Guardienne of the Tomes

Hey all, a quick morning update while I laze about until my 10:30am program. (I have taken copious notes on paper, because I'm not awesome enough to pay for the interwebs everywhere I go, and will post those when I get home and organize some more brilliantly constructed posts.) Friday - Friday I attended the Business Reference 101 preconference put on by RUSA's BRASS, and it was great. I met some fun people (shout-out to Patrick from UNLV) and received some really fantastic bibliographies. As the liaison to our econ department, a lot of the material was also useful for me in that vein. It was very very basic, though, so if you're a starting-out business librarian, you probably already know everything that's covered. Would have been good for supernew fresh out of MLS librarians. Final thoughts: Not recommended (it was an expensive preconference), but could be useful if you're brand spanking new. Friday night - I attended the LITA Happy Hour at the Menage Hotel (whi...

Plane got in over an hour late, so it was 10:34pm (Pacific) before I even got onto my shuttle. *yawn* The poor guy next to me on the plane was concerned about my fidgetyness - so was I, since sitting on planes all day had me feeling like I was going to birth a full grown alien from my lower back. Hotel is fine, but my roomie's flight was cancelled, so she won't be in until tomorrow. I was pleasantly surprised to find a fridge in the room (because I drink about 6 bottles of water a day, and imagine this won't change much in the Anaheim heat). I just traipsed over to the gas station and paid $12.43 for a 24-pack of Dasani bottled water. (And that only because the Aquafina 24-pack was going to set me back - I shit you not - $30). Good lord. Guess who has two thumbs and will be taking advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel daily? You can't see it, but I'm pointing to myself. Vehemently. On the bright side, I'm here, my luggage was not lost, and as the first r...

Squee! (That is my 'excited' sound for the internet world.) I just got a confirmation email that another proposal got picked up for Internet Librarian 2008. My Twitterpal Rudy and I have been confirmed on the Learning Track about reaching underskilled users (which jives nicely with the book chapter I just put together on the continued presence of the digital divide). The details, for those who are planning on Internet Librarian-ing in Monterey: Tuesday, October 21 11:30 – 12:15 RoomC202 2.0 Learning & 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap Rudy Leon, Instruction & Collection Development Librarian, SUNY Potsdam Colleen Harris, Reference and Instruction Librarian, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga For many instruction librarians, the challenge of Library 2.0 isn’t the technology, it's the users. Despite the extreme 2.0 savvy attributed to the Millennials in the buzz that dominated early 2.0 reports, the media is finally catching up to what many instruction librarians have ...

Remember Madonna Constantine, the Columbia professor who committed egregious plagiarism who then accused others of plagiarizing her? (You can read my original disgust with her and her manufactured situation here. ) Well, it looks like Columbia finally cowboyed up and decided they should terminate her butt, effective December 2008, according to The Columbia Spectator. About danged time. It's nice to see academia finally getting around to purging one of the undesirables. And by "undesirable" I mean a plagiarizing liar who sullied the name of her profession, her department, and her university before someone finally made the decision to boot her. Constantine of course has the last resort of filing an appeal, and she'll likely sue for defamation of character or whatever, since that seems to be the thing to do once people publicly announce that you are, indeed, of poor character. Still, nice to see that this one didn't stay under the rug for the rest of time.

I know you were waiting with bated breath for my schedule. (I know I have been; this is the first time I've gotten to sit down with the schedule and plan for the conference.) Anyway, here is where I will be: Thursday June 26 Arrive Santa Ana airport 9:05pm, head to Comfort Inn Maingate. Friday June 27 8:30am - 5:30pm: RUSA/BRASS Business Reference 101. Location: Hyatt Regency Orange County, Royal A/B. 5:30pm - 8:00pm: LITA Happy Hour. Location: Mist Pool Bar at Hotel Menage (1221 S Harbor Blvd). Note: This is a maybe. I am not a LITA member, but a whole lot of very cool peeps are likely to be there that I would like to meet irl. Saturday June 28 8:00 - 9:00am: RSS Open House. Location: Sheraton Park Hotel. 9:00 - 10:30am: RSS User Education & Info Lit Committee Meeting. Location: Sheraton Park Hotel, Palm ballroom. 11:am - 1:00pm: Free for lunching - will likely check out exhibits 1:30 - 3:30pm: Learning Virtually panel session. Location: Hilton Anaheim Pacific Ballroom D. 4:0...

What would you do with 162 billion dollars? I know, I'd spend it on more war in Iraq and Afghanistan . Oh, wait, no... Seriously. Our government throwing money numbers like that around makes me a wee bit sick to my stomach. $162 billion. That's Scrooge McDuck-style money, the sort you can put in a pile and swim in. That is more than a number of countries' Gross Domestic Product for 2007 . Headlines like this are slowly turning me into a liberal (which should please my libraryworld colleagues, who consider me a wee bit of a fascist for my conservative notions). Consider this: every single university that I have read about or spoken to colleagues and Twitter acquaintances about is about to be on an austerity budget, losing money from their legislatures so the government can attempt to keep itself afloat. We are slicing the jobs of education workers and throwing a bajagazillion (which $162B might as well be) at our incompetent mushmouth of a President. *sigh* If this money ...

In airline news, other than the massive dropping of numerous flights and raising prices ridonkulously, Delta is merging with Northwest . I have to admit that my first (admittedly ungenerous) reaction was, "when you add crap to poop, you still don't get ice cream." Delta has been the bane of my existence as an airline traveler. I've lived in Long Island, NY, as well as Atlanta, Lexington (KY), and currently Chattanooga, among other places. My family remains in NY, so I fly to see them quite often, and then there's the various professional conference-type things. Not once have I flown Delta that they haven't lost my luggage. Not a single time. (I credit them for my penchant to fly with copious amounts of underwear in my carry-on.) Not only have they lost my luggage, but the service desk is always quite snotty about it (which horrifies me as someone committed to good customer experience). I had the temerity to ask, given that they had barcode-stickered my lugga...

A friend of mine just reported that at my former place of work (MFPOW), President Lee Todd of the University of Kentucky just received a bonus to the tune of over $145,000 due to his highest score ever on his annual evaluation. Todd, in his generosity, will be returning $50,000 back to the university to support various programs. (To Todd's credit, he does give back a portion of his bonus each year.) This leaves him with the measly bonus of $90,000. Which, to put it in perspective, is more than I (and many other professors, not to mention staff) make in two years. This is the same University of Kentucky that is offering its employees - who generally make less than half of the president's BONUS - no raise, and is slicing 188 positions . This is a University in a state that is just as hard hit as the rest of the country and has sliced its education budget to the bone, because, hey, states like Tennessee and Kentucky can afford to snip at education, right? I find it reprehensible...

That's right, hotmenz. I do not cavort with folks who do CliffsNotes. Ever. I may be single, but I do have *some* standards.

This post is going to sound a little bit harsh, and I apologize in advance. I promise I'm not trying to offend anyone. If you believe in evolution (I happen to, and think it can coexist with a belief in whatever Higher Being you wish), aren't you disturbed by the way humans are going? We're letting folks with serious genetically passed on diseases live longer (consuming resources) and procreate (propagating said diseases). What does this have to do with academia or academic librarianship, you say? I'm glad you brought that up. I've mentioned in another post that telling students in K-12 that they are each a very special little snowflake who deserves the best and should never get disappointed is a crock of poo. What I'd also like to mention is that tagging kids via GPS to reduce truancy rates may be missing the point a little bit. The point being that some little monsters should not be in school. (As someone who taught at a high school for half a year, and atten...

Awright, folks. I am back from a week and a half in Louisville for the 'res' part of my low-res MFA program. Funnily (or horribly) enough, I actually missed MPOW. It's a busy summer, with the projects we've got going on (which include developing podcasts, building a plan for our instruction program to break into upper level courses, collection development, etc.), Annual coming up in a few weeks, and the book chapters I need to get written. Factor in all of my June weekends out of town (I just returned from a trip to Lexington to see my best pal), and, well, let's just say I'm really looking forward to July. Random news from the Guardienne's world: June 3rd was my birthday, and I felt absolutely loved between my Twitterpals' wellwishes and all of the people writing on my Facebook wall. An Internet Librarian 2008 proposal put together by Cindi and involving myriad Twitterpals has actually been picked up as a preconference for Monterey in October, so we...