You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2007.
While catching up on some long overdue Google Reader feeds, I discovered that I am a semicolon. Big thank-you to Jennifer and fellow semicolon Mark…
Your Score: Semicolon
You scored 30% Sociability and 70% Sophistication!
Congratulations! You are the semicolon! You are the highest expression of punctuation; no one has more of a right to be proud. In the hands of a master, you will purr, sneering at commas, dismissing periods as beneath your contempt. You separate and connect at the same time, and no one does it better. The novice will find you difficult to come to terms with, but you need no one. You are secure in your elegance, knowing that you, and only you, have the power to mark the skill or incompetence of the craftsman.
You have no natural enemies; all fear you.
And never, NEVER let anyone tell you that you cannot appear in dialogue!
| Link: The Which Punctuation Mark Are You Test written by Gazda |
A United Nations of Librarians
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
We’re on top of the Library of Congress Madison building, over 100 countries represented. An incredible, beautiful mix of people.
[Added:] I attended this reception (and tour) right after a session on international library partnerships. What a wonderful breath of fresh air that was! After hearing about how much librarians need to brag more and trumpet their successes, this session was a fitting example of just that. All the speakers had great success stories to tell and offered excellent concrete suggestions for making such partnerships work. I’ll be posting notes and such on my new Librarienne blog once I get home. The session on partnerships also sparked an idea for me along the lines of another recurring theme at this conference (recurring in conversation more than in sessions) about libraries and our woeful marketing practices. The international partnership speakers all stressed the value of publicity. I attended mainly sessions on technology or sessions on international matters, and I see a potential marriage between these two parties (meaning – completely different sets of people were following the tech sessions vs. the international sessions. I felt like the only cross-over.) that could teach both sides some very valuable skills. More on that to come.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
We’re in the Great Hall and going camera crazy.
[Added:] The tour docent also took us up to the overlook of the Reading Room, and pointed out the symbolism and identity of the statues and seals adorning the dome. He asked an interesting question before we continued — if this temple to human knowledge and civilization were being built today, who do we think should be represented? I was painfully aware of the historical prejudices built into the artwork — for example, the figures at the very top of the dome, representing the development of civilization, included certain countries and their contribution … Germany was there for printing and America stood in for science. No India. No China. Today, I would hope there would be some recognition of the incredible contributions these countries have made to literature, philosophy, and sciences. But I have to remember my favorite history professor and his admonition about wagging our 21st century finger at the beliefs of previous centuries. I think my embarrassment was coupled with the fact that our tour was for the International Relations Round Table of librarians. Thus, we had many nationalities in our group and many of them had been living here in the States for a long time. I wish the tour guide had at least acknowledged that there were far more influences on America’s success than those figures represented in the Library of Congress Reading Room.
I’m trying out a dual-blog personality for a while – I’ll be writing on everyday me stuff here at the original “epist.wordpress.com” and I’ll be putting my more library-like stuff at the brand new “librarienne.wordpress.com” … so, I should probably rename this one but I don’t know what to use yet. Ideas?
Things I’ll do differently next time I attend ALA Annual…
- I’ll arrive earlier on Thursday, pick up all the conference stuff early, find a comfy cafe to sit at for 3 hours and leisurely go through the materials.
- I’ll have my resume ready.
- I’ll stay at a hotel with free wireless (that still exists, right?) so I don’t have to lug my laptop to conference
… more lessons to follow.
The hotel might not be that great,but the view is fantastic. And it’s true – everyone looks like a librarian.
Listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday this morning, I heard two particular things to blog about:
1. The word “meritocracy” was used in two very different segments … first, I heard it used by Bob Barr in the context of allowing gays in the military. <soapbox!>Of course they’ll let gays in the military… for the same reason they recruit poor people: politicians see the military as a disposable population. </soapbox> I heard “meritocracy” a second time in a later segment about the Internet undermining culture. Andrew Keen used the word to describe the professional media, as in journalists, producers, and so on. He claimed that the Cult of the Amateur – in the form of Web 2.0 – was corroding popular culture and the “authority” of traditional media outlets… (and I’m telling you about this on a blog, which you might very well be reading in an RSS feed; so many issues to tap into here, so little time).
2. This interesting anti-change sort of segment was immediately followed by a bizarre little story of a library in Arizona that has turned its back on Dewey and gone the way of a Barnes and Noble, using subjects or genres to group books into stacks and sections of the library. I really don’t see how this is any different from Dewey or LC or any other classification system since it is, after all, another classification system… but I haven’t visited the library so I can’t really say. [Edit: I forgot to add the other interesting choice of words: during this library segment, the "library official" referred to the people visiting the library as "customers" whereas the radio announcer referred to them as "patrons" - I've seen this distinction get rather thorny between librarians before, so I wonder how librarians will react to this use of "customer" by a Barnes and Noble library. On a side note, I went to a bookstore with my honey later in the day and asked her, "How would you feel if you walked into a library that looked like this?" And she answered, (quite perfectly) "I wouldn't be able to find anything."]
Please do listen to the Andrew Keen interview and the piece about the library – these two segments alone are somehow bizarre to me. Perhaps this is due to combing through the ALA conference schedule and seeing so many pro-Web 2.0 events planned.
It seems to me that libraries (or librarians?) are reaching a sort of adolescence. As an organized profession, we are relatively young – maybe a little over a hundred years old? And we are exhibiting all the signs of a stressed-out teenager: we make big deals about some small things, we think the strangest things are signs that we’ll die a death of humiliation when actually we’re just experiencing growing pains. Yes, growing pains. I think more and more fields will need the skills of an information science degree, but we’re still in the midst of figuring out our place in the world so we won’t be able to see the role we fill for a while yet.
In one week I’ll be headed to the Great Big Library Shindig. I have some familiar faces to look forward to and that is a wonderful bonus. This week I resolved to *not* lug my laptop around with me in favor of just enjoying the conference and restricting my online activities to whatever I can do with my (nifty new) phone. I want to take advantage of the people opportunities more than the techie opportunities. On another note, does anyone have some tips on how you choose the programs you attend?
