joy at moll projects dot com
Several librarians took the Guardian Unlimited's spelling quiz yesterday (Rochelle, Jane, and Angel). Like Rochelle, I got an 18/23 which I thought was deplorable but the quiz results put me at the top of the class. It is a difficult test--seeing slight variations tempted me to second-guess myself.
It does make me think that I'm more dependent on Word's spelling checker than I thought. And that I should be using Blogger's spelling checker more often. I am always amused when Blogger cites "blog" as a misspelled word....
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I am so happy that Dorothea got the job she wanted. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Meredith. The experiences that they are sharing have been tremendously helpful and inspiring as I contemplate my own job search.
In preparation for another draft of my resumé, I've been thinking about what, exactly, I want as a job. This has proved to be an interesting exercise. I know exactly what I want to do, but I can do those things with a dizzying array of job titles:
I started this list a week ago and have alreay added another title based on a job ad for that last one.
I could be happy in a large research library where I can learn things from people who are more knowledgeable than me. I could be happy in the library of a small liberal arts college where I'm the resident tech expert and perform miracles every week using Low Threshold Applications.
No wonder people can't tell from my resume what kind of job I want! But these really do have things in common for me--they would all allow me to do the things I want to do:
Any ideas about how to express all of this succintly in my resumé? (joy [at] mollprojects [dot] com)
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Several times in my reading about libraries, I have come across the curses that were once written in library books threatening harm to would-be thieves and vandals. A new librarian might benefit from knowing some library-related curses, so I'm going to start collecting them.
Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson (New Haven : Yale University Press, c2001) has several examples (pages 12 through 14) from the ancient world when literature was written on stone tablets.
This one is the most graphic. The tablet carrying this threat was probably housed in a school library in Ashur.
He who breaks this tablet or puts it in water or rubs it until you cannot recognize it [and] cannot make it understood, may Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar, Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Bit Kidmurri, the gods of heaven and earth and the gods of Assyria, may all these curse him with a curse which cannot be relieved, terrible and merciless, as long as he lives, may they let his name, his seed, be carried off from the land, may they put his flesh in a dog's mouth!
Given that I just copied these passages from an overdue library book, I ask mercy from the gods and will now return it.
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I took Michael Stephens' suggestion to be more involved as a librarian in my favorite virtual community last week. This week, Jenny Levine the The Shifted Librarian, prompted me to take it a step farther.
The podcasts on the NEASIST Events blog are amazing (thanks to Greg of Open Stacks for pointing them out yesterday). I only miss the slides a little bit....One slide in Jenny's talk apparently showed a reference librarian offering his services for an hour on flickr, by way of a picture, of course. And he got a few questions!
My favorite virtual community, 43 Things, has a system for asking questions. They are called pleas for help. The users are actually asking the questions of people who have already completed the goal, so some are not really reference questions. I'm not going to touch the plea about how and when to move from indoor rock climbing to outdoor rock climbing, for example. But I would have done no worse on the question about where to sell a short story than the first person who responded (take a look at The Writers' Market).
There is an RSS feed for pleas for help. I subscribed and recommended a book to someone this morning.
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This is a follow-up to my post about Getting Things Done.
I decided to stick with Note Studio, using a modification of the GTD template book by Dr. Volker Kurz (don't bother downloading the template unless you also download the trial version of Note Studio--you won't see a thing). Two things convinced me to take this path:
GTDTiddlyWiki came highly recommended by several people. If I hadn't bought Note Studio a few months ago, I'd probably start with that. Although, I may decide, in the end, that it was worth the money to have this on my PDA.
Backpack is very pretty, but it also costs a pretty penney every single month. Here's one of Aunt Joy's secrets to financial success: minimize recurring expenses--they add up! Also, Backpack solves the project planning bit, but so do lots of things. Probably the more important, and unique, aspect of GTD is the concept of the context-sensitive Next Action list. I don't see how to implement that easily with Backpack.
I also played around with a new tool that I saw on lifehack.org. Tasktoy is a GTD system on the web with an extremely clean and simple interface. As cool as wikis are, it always takes me a little time to wrap my mind around them. Tasktoy is very intuitive. I might have gone this route, but it limited me to twenty projects--I need 43!
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Like Meredith, I am thrilled to have a mention in this month's issue of Walt Crawford's Cites and Insights. I wrote Bloglines for Librarians in Three (and a half) Easy Steps for some of my classmates and I know that several followed through (that's how easy it really is!).
When I'm a working academic librarian, I'm thinking of doing similar things for other fields--Bloglines for Psychology Majors, for example. If you want to steal that idea, go right ahead. Just send me an email so that I can steal it back.
On the topic of RSS, I just put a new paper up on my School Projects page. It's the paper I wrote for Digital Libraries about RSS. I learned a lot about the provider's view of RSS when it doesn't come automatically from blogging software. I thought what I had learned was all fairly theoretical, but it was quite helpful to have that knowledge when I made a pig's breakfast of my feeds a couple of weeks ago.
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Taking Michael Stephens' suggestion to be involved in virtual communities by participating in things like the Librarians' Desks pool on flickr.com, I posted a picture of my workspace here at the cabin. It's kind of a postmodern approach since I don't actually have a desk here....
I hadn't really thought about representing the profession at my favorite virtual community, 43 Things, but I guess I should since I claimed the username "Librarian." So, I just subscribed to the RSS feeds for start using the library, Go to library school, and similar goals so I can monitor the entries and offer my perspective.
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The death of Sandra Dee in February inspired me to request Gidget from the library--others, too, apparently, because I just got it this week. It was not at all what I expected--an extended dumb blonde joke with a few beach dance scenes thrown in. Wonder how I got that impression?
Frances Lawrence, nicknamed Gidget during the course of the movie, is a straight A high school student, cellist, and tomboy. There is a dopey fifties moral, but (similar to Wizard of Oz) the story doesn't really support the moral. Instead, you get to see a young woman who usually gets the thing she works for and when she doesn't, she learns from the experience.
The movie inspired this conversation:
Gidget: You can learn anything from books.# (0) comments
Joy: She's going to grow up to be a librarian!
Rick: Gidget Goes to Library School
In case it helps Dave, Greg, or other librarians ready to drink the GTD kool-aid, here is where I've blogged my experiences about GTD:
I suspect my past experience reflects more on how to get things done as a student than as a librarian. I hope Dave and Greg will share their implementations as they go along for all us librarians and future librarians to learn from.
I bought Note Studio a couple of months ago thinking that a wiki on a PDA might be just the thing. But now, I'm taking a look at the products at 37 signals (Backpack and Ta-da List). These tools would let me put the productivity stuff on the web--it works for me for email (Mizzou and Yahoo!) and my news aggregator (Bloglines), why not projects and to do lists?
Some people seem to be using 43 Things as a productivity tool. I am using my list as my current projects list. And I'm using my new blog as a log of productivity--something that is missing in GTD and that I seem to need (for me, it hasn't really happened if I haven't reflected on it). But, and I know this will come as a surprise to some, I really won't share everything on the open web. My Next Action lists have private items, particularly the ones related to "29. organize my finances" and "4. get a job." So, 43 Things is not a candidate for my full implementation of GTD.
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This is a distillation of thoughts generated by conversation last week on Collib-L, the email discussion list for College Librarians. At least, I think it was Collib-L--the archives aren't particularly convenient.
Someone posted a suggestion that librarians take every opportunity to advertise our services. This message didn't stimulate much conversation, but I'm imagining reference librarians all across the country saying, "The restroom? Down the hall, on the left. I can also help you find cool internet and library resources--come back anytime!"
Another thread on Collib-L last week was about how libraries notify late-night patrons that the building will be closing soon. Some use a PA system, making the first announcement an hour before closing time. An hour leaves enough time for a few reference interviews....
So combining the two, I came up with this script--imagine it in your best night watchman voice....
"Nine o'clock and all is well. The building will be closing in one hour. The Reference Desk has been quiet this evening. Stop by for help finding resources on the internet or in the library. Or just to chat about your research strategy. Have a good evening."
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We moved all the stuff in my website around in anticipation of an overhaul this summer. Rick figured out how to do redirects, so, with any luck, you won't notice the change. However, if you want to have the exact right address of this blog for your bookmarks or favorites, it's here:
http://joy.mollprojects.com/myblogs/wanderings/index.html
And the correct feed is here:
http://joy.mollprojects.com/myblogs/wanderings/atom.xml
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Congratulations to Dorothea who has joined the gang of librarians, and has the hood to prove it. She also displays the enthusiasm that I'm beginning to think is the most important thing that new librarians bring to the profession.
I don't see enough enthusiasm in libraries and I think it hurts the institution and the profession. Enthusiasm is a precious and delicate commodity and there are sophisticated people in the world, some of them in libraries, who take great pleasure in pulling off the wings of enthusiasm and watching it die.
So here's my advice to brand new librarians: look for a place where your enthusiasm will be valued and nurtured. If you can't find such a place, read as much of Tom Peters as you can stand--the book Re-imagine! may help you transform your library into one that nurtures enthusiasm, fosters pride, and provides vibrant service to its customers.
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For awhile yesterday I had two blogs feeding into one feed, under the new blog's name. What a mess! My apologies to anyone who was confused by that and to anyone who saw my test posts to make sure I had fixed it.
By the end of the afternoon, though, I had two blogs with two feeds, just like I wanted:
If you don't understand any of this, send me an email. One of my goals is "get more people to use news aggregators." The feeds allow readers to get my blogs, and other news, in their news aggregators.
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For my birthday, I'm giving myself a second blog--and a long to do list.
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We cheered the Cardinals to victory yesterday. My family was surprised that I didn't conform to normal habit and keep score of the game. Somehow, it seemed too much like schoolwork. I missed it, though. The nuances of the game are easier to read off of a scorecard than from my memory.
But perhaps it was just as well. The big story of this game wasn't very nuanced. And the scorecard isn't designed to handle fifteen batters scoring eleven runs in the first inning.
To give this post a library angle (although I've met a surprising number of library types who like baseball, so maybe baseball is on topic), The Joy of Keeping Score by Paul Dickson is a delightful addition to a summer reading list. For a quick introduction to scoring, try these tips from Major League Baseball.
Since I don't keep score very often, I usually make up a system on the fly, combining the instructions on the scorecard and my preference for drawing the baseball diamond as runners proceed around the base path. I reached my peak of scoring ability the summer before high school when I scored nearly every Cardinal game in a spiral bound notebook while listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio.
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I wasn't completely useless at trivia last night.
I knew that the building with the most mosaics in the world is the New Cathedral in St. Louis. Beautiful. If you ever get the chance, take a look.
I knew that the baby in the Hepburn/Grant movie Bringing Up Baby was a leopard.
I knew that the alcoholic beverage made from juniper berries is gin.
My favorite question all night, though, was the one that we got right because my mother played. What phrase do the intials LSMFT stand for? Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. Here's the famous marching cigarettes ad.
Happy Mother's Day!
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My last paper went into the digital drop box at 12:58. Hooray!
Between lack of sleep and brain overload, I'm going to be useless at trivia tonight--unless there are questions about metadata formats or descriptive statistics.
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Just what I needed, a tool to demonstrate exactly how little time I have left to finish the semester's work and exactly how fast it is slipping away. Link via Wil Wheaton dot net. Back to work!
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I am so jealous of Dorothea. (But, congratulations!)
To finish my semester, I still have to write about twelve pages from scratch and give a fair amount of attention to another twelve pages in draft form. These things are due on Monday and Tuesday, but I'm determined to turn them in on Saturday morning so that I can enjoy family festivities--a trivia night to benefit hospice care on Saturday and a Cardinals baseball game on Sunday.
I'm dreaming in metadata.
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