Good Librarian/Bad Librarian

I've been gone for four months, busy getting married and honeymooning and the associated. "My husband" added to profile interests... check!

Well, the campus closed at 1pm on Wednesday and was closed all day yesterday due to the snow. We haven't had this kind of weather in over ten years. Paul (aforementioned husband) drove me to work today and we saw one of those flashy billboards stating it was 9F/-12C outside. Good times.

AL Direct mentioned both a good librarian and a bad librarian in their last newsletter. Thought you would get a kick out of them.

Cataloging Twilight

So on Sunday, I headed three hours south of my home library to a three-day group of cataloging courses through OCLC. Not only did this turn out to be a physical vacation (I got to stay in a hotel on my employer's tab), but also a bit of a mental one.

Now, I did find out plenty of important things that will enable me to do my job better, and that was good. I can look at a MARC record now and more easily pick out flaws or understand exactly what it is that I'm seeing. This is kind of awesome. But the material itself . . . you don't know the definition of dry until you sit through a cataloging class. About the only interesting thing about it was the view-of-Earth-from-space wallpaper at the very back of the long room and the "Transporter Room" sign taped to the nearby elevator door.

The time I wasn't in class was mostly spent reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Between swimming and sleeping, I burned through the first book and a half back at my hotel. Meyer is a masterful suspense writer--her ability to pull you into the world is flawless; her character development is terrific. Her authorship is the only thing powering this "girl falls in love with a vampire" plot and turning a cheesy premise into something so involving.

Getting addicted to this series inspired my creativity too. I felt a desire to write that I haven't felt in years. Juxtaposed to that was the cataloging . . . it's stifling, really. I am so grateful that there are people out there who love it. It is necessary--the backbone of libraries. But despite my detail-oriented nature, I find cataloging to be soul-sucking. There is little room for creativity or imagination in this man-made system constructed to capture man-made knowledge.

Fortunately, my degree can lead me to other areas of librarianship. Navigating this system of knowledge holds much more interest to me than constructing it and making sure it runs correctly.

And with all of this reading about vampires, I think I will feel the urge to bite the next person who asks me, "what do you do in library school? Learn the Dewey decimal system?" I will tell them to come back and ask me the same question once they can tell me what all of this means. Seriously.

This is your brain on Google.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Atlantic Monthly)

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this?

Haven't these people read M.T. Anderson's Feed?

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm beginning to think that Google is, in fact, evil (and I'm only partially being tongue-in-cheek).

Book Collectors

I'm not a snob about books, but I'm probably a show-off -- as who isn't? My showing-off is of a pretty low-key if not completely abstruse sort, though. No one has ever noticed -- much less commented upon -- my collections of minor German Romantics, accounts by UFO abductees, books by and about hoboes, or memoirs by former employees of the New York Evening Graphic.

So states Luc Sante in his article The Book Collection That Devoured My Life. Very entertaining--take a look.

I can somewhat identify, although my own library remains steady at about 400-500 books. It's not likely to get bigger anytime soon either, as I've sadly curbed my desire to own books for the sake of owning. It is still good to keep my favorites, the collectible ones, the ones that have sentimental value, or the ones that I really want to read but that a library is unlikely to have. So many books, so little time!

Some trivia: I like it that Mr. Sante uses the term "library rat" to describe himself at the end of the article. He states earlier that he's bilingual in French, and "library rat," or un rat de la bibliothèque, is a French term equivalent to our English "bookworm."

Library Job Titles

This link will give you an idea of all of the jobs out there for someone with an MLIS degree--and perhaps also why librarians need to know more than just the Dewey Decimal system.

TS

This is like the place where I work, except that this is massively bigger. It looks like they have about twenty tech. serv. staff, whereas in our library we have two--me and my supervisor. Our library is a lot smaller, so my supervisor and I do all of the acquisitions, cataloging, processing, mending, and stacks maintenance (which you don't see in this video--consists of inventory, shifting the collection to make space, some shelving, dusting, etc.). Kind of a goofy video, but it gives a good idea of what we do.

Murphy's Law

Of course now that it's finals week, my internet is down at home. It's been down for four days. I am crossing my fingers that the technician coming on Friday some time between noon and five will be able to fix it.

The upside is that I was able to print my final at work, the questions look doable, and I only really need the internet for two out of the ten. On top of that, I have until next Tuesday to finish it.

And then, no more school until next January--I'm taking summer and fall off for wedding planning and . . . you guessed it . . . wedding. :)

Faux Websites

Our systems librarian linked to this page on our college's website. She uses it in her courses to show students that you can't always tell what is legitimate information and what isn't on the internet. Some of the stuff is hilarious--be sure to check out "Facts about Beluga Whales" and the links under "Current Headlines."

And if you haven't had enough after that, learn about the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide, and help contribute to saving the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Living Library

As you can probably tell by now, I get a lot of interesting links through various sources at work. And this one intrigues me so much that it deserves a more extensive commentary.

I absolutely love the Living Library concept. Go ahead and read the article too, but the idea is that a library sets up a program in which library patrons can check out a person for a half-hour conversation just like they would check out a book. The people represent various stereotypes, in this case like Ex Gang Member, Muslim, Social Worker, and Gay Man.

Now, our cultural buzzword "diversity" irritates me. It focuses on how different we all are, not on the commonalities that make us human. If we were really able to love our fellow human beings, there would be no reason to "celebrate diversity," because the differences between us wouldn't matter. Celebrating difference only drives wedges between people--it dehumanizes the "other" and turns a person into an exotic stereotype. In essence, "diversity" is a word we use to hide how prejudiced we all are by applauding ourselves for "tolerating" difference--from a safe distance. "Tolerance" is one thing--friendship and love are another entirely.

The Living Library project tears down barriers for the brave souls who volunteer and those who check them out. By having a half-hour conversation with someone about whom one has a handful of preconceived notions, one can get to know them as an individual rather than a stereotype. In the U.S., I think it would be a bucket of water to a culture thirsty for meaningful relationships in a confrontation-phobic atmosphere.

So all in all, I love the idea. The only questions I would have are . . . how do you catalog a person, and where does the bar code go?

National Library Week: College Reference Desk

April Fools' Day

These are the kinds of things librarians joke about on April Fools' Day.

Ms. Dewey

One of my co-workers introduced me to Ms. Dewey the other day. She is probably about the cattiest search engine you will ever use--pretty impressive. Is this an example of the new stereotype of the librarian as a sexy college grad. in a suit and glasses?

These are the days when information is "in" and geek is the new chic.

Be sure to ask her about country music.

Odd Book Out

Well, somebody beat me to it. And they have formed quite a collection! Click and marvel at such titles as Cheese Problems Solved and Squid Recruitment Dynamics.

Organization of Info-what?

After a spectacular January that included a horrific incident, the untimely death of a loved one, an acute attack of the stomach flu, the complete and utter depletion of all of my sick leave, a sluggish return to my normal full-time work schedule, and the start of the Spring semester course that I didn't drop, February is looking up.

This semester it's time for "Organization of Information." From what I can tell so far, it explains the abstract theories of organization and all of the strange and complex words that librarians have created to describe simple concepts. For example: no longer is it a "book" or a "DVD" or a "website," it is an "information package." Then there is "metadata," or "data about data."

"Metadata" is one I'd heard before--the idea is that an "information package" contains data, and thus any data describing that package, such as a bibliographic record, is metadata. Compare this to a similar word--"metafiction" (you guessed it; it's fiction about fiction, those wacky stories about people writing stories, or movies about people making a movie, etc.).

The most thought-bending one I've heard so far is that a "work" is the abstract, intangible idea in a creator's head, such as the David statue before Michelangelo carved him out of that block. An "expression" is the original tangible form that the work took, such as the David statue itself. A "manifestation" is a particular version or form of the expression, such as a picture of David or a book about David. And an "item" describes the particular copy of a given manifestation, such as that 4th printing of that picture of David, which happens to have a torn corner and exist in your local library. This is all part of the new-ish "FRBR" concept--"Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records."

Confused? Try reading my textbook.

What it really all comes down to is that library school is what you do if you want that piece of paper. And I want my piece of paper. But I think we could all benefit from some of the courses suggested by The Annoyed Librarian (read them and laugh, laugh hard. It's things like this that make school bearable and life livable).