The shape of a city, as we all know, changes more rapidly than the heart of a mortal. However, it often happens that before being discarded, left behind to become the prey of its memories, the city — caught, like all other cities, in the vertiginous metamorphosis that characterizes the second half of our century — will have found ways to change a heart still young and impressionable just by subjecting it to its climate and landscape, and by leaving an imprint of its streets, boulevards, and parks on the most private thoughts and daydreams of its owner. It is not necessary to have lived there like an ordinary citizen; I even doubt that it would make much of a difference. The city’s influence will be much stronger, and perhaps longer, if it has remained partially hidden — if, because of some unusual circumstances, we have lived in its midst but never reached a degree of familiarity, much less of intimacy, if we never had the freedom, nor enough leisure time to walk through its neighborhoods aimlessly, to stroll its streets at will. It is possible that by making only certain concessions and without ever completely surrendering, the city has — just like a woman — tightened the threads spun by our daydreams around herself, and better adapted the rise and development of our desires to her rhythms and moods.

The book, I went on to find out, is a love letter and appreciation of the Loire Valley city of Nantes by Julien Gracq, a French writer, historian and literary critic. Though I’ve never been to Nantes, I appreciate Gracq’s clear affection of the secret city, the walking rhythm of urban life. This opening passage captured the spirit of the flâneur I have written about before, and the way I love not only San Francisco but other cities I have walked, however briefly, such as New York, Barcelona and Edinburgh. Ultimately, it represents the higher ideals of the livable streets movement I embrace, and why I believe cities, not suburbs, are the best mode of life for me.

In what little free time I seem to have, I hope to read this petit tome — even though I know nothing about where it will go. But that’s just like walking a city.

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• Blue sky over the City, but dew on the ground;
• My daughter (3, and full of curls) dancing down the street in her sundress;
• Noe Street, shaded by trees and filled with blooming flowers;
• An older gentleman on the corner assembling bouquets, who gave my daughter a branch of lilac buds;
• Walking through a verdant Golden Gate Park on my way to work;
• Seeing Park & Rec prepping a public diamond for high school hardball.

Only catch? No camera! And I decided that my iPhone camera wouldn’t cut it.

Hopefully I’ll find as much inspiration tomorrow. I will also post a recap of my fantastic experience at the CARL Conference shortly.

It’s a bittersweet departure because of the fun I’ve had, the skills I’ve learned, and the connections I’ve made. First, credit for how enjoyable it’s been should be given to the people I work with: Christina, who for my months as an intern was my roommate in the Corsi Digital Lab, and then, when she went on maternity leave, the reason I had a professional opportunity; Becky, who is funny, lively, takes long runs in the rain and taught me a lot about life sciences librarianship (taxonomy!); and most of all, my supervisor, Danielle, who has patiently taught me how to handle the Academy’s historic materials, how to curate an informative archival display, and all sorts of digital asset management details they never get to in library school. I appreciate the patience they’ve shown in teaching me the rigging of the good schooner Academy.

Working in the Academy’s archives is quite an adventure. These aren’t dry and dusty collections; I learned about Alvin Seale, a headstrong turn-of-the-century scientist and adventurer who scoured the South Pacific for feather cloaks and cannibals; the great matriarch of botany Alice Eastwood and how she rescued specimens in the midst of the 1906 disaster; and scientific explorers like Rollo Beck and Templeton Crocker and their high-seas voyages to the Galapagos and beyond. I spent weeks delving into our materials on the arctic north and became an accidental expert on pelagic sealing, the Pribilof Islands, and the strange things that happen in the Bering Sea.

But all this was temporary, and I’ll be moving on. Fortunately, the skills I’ve learned are not.

My image in this week’s “temporary” diptych is the iconic orange band that’s been around my neck since last summer, the one that I’ll soon be giving up.

The Papers and Proceedings of the ALA for 1891 and 1892 – available freely on Google Books – are filled with interesting personal and professional notes on the event, including one late night tour of subterranean Chinatown haunts (complete with Chinese opera). Librarians have been writing up accounts of their adventures for far longer than the Age of Blogging!

In 2010, the ALA Conference remains a mainstay event, but with far more than the 50 attendees of 1891 (and developed in ways that Cheney, Dewey and Windsor likely never anticipated). Meanwhile, there is an endless number of focused events a librarian can attend based on specialty, region, and various other factors. Some now take place entirely online (robbing us of the charm of the three month train trip…)

So far I’ve only dipped my toe in one library conference, the 2008 California Library Association (CLA) Conference. I was a San José State SLIS student at the time and was able to attend free of charge in return for volunteer hours at the Infopeople Booth. It was a worthy trade. I found a presentation on Zotero to be quite useful, and greatly enjoyed the keynote speakers Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. The booth time itself turned out to be a great hands-on learning experience with a variety of interesting gadgets and gizmos (with varying degrees of library-related usefulness). However, because of other commitments my time at the conference was limited.

I’ll have a more substantial conference experience with the upcoming California Academic and Research Libraries conference in Sacramento, April 8-10. I plan on attending the entire event (I’ll be commuting in each day with my friend Carolyn in lieu of the cross-country train ride). And while my experience in Sacramento may lack late night adventures in Chinese Opera, I’ll still do my best to write up accounts of my adventures on these digital pages here.

I feel fortunate that I am now able to turn those promises into concrete action.

I am very proud and excited to announce that I have been nominated to join the Ilene F. Rockman Scholarship Committee on behalf of the California Academic & Research Libraries (CARL) association. CARL is the California chapter of the ACRL, which in turn is the division of the ALA (American Library Association) that focuses on the needs of academic and research librarians. I will be one of five committee members who promotes the scholarships, reviews applications and helps select winners (current Master’s Students in Library and Information Science). The scholarship is given to two recipients in even numbered years to help fund the recipients’ participation in the biennial CARL conference, and in odd numbered years it sponsors one student’s trip to the national ACRL conference. The hope is that budding professionals will have the opportunity to participate in conferences and thereby learn themselves how to become active in their profession.

This opportunity is due entirely to the great Penny Scott, outgoing chairperson of the Rockman Scholarship Committee, a fantastic mentor who has provided me a sterling example of how to give back to the profession, and whose path I feel honored to follow.

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.

A wine country candy shop’s card catalog, courtesy Adina Leitner

What would you do with your own card catalog cabinet?

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.

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?

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.