tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65878142024-03-12T22:01:02.066-04:00The Library AssA blog chronicling the trials and tribulations of a mild-mannered library assistant as he attempts to land his first professional gigTomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-33875866948042699122007-10-10T00:11:00.000-04:002007-10-10T00:42:30.633-04:00The end!Well, it's official - this morning I got the call! After working for over ten years as a library ass(istant) I will start my first professional job on Monday as the new Head of Interlibrary Loan here at the Big Library. Which means it's time to bid this blog farewell. To be honest it's been hard to find the time for blogging of any sort, be it library-related or personal, and though I hope to start a new blog chronicling my career as a librarian I believe I will have my hands full for the foreseeable future getting up to speed in my new position. <br /><br />I will keep the archives active, but this will be my last post. Thanks for tuning in, folks! And wish me luck...Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-17650585560424570542007-08-20T11:17:00.000-04:002007-08-20T15:25:03.027-04:00Real Library Heroes, pt. 2Today we also salute you, Mister I Need A Form So I'm Just Going To Reach Over The Top Of The Desk And Grab Whatever Looks Like What I Need Without Asking First...Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-70790595606966115982007-08-20T10:29:00.000-04:002007-08-20T10:38:18.755-04:00Real Library HeroesToday we salute you, Miss I Don't Care If My Portable Scanner Is From 1986 And Whines Like A Giant Mosquito When I Use It...Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-2353203587138691072007-08-16T10:20:00.000-04:002007-08-16T11:20:30.923-04:00ARGH!There is a special place in library Hell for patrons who think that it's okay to put Post-It™ notes in books that are over a century old. In case you're wondering, the effect is a lot like when you put Silly Putty on a newspaper comic strip, except instead of pulling a microscopic layer of color off the newsprint you actually pull the paper clear off the page and out of the book. Eep!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-46710377322425107622007-08-12T22:05:00.000-04:002007-08-12T22:06:53.368-04:00Curiouser and curiouserOkay, well I didn't get the job... but I may have landed a different one in the process. I really wish I could elaborate right now but I can't. Yet!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-9486684054170362922007-07-28T15:48:00.000-04:002007-07-28T15:50:19.774-04:00The beginning of the end (part two)?Got the call for the second round of interviews - I go back on Thursday!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-14208182887985040682007-07-19T10:06:00.001-04:002007-07-19T10:06:37.175-04:00The beginning of the end?Big interview tomorrow. I'm so nervous!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-12880746221349241292007-06-28T10:25:00.000-04:002007-06-28T23:25:36.350-04:00We also do bail bonds"Can you guys run a background check on someone for me?"Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-27518414997497985992007-06-26T14:44:00.000-04:002007-06-26T15:35:18.084-04:00Welcome to the East CoastSomeone is shouting in the reading room, which is odd enough for any time of the week, let alone a Tuesday morning, when the room is usually dead. Today however it's quite busy - I blame the ninety-degree heat (plus humidity) outside for driving people into our climate controlled space. But as I look up from my computer I realize that there seems to be a confrontation in progress at one of the tables along the South wall. Surely it hasn't been hot for long enough to drive us all batty, or has it?<br /><br />A regular patron comes up to the desk. "Can you help me? There's a person telling me that she doesn't want me sitting across from her."<br /><br />This is a new one. I smile at the regular, a gentle and unassuming man who almost seems apologetic even to bring the matter to my attention, and amble over to the patron who was yelling just a few moments ago. <br /><br />"Is there something wrong?"<br /><br />A woman in her twenties looks at me with an irritated expression on her face. "Yes, this person just sat at my table without asking me or anything."<br /><br />"Huh," I say, choosing my words carefully. "Well, this is an open reading room. People can sit wherever they want."<br /><br />"'Open reading room'?" she asks. "I've never heard of that before. It must be an East Coast thing."<br /><br />As I attempt to process this observation, the woman continues:<br /><br />"I'm from the West Coast. We don't have open reading rooms there."<br /><br />I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, but I wisely choose not to contradict her. <br /><br />"Well, this room gets pretty full so you're going to have to share the tables."<br /><br />"I hope with someone my own age, at least!"<br /><br />I frown. As far as I could tell, there wasn't much age difference between the two patrons. Something isn't quite right here, but as long as she's gotten the message it's not really my business to get to the bottom of it. Nevertheless the woman continues to talk:<br /><br />"I'm from California. I used to go to X university, but I didn't want to get the Ph.D. there so I came here to get my Masters."<br /><br />Wow. Non sequitur city. I nod pleasantly, smile, and back away slowly, hoping that this is the end of the disturbance. But no sooner do I sit down and go back to my email than I hear her raising her voice again at a different patron.<br /><br />"Are you a Muslim?" I can hear her ask the clearly surprised young man, who is unaccustomed to being challenged upon taking a seat in this room. Rather than submit to her interrogation he simply gets up and chooses a chair at another table, but unhappy with this exchange I walk back to where she's sitting and clear my throat.<br /><br />"Excuse me, but you can't keep yelling at the other patrons if they want to sit down at your table. There is no reserved seating here."<br /><br />The woman looks at me somewhat blankly. "Oh, I'm sorry. I was trying to study in the dining hall but people kept on sitting down at my table."<br /><br />Putting on my best customer service face, I try to be helpful. "If you want more personal space, you could always try the main reading room up on the second floor. There are many more tables there."<br /><br />She dismisses this suggestion with a shake of her head. "No thanks, I want to be as close to the basement as possible."<br /><br />I open my mouth and close it again, pretty much at a loss now. "Well, this room tends to fill up during the day, so you'll have to be considerate to the other patrons, okay?"<br /><br />"What's your name?" she asks instead of acknowledging that she understands my request. <br /><br />Uh, oh. Here we go. I tell her and prepare for the situation to escalate. I've never had to 86 a patron from my room before, and to tell you the truth I wasn't really looking forward to doing it now. But instead of loudly demanding to see my supervisor or the head librarian or the dean of the college she considers my name thoughtfully:<br /><br />"Tom, huh? We don't have many Toms out on the West Coast. That must be an East Coast thing."<br /><br />There's really no sense in responding, so I just stand there.<br /><br />"I'm from California."<br /><br />I do my best to smile again and break eye contact so as to return to my desk, because if I stay I'm pretty sure this conversation isn't going to come to a meaningful conclusion anytime soon. Mercifully the woman returns to her studies and I get away again, although as patrons file into the room I wince as they approach her table. As luck would have it, however, no one decides to sit opposite her, so the room enjoys about an hour or so of Tuesday-morning normalcy before she begins to make noise again.<br /><br />This time she's laughing hysterically to herself. At this point I'm pretty much ready for anything to happen, but before I can worry about the situation I notice that the woman is packing up her things and getting ready to leave. Fair enough. As she walks past the desk, though, she stops for a moment:<br /><br />"I'm going to go home to study because it's too hard for me to concentrate. You guys are too good-looking!"<br /><br />Wow. Just, wow.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-36586100906243420332007-05-15T16:02:00.000-04:002007-05-15T16:50:43.661-04:00Why networked printers and integrated library systems are the tools of the DevilHere at the Reading Room Desk we have two staff workstations that share a printer - one through a direct connection, the other a networked connection. In their infinite wisdom IT chose to configure the student workstation (aka the "Chewbacca Seat") directly to the printer, which means that in the morning when I log in I get to flip a coin to see whether my printer settings have changed or not. <br /><br />Most of the time they have, owing to the fact that I split my day between the public service desk and my office. This wreaks total havoc on my personal profile, and despite all of the best efforts to stabilize the situation the best I can hope for is that at the very least I'll be able to "see" the printers in my network and not have to reinstall them on the network from scratch.<br /><br />Needless to say this is extremely irritating, especially when I'm working in our Circulation module and generating slips for items to be placed on hold in the room. If I forget to check to see if the Reading Room printer is in fact the default printer - and not "Adobe PDF" or even worse Microsoft "XPS", neither of which I can deselect as options since I don't have adminstrative rights to make the deletions stick - then I have to go back into the item record and reset the hold manually for each slip that failed to print. <br /><br />This is of course as much a failing of the Circ module as it is our printing situation. Why in the name of Melvil Dewey a simple "Reprint Hold Slip" option doesn't exist in this system is entirely beyond me. But that's the world of Integrated Library Systems for you in a nutshell. Large universities that could easily farm out the task of creating a homegrown client and OPAC to their own Computer Science Departments shell out untold amounts of money for bug-ridden platforms just because everyone else in their peer group is doing it. So instead of an ILS that is responsive to local needs, you end up with a shared system that pleases the lowest common denominator if you're lucky.<br /><br />A curmudgeonly software engineer friend of mine who was once a Library Ass such as yours truly once demonstrated how the school we were both working at back then could spend half as much for an in-house ILS system than contracting with a third-party vendor. Predictably his opinion was ignored in favor of a system which proved to be an absolute disaster to implement and was abandoned shortly thereafter, but his math still holds true - especially in this radically-decentralized Web 2.0 kind of world we live and work in nowadays. <br /><br />You would think that Virginia Tech's success in developing the <a href="http://www.oclc.org/illiad/">ILLiad</a> management system for Interlibrary Loan would inspire similar innovation on the ILS front, but rather than leveraging their own native engineering talent the big research libraries play it "safe" and commit themselves to products which serve neither their staff nor their patrons. Using the logic of a spouse who marries someone in hopes of being able to effect change from the inside of the relationship, we think that these vendors' imperfect products can be improved from within, forgetting that owing to some pretty major mergers in the ILS world these days even a big-name client is just another customer. <br /><br />Granted, the profession itself is also to blame here, as it is more convenient to move from job to job if we all use the same ILS systems. This perhaps makes us more complicit than we should be in our choices, not just for library systems but for all of our software needs. Does the siren song of Microsoft Certification blind us to the advantages of homegrown and/or open-source solutions? No doubt there is a break even point between local needs and universal demands, between optimization and convenience, but I think many of the big schools have simply grown a little too lazy in their decision-making processes. We could and more to the point should be driving innovation in these regards, not taking a back seat to what's trendy at the vendor expo at ALA. <br /><br />(Huh. I'm not sure how this post went from a gripe about networked printers to a full-blown rant about the state of academic libary innovation, but there it is.)Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-61585373955477656002007-05-11T12:16:00.000-04:002007-05-11T12:57:53.590-04:00Ever see a book with sunburn?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tWC_zvMttyIYEb0KAOHOEBY-HUP1jtH2avi0ARkvkuZImrN9Q56wq3TUMWwG6Tl4ed0t01eqLw_3_HV4DWNhGx1R0bf2fL3qydoyZicTnEJ_1VLmPmFrwh8Qocf6fjGZ__XW/s1600-h/0511070947.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tWC_zvMttyIYEb0KAOHOEBY-HUP1jtH2avi0ARkvkuZImrN9Q56wq3TUMWwG6Tl4ed0t01eqLw_3_HV4DWNhGx1R0bf2fL3qydoyZicTnEJ_1VLmPmFrwh8Qocf6fjGZ__XW/s320/0511070947.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5063347228623484978" /></a><br />This is a living relic from the days when our library used to expose the collection to a "healthy" amount of fresh air and sunshine - the light from the sun actually bleached the cover where it wasn't protected by the latticework of the bookstack.<br /><br />Pretty neat, eh? The moral of the story: even books need sunscreen!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-12750276607502701842007-05-03T11:41:00.000-04:002007-05-03T12:30:03.236-04:00On the value of clutch hittersTime and time again I have the same conversation with my evening and weekend full-time staffer about student employees who in her opinion aren't quite up to snuff. She always wonders why I keep certain people around. <br /><br />"So and so is bad with the details," she'll tell me. "X always forgets to do this, and Y never remembers to that unless I remind her." <br /><br />While I'm not saying that attention to detail isn't critical in a library setting, I tend to be a little more forgiving in this regard than my coworker (whom I often refer to my "enforcer"). This is in part because of the economics of work-study - on our campus the library jobs tend to be the ones that pay the least, so aside from a spike of interest at the beginning of each semester there are often few takers no matter how aggressively we advertise - but mostly because I've discovered an interesting correlation between "more" and "less" reliable workers: namely, that the former, while consistent, are less available at clutch times than the latter.<br /><br />Of course this is not some mysterious principle at work, as kids who already have their life together at 19 tend to know when they are overcommitting themselves and give me plenty of advance warning to schedule themselves off duty to accommdate their papers, exams, and everything else that needs their attention as the semester comes to a close and free time is squeezed down to zero. Whereas the ones who tend to be a little flakier during the regular semester are suddenly the students whom you depend on to man the fort when everyone else is home studying - they're the clutch hitters, to borrow a baseball metaphor (sorry, I've got Sox on the brain, especially this season!).<br /><br />I've worried about this phenomenon, mostly because as a supervisor in a higher educational setting I don't want to be taking advantage of this second category of students. But insofar as they are adults - albeit young ones - if they want to pick up the extra hours I will gladly take the help during the tumultuous end of the each term, as I'd be dead in the water without them. I try to communicate this to my enforcer colleague, and I think she gets it sometimes, but I know that deep down inside she'd rather have students who are both reliable and there when the chips are down.<br /><br />So would I! But just as my beloved Red Sox dare not part with their at-times brilliant, at-times lackadaisical slugger Manny Ramirez, neither can I cut loose my clutch-hitting students. Because sometimes when you're down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, only a player like Manny will do.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-68778750974680194452007-04-27T12:38:00.000-04:002007-04-27T12:49:18.781-04:00Should I be proud?This blog comes up in the first page of results when you Google the words <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=delicious%20ass&btnG=Search">"delicious ass"</a>. Sorry folks, but everything here is SFW - unless you're interested in some hot library porn, in which case may I recommend Michael Griffith's excellent book <span style="font-style:italic;">Bibliophilia</span>?<br /><br /><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thejerexi-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1559707216&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-6645158015145750342007-04-25T13:27:00.000-04:002007-04-25T13:41:02.598-04:00GTD vs. TCBBy now you're probably familiar with the term GTD - short for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done">Getting Things Done</a>, a philosophy for approaching one's work/life productively that encourages its practitioner to collect his or her tasks in a central location (or "bucket") and deal with them in a systematic fashion. As my life has complexified and my available free time inches its way ever closer to zero, I've become more and more a devotee of GTD, which has proven to be an absolute lifesaver in my work life since taking on some additional duties that were not originally part of my position.<br /><br />Sometimes however Getting Things Done is hard to do when you work at a service desk, where first and foremost one must be Taking Care of Business (or TCB*). Whereas GTD is a proactive principle of organization, TCB by its very nature must be reactive, as it usually involves spur-of-the-moment decision making and problem-solving that just won't wait, mostly because the person you're helping is standing right in front of you. To be fair, GTD espouses a "two-minute rule", whereby any task that would take you two minutes or less to complete should be done right on the spot, but whereas these are exceptions to the GTD method they are the rule in a TCB workplace.<br /><br />The tricky part then of course is figuring out how to combine these two philosophies on the job. I've discovered that the best way to do this is designate GTD time away from the service desk, as even the most iron disciplinarian will find it hard to Get Things Done when being interrupted at unpredictable intervals. It has gotten to the point where I actually need to schedule an entire day off-desk every week for GTD purposes, and even then that still only seems to take care of a fraction of everything that I should be doing. <br /><br />The funny thing is that I could probably spend the entire week downstairs in my office instead of manning my desk, which is the complete opposite of how this job was described to me originally by my former boss. In his defense the position was a little more circumscribed than it is now, but nevertheless it has always been the sort of job that would respond positively to the amount of extra work one could put into it above and beyond the daily expectations of TCB. Only now after a year and a half am I beginning to appreciate this interesting paradox and figure out how to make it work for me, but I suppose it takes that long to truly settle into any kind of job, doesn't it?<br /><br />* For those of you who are fans of Elvis Presley, you may already know that TCB was a favorite saying of the King. TCB also happens to correspond to my initials: Thomas Charles Bruno. I've been fond of the mantra myself ever since I worked at a bakery/coffeehouse who derived endless mirth out of this coincidence, addressing me as "TCB" in as Memphis a drawl as he could muster. On one of my two (!) trips to Graceland I picked up a TCB coffee mug - it's one of my most treasured possessions.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-8299534703433918192007-04-25T12:33:00.000-04:002007-04-25T13:05:58.762-04:00What's another hat?Recently I took on the added duties of supply ordering for my entire department, an alleged temporary move due to a staffing change elsewhere that I'm beginning to suspect may turn out to be permanent. This would not be an unwelcome development, as it adds some complexity to my job and allows me to finally attend to the material needs of the Reading Room without jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops. <br /><br />For instance, we finally acquired some alphabetical dividers for our 10-Day Hold Shelf, after my having agitated for them since I took on the position a year and a half ago. Granted, it was taking us a while to figure out exactly what we needed, but as I've mentioned previously here it is amazing how little you can take for granted when it comes to a library patron's experience of your space and his/her abilities to navigate it. <br /><br />Even when something about the library - such as the alphabetical arrangement of our self-service hold shelves - seems completely intuitive, one must always bear in mind that our perceptions of what is clear and what is not have been warped by being in the library for a goodly portion of our waking hours. Habit and intuition are not one and the same, and any organizing principle based on the former is doomed to cause more problems than it addresses.<br /><br />We've come a long way with our hold shelf system since the Reading Room's inception several years ago, moving from a completely opaque scheme where patrons were arbitrarily assigned shelves (each with its own barcode for charging items out to!) to one where our library users could feel comfortable making sense of without compromising the privacy of our patrons and the anonymity of our books. But inevitably we would find people stymied by the lack of adequate signage on the 10-Day Hold Shelf. <br /><br />Well now we've invested in some nice double-wide alphabetic dividers that can be seen clear across our cavernous Reading Room, so short of hiring a bunch of helper monkeys to assist our most befuddled patrons I think we've done all we can do. Hmmm. I wonder what billing code I'd use to purchase a helper monkey...<br /><br />Of course what would be really cool would be to have a hold shelf that worked like the wine rack at <a href="http://www.aureolelv.com/wine.html">Aureole</a> in the Las Vegas hotel resort Mandalay Bay, where "wine angels" in harnesses fly up and down to retrieve bottles of wine from the four-story tall glass and steel structure.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.aureolelv.com/images/photo_wine1.jpg"><br /><br />Book angels, anyone?Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-5747628079270520542007-04-25T10:31:00.000-04:002007-04-25T10:43:34.368-04:00The question of questions(This post originally started as a response to a query on an email listserv, but it occurred to me that it made a pretty good Library Ass posting in its own right on the topic of interviewing prospective student workers. So here it is!)<br /><br />I am responsible for hiring and supervising between 8-12 student workers and a handful of temps. My desk is a point of service for both regular library patrons accessing rare or noncirculating materials as well as visiting researchers who access the entire collection through us, so there is a very large customer service component which requires a certain kind of temperament and/or work ethic. The trouble is that library jobs tend to be the lowest paid work-study jobs on our campus, which means that many times our "interviewing" process actually works in reverse, as prospective student employees shop around for the best gig for that academic year.<br /><br />That being said, there are a few standard questions that I ask:<br /><br />1. "How comfortable are you in a library?" While we try to keep our desk covered with one staff member and one student at all times, during breaks or book pages it's entirely possible that the student worker will be manning the desk on his/her own and subject to all manners of informational questions. Bearing in mind that by the time patrons get to our desk they've already been bounced around a couple of times we try not to send them away without the answers they need (with the exception of bonafide reference questions, of course), so that requires a certain familiarity with how our library and university library system functions. It's okay if a prospective student employee has no such experience or familiarity, provided that he or she demonstrates an eagerness to learn those skills during the interview.<br /><br />2. "Do you consider yourself a 'people' person?" We are public service desk that interacts with scholars visiting from all over the world and who aren't afraid to make unflattering comparisons if we fail to live up to the other members of our peer group. As luck would have it, these same patrons tend to be the ones who require the most hand-holding, especially where technology is concerned (sometimes there is also a language barrier or physical disability). While our Circ Desk is much more production-oriented and is trained to make quick and efficient referrals when needed, in the reading room we need student workers who are above all patient, understanding, and willing to go the extra mile. <br /><br />3. "How well can you multitask/prioritize?" Although our reading room has an hourly paging schedule and periodic deliveries from off-site storage, there is absolutely no regularity to our workflow from day to day, even hour to hour. I'm impressed that people can dash off an email while staffing our desk, let alone read a book for class or write a paper, but as long as students give their undivided attention to any patrons who comes to the desk we're pretty much laissez-faire about what they can and can't do with their free time. We're well aware of the fact that due to our abysmal wages we need to sell this fact in order to attract and keep a regular schedule of students, but that requires a certain kind of worker who is able to keep one eye or ear open while cranking out a problem set at the last minute.<br /><br />4. (Perhaps most importantly of all) "Can you stay in touch and keep us in the loop?" I don't pretend that the 4-10 hours that our students work for us every week is the most important thing in their lives, and I'm not particularly interested in trying to teach them 'life lessons' about keeping a job in the real world. What I do expect, however, is for my students to read every email I send and respond when asked to, as well as give me advance notice of any upcoming problems in their schedule so that I can plan accordingly. I also ask prospective students how comfortable they feel with being contacted via IM or through Facebook for work matters, as I'm well aware that email is increasingly taking a backseat to social messaging. If through the initial contact period I suspect that there will be a problem on this front, I tend to turn away the students right then and there.<br /><br />In truth, however, it's pretty hard to tank an interview with me. This isn't simply a function of campus economics, but an acknowledgment on my part of the limitations of trying to evaluate an employee's worth in the space of the first 10-20 minutes that we know one another. I've had students who interviewed impressively but were absolute basket cases on the job and vice versa, so unless there are any serious warning flags during the hiring process I tend to err on the somewhat lenient side. I guess I'm just a big softee that way...Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-74815105983956998612007-04-18T15:08:00.000-04:002007-04-18T15:09:21.103-04:00Holy crapIt's <a href="http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/natlibraryweek/nlw.htm">National Library Week</a>!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-92026006977897260232007-04-17T14:27:00.000-04:002007-04-17T14:32:17.599-04:00This explains everythingFrom the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4605476.stm">BBC</a>:<br /><blockquote>Fighting fires may sound taxing, chasing criminals<br />demanding, but a new study says that working in<br />library is the most stressful job of all.<br />Librarians are the most unhappy with their workplace,<br />often finding their job repetitive and unchallenging,<br />according to psychologist Saqib Saddiq.<br /><br />He will tell the British Psychological Society that<br />one in three workers suffer from poor psychological<br />health.</blockquote><br />Sure, <span style="font-weight:bold;">now</span> they tell us!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-30733644269731851012007-04-06T10:20:00.000-04:002007-04-06T10:48:20.436-04:00God is dead - what's *your* excuse?Don't get me wrong - I like Easter as much as the next guy (it's in my top three of resurrection myth celebrations, along with the Festival of Dionysos and the <span style="font-style:italic;">Evil Dead</span> trilogy), but as a supervisor I hate scheduling desk coverage for the holiday. Since we're not a religious institution, we don't close or even go to reduced hours for Easter, which means I need to try and divine the religious beliefs of my staff and students without making an ass out of my self with a wrong guess or <span style="font-style:italic;">faux pas</span>. <br /><br />This is much more difficult than it seems, mostly because even if you have an inkling as to a person's religious affiliation that doesn't necessarily mean that you have a clue as to whether that person actually practices their faith or not. I've found this is hardest when dealing with people from the former Soviet republics, who may be nominally Orthodox or Jewish or what have you but are actually still old-school atheists. My super slick way of attempting to suss this out is usually something like: "So. Got any plans for this weekend?" hoping that some telltale mention of ham, lamb, or the Passover Seder will be elicited.<br /><br />Of course the bonus nuisance this year is the fact that Western and Orthodox Easter coincide*, which means that I can't rely on my Greek, Armenian, or Ethiopian students to bail me out like I normally do. This is why the public services manager learns to instinctively dread any time of the year that encourages families to spend quality time together. At least on the Federal holidays we lock the library doors...<br /><br />* It's a long story, but due to the contested interpretations of reckoning sacred time Orthodox and Western Christians can celebrate their Easter holiday as many as five weeks apart from one another. Wikipedia has a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_controversy">decent roundup of the controversy</a>, if you're interested in that sort of thing! But the upshot is that because that the Orthodox reject the Julian calendar reforms when computing the date of Easter, there will come a time when it will be impossible for the two Easters to coincide (in fact, in the far future Orthodox Christianity will be roasting their Easter lambs in midsummer if they stick to their guns!). Bad for ecumenical Christianity I suppose, but good news for anyone who has to put together a desk schedule!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-7127715013685272192007-04-06T10:06:00.000-04:002007-04-06T10:19:55.515-04:00Oh, pleaseI admire J.K. Rowling as much as the next librarian, but this is <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264391,00.html">just too much</a>:<br /><blockquote>FARMINGTON, Utah — No peeking.<br /><br />The publisher of the new Harry Potter novel has strict rules for libraries handling the book this summer.<br /><br />Among them: Libraries must limit the number of employees who handle the books before the July 21 release and provide names and contact information for each branch manager, according to the contract from Scholastic Inc.<br /><br />"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is the final book in J.K. Rowling's popular series about the boy wizard.<br /><br />Davis County Library director Pete Giacoma got a contract on March 28 and shared it with county commissioners. "I think we better ratify," Commissioner Bret Millburn said. "I think we'd get a spell cast on us."<br /><br />The contract says failure to keep "Deathly Hallows" under wraps until July 21 could get libraries scratched from future embargoed titles. "We acknowledge and agree that any such violation will cause irreparable harm to Scholastic and the author, J.K. Rowling, and that monetary damages will be inadequate to compensate for violations," the contract states.</blockquote><br />I'm sure there are probably all kinds of crazy legal issues at work here in attempting such a silly gag order - especially when it comes to public library employees, whose First Amendment protections are far more broad than those of us who toil in the semiprivate sector - but there's also the simple matter that this is the last installment of Harry Potter anyway, so what kind of leverage does Scholastic really have if anyone leaks spoilers or a review? <br /><br />And not to put too fine a point on it, but advance press only hurts you if your work sucks (cf. George Lucas).Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-62148061447446693542007-04-02T19:25:00.000-04:002007-04-03T10:53:43.038-04:00Review: The EntitledHowie Traveler, manager of the Cleveland Indians, has reached the metaphorical bottom of the ninth inning of both his career and his life. After years of never quite succeeding as a ballplayer and a coach - not to mention as a husband and father - Howie is on the verge of being fired for costing his team a shot at the World Series when he becomes embroiled in a scandal involving his star player, Cuban-born slugger Jay "El Jefe" Alcazar. Everyone knows that professional athletes make their own rules (especially players like El Jefe), but when a troubled Jay seemingly crosses the line will Howie do the right thing and speak up, or will he let his MVP outfielder get away with the unthinkable?<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The Entitled</span> is the latest novel by sportswriter and NPR commentator <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100422">Frank Deford</a>, whose previous works include <span style="font-style:italic;">Everybody's All-American</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Alex: The Life of a Child</span>. Deford deftly interweaves an insider's look at baseball with a plot that takes the reader from the Major League dugout bleacher to Fidel Castro's Cuba in a story that is equal parts thriller and encomium to America's national pastime. Drawing a cast of memorable characters who at the same time evoke real-world sports personalities is a formidable challenge, but Deford succeeds admirably in this regard. <br /><br />While I couldn't help but think of Howie Traveler as Grady Little, the Red Sox manager whose fateful decision in 2003 to leave Pedro Martinez on the pitcher's mound in Game Six of the American League Championship Series against their mortal enemies the Yankees will forever live in infamy, Howie is nevertheless his own person, a man clearly haunted by his failures both on and off the baseball diamond. So too is Jay Alcazar not merely an imitation of a current marquee superstar but a surprisingly nuanced portrait of a modern Latin-American ballplayer - Frank Deford manages to capture the internal contradictions of the latter-day immigrant without resorting to platitudes or tired stereotypes. <br /><br />If Deford stumbles anywhere, it is in the final act, as his resolution of the main plot feels somewhat rushed and the ending just a little too pat and Hollywood for its own good. Considering the seriousness of the subject matter being addressed - professional athletes and inappropriate sexual conduct - one can't help but wish that the accuser in the story comes off as something more than a convenient plot device, but unfortunately she is the least developed of the novel's characters. These minor considerations notwithstanding, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Entitled</span> is a well-written and compelling tale, one that will satisfy both diehard sports fans and casual readers alike. As yet another baseball season begins, Frank Deford has given us the perfect reading material for that inevitable rain delay. <br /><br />(Disclosure: <a href="http://www.sourcebooks.com/">Sourcebooks, Inc.</a> provided me with a free advance copy of this book for review. My opinions, however, are entirely my own.)Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-52314995651422628352007-03-27T09:54:00.000-04:002007-03-30T08:56:57.236-04:00Meme me up , Scotty!Because <a href="http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/2007/03/five_nonlibrari.html">all the cool kids</a> are doing it, here are five non-librarian blogs that I read on a regular basis:<br /><br />1. <a href="http://misssnark.blogspot.com/index.html">Miss Snark, the literary agent</a>. A daily hit from the cluegun keeps this wannabe writer on his toes.<br /><br />2. <a href="http://www.parenthacks.com/">Parent Hacks</a>. Crowdsourcing child-care wisdom since 2005. I only wish I'd discovered this site sooner!<br /><br />3. <a href="http://www.whedonesque.com">Whedonesque</a>. All things Joss. Because I have a problem.<br /><br />4. <a href="http://www.elise.com/recipes/">Simply Recipes</a>. Food porn at its best!<br /><br />5. <a href="http://www.webcomicsnation.com/reidsrow/daily_reidsrow/series.php">High Maintenance Machine</a>. The online sketchbook of Matthew Reidsma, one of America's up and coming indy comic artists (the fact that I <a href="http://sketchbook.inkcollective.com/february2007/02_26_07-2.jpg">occasionally appear in his strips</a> have absolutely nothing to do with this plug*).<br /><br />* Don't believe me? Check out <a href="http://www.fleen.com/archives/2007/03/28/simplicity-is-key/">Fleen's recent review</a> of the genius that is Matt Reidsma!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-29061884494782921702007-03-26T11:51:00.000-04:002007-03-27T09:37:21.458-04:00Why don't you Twitter?In case you missed it, there's a new Web 2.0 craze making the rounds: <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a>, a social networking service which allows you to post short dispatches from your browser, instant messenger, or even your cell phone. Posts are instantly broadcast to anyone who subscribes to them in their preferred method of delivery, making Twitter a real-time method of communication regardless of the platform. Since the format is intentionally truncated - 140 characters or less - Twitter encourages rapid-fire posts and is thus best suited for updates on the fly. <br /><br />Not surprisingly there's been a lot of skepticism about the whole Twitter thing, not just from the Old Media (which reflexively hates on anything which threatens its hegemony, <span style="font-style:italic;">a la</span> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117442140140243147-rzbC3ND6LG3_Wj7ctPKi4X_6tKY_20080320.html?mod=rss_free">a recent article in the WSJ</a> which went out of its way to knock both social networking <span style="font-weight:bold;">and</span> Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards) but from the established powers of the blogosphere as well - Wil Wheaton <a href="http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/02/ready_ready.html">wonders what the point of it is</a>, although that hasn't stopped him or someone impersonating him from <a href="http://twitter.com/wilwheaton">creating a Twitter account</a> - along with a coterie of 69 followers waiting for him post something!<br /><br />I think this lack of interest may be a function of one's ability to blog in an unfettered capacity, as what Twitter does is enable someone who might otherwise be inclined to blog if not for his or her daily constraints of work and life to blog nonetheless, albeit in attenuated form. Perhaps my newfound obsession with Twitter would be less intense were I not so busy these days that blogging has become a rare luxury for me? I like to joke that Twitter is the crack cocaine of blogging, but maybe it's actually more like methadone - a way to get your fix, when the real thing ain't forthcoming.<br /><br />At any rate, Twitter is worth a second look, especially <a href="http://www.davidleeking.com/2007/03/10/twtter-explained-for-librarians-or-10-ways-to-use-twitter/">for those of us in library-land</a>.<br /><br />(And if you feel like stalking someone, I'm <a href="http://twitter.com/oodja">oodja</a>)<br /><br />UPDATE: The folks at The Joy of Tech give us an amusing summary of <a href="http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/939.html">"what not to tweet about on Twitter"</a>.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-18727330731721499052007-03-13T13:43:00.000-04:002007-03-13T13:56:53.898-04:00Dispensing all kinds of reference"Excuse me."<br /><br />I look up from the Reading Room desk to find a very perplexed-looking elderly gentleman. "Yes?"<br /><br />The man looks at his wristwatch, up at our wall clock (which is still running an hour behind, natch), and back at me. "I was under the impression that this room closed at 10pm."<br /><br />"We do."<br /><br />The man looks at his watch again. "Was there some sort of time change that I missed?"<br /><br />Daylight Savings - always good for at least one chuckle at a public service desk, though usually it's not three whole days afterwards! The frightening thing is that this guy has been running late for everything in his life since Sunday, kind of like Kramer in <a href="http://www.geocities.com/tvtranscripts/seinfeld/susie.htm">that episode of Seinfeld</a> when he decides to spring ahead before everyone else.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6587814.post-54886654833594796502007-03-13T13:38:00.000-04:002007-03-13T13:43:08.518-04:00Mmmm, delicious feedsLike any good information professional I'm always on the prowl for interesting and useful RSS feeds. Well, here's a whole boatload of them, courtesy of <a href="http://www.resourceshelf.com/2007/03/13/roundup-of-a-few-recently-released-rss-feeds-from-the-library-of-congress-and-national-archives/">Resource Shelf</a>:<br /><blockquote>ResourceShelf friend Pete “RSS” Weiss sends along the following. For some of you, these might not be new. However, for others they will be and worthy of a quick mention.<br /><br />+ <a href="http://www.loc.gov/rss">Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office Feeds</a><br />Feeds include:<br />++ Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly Lists<br />++ Library of Congress Classification Weekly Lists<br />++ New on the Web<br />++ New Webcasts<br />++ What’s New in Science Reference<br />++ Copyright Office: Current Legislation<br />++ Federal Register Notices<br /><br />+ <a href="http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/rss.php">Historic Documents from the National Archives</a><br />Always something interesting. To see a historical document from another date, use this url:<br />ResourceShelf friend Pete “RSS” Weiss sends along the following. For some of you, these might not be new. However, for others they will be and worthy of a quick mention.</blockquote><br /><br />Share and enjoy!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09129772985016857146noreply@blogger.com0