous than to blog under your real identity. You can say things you would never dream of saying when you are
anonymous and that, dear readers, is the fun.
Now that we have outed ourselves, however, we fear that it will not be as fun for others to read AL — after all, half the fun is trying to figure out who is behind the pseudonym.
Reason #454 to Love Being a Librarian
Inspired by a post over at A Wandering Eyre, I have decided to post yet another reason to love being a librarian: you are sometimes lucky enough to be the muse for a poet!
I was reluctant to post this at first, but after telling Amy about this yesterday over snacks at Applebee’s (and seeing Michelle’s post today), I guess I will share. Here’s the back story…
Romina Gutierrez and I had a tour and lunch with the some of the staff at Princeton University Press a few weeks back. While at their offices we noticed that they had the newest biography on Garibaldi on display, it was hot off their presses and being released that week. We were able to get a freebie copy during the course of our conversation – but it was not for the PPL collection that we wanted the freebie. We wanted to get this for one of our favorite long-time customers, an elderly gentleman who takes a bus some distance and then walks several blocks to reach us so he can do research on Garibaldi at our library. He has been here on an almost daily for as long as I have worked here (9+ years). The staff all know him by name and we have literally purchased or done an ILL on every book and article every published about Garibaldi by this point.
When he was given his own copy of the new Garibaldi biography to keep, he was deeply moved – we knew he would be happy, but we had no idea how happy. Here is the poem he wrote and typed on his typewriter and mailed to administration to give his thanks. It brings a smile to my face to read it (I have it on my bulletin board next to my desk).
O Janie! O Romina!
Wish I knew a better way,
To let my heart (thank you) say,
For your generous book gift,
Giving my sagging spirit a lift.
Newest bio, I do not own,
On “Garibaldi” which I’m prone.
To some librarians, well known,
Thrives the noble gestures pull,
Into that zone of the wonderful.
Eye-ing graciousness hue
Embedded in Library’s two.
In parting, I will plead
Words are _______ next to the deed.
— A.C.
Anyone care to share Reason #455 to love being a librarian? Perhaps the making of a meme…
Jim Trelease to speak in Princeton
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Save the date and plan to attend this event that will be of interest to school librarians, youth services librarians, teachers, parents, grandparents… well, almost anyone! Jim Trelease will be retiring from the speaking circuit after January 2008 and this presentation will mark his final public speaking appearance in a NJ venue. As he announces on his site:
“January 2008 will be Jim Trelease’s last month of public seminars. After that his only programs will be for teachers through the Bureau of Educationand Research (BER) and a few isolated librarian conferences. Why retirement? Four grandchildren and a wife who has waited 23 years for him to “come in off the road” to travel with her. (Jim suspects there is an oxymoron in there somewhere.)”
The library has teamed up with several PTOs and the local school board to make this event happen. Trego-Biancosino Hall at Princeton High School seats 770, but arrive early as this free event is sure to draw a crowd.
More details can be found on PPL’s site:
http://www.princeton.lib.nj.us/children/
Sigh
I just logged in to check my Comcast account and the following headline was in the top five:
“Dead? You still have to pay library fine!”
What started as a story in the local paper has been now picked up by the AP and is out on the wires. The AP version is brief and it was not until I found the detailed local one that I got truly disheartened, especially when I read this:
When she returned the book last week, Schaper said, “I explained that my mother had died suddenly and that I was returning a book she had checked out.”
Schaper said she was stunned when the man behind the library counter informed her of the 50-cent late fee.
…
Schaper said the man, whose name she doesn’t know, “showed no compassion or understanding at all.”
“He didn’t say he was sorry and didn’t offer to waive the fine,” she said. “He did say he would cancel my mother’s library card. He seemed to have ce in his veins, and he had the demeanor of a robot.”
In the end, Schaper said, “I gave him two quarters and left in total isbelief.”
Honestly, is this kind of bad PR worth the 50 cents? And it is no longer just bad PR for that one library now that it has been picked up by AP and is flahsing as a headline for everyone in my region of NJ who is logging on to their Comcast account tonight.
Library Garden 