June 15, 2004

ways to die in the seattle public library

The Stranger lists the dangers to life and limb found at the Seattle Public Library.

Posted by tangognat at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 02, 2004

teaching federated searching

Now that summer is here and I'm not teaching any classes, I have to think about what I'm going to be teaching in the fall. We're getting a federated searching tool, and I'm trying to figure out how to integreate it into all of the basic freshmen classes that I teach. I mean in a 50 minute class things might break down like this:

-class starts 5 min late, so you really have 45 minutes.
- (5 min), introduce self, show where to go to get help with research, orient class to library web page, pointing out the more useful bits.
-search concepts, why you have to search differently in library databases as opposed to google (the joy of boolean), how library databases differ from google (5-10 min)
-introduction of federated searching tool (less than 5 min)
-fun with a particular article database (5-10 min)
-how to track down journals using the library catalog (2 min)
-more fun with the library catalog (2 min)

If I add up all that allocated time I'm using up 40 minutes, which is way too much. I prefer to spend much less time talking to students and give them more time to actually run their own searches while I can go around the room and help them out individually if they run into any problems.

I'm inclined not to spend a whole lot of time on the federated search tool, because I think a quick demo will show students how nifty it is, they'll probably use it all too much anyway, and I'd rather show them search techniques in an individual article database (since some of them might not have used them all that much to begin with), pointing out that the federated search tool could give them an idea of what other article database would be useful, or give them a quick overview of the sources available.

I don't know though, does anyone have any tips?

Posted by tangognat at 07:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 31, 2004

you know you are dating a librarian when...

You call up your boyfriend to whine about your illness, speculating that you may be dying of diphtheria or consumption, and he proceeds to take a medical dictionary off the shelf and starts reading the symptoms of diphtheria to you.

Librarians have a reference book for any occasion.

Posted by tangognat at 10:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 19, 2004

I heart usability testing

Usability testing, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1) You don't have to be fancy or expensive

Some people may think you need screen capture software and/or a video camera, but you can also get very valuable results with just a person, a computer, and a piece of paper to record their actions.

2) You counteract assumptions

I did some testing today with a colleague for a page that I thought was pretty much ok. I was pretty sure that the testing would confirm that the page was good and had minimal problems. Imagine my shock and surprise when all of the people who tested the page had an unforseen problem doing a really basic task! The HORROR! But isn't it good the page was tested before going live?

3) It isn't hard to get test subjects

Here is where you can leverage the good will you might have as a librarian :)

Most people like libraries or at least don't mind being asked for their opinion or help if it is for the library, I think. So if you don't mind walking up to strangers and asking for their help and a few minutes of their time, something everyone does when they approach the reference desk to ask you a question anyway, you will be able to do some impromptu usability testing with no trouble at all.

Posted by tangognat at 07:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 18, 2004

No More Refgrunt

Via LibrarianInBlack, the original RefGrunt is no more. It is pretty great that he managed a whole year documenting life on the reference desk. The posting at Refgrunt.com has slowed down recently, I wonder if it will pick up now or not.

Posted by tangognat at 07:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 14, 2004

Library Juice vs LISNews

Good grief. Library Juice says "LISNews Veers Right." I commented in the response thread after a link to the Library Juice article was posted on LISNews.

I'm very much a lefty, and I see no evidence of a "right wing librarian's militia group" taking over LISNews. There are certainly some vocal conservative users posting comments after many of the stories, but there are plently of lefty librarians posting comments in return. If I thought I was supporting a forum for a "right wing librarian's militia" I certainly wouldn't have put a check in the mail today to support the hosting costs of LISNews.

Posted by tangognat at 07:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 11, 2004

inexorable sadness of the rush catalog request form

A situation the other day reminded me of the this Theodore Roethke poem:

DOLOR

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.


I’m not always crazy about the amount of red tape, forms and beurocratic procedures associated with doing my job, but when the end result is placing a book in someone’s hands faster, sometimes you do need to rely on little slips of paper and golf pencils, sad as they may be. I was filling out a rush cataloging request for an undergrad who needed a just received programming book soon, the book he needed was in the library but it hadn’t been assigned a call number yet. As I was finishing up with this transaction, a prof came up and said that he was in the same boat, and I said “ok we can check on your book” looked it up, and sure enough it was another situation where the rush catalog request form was needed.

So I offered to fill out the dolorous slip of paper that would ensure that the book would be in his hands in a few days.

Prof: Where is the book?
Me: It is probably back in technical services waiting to be cataloged.
Prof: Can I just look at it?
Me: If you want to be able to look at the book in the next couple days, we can fill out the form, and it will be held for you when it is available for checkout
Prof: You mean you can’t go back and bring the book out?
Me: No, I don’t know where it is, the only thing we can do to make sure you are able to check out the book soon is fill out the form, do you want to do that?
Prof: You have no idea where it is?
Me: No, but if we take a minute to fill out the form, a cataloger will look for it and process it faster just for you.
Prof: No, I’ll check back later.

Really we spent more time debating the process than it would have taken to fill out my poor lonely rush catalog request form. And I did feel a little bit like a cog in the grey institutional machine when all my answers to his questions were variations on "should we fill out the form?" but sometimes that's all you can do.

Posted by tangognat at 11:15 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

ALA blog pimping

I was a little surprised when I was skimming some of the vaguely spammy e-mail I got sent from "library worklife" from ALA-APA. The e-mail was the text of this newsletter, and the last item leads to a story about blogging. Icontemplate gets a mention, one of Nat's entries is excerpted in the newsletter :)

Posted by tangognat at 10:53 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 10, 2004

think of the children!

Wow, check out this thread on Lisnews, where everyone debates the issues of a library happening to own a copy of "Heather has two mommies"

Posted by tangognat at 07:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 28, 2004

Maximus helps out Jewish library

Russell Crowe is going to give some cash to rebuild the library that was fire bombed at a Jewish elementary school in Montreal.

Posted by tangognat at 01:08 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 27, 2004

reference desk excitement

What to do when your website is down:

1) Introduce students to the joy and wonder that is the telnet version of the online catalog.

2) Print indexes are great to have around, specifically the old reliable Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature for those students with more general topics to work on.

3) Fun with advanced search techniques in various search engines, google uncle sam, and lii.org

Posted by tangognat at 11:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 19, 2004

no fun reading for you!

I felt bad when I had a woman come in to the library and ask me where the mystery section was. We don't really have a leisure reading section, although some academic libraries do. I could have easily helped her find some literary criticism on the development of the detective novel or the influence of Wilkie Collins, but I don't think that's what she wasn looking for. I gave her some call number ranges for fiction. We do have some classic mystery authors like Patricia Hightsmith or Raymond Chandler, but not much that has come out recently.

Posted by tangognat at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 16, 2004

Pratchett Archive

The University of London Library has a web page with a few images from their Terry Pratchett Archive. Nice!

Posted by tangognat at 01:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 15, 2004

manga at the reference desk

I had my first manga related question at the reference desk today. It was very funny, a student walked up, rummaged in his backpack for a manga volume and pointed to the "about the author" section in the back, saying "I need more information on this guy!"

However, it is a little tough to find articles on a specific work of manga that aren't merely short reviews. (We checked various sections of Lexis-Nexis, Gale Databases, MLA, Asian Studies Bibliography, and JSTOR for some Asian Studies journals.) This is a case where you'd probably be able to find more in terms of sheer volume of information just on fan sites, although when you're writing a paper on a topic you obviously are hoping for more than just what you'd be able to find by googling. The student ended up with a few articles and a copy of one of Frederik Schodt's books. Hopefully that will be enough.

See, this is why being a librarian is great. No matter how random your own personal hobbies may be, you never know when the random bits of information floating around in your head will come in handy at work!

Posted by tangognat at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 03, 2004

totebags

Why is it that at library conferences where attendees are given free totebags, people come with totebags from other conferences? Is it so easy to form a sentimental attachment to a square bit of canvas with handles and an Internet Librarian 2000 logo? Or a giant totebag advertising an OPAC that no longer exists? Why must the totebag appear again many years later? Is it some form of karmic retribution? Or is it a way of appearing like a chic, seasoned information professional?

Posted by tangognat at 09:04 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 31, 2004

one book, one college/university

I'm not sure if this has been done in academia before, but it looks like the library at the Rochester Institute of Technology is sponsoring a "one book" reading program, similar to the ones that many communities have participated in.

On the informational page it describes how the library released 100 copies of Leif Enger's novel Peace Like a River into the community, and says "students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to read the book, write comments in the margins, and sign and date the inside back cover," before passing on the book to someone else or bringing it back to the library for redistribution. I think that's a nifty idea. Often reading someone else's notes in the margins of a book drives me crazy, but if I was reading a book as part of a community building exercise like this, I'm sure I would enjoy seeing who else read my copy of the book and what they thought about it.

Posted by tangognat at 06:42 PM | TrackBack

March 30, 2004

stick a fork in me, I'm done

At some point in the semester, I just run out of energy with the whole teaching thing. This is when, more than ever, I'm thankful for coffee. Sometimes I wish I could have a pot of coffee this big. I think that I only have around 4 classes left, and I teach 2 tomorrow. I'm just not looking forward to a class where:

1) I have to spend a little bit of time on internet searching/evaluation.
2) How to look up contact information for members of congress (quick and easy, but every minute counts).
3) How to find articles, and the students' topics range across several totally different subject areas.
4) Hands-on time so they can actually have some time to locate some sources.

It is a little too much fit in to a 50 minute class that might show up a few minutes late :)

Usually I spend less time on certain things and try to put faith in my Super Happy Library Instruction Handout of Fabulosity! Well, most of the time I think that students probably don't look at them very much. Or use them to take notes. Which is fine, but in a case like this I can use the handout as a class outline (good when I'm teaching in the morning so I remember what I planned to go over) and list of resources that I won't have time to mention.

Posted by tangognat at 11:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 28, 2004

fun with microfiche

Something to do with your discarded microfiche...

Posted by tangognat at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2004

nagoya

Old photo of Nagoya Castle

This is a cool digitial archive of photos that was posted on metafilter several days ago.
Nagoya Castle was destroyed in World War 2 and rebuilt in 1959.

Posted by tangognat at 07:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2004

I voted today

I voted online for ALA today. It was my first time voting for anything for ALA, because in the past I broke out in an allergic rash when looking at the paper ballot. The voting process was very easy, although by the time I finished voting for all the sections that I'm a member of I got a little sick of seeing the same satisfaction survey after I cast each ballot. It was tough trying to vote for ALA council because the names just become a blur. I knew one person who was running, so I voted for her. For everyone else, I tended to look at the background info for the candidates I thought had cool names and tried to vote for a varied mix of people. I don't know if that's a bad voting method or not but at least I voted!

Posted by tangognat at 11:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2004

aim question answering

This is an interesting example of virtual reference in action, even though it isn't a librarian answering the questions :)
http://sylloge.typepad.com/questions/
I must say, I've only gotten questions like this a couple times in virtual reference. Most of the questions I've gotten have centered around people not really knowing where on their library's web page to click in order to find the information that they needed, sometimes the questions will be more in depth like helping someone get started on a research paper.

Posted by tangognat at 08:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2004

libraries need more monkeys

Wow, Fanboy Rampage, source of endless comic book goodness posted this image today:

Man-ape holds up library

Clearly that Man-Ape with the gun is an impassioned library patron. We need that type of enthusiasm for reading more than ever. I'd love to give books to someone who thinks that reading the classics will help them conquer the world. I might not want to be held up at gunpoint though. Maybe the Man-Ape didn't have a library card?

Updated to add: even more comic book simians can be found here (via Neilalien).

Posted by tangognat at 07:18 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 09, 2004

not being able to turn it off

After work today instead of powerwalking to my mass transit stop I got sidetracked overhearing a conversation behind me:

"I couldn't find anything scholarly on my topic!"
"Seriously?"
Yeah, but my prof told me not to worry about it!"

So my innerlibrarian was just screaming "NO, NO, NO, NO!" upon hearing this so I turned around and conducted an impromptu reference interview and suggested a couple sources for this girl's research paper. And I mentioned that she could always check at the Reference Desk if she was having a hard time finding scholarly material.

So, I figure I've done my bit for library outreach for the evening :)
But it made me slightly disturbed that I can't turn off my librarian instincts after work. I'm sure that people who talk to me who make the unfortunate decision to randomy wonder about a topic are sick of my suggestion "We could look that up!"

If I ever leave librarianship and return to civilian life, I'm probably going to need hypnosis to replace the phrase "Let's look that up!" with more common innocuous comments like, "What was up with Todd Bertuzzi?" or "Chris Weber is a lying crybaby felon."

Posted by tangognat at 11:26 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 04, 2004

the good, the bad, and the giggly

The Good:

A student comes up to the reference desk after only using google for her project, saying that her prof. told her to "ask a librarian." I show her a couple article databases she can use for sources for her topic and give her a crash course in searching the library catalog and explain to her about the citation management software she's heard rumors about. She says "Wow!" and I know I've really helped her out! Yay for being a librarian!

The Bad:

Having to play cellphone police when someone leaves their bag and cell phone out on a desk near the counter. The cell phone goes off 4 times, inflicting a high-pitched Blink 182 ringtone on everyone else studying quietly. I walk over and silence the phone, and when the cellphone user comes back 10 minutes later, she stares at me blankly and says nothing when I tell her of the library's no cell phone policy. Then she starts returning her calls. I should have taken her stuff over to lost and found! Grrrrrr...

The Giggly:

When showing the wonders of WorldCat to somone needing to track down serial holdings in local libraries, he asks what the "cat" part stands for, and I say catalog. He starts giggling because whenever I said "worldcat" to him, he thought I was referring to some sort of universal feline :)

Posted by tangognat at 10:02 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 02, 2004

the answer to your question is NO!

I always feel a little bad when I have to tell someone "No" at the reference desk, even when "No" is a perfectly correct answer to their question. Like the student who was having problems accessing the wireless network in the library. After I asked him if his computer had ever been configured to access the campus wireless network (it wasn't). I gave him the information he needed to get his computer set up to access everything. Basically he needed to visit campus computing, and they would set him up. But he would not take this as an answer:
"What is the IP address for the server?"
"I don't know" (thinking even if I did know I wouldn't tell him, since it wouldn't do him any good anyway if his computer wasn't set-up).
"Would they know over there?" pointing at the circulation desk.
"No, they wouldn't. You really need to go over campus computing, they'll be open tomorrow."
He walks off to the circulation desk to ask them the same question and get told "No" again.
Now, I might have appeared unhelpful, but I gave him the information he needed, it wasn't my fault that you can't walk into the building with your laptop and access the wireless network without getting your computer registered.

Likewise with the student from Harvard who wanted to check out a book. I couldn't do much to help him. Why he would want to check out books from my library when Harvard would have everything he would need was beyond me. I think he was just visiting the library with a friend and wanted to grab a book, but it isn't like a library at a smaller academic institution than Harvard gives out library cards the same way a public library does. And I'm sure Harvard has an excellent interlibrary loan department.

Oy!

Posted by tangognat at 11:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 24, 2004

info, but not too much info

One thing I sometimes struggle with is how much information to give students when they e-mail me with problems about their research. I know we are supposed to teach students to find information themselves, but sometimes it is just better to send someone an answer directly. I had a student who was in a class of mine this morning who e-mailed me later in the day with her question, and I sent her some information, basically the call numbers of the books that contained the government report she needed, around 4 article citations, a couple possible search strategies, and suggestions for further research. It probably wasn't anything different than what she would have gotten if she'd come to the library tonight and asked me her question when I was at the reference desk, but it was much easier for her because it was all packaged up in an e-mail.

To some degree, I think teaching someone to ask a librarian for help when they need it is a good outcome for a library instruction class. So good for me!

Posted by tangognat at 11:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 19, 2004

teaching again

My teaching load is lighter in the spring semester, mostly because the department I work with is offering fewer classes. The students tend to have assignments focusing more on a specific theme or subject, so it is a good excuse to show them the more discipline specific databases or the subject encyclopedias I wish they would use more. It is also a little challenging because some of them saw me or another librarian last semester, so I try to show them fun and exciting things like field searching or proximity operators! Woo!

It is funny how classes take on the personality of their professor. The class I taught today has a very nice but soft-spoken instructor. As the students were coming in to the classroom I walked up to each one to check in about the subject areas they might be researching. Then later on when we were looking at the databases, we'd have an exchange like this:

Me: ...so we're going to find scholarly criticism here! Does anyone want to find some articles on their topic right now?!!!

Class: .....

Me: Well I know Julia over there wants to find information on film adaptations of Jane Austen novels so let's see how we would do that!

Sometimes it is a little hard to get a reaction from them. Later when some of the students were packing up their things I heard a couple of them talking to each other, saying that the library sessions were really helpful because they didn't know where to go to get started, and if left on their own they would "only use google." I really wanted a transcript of that conversation so I could laminate it and hand out little cards to anyone wondering why it might be a good idea to give up some class time to bring their students to the library :)

Posted by tangognat at 12:18 AM | TrackBack

February 08, 2004

targeting YALSA

Over at Comic Book Resources, an article from a comics retailer about the YALSA Best books list and getting comics reviewed in library journals.

Posted by tangognat at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2004

del.icio.us

So I've been playing around with the collaborative bookmark management system del.icio.us, I'd heard of it but when Greg and Steve started raving about it I decided to actually take the step of checking it out. I am a follower, not a leader. Those guys are like the library blogging Kirk and Spock and I am one of the hapless red shirted crewman stumbling around on the web, soon to get crushed by a styrofoam avalanche.

Can you tell I watched way too much Star Trek in my formative years? I'm sorry!

Anyway, I'm seriously enjoying del.icio.us, the collaborative nature of the system means that often when I visit the page and see the bookmarks that other people have added, I think "Oh right, I need to read that!" and I can add it to my own bookmarks. I do like some aspects of the categorization, if you click on a category like RSS you can see other bookmarks from other users who use the same tag. I seems like you have to have single word tags though. I tagged a couple items as "library instruction" and instead of that phrase being a tag, I got two tags, one for "library" and one for "instruction" which wasn't exactly what I was going for. So I renamed those items with the more jargony "infolit" because I wanted those things to be in a different category than any general library links I might bookmark. I've added links to my del.icio.us page and the rss feed over on the left side of my blog.

Posted by tangognat at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 26, 2004

wat up library dawg?

The Dig Ref listserv debates the use of "dawg" in virtual reference transactions. Here's a good example of a transcript of a librarian doing virtual reference who is comfortable dealing with someone who uses a ton of slang.

Monitoring an academic queue gets me fewer opportunities to provide virtual reference to users who type "yo!" every few minutes, but at least if someone is typing "yo dawg" it sounds like they are anxious to get an answer to their question. Nothing wrong with that!

TTFN!

Posted by tangognat at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2004

teaching the teachers

Classes started today, so at the reference desk I got to experience the influx of students expecting that the library would have copies of their textbook available for someone to check out. Also I had someone wanting an official time estimate on their research project involving 40 things that they needed to look up on microfilm. Like number of minutes it would take per item to retrieve. And this is just the type of question that is sort of unanswerable because it depends on so many factors like, are you using microfiche or microfilm? How familiar are you with the microfilm readers? How fast can you scan things that you read? Does seeing a ton of text whiz by on a screen give you motion sickness? I was able to tell him that it would take more than a morning, and he wouldn't be able to only spend 1-2 minutes per item to look it up and print it out.

Anyway one of the things I've been obsessing over at work is the creation of stable proxied links to individual articles for instructors who use our university's course management system. So I taught a workshop on how to do this last week and it was fun because I was teaching a group of faculty who wanted to be there and had tons of questions. In contrast I do think that some freshmen composition students, when given the choice between library instruction and a sharp poke in the eye would pick getting poked in the eye.

I picked an article to demonstrate this proxied link building process that would be in line with the research interests of one of the less technically adept attendees, prompting a little mini-discussion in the back of the room:

"Oh, I've read his stuff!"
"Really?"
"Yes, his specialty is mumble mumble"
"Uh huh?"
"He's a good historian!"

But it was nice teaching a more engaged class, it is something I have to try to replicate in the classes I usually teach.

Posted by tangognat at 11:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 18, 2004

library dreams

Last night I dreamt I was on the reference desk, when a strange man with a mustache came up and needed help researching an obscure Russian scientist. He was carrying a stack of ripped up pages from a Superman comic book and when I asked him how to spell the Russian last name he started ranting about people who lie to him.

Posted by tangognat at 11:46 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 16, 2004

career advice for librarians

On tomatonation's "Ask an Expert" series, advice on interviewing.
Also on AskMetafilter.

Posted by tangognat at 06:48 PM | TrackBack

January 11, 2004

books in the house

I was able to free up an extra bookcase in my house by buying some cheap shelves for my dvds (I was holding the camera crooked, it doesn't actually lean):
yellow shelves

I was able to do some shifting around, and I now actually have a few inches of empty space on a couple shelves, and instead of having my unread books arranged in piles on the floor, I now have an unread books shelf!

For a librarian, my personal library is extrememly chaotic. There is no alphabetical order, but somehow the Jim Thompson books all end up lumped together on the same shelf. Non fiction has its own area. Mass market paperbacks are stacked up horizontally. Childrens and young adult books have their own general area, as do books I like to read if I have the flu (Little Women, Hero and the Crown, and I Capture the Castle). Poetry books and graphic novels get their own bookcases. Other than that, anything goes.

How is your home library organized?

Posted by tangognat at 11:45 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

January 07, 2004

refgrunting on memepool

Via Waxy's links, refgruting is on memepool.

Wow, we are so trendy!

Posted by tangognat at 06:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 05, 2004

refgrunting and Mr. Bloom

I posted a grunt at refgrunt.com

One of my friends (who should be blogging) e-mailed me to say:

"Also, it's swell that Orlando is doing a READ poster, but doesn't his neck look unnaturally long and skinny and like he's Rubber Man or Plastic Man or something? And where the hell is Viggo's poster??"

Orlando's neck does look a little wonky. I don't think he could pull off Plastic Man's red jumpsuit and shades. But I'm sure putting the poster up in the YA section of your library will make a legion of pre-teen girls happy.

I want Viggo's READ poster too, though!

Posted by tangognat at 07:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

library blogs

RetroGirl has a great, positive "Open Letter to Library Bloggers" as her latest entry. Walt Crawford revisits the topic of library blogs as part of his latest column (via Library Stuff). It'll be interesting to see what the library blog landscape looks like in a few years. It feels like there's been a tremendous explosion of library blogs (or maybe it is just that since I'm blogging myself it is easier for me to keep track of them) recently. I'm curious to see how we'll all evolve over time, but there's not much to so about that but sit back and wait...

Posted by tangognat at 12:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 02, 2004

Marie Claire inflicts fake PDA on NYPL

In the Feb. issue of Marie Claire, they conduct a sociological experiment where a couple is sent out to the wilderness of New York to make out in public places until they are asked to stop. They time how much smooching they are able to fit in. The longest they were able to last was 37 minutes in a hotel bar, but the Rose Reading Room at NYPL was the runner up for longest undisturbed PDA at 15 minutes:

"We realize we... were being systematically ignored. The people stacking the books wheel right by. The academics keep reading. The security guards couldn't care less. For God's sake, librarians barely blink. I've gotten into more trouble in a library for chewing gum."

Posted by tangognat at 09:24 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 30, 2003

refgrunt is mefied

As if Blake didn't have enough to do, it looks like library bloggers can have their own community blog for refgrunting using metaphilter, looks nifty! Now, if only I'd been on the desk recently so I could refgrunt!

Posted by tangognat at 08:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 20, 2003

tempest in a teapot

Greg writes about the response to Nanette's "I hate library weblogs" post.

Personally, I think differences of opinion in the blogging world could be solved in any number of ways, perhaps a steel cage deathmatch, or someone could round up all the participants (and I count myself as one of them, because I think I left a comment over on tinylittlelibrarian's blog) and strand them on a desert island, where only the strong will survive.

Or we could always call in Mr. T

Posted by tangognat at 06:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 19, 2003

more on comic book "card catalogs"

Over at comic book resources, more talk about a searchable catalog for comic book stores from Augie De Blieck and Steven Grant. I think it is semi-amusing that people are discussing what this theoretical catalog should do, and no one has asked a librarian who would actually do this stuff all day long.

Basically one reason for this catalog is reader's advisory, since comic book store owners tend to not do a great job reccomending titles for readers. Librarians do reader's advisory all the time.

People want an e-mail alerting service when a new comic that fits a user's profile is about to come out -- sounds like SDI (selective dissemination of information) which library databases have been doing for a long time.

It is supposed to be a shared resource pooled among comic book stores, libraries work together in consortia often.

Personally, although the idea is nice in theory, I think it would be tricky to set up and maintain, even with the limited size of the database. You'd have to have someone cataloging every week's new releases. You would have to have some sort of standardized format for the records. Even if you were using some of the open source systems available, I'd guess that there would be a ton of customization involved.

Oh well, I'm not a cataloger and it is too early in the morning for me to even attempt to think like one : )

Posted by tangognat at 07:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 11, 2003

OPACs for Comic Book Stores

Over at Comic Book Resources, Steven Grant argues that comic book stores need a searchable online catalog, just like they have at the library.

Posted by tangognat at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 02, 2003

magic research sources formula

Today I had someone say they were sorry for bothering me at the reference desk because they were worried I was studying. Either I look like a young college student, or I need to stop appearing so studious!

Sometimes I hate hate hate the format/source formulas professors expect students to follow when they are doing research for their term papers, especially if they are too strict. I was helping a student today who needed books for her research. The best sources were books. We had plenty of books! But because she was permitted to use only 2 books and needed 10 journal articles we were stuck attempting to find journal articles on her rather general subject. It was like she needed information on ping pong, we had ping pong books, but whenever we searched for articles we were finding very very specific stuff that wasn't that relevant to her interests, like a statistical survey of the snacking habits of left handed hungarian orphan ping pong players. We found a few articles that looked good, but the books that she wasn't able to fit into her prof imposed research quota would have been better.

Posted by tangognat at 11:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 21, 2003

what not to wear

Good lord, I am watching an episode of What Not to Wear, and it looks like the latest episode maybe features a librarian, or at least someone who works in a library. They mention her going to an annual library conference (stating it is the same as going to an undertakers conference, hmm), maybe she works for a library vendor. Whew! She works in an office.

Now they are making her throw away her Nick Cave t-shirt!

Posted by tangognat at 10:19 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

reference questions at the store 24

Today I helped a person with a reference question as I was buying some milk at my local convenience store. She was staring at a display of astrological sign decorated cigarette lighters and asked me if I knew what sign was for people who were born in November. I told her I didn't know, but she could look it up if she went to the store's magazine rack [reference collection] and looked it up in cosmo's astrology column [authoritative reference book].
She said, "Ohhh! Thank you!!!!"

See, a librarian's work is never done!

Posted by tangognat at 10:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 20, 2003

thank you, yale avalon project

I seem to be in the habit of thanking institutions now. I must have the Thanksgiving spirit. Today, the Yale Avalon Project saved me while I was at the reference desk. I tend to fear questions dealing with either statistics or government documents. Especially documents that were published before our lovely age of online catalogs. I get these questions just seldom enough that I always feel a little bit rusty when I'm tackling them.

I'm not totally incompetent (I hope!) but I am aware of my own limitations when it comes to doing things like tracking down government documents from the 1930s and 1940s. So I had a girl at the reference desk needing historical documents dealing with Palestine. And I showed her a couple things she could use to track down some of the documents (print sources and whatnot), suggested some people she could contact if she wanted a more extensive orientation to what we have locally, but like many undergraduates her project was due in a couple days and then I was like waitaminute! No way can something like this not be online somewhere in some fashion. And some things were, she was thrilled, and we then started checking to see if we had some of the print sources used for the project, and we did!

So it is sort of a backwards way of doing reference work, using google to get citations for print sources, but it sort of worked. Yay Yale!

Posted by tangognat at 11:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 14, 2003

Library, the musical!!!!!!

Via Overstated, "Reading on a Dream!"

So funny....I wish this would happen in my library!

Posted by tangognat at 01:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 10, 2003

I am a bad librarian

...but I am ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille! I was mentioned in Steven M. Cohen's article on the "New Breed of Library Weblogs". I got quite a kick out of being grouped with Nat, Mike, Greg, Liberry Blooze, Technobiblio, Tame the Web, Library Girl, and the Info Commons Blog. It's all downhill from here, baby! w00t!

I am a bad librarian because at the reference desk today--

I had a very very hard time spelling ichthyology.

I totally forgot the title of the Historical Statistics of the United States, I was like "Durr, I know there is a reference book where you can look those statistics up...what was it called? American Historical Statistics? United States History Statistics? Statistics of the Historic United States?" Thankfully it was time for another librarian to man the desk, and I was rescued from my brain freeze.

I finally went to the public library and paid my fines (this is where I am a bad, bad, bad librarian). I owed around $7.00. But then I could check out books again!
And it seems like the friends group of my public library has continued to provide funding for the tiny graphic novel collection, I checked out Marvels and Peach Girl. I also picked up some P.G. Wodehouse and....Wait for it! Brace Yourself!!!!!

The Dewey Decimal System of Love

Posted by tangognat at 09:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 09, 2003

I made a toy

I love those websites that generate random words & phrases, I wanted to make one that would do the same for librarians, so I made one using the excellent javascript and arrays of They Fight Crime, but tweaking it a little bit to make it more libraryish. Check it out:
http://www.tangognat.com/librarian.html

Posted by tangognat at 10:09 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Everything has a beginning and an end

The teaching season is basically over. I am thrilled. I still have a couple classes here and there in the next few weeks, but I no longer have to feel like I am living and breathing freshmen library instruction.

I'm fine with the cyclical nature of the instruction librarian's job. Usually right when I get to the point where I feel like I will go postal if I have to explain boolean operators one more time, things begin to ease up. I'm looking forward to a week of work with no classes, it feels like I'm lying on a beach in Bora Bora while Clive Owen, Sean Bean, and Colin Firth are fanning me with palm leaves.

Posted by tangognat at 09:00 PM | TrackBack

November 04, 2003

what to do when you have been teaching a whole lotta classes

1. Instead of greeting your co-workers with a "good morning!" when you get to work, mumble inarticulately instead.

2. Paint your toenails OPI "I'm Not Really a Waitress" Red to keep yourself cheerful. Wonder what color "I'm Not Really a Librarian" would be. Speculate it might be mauve or a bookish red-brown.

3. Watch classic movie "What a Girl Wants." Shut up!

4. Decide teaching 2 classes in a row entitles you to hobbit-like "second breakfast." Eat chocolate croissant and drink large coffee. Enjoy coffee and sugar buzz.

5. Buy advance tickets to Matrix Revolutions. Although movie might be bad, Keanu is eternally beautiful!

6. Look forward to suddenly clear schedule next week!

Posted by tangognat at 04:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 30, 2003

psychic librarian

This is the time of year when it is time to unpack your blankets, the leaves begin to turn, the stores start putting up their christmas decorations, and when a very large number of freshmen start to work on their research projects!

I taught 3 classes yesterday, which is basically my limit. After one class I learned that I need to be a little more assertive with students when they are doing individual research. I try to make the rounds of the classroom and check in with everyone several times. And sometimes when I ask them if they need help and they say "I'm doing ok, I've found some articles", I usually don't tend to press the issue because I've got a whole classroom to get to. But I found out after my last class yesterday from the professor that there were a couple of students that needed some extra help, but I didn't know it at the time. This is why very limited psychic abilities might be useful for a reference/instruction librarian because then I would be able to sense when "I'm OK!" really means "I'm not ok, but I don't want to ask you for help right now!" and then maybe I could do something about that.

Posted by tangognat at 08:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 23, 2003

no classes today

This felt very luxurious. I was working reference instead. I had one not so great and one really good virtual reference transaction today.

The not so great one was for a student who had the dreaded "formats assignment", where he was required to use x number of books, x number of web sites, and x number of articles. The student's question upon logging in to the reference service was something like "I need a web site about happiness." After determining that the student was needing a web site for the sake of checking it off on a list, I tried to ask some open ended questions as to which aspect of this sort of abstract concept of human behavior the student might be interested in exploring, and didn't get much of a response that I could use to direct my search. I ended up sending the student a link to the lii.org section on psychology, figuring that there had to be some general web based sources there that the student could use for background information. I sent the student a couple examples of some stories on news web sites (health effects of happiness, etc) and described some of the search strategies the student could use to find more information. The student wasn't happy with the links/search strategies I was suggesting, but wasn't being any more specific than "The web site has to have a date on it so I can cite it". I eventually gave the student information about contacting his local reference service to follow up on his question.

This was in sharp contrast to another student I was helping at the same time, who was just getting started with research on a legal topic, he was very happy with the "law about" section of http://www.law.cornell.edu/ and I was able to take him through some searches in lexis nexis, and he asking questions about search strategies, article sorting, finding other legal information, and I felt like he was at least off to a good start.

I'm using sports and pop culture examples more and more to explain boolean to students, especially the classes working on a paper related to a controversial current event. So one I used a couple days ago that got some instant glimmers of recognition from the class was:

Kobe NOT (nutella OR nike OR sprite)

Posted by tangognat at 07:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 17, 2003

comics in libraries = guerrilla marketing

Comic book resources column "The Comic Pimp" on getting comics into libraries, the suggestions are excellent because a librarian helped with the column!

Posted by tangognat at 07:35 PM | TrackBack

October 15, 2003

crazy reference desk

It was a busy day at the reference desk. I love the fact that people wait 2 days before their paper is due to get started on their library research.
I used to do this all the time when I was in college, but usually I'd have all the research out of the way and then just stay up until 6am typing the paper. Believe me, you haven't lived until you are staring at your computer at midnight, confronted with the idea of churning out a 10 page paper on epistolary novel, drawing upon readings of Lady Susan and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Everyone in this large undergraduate class get to learn about the concept of article databases being restricted to a certain number of simultaneous users. I think that 1/4th of my questions centered around this issue, and I informed people of their other options for research that did not have a login limit. I also got to helpfully suggest "Violence is not the answer!" when one disgruntled student was contemplating walking around the library and physically removing other researchers from their computers if they were using the database in question.

I had a very very irate woman march up to the desk, extremely angry that the library "Did! Not! Have! This! Essential! Journal!" Dealing with people who come to the desk with major attitudes is never fun. I don't mind when someone becomes hostile or cranky when I'm telling them that there is nothing I can do to personally log them in to a swamped database, because I can see why they'd be dissapointed. After a little back and forth with the woman, I discovered that one of her journals was in fact at the bindery, and about to come back in a few days (she didn't want to hear this, as soon as I mentioned the word bindery it became unimportant to her) and the reason why she couldn't find her other journal was because she was wandering around looking for journals in the book stacks, and not the area where the bound journals are.

I allowed myself a silent inner smirk. I don't think it is easy to find things in a library, especially if you aren't used to it. I'll walk people to the shelves and show them how to find what they need if they are having trouble, but it doesn't make sense to get angry at the library or at the librarian when you're looking in the wrong place for what you need, especially if people are there to help you out!

Posted by tangognat at 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2003

beyond the valley of the refgrunt

Ever since refgrunt went on vacation I've noticed an alarming spike in my referral logs. Clearly people crave more refgrunting. Here you go!

Printing
French Dictionaries are over there, miss.
We can't hold your backpacks for you while you go eat.
Printing
Scissors
If you are researching public health policies, try these sources...
That speaker is in that building across campus
Printing
You search the library catalog to find out if we have a journal
Printing
We don't have the videotapes that are on reserve for your class at another university. If we did, you couldn't check them out today, since you aren't a student here. Sorry sir.
Wireless
You can check out an ethernet cable over there, miss
Group study places are over there
Here are some resources to try for your poli sci paper
Citation management software
We don't have MSWord on these computers, sir
Grammar handbooks are there, miss
You can get into E-Journals from your dorm room, sir
Printing

Posted by tangognat at 11:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 06, 2003

committees from hell

I totally forgot that today was Yom Kippur. I am such a bad ex-jew.
Actually, I am probably a very good ex-jew for totally forgetting about a major holiday. I don't feel all that repentant either : )

However, sometimes I feel like doing committee work is atonement enough to last me throughout the rest of the year. I don't think that the group projects that students endure in library school prepare anyone for the sheer mind numbing drudgery of committee work. Like, when you are the only person on the committee with a certain needed skill set, so you end up doing most of the work. (Although this happens in libraray school too). Or the slippery slope that you start sliding down, once you've done some committee work, your reward is more committee work.

At a former job of mine, I always had an interesting Thursday morning, because 3 of the 8 committees I was on were all meeting at the same time. So sometimes I would play committee musical chairs, where I would show up at one committee for 20 minutes, then go to a different part of the building for the next one, etc. Eventually I got to the point where I just went to the committee that had the most sane committee members. Sometimes they brought cookies!

I have a committee meeting soon. I think I'm getting sick, perhaps it is the Black Death, and I will not have to attend the committee, because I will no longer be suffering on this mortal plane.

Posted by tangognat at 10:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 29, 2003

tangognat, the one-eyed librarian

Makes me sound mysterious, no, like a pirate?

Not really. Ok, this is maybe a little gross. If you get squicked out by hearing about another person's eye problems, read no further.

I lost a contact lens in my eye, and I have no idea where it is. I really really hope that it fell out somewhere without me noticing, because I can't find it, although my eyeball is itchy. And this happened 15 minutes before I went on the reference desk. It really messes with your vision, to have one contact lens in and one not. I was contemplating whipping up an eye patch out of office supplies, because that's what the lipstick librarian might do. I was thinking about making an eye patch out of a post-it note colored black with a sharpie, and making an eye patch chain to wrap around my head with paperclips, but then I decided that would make me look scary like Nadine from Twin Peaks.
So I decided to arrange my hair in imitation of Veronica Lake, hanging over my afflicted eye.

And I kept blinking and hoping that no one would think that I was being playful with them and winking at them when I was just trying to dislodge my still-missing contact lens. And trying to look up wacky ILL requests in World Cat with poor vision was fun.

I hope my eye doesn't become horribly infected and fall out.

I really wish I did not have to wear my glasses tomorrow, because I don't want to look like a librarian!

Posted by tangognat at 07:29 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 28, 2003

ALA beat me up and stole my lunch money

In a metaphorical sense, I mean. My membership always comes up for renewal around October. By the time I finish adding up all the extra side groups I belong to, I'm wondering how I'm going to buy milk.

And there is no way I'm going to donate extra money to any of ALA's causes, but thanks for stuffing tons of solicitations into my membership renewal letter!

If I was kidnapped and woke up in an alley in Hong Kong two years later, would I still be getting mail from ALA? Probably!

I cannot believe that Vaughn got married after Sydney died, even if they found proof of her death, you would think he would be a little more suspicious, being a SPY and all. I swear, if my boyfriend got married while I was in a coma or being brainwashed and turned into an evil blonde assassin, I'd be really annoyed.

Posted by tangognat at 11:40 PM | TrackBack

September 26, 2003

some days I need a coffee IV

I taught 3 classes yesterday morning, and then had to be on the reference desk in the early evening. So I came home and slept for around 11 hours.

The instructor for a couple of the classes basically just wanted time in the library for his class to work on their assignment with a librarian hanging out nearby to help them. So I didn't actually "teach" a whole lot, other than a few introductory remarks when I figured out that no one in the class had used the library before. Then, I had mini-reference consultations with every student in the class. And afterwords the instructor thanked me for not talking very much. I have no problem not talking during an instruction session, if that's what is requested. And at 8:00 in the morning, I tend to doubt my ability to speak coherently, so it worked for me too.

Via journalista, evidently Alan Moore is so evil and so Hollywood that he wrote League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a smokescreen for Fox Studios, because the idea for League really came from an unproduced script by Larry "Phone Booth" Cohen.
That's funny!

I don't know about this blogs and ISSN thing. I don't think there is anything wrong with getting an ISSN for your blog, if you can, but I wonder if our issn registry has the man/womanpower to assign the numbers to blogs.

Posted by tangognat at 07:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 22, 2003

and so it begins

It felt like today kicked off the start of library instruction "season".

I has a meeting at the library with the primary department I work with. I was somewhat nervous about standing up in front of people and talking about the wonderous world of library instruction. I have no problem standing up in front of undergrads, but faculty sometimes make me nervous. Especially when they arrive in a horde. And then I thought, "you are just talking to a bunch of faculty and new grad students, they aren't malignant zombies coming to eat your flesh" and I became much much calmer.

I showed everyone our new ILL system by requesting this book, and that got a laugh.

Posted by tangognat at 09:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 19, 2003

when databases attack

I taught 2 classes today. I have a cold, so I was not in a good mood when I was running some searches in one of the databases I was going to show my classes (the name of the database vendor rhymes with Christian Bale), only to discover that they had just switched on a 'feature' that appears on the top of the search results list -- a link to the google image search.

While I'm all in favor of using web image searches if it is appropriate to one's research, I see no value in a link that will try to rerun a search for articles(formulated with boolean operators, truncation symbols, etc) in google without reparsing the search query so it would be possible to get some results instead of a google error message.

And why was this even set up? Are they getting kickbacks from google? What does my library get for paying for a database that incorporates search engine product placement? And why do database companies do things like this without informing their clients?

Most people know how to use google already. It is enough of a struggle to try to educate patrons that they have access to a ton of valuable online information through the library, and no, it isn't all on the open web. Seeing the google logo slapped on an article database just adds more confusion to an area that is already blurry to many people.

Grrrrrr....

Posted by tangognat at 05:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 18, 2003

homework help

I swear, in some other dimension, I am a young adult librarian. I think I had my first homework help reference transaction today over the phone.

Anyone doing YA reference, let me know if this is typical or not.

Note: the following account is semi-fictionalized but based on true story. True Story!

I don't need any help!
A One Act, One Scene Play

Cast of characters:

Tangognat: T
Little Sister: LS
Tangognat's Mom: Mom

Tangognat arrives home to hear a message from her mom stating that she has a reference question

Tangognat phones home.

Little Sister: Hello?!!!!!!
T: Hi, It's Tangognat.
LS (crestfallen that T is not one of her friends from high school): Oh....Hi..... It's ok. We don't have a question anymore.
Mom in background: Is that T? Let me talk to her.
LS: But we don't need to!
Mom: Give me the phone. Hello! LS is working on a project. She needs statistics about radio stations.
LS yelling in background: Not anymore, I found something already, everything is fine!
Mom: I think that someone wants to do a very superficial paper-
LS yelling in background again: Yes, I do want to write a superficial paper! I don't care!
Mom: Getting some information after typing a couple words in google, instead of using some better sources.
T: Umm. She might want to look at the Statistical Abstract of the United States. You can get to it at www.census.gov.
LS still yelling in background: I have enough to write the paper, I don't need to look at anything else!
-stomping noises-
Mom: Hold on, I'll get a pen.
T: She could try searching the FCC web site or maybe googleunclesam instead of regular google. If those don't work, let me know.
Mom: OK, I wouldn't have thought of the FCC
T: She doesn't seem to be into the whole research thing.
Mom: No.
LS: muffled indignant shrieking

T: thinks that this was not a great reference transaction, as she was not able to run some quick searches to see if the requested statistics actually were at these sites, and using the online Statistical Abstracts is hard unless you open the index in a seperate browser window, and she wishes she could have told her sister this but she probably wouldn't listen anyway, so that's the way it goes.

The End


Edited To Add:
Tangognat deeply regrets any pain and suffering she has caused her Youngest Sister by portraying her as a "shrieky embittered pre-teenesque character". For truly, although she is sometimes shrieky and embittered, the sister in question is also very smart, witty, and charming, especially for one of teenage years.

Posted by tangognat at 08:04 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

September 17, 2003

welcome to one librarian's nightmare

Or actually, what looks like a rather annoying day, dealing with some interesting faculty.

In the free section of the Chronicle of Higher Ed, "The Librarian's World and Welcome to It"

Posted by tangognat at 11:12 PM | TrackBack

September 16, 2003

tangognat meets refgrunt

Since today I spent half my day on the desk, I thought I'd experiment with a RefGrunt style post:

Here are some databases you might want to try for your research....This is how you might search for your topic
Printing
Books are over there
Wireless
Here is a highlighter
Back issues of that magazine from 1935 are there
We have online access to that journal
Books are over there
Phone number for the campus convenience store
Here is some white-out
You can type your paper in the computer lab
Books are over there
Put a trace on the missing book
College rankings
That book is at the other library. You can still check it out.
Here is a calculator
InterLibrary Loan
Printing
Reference books are here, books you check out are there
Use the LC call numbers
Place a recall on the book
No floppy discs here
You look up a book like this
Spanish Dictionary
You can check out as many books as you need
Wireless
Here is a pen
You can photocopy the magazine
Water fountain is over there
Copycard
Printing
Reserve is over there
Printing
I don't have any kleenex


Posted by tangognat at 11:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 11, 2003

Who wants to be a super librarian

Well, here's an opportunity for you, this is the application (pdf) for the new Stan Lee show on the WB, Who Wants to be a Superhero. Perhaps we should get a representative of the library community on this show as a way of counteracting the dreaded shushing librarian action figure. I'm sure if they make action figures of the people on this reality tv show, they'll at least have kung-fu grip.

Here are the questions from the application, and how a librarian might answer them.

Superhero Name: Toshukan, the Ninja Librarian
Non-Superhero identity and occupation: Librarian!
Describe your character's costume and appearance: Wears Lipstick and lots of leather. No buns or glasses, unless they are of the cool sunglasses variety!
What 3 primary powers does your superhero have? Lightning fast intelligence to find the information you need. The invulnerable teflon coating that builds up with years of public service -- any insults or attack will just magically slide off. Secret CD-ROM Attack of Death, like Jet Li in Black Mask.
What secondary abilities, skills, or talents does your superhero have?
The ability to magically fix all paper jams in printers, above average strength from lugging books around, superior math skills from tracking sign-up times on internet terminals in library.
What special weapons or tools does your superhero have?
Magic Anonymizer Wand scrubs databases and library records when waved in the air, preserving patron privacy.
What does your superhero do when not fighting crime?
Runs summer reading program, mans the reference desk.
Does your superhero have any talents or hobbies?
Getting modified.
Does your superhero have a specific code of conduct?
Umm... ALA code of ethics?
Describe your superhero's personality:
Slightly bewildered that she is a librarian, but coping as best she can.
How does your superhero transform?
She possesses the ultimate interdimensional handbag, giving her the ability to carry around as many books as she wants, as well as multiple ninja outfits, and hundreds of pairs of cool black boots. In times of trouble, she can vanish inside her handbag, and also use it as a dressing room or to teleport to a safe location.
What is your superhero's motivation? Does your superhero have any specific abilities or goals? I hate questions like this, so I'm going to write a random list of goals that either I or my librarian friends have discussed at some point--
To achieve ultimate power and benevolent dictatorship by becoming a library director. To meet a cute FBI agent. To go back to school and get a second master's degree. To move to Michigan and live happily ever after. To find a second career.
Does your superhero have any specific friends, family, or loved ones?
The Emotional and Professional Support Gang, consists of a group of library school buddies, all superheros in their own right, who band together when times are tough to fight the forces of evil!
How does your superhero get around?
A combination of the aforementioned interdimensional handbag, or super silent rollerskates.
What are your superhero's catchphrases?
"Don't call me Marion!" "Beware my Bibliowrath!"
What are your superhero's weaknesses?
Fearsome budget cuts, administrative tasks, and the sight of John Ashcroft acts like a mind numbing fatal poison.
Where did your super hero get her powers?
Graduate School and top secret ninja training.

Posted by tangognat at 12:16 AM | TrackBack

September 10, 2003

my plan to revolutionize library classrooms

One thing that was a bit of a rude awakening (not that I didn't expect it to some degree) when I started out as a librarian many, many, many years ago was the amount of time I spent preparing for or administering various aspects of my work as opposed to actually doing work.

This hits especially close to home when one is trying to do bibliographic instruction, and you spend tons of time scheduling classroom space before you actually get to the point of standing in the classroom and teaching.

So I've come up with a multi-point plan that will free me from the tyranny of the classroom!

First, I am magically showered with thousands of dollars, like manna from the heavens.

I use this money to purchase 20 laptop computers with wireless internet connectivity and 20 beanbag chairs.

Then, instead of using a classroom, I distribute the computers and beanbags to my class of eager freshmen. Then we stake out our turf somewhere, in the hallways of the building, outside, the library lobby, etc.

Next, we settle in to our beanbags and connect to our always stable wireless network. The class logs in to the meeting room provided by our virtual reference software. I can now push pages out to the class, showing them how to search.

Result: Classroom Free Information Literacy! The world is enlightened, resulting in a new era of prosperity and world peace.

You might find this farfetched, but since the PIXIES ARE BACK TOGETHER for a tour and possible new album, I figure anything can happen now.

Yay!

Posted by tangognat at 10:39 PM | TrackBack

September 08, 2003

great googly moogly

Imagine my shock and surprise when I was goofing off...er I mean to say Engaging in Vital Professional Development by looking at lisfeeds, only to discover that I am listed there! I am now doing a big Wayne and Garth "We're not worthy!" in lisfeeds' general direction. Cool!

My first classes of the semester went ok, I think. Random things kept coming up in the middle of the day for me to work on, so I ended up scarfing down an apple and diet coke for dinner while prepping for my classes in the late afternoon, but that is fairly typical of me.

Something is going on with the HVAC system in the classroom. It was very warm. I was overly sweaty. I felt like the Swamp Thing, except for being shorter and female and not as green.

One of the advantages of teaching back to back sessions is you can fix all the stuff you forgot initially in the second session. I left a few things out in my first class only to discover what I'd forgotten when I was helping students individually, leading me to occasionally stand in the center of the room and and inform them about the niftyness of interlibrary loan at random moments. But! It looked like everyone was finding plenty of articles for their projects, and in the little assessment sheet that they handed back to me asking them what they'd learned nearly all said some variation of "Finding articles, narrowing down my searches" which I think is about all you can expect someone to remember from a one-shot BI session. Which is pretty much all I do.

Now I have a horrible sore throat, which I hope is either allergies or the effects of talking at full volume for 2 and a half hours, and not a cold.

Posted by tangognat at 10:08 PM | TrackBack

first classes

I am so slowly waking up today. I hope I eventually become semi-coherent, as I am teaching my first couple of library classes of the semester early this evening. I always tend to get amped up for my first classes, but then that wears off quickly enough once the semester drags on and I'm teaching my 20th session. Not that I'm not inherently thrilled to be teaching people about the joys of library research!

Some linkage for you:

Via Nielalien: Volokh Conspiricy finds that Demon Beast Invasion is all about sex, this was the comic challanged as part of the Castillo Case in Texas.

Round 4 of Comic Book Idol, I hope if they run this again they actually get some female artists to participate.

Via animenewsnetwork the cast of the live action Sailor Moon Movie, Aieee the horror. The Horror!

Posted by tangognat at 10:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 04, 2003

hazards of library blogging

I'm so glad that liberry blooze is back. And it is too bad that things were difficult for the author. I guess it is part of the dangers of blogging, especially in a profession like librarianship where if people want to find out information about you online, they certainly have a full arsenal of search techniques in order to do so.

So, I'm not going to be blogging very overtly about work. Although I'd feel pretty safe if I was because blogs are not on the radar of most of the people I work with. I think I'm the only one who fills empty stretches at the reference desk by scanning lisfeeds, for example. Although, if I work with you and you read my blog and you haven't told me, please wink 3 times and raise your eyebrows at me twice when I come in to the library tomorrow so I know who you are. Thanks!

I've been wondering a little bit recently about how library blogging fits with our desire to insure patron privacy. I mean, if we scrub our databases of identifying information, and put up cute signs warning patrons about the Patriot Act, but then we blog about our co-workers and patrons, is that an invasion of privacy?

If I were to blog, say, about the father of a prospective student who came up to me at the reference desk with family in tow and asked me to speculate about the ideological leanings of the campus and when he found my answer unsatisfying asked me for percentages of students with the outward signs of alternative lifestyles like tattoos or piercings would that be technically an invasion of his privacy? I really wanted to tell him that if his daughter being exposed to people with tattoos was the worst thing that happened to her during her college experience he would be a lucky man, and the only way to protect her from such dangerous people would probably be to enroll her in BYU or Rodger Williams University, but I bit my tongue and smiled like a good librarian, and gave a very balanced answer that he deemed "politically correct" before walking away.

I think I'm ok, because no one knows where I work. I might say I'm in Boston, but I could be in Canada or Finland for all you know! So there! I might not even be a librarian. I could be a recently signed nba guard from iceland or a famous scottish cross dressing comic book writer for all you know. And any blogging about people in real life would have no names and details tweaked to protect the innocent or not so innocent as the case may be.

But people blogging have gotten fired for their blogs, or fired for reading blogs so I wonder if something negative could happen as the library blogosphere grows larger, especially since we are in such a hot button profession (censorship! think of the children! internet! ack!) in many ways.

I'm probably being way too paranoid due to rampaging insomnia.

Posted by tangognat at 12:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 02, 2003

no textbooks or chickens, please

Aieee! I had my first evening shift at the desk since classes started. I had nine people at the desk at various times asking where their textbooks are at the library. I very pleasantly informed them that unless their professor placed their textbook on reserve it was unlikely that we would have it. It is probably reasonable for an entering freshman to assume that the library is a giant textbook warehouse. Then I got to explain the concept of reserve:

"I want to check it out"
"You can check it out for 2 hours to use in the library!"
"But I need to take it out of the library"
"But your whole class needs to check it out, this way everyone will be able to use it to study! Isn't that great!?"

The math/science profs are on the ball, as there seem to be multiple copies of the introductory calculus books on reserve.

I was not able to be of much help to the poor young woman who came in needing a book for her class with "something about words in the title" I told her she could ask at reserve to see if her prof. placed it there, and failing that explained the joys of searching the library catalog for the titles of books once she had her syllabus in hand and knew what she was looking for. She seemed less than enthused about the wonders of the library catalog.

Then the sound of a chicken rang out across the library. One of the kids had a cell phone with one of those new polyphonic ringtones and it sounded just like a chicken. I was seriously wondering who had brought in a barnyard animal to the library for a second.

During my non-reference time, I was listening to Kent. I had the song Socker on repeat for around a half hour. Ah, Sweden! You give us Foppa, and you give us lovely pop music! Sweden, you rule!

Posted by tangognat at 11:13 PM | TrackBack

August 31, 2003

back to school

On Friday at work, one of the students on an earlier library tour came up to me at the reference desk as I was finishing with someone else, and commented "You're so quiet now!" and I was like "Yes, I don't tend to project my voice when I'm not trying to speak to 30 people at once!"

One of my co-workers commented that when I gave tours my voice was "booming" and I thought great, now the whole library knows that we have a reference book that provides a list of all the monster movies that feature giant squid. But that's ok, because someone could be sitting around thinking "Man, I want to watch a movie with Squid!" and now they know where to go.

The first couple weeks before the beginning of a new semester, I am usually filled with dread wondering how on earth I'll have the time to get everything done, but usually I settle down and its all ok.

Posted by tangognat at 01:25 PM | TrackBack

August 27, 2003

"redefining the role of the library"

This article is an interview with the Vice President/CIO/University Librarian at Rice University.

I do agree in some ways that librarianship is conservative. On a personal level one thing that drives me crazy as a younger newer librarian is the conservativism that occurs sometimes when one has enthusiastically presented a new idea, and then is subjected to a 20 minute lecture about how your nifty plan is impossible to implement because you do not understand the history of your library/institution and therefore your proposal is not worth pursuing.

I don't think that library science programs dropping "Library" from the school name is a positive sign. I think that we have to make the idea of libraries and librarians much more cool, without the need to jazz up what we do by calling ourselves "information scientists" or whatever.

Posted by tangognat at 07:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 19, 2003

liblogs, biblioblogs, braryblogs...

There has been much written recently about the nature of library weblogs and the overlap that happens when everyone links to the same item. Steven would like to have a way of filtering out redundant posts. Catalogblog calls for more topic-centric library blogs.... I wonder if library blogs are going through the same growing pains that regular blogs went through years ago – there are too many blogs, pointing at the same links, how to cope?

I wonder about having the information you get from library blogs pre-filtered. Yes, it would save time, but isn’t filtering information what librarians are good at in the first place? I would guess that a librarian would be more able than the average reader to quickly glance at a link to the librarian action figure or david hasslehoff singing in an Eskimo outfit, note that it is of no interest and everyone else has already linked to it, and move on.
Is there anyway to quantify the time you’d save by weeding out links to a common library topic before you decide to also segregate all the good commentary attached to the link you find redundant?

I don’t think that to be a librarian blogger you automatically have to be contributing to the profession in the more traditional sense, by providing a human filtered SDI service on librarianship to your blog readers. I greatly enjoy reading the slice o’ life librarian blogs created by libraryblooze, tinylittlelibrarian and malelibarian centerfold. I suspect that once the semester starts and the students come back, I’ll have a few stories like that to tell myself. I decided to start blogging because I wanted to write more even it was very informal, and I wanted to be able to tinker with my own web site.

I think that sometimes you don’t need a reason to start writing. Sometimes your focus, niche, or the story you have to tell evolves over time. Sometimes content restriction (a man blogging about knitting) can build up a targeted core audience. If that is your goal, cool. I find myself restricted to a particular area of librarianship at work enough, that if I posted exclusively about it during my off-hours I would probably go insane. I think that all of the more free-flowing librarian blogs do serve a purpose, as they might humanize a stereotyped professions to a non-librarian reader in a way that a more focused professional development library blog couldn’t accomplish.

I know I'm fairly new to the whole blogging thing, but for the moment I’m happy to blog about whatever I’m thinking at the moment without wondering if I’m meeting the needs of my “audience,” whoever that may be. *Hi Mom!*

I’m probably being unnecessarily defensive here because I’m cranky about having to drive on the masspike tomorrow morning, and I feel like the kottkes and rebeccabloods of the library blogging world are making feature requests and suggestions that might exclude a lot of the library blogs out there.

Posted by tangognat at 07:54 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 12, 2003

Boston Public

I went to the Boston Public Library today, and met a very nice group of librarians. Now I really want to work in a library with a courtyard and a fountain. They have a cafe, sequestered from the collections in an alcove, and next to the cafe they have a much more fancy place to eat where you can get high tea.

The library was so beautiful -- they have their Sargent Murals Restoration Project online. They are taking advantage of the images in their special collections department by setting up an online store, which I think went online in June. You can buy yourself a picture of Ted Williams (SI just published an article about his remains today) and a t-shirt of Babe Ruth at Fenway Park. Have any other libraries done something on this scale, with a store based on images in their own collections?

Thanks very much to Greg, I have now gone full-text in my RSS feed.

Posted by tangognat at 10:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 08, 2003

blogs in education

New article in Syllabus, Campus Communication and the Wisdom of Blogging, and a metafilter thread points to a few universities that are blogging. If I ever teach a semester long information literacy course, I'd love to incorporate blogging somehow.

Posted by tangognat at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2003

Long Day

I ended up suddenly filling in for the late shift at the reference desk today. I don't usually mind taking on extra hours, because I like working the reference desk (today I introduced someone to sociological abstracts and tracked down an engineering journal that had gone through a couple of name changes).
I do wish I'd known about it in advance, so I could have come into work really really late, instead of only sorta late. I'm SO not going to be in my cubicle until at least 11 tomorrow morning!

I wonder if I set myself up for this, because when people ask me to do something, I usually say yes, unless they are asking for something insane. What can I say? I live to serve! I also wonder if people would be less inclined to assume that I had a flexible schedule if I was married and had kids....

Maybe I need to make up having an infant or pet snake or something, so when someone asks me for a favor that involves me being at the library for a good 10 hours, I can say something like "But I have to go feed little Everard! I can't take your shift!"

Tomorrow: Pink hair, Hot Pants, Gardening, Monkeys, and Dueling!

Posted by tangognat at 09:42 PM | TrackBack

August 03, 2003

when the patron is wrong

I've been reading tinylibrarian's tales of horror with Evanovich woman and malelibrarian centerfold's tales of patron hair dying, thinking that they are far far better people than me enduring the craziness at their public library branches...but I was thinking that it really isn't any less crazy at an academic library. It is just a different kind of crazy, sometimes a slightly politer and less overt brand of crazy, but crazy nonetheless.

It is fairly slow at the desk for me now, but one thing last week got me thinking about the sense of entitlement people sometimes have when asking for library services that simply don't exist. Evanovich woman has no concept of the library system and structures in place that would get her the book that she wants eventually, if she was willing to wait for it.

Likewise, I wonder what the pleasant but misguided faculty member I was helping last week (who told me that he wanted to get a decade long run of a bound journal in a foreign language that is not even held at our library checked out for several months so he can have it in his office) thinks a library is for? I mean, someone can say "I need this for my research, I don't want to bother with a bunch of photocopying" but just because you need something, it doesn't mean that you're gonna get it.

It is probably not practical of me to wish that individual patrons had more of a sense of themselves as being part of a community of people, all trying to use a pool of common resources. I mean, I can say "I doubt that this other library is going to let you check out their bound journals to you in the way you want. Most journals don't circulate -- what will happen to all the other people who might need those articles if we allowed journals to be checked out?"

But I don't think it does much against the kind of "I need it, I need it now, I need it in my preferred format" point of view when it comes to using the library. And sometimes there isn't much you can do other than attempt to point out that someone's assumption is wrong (even when they don't believe you), make sure that they know how to use interlibrary loan, and set them loose.

Posted by tangognat at 05:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 29, 2003

KeepMedia interview

CNet posted this interview with Louis Borders. I don't understand why people would want to pay to access archives of only 140 magazines, when you might be able to get access to similar resources at your local library. I'm sure that there won't be many librarians signing up to get access to back issues of Library Journal and School Library Journal, both of which are included in this service.

Posted by tangognat at 10:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 28, 2003

I am yuppie scum

I bought a rug at Pottery Barn. Oh! The shame! I must say though, it does look great in my living room.

I always find something new everytime I look at the American Memory site. Like WPA posters on books and reading promotion. I like this poster for March, with a woman being blown away by strong wind of classics.

Posted by tangognat at 06:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 22, 2003

Print!

It is probably sad that I get a little thrill when I have to consult print sources at the reference desk. It just happens infrequently at times. Today, I got to look up periodical title abbreviations, use Ulrich's, and show someone where the Poole's Index was.

Actually, now that I think of it I was more of an "Obscure Periodical Tracker Downer" today than anything else.

Posted by tangognat at 11:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2003

Bookmark[er]

Ok, take a look at the middle bookmark ALA is selling to promote Banned Books Week.

I do not think that Ms. Block wrote a book titled "I was a Teenager Fairy." I assume that someone caught the spelling error before the bookmarks went into production, but why on earth would you leave something like that bookmark up on your web site when you are trying to sell it as part of one of your larger marketing efforts of the year?

I'm being overly picky, I know.

Just for fun, Which Weetzie Bat Character are You?
I'm Lanka?

Posted by tangognat at 06:44 PM | TrackBack

June 30, 2003

Buddha Boy

Went into work today and was surprised to see a boy sitting off to the side of the entrance to the library meditating. And it struck me that anyone compelled to meditate at the doors to a library isn't really meditating so much as they are saying, "Look at me! I'm so special! Gaze upon my self-consciously serene face as I commune with the Buddha." I was trying to think of something sufficiently snarky to say. But then I realized that it isn't like I'm the Buddha police, and the kid was punishing himself enough by meditating on concrete. I don't think it would be all that possible to free one's mind from clinging if your butt is totally numb.
But you never know!

I enjoyed ALA. I especially enjoyed being mistaken for a Canadian while shopping. I bought some shoes.

Some of the programs I went to were very illuminating, or at least presented some interesting research. I think that the next time I go to ALA, I will go armed with stickers saying "Yes! I'm a librarian and an easy mark! Rob me blind!" for those people that think the entire city is their conference center and go wandering about with their badges and corporate sponsored tote bags.

I tore through the new Harry Potter. It left me underwhelmed. I probably need to read it again, since I read most of it between midnight and 2 am, so maybe I was underwhelmed due to sleepyness. I thought that it was nice to see how some of the characters are growing up, like Ginny and Neville. Harry was appropriately angsty for a teenage boy. Rowling continues to be great at building an atmosphere of increasing dread, but somehow the ending didn't have the same payoff the other books in the series had for me.

Posted by tangognat at 12:10 AM | Comments (3)