- about
- Age of Enlightenment
- apps
- architecture
- archives
- argyle
- Asimov
- Assyriology
- automobiles
- Banned Books Week
- biblioblogosphere
- bloggers
- blogging
- blogs
- bookmarking
- book review
- cal academy
- card catalogs
- career
- cataloging
- censorship
- cg
- chance encounters
- cocktails
- communication
- delicious
- digital
- digitizing
- diptych
- e-Portfolio
- Farkas
- film
- flâneur
- Foundation
- gaming
- Gilgamesh
- Google Reader
- graduation
- Greece
- history
- homer
- iPhone
- John Vance Cheney
- Lemony Snicket
- library ethics
- library science
- link
- magazines
- Meebo
- metaverse
- museums
- music
- OED
- oral storytelling
- personal observations
- Photography
- photos
- pinakes
- podcast
- podcasting
- poetry
- printing press
- questions
- reference
- Rome
- RSS
- San Francisco
- Science Fiction
- screencast
- screencasting
- Second Life
- self-publishing
- sharing
- social
- subscriptions
- theater
- third place
- thomas edison
- toothpaste for dinner
- video
- vimeo
- walking
- welcome
- wikis
- youtube
CATALOG AT HOME!
What’s the ultimate library geek accessory (well, aside from a tattoo)? Your very own card catalog, of course! It carries all the retro-chic of vinyl record players, 35mm cameras, and typewriters, plus that something extra-special that reveals your affinity for books and the Dewey Decimal System.
Holy Names University in Oakland is selling two vintage cabinets. A quick survey via Google suggests they should sell somewhere in the amorphous hundreds-of-dollars range. If you’re not in Northern California, various other libraries are selling off their cabinets on eBay.
The narrow drawers are perfect for a variety of crafty purposes, like skeins of yarn or children’s art tools and toys. Or you could fully catalog your home library if digital tools like LibraryThing aren’t your thing. Alternatively, you could use it to house your cocktail recipes.
What would you do with your own card catalog cabinet?
DIPTYCH: SHINE
Just as my first contribution to this project, my photo for this week’s diptych was taken at my current place of work, the California Academy of Sciences. However, unlike that abstract image (which was an underwater angle of the penguin tank), this one is immediately recognizable to anyone who’s been inside the building: it’s the massive glass sphere, containing a four story rainforest and hundreds of free-flying butterflies, an iconic image of the institution. This is merely one angle of it, highlighting the combination of natural and unnatural light shining inside.
My partner Nicole’s take on the subject is obviously quite different. The joy of the diptych.
ON TATTOED LIBRARIANS
To be fair, the recent Salon.com interview with writer Marilyn Johnson about her new tome, This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, is not the first place I’ve seen the “librarians can be hip! Librarians can have tattoos!” theme. In fact, that’s part of the problem — I’ve seen that canard a few too many times now and it’s beginning to bug me. Even the director of my graduate school is guilty of the same maneuver.
Of course librarians have tattoos.
Some even have professionally relevant tattoos! I have one friend, an MLIS, with an entire scene from Where the Wild Things Are across her back (the subject of a children’s lit research paper she wrote at SLIS). But tattoos are hardly new. Body art has a legacy stretching back thousands of years, and the contemporary, widespread popularity of tattoos — blossoming in the early nineties, still going strong twenty years on — shows no signs of abating. Tattoos aren’t limited to record store clerks anymore. My wife has two tattoos — and she’s an accounting paraprofessional. So are accountants considered hip now too?
At the root of all this is a defensiveness about our profession that some librarians have adopted. Are we really so afraid of hair buns and cardigans? Libraries and librarians have real-world challenges to deal with. Budgets are being slashed. Technology is transforming information use. We’re still figuring out what is the 21st century librarian’s skill set.
Meanwhile, any and all trades with practitioners under 40 are going to have plenty of tattooed or otherwise hip professionals, just as they are bound to also have a few nerdy, bookish types. Heck, there are plenty of people over 40 with tattoos. It’s become…unremarkable. So the more we remark on it, the more we try and make a big deal about the appearance of librarians, the more silly and vain we look. Librarians can and do come in every stripe, every style, every age. That’s no longer the point.
Johnson does point out a number of great things libraries do — this entire passage is on point: “As for librarians, they’re civil servants. They deal with all kinds of social welfare problems, from childcare to homelessness to people who can’t navigate the bureaucracy to get benefits or help finding a job. The buck stops at the library. If we keep cutting library aid, people who can’t figure out how to file for taxes, or how to use e-mail, are going to be out of luck. About 20 percent of the population is not wired; they don’t have Internet access or a smart phone.”
These are the talking points librarians should use when trying to influence public perception, not the punkish color of our hair or the trendiness of our musical taste (though it’s unfortunate, as my friend Nicole pointed out to me, that Johnson doesn’t highlight the value academic and special librarians bring as well; public libraries are only one sector of the profession).
When you get down to it, that kid who always talks about how hip or popular he or she is is never actually hip or popular. Let’s stop being afraid of a harmless stereotype and have a little fun with it, and get serious when we talk about all the good things we can do.
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DIPTYCH(S): COLD AND BOLD
Due to a series of factors, our regularly appearing Diptych series has been a little irregular. Here are the past two to catch us up. Expect the next in the series (”Rough”) on Wednesday, and take a look at other entries for these categories via the links on Miss Grace’s blog: Cold and Bold. Thanks, of course, to @uncola for her continuing contributions.
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REVISITING LIBRARIES ON FACEBOOK
Last week David Lee King wrote an excellent blog post on academic libraries and Facebook, and it forced me to rethink some of the assumptions I made a year ago in a blog post on the same subject. At that time, I felt that Facebook was far more useful for networking with other professionals and staying in touch than it was for institutions, but some of the newer features on Facebook have really changed the landscape.
The single biggest change as far as institutions are concerned is that Fanpages can now post updates and have them automatically appear in the Newsfeed of their fans. This was implemented in the spring of 2009 and it allows libraries to create a far more active relationship with their fans. This simple but key difference means that instead of the user needing to visit and revisit the fan page in order to interact with the library, all they have to do is sign up as a fan and the news will come to them. Instead of fans having to post on the wall of the fanpage, they can post comments right on each update, creating a dialog.
That is, as long as the library remembers to post news. And that was the biggest element of King’s post. If libraries want to gain fans and have relevant fanpages, they can’t just set up a page and walk away. They need to keep a frequent stream of updates relevant to their institution, invite their fans to events using Facebook’s Event feature, and add photos and videos, much like an individual uses their personal Facebook page.
I can imagine a few groans now. Who has the time to keep posting these things on Facebook when the library is busy and (likely) understaffed? Well, it’s worth remembering that the library is already creating all this content. It already hosts events. It already publishes guides and pathfinders to its website. Perhaps it already has a blog. All of these things can be fed through Facebook updates with just a few clicks. If the library also has a Twitter feed, the tweets can be linked to the fanpage account and be posted simultaneously in both places.
I’d like to add one point to King’s. Ultimately, a library (or any institutional fanpage) will be most successful if they spread the responsibility between staffmembers. I heard this from two different colleagues in the last week — one my former Technology Tools professor, and the other a former SLIS classmate — and the reasons why are pretty obvious. If only one person is keeping the Facebook page going, any time they go on vacation or get too busy the Facebook page withers away. Instead, if several people are involved it is easier to maintain momentum and vary the content.
Does anyone know of any particularly good library Facebook pages to recommend?
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DIPTYCH: SAD
Normally, a photo should be able to stand on its own merits, without need for explanation. But I do think that this week’s diptych — or at least my half of it — benefits from a bit of explanation. I was reminded again this morning of the interesting things you see and the interesting encounters you have when you take the time to walk about the City.
First, the subject of my photograph (the second image below) was suggested to me by a transient man who noticed me taking “arty” pictures of a weathered signpost. He told me if I wanted a really good picture, I should go across the street and look up, look for a sign high on the wall of the crêpe place on the corner.
Now, I actually knew what he was talking about because I had grown up in that same neighborhood, back when The Other was in its late 70’s and 1980s heyday, when it was the greatest underground comedy club in America. But I had forgotten about it, just as the City did when the club died at the end of that decade. “Entertainment nightly” indeed. Once upon a time.
Once again my gratitude goes out to @uncola for her contribution. About it, she said, “Note that on top of the sort of slow-destruction-of-childhood-whimsy-in-the-harsh-realities-of-the-environment thing, ‘where’ is spelled wrong.” Indeed.
ON FEATHER CLOAKS AND CANNIBALS
I’ve made another contribution to the California Academy of Sciences library blog From the Stacks. It’s about pioneering ichthyologist and first Superintendent of the Steinhart Aquarium Alvin Seale and his adventure memoir Quest for the Golden Cloak. The book is the account of his turn of the century exploration of the South Seas in search of a feather cloak to rival King Kamehameha I’s, and to determine if cannibalism still held sway upon any remote or forgotten island.
To quote my post on From the Stacks, “in his adventures he also came across high cliffside caves strewn with ancestral bones, went diving on a forgotten island searching for oysters with golden pearls, and even had a chance to shoot the devil himself.”
If that whets your appetite, read more here.
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DIPTYCH: FRESH
As always, original credit for this project is due Kellee Pigeon and Miss Grace. Check out their rendition of “Fresh” yonder. Here is my collaboration with @uncola:
DIPTYCH: PLAY
Unfortunately the posting of last Wednesday’s “Diptych” was delayed due to some interminable computer hardware issues. But! Here it is in all of its playful(?) glory, thanks to some timely help from my partner in photography @uncola. Enjoy, and peruse other offerings on the subject via Miss Grace.
Hopefully our next offering, on the subject of “Fresh”, will be freshly posted this Wednesday.
