Guardienne of the Tomes

Just when I am finally broken enough to blog something like this , another student provides a refreshing moment of wisdom and interest in being the best researcher they can possibly be. (Much like "being all you can be" for the army. Except an army of one isn't very intimidating, whereas a researcher or scholar of one can inculcate thousands before they're stopped.) I got my little librarian hands on two upper-level English classes yesterday, and we worked with thesauri and subject guides in various databases, learned all about how our crappy link resolver (soon to be replaced with Gold Rush - yay!) works, and delved into some of our more advanced, subject-specific databases. We discussed inter-library loan, and the coolness that abounds in librarians, who I framed as professional nerds, ready, willing and able to come to desperate students' aid in times of crisis. I may have also mentioned in passing that we occasionally wear capes, attract the hottest men, and...

All right, folks. Let's sit down and have a chat about all of the authors you're angry at because you were "touched" by their memoirs, and whom you then decry as demons when you find out they made the memoir up. It's a long overdue conversation, and it's one I really want you to think about. Oprah took James Frey to task for making up the majority of his book A Million Little Pieces after she had endorsed it and made a good portion of the housewives of America read it. Oprah, the crusader that she is, took Frey to task publicly, outraged at having been deceived by his occasionally fictitious "memoir." He was, in fact, a drug addict, and many of the pieces of A Million Little Pieces are, in fact, true. Lots of fact there for you to enjoy. More recently, Misha Defonseca admitted that her Holocaust memoir Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years was entirely fabricated. That's right - she fabricated her memoir of her survival of the Holocaust ye...

I just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to explain to a young college girl why she should *not* be using The Onion as her news source for a serious research paper. Let me back up. It started with a relatively simple question - she came to the desk and asked whether she was supposed to cite her news article as a newspaper or as a web source. She held out an article from the Onion. "I know it's a newspaper, but I only have the online version," she said. STOP Because I wanted to be sure, I asked, "You know The Onion isn't actually a real news source, right?" *blank stare* "What I mean to say is, The Onion is a fake news source. They make things up. it's a parody of the news, meant to make you laugh." *blank stare* "Erm...it's not a real newspaper at all. It's just a fake news website." Face brightens. "So I cite it as an online source?" "Yes. But it's not real news. Do you need a real-life news artic...

Woo-hoo! I made the March issue of InfoCareerTrends , the online professional newsletter for librarians-in-the-know. You can read "The New Academic Librarian: Setting priorities, Setting Goals" here . I have to admit, writing that was a nice excuse to step back and take a look at what I Should be doing, as opposed to what I do, which is generally crisis and deadline management. Given the gorgeous weather of the past few days (makes me think beach ) and that a bunch of deadlines will be off my back once march is done, I'm going to have to re-pace myself. Here's to surviving March!

Today I taught a mixed-bag class of repeat English class offenders. And I had the most fabulous time teaching them how to evaluate information sources, break their topics into keywords, and e-mail themselves their articles - complete with MLA-style citation - to their Gmail accounts (because we all know that our university e-mail is not to be trusted). The usual fare, but I made it extremely informal - they'd already been through the library session once, the last time they took the class. Among others, one topic that came up when discussing the importance of scholarly articles' bibliographies included: the G-Spot and recent reports that some women don't have it. (comment from student: "Aw, hell no, I'd want to see that bitch's citation for sure! You can't go sayin' that with no data.") These are the days when I love my frickin' job. Now I am left to wonder it means, that I am apparently in tune with the academically challenged demographic, an...

Let's talk about plagiarism, folks. It's a topic that seems to be all the rage lately, both in politics and in academia, and it's one that dearly needs to be addressed. CNN has the latest on a Columbia professor who has been caught plagiarizing. That's right, plagiarizing , the bugaboo of librarians and professors everywhere who are attempting to educate students on the proper way to give credit to others for their hard work and original ideas. The law firm report states that "in two dozen cases, Constantine's published works contained language similar to passages in papers written by others, including a former teacher at the school and two of Constantine's former students." (See how I did that, made a note of the article, linked to it, and stuck quotes around the phrase I took that someone else wrote? Yes, we'll come back to that.) So, not only is she stealing from her colleagues, she's also cherry-picking from her (likely) best and brightes...

Today, an article at InsideHigherEd.com attempts to address the death of liberal arts in the American higher education system. I call shenanegans. Proportionately, liberal arts colleges graduate more students who attend graduate school, receive higher degrees, and become part of a skilled labor force as doctors, lawyers, PhDs, and various other professions. The universities churning out "vocational" students, as referred to in the article, are doing a poorer job at this. Small liberal arts schools have far better records of alumni giving. They are also less beholden to state funds, and so don’t suffer nearly as much in quality when the state slices the budget. For instance, Centre and Transy will be less devastated than UK by the Kentucky governor's plan to make a 12% across the board budget cut to institutions of higher ed. Of course fewer people know what liberal arts means — the larger universities are churning out diplomas to people who can barely read. (Heard m...

A university is not McDonald's. I should clarify that. Some of you will think that's a ridiculous statement. Of course we're not McDonald's. We are, indeed, in the business of training people to be on the other side of the counter than the one they might occupy without the university in their lives. McDonald's is an un-nutritious, quick-fix, fast-stop solution bound to lead to obesity, heart disease, and intestinal distress. Some others are likely saying that the university is indeed like McDonald's. Our kids drive through, pick a major from our menu, and try to get in and out as quickly as possible without laying out much effort (or cash) for something that is "good enough." understandably, most want a college education because of the career paths it opens, and that's a fine enough reason. Both camps have a point. I'd like to make mine: administrators and educators who encourage this fast-food approach in the name of "incorporating busi...

I work for a living, just like you do. Not exactly like you do, since I don't have the venerable onus of grading 300 terribly written exams on ancient history, but I promise I'm busy. I'm busy making sure you have the resources you need, and checking for the software programs your students need when you tell them to come to the library and use Photoshop (better check with us before assigning that, plz). I am planning lessons to teach your classes how to do actual research, since you feel they already know what they need to and don't much care how they get the right information so long as it's valid. I am reviewing books, reading reviews and making purchases for your curriculum, attending department committee meetings, attend university committee meetings, and serve on the faculty senate. I am informing you about database trials, trying to wrangle an invitation to your department meetings to keep you updated, attending job candidate talks all over campus (because ev...

There is an article in the December 17th issue of Publisher's Weekly on the ethics of book reviewing. 34.4% of survey respondents "claimed they thought it is acceptable for a reviewer to back out of a review to avoid negative criticism of a book," (though the same percentage of editors find it unacceptable to back out of writing a review for that reason). This all comes from page 8 of that issue, for those of you who are interested in other statistics they garnered. Someone also recently (within the past 2 months) blogged about this, but I cannot for the life of me find the post. (If someone would be so kind as to send it, I'll link to it.) I decided to write on this because I review quite a few books a month - I usually have one item to review for Choice , one for , Tennessee Libraries , two for Library Journal , and occasionally I review for Journal of Web librarianship. I consider it my job to read the book (or examine the online resource, in some cases) with an...

I taught three sections of the second-semester English students this morning, and I have to admit, despite my now-froggy voice, that this is why I became a librarian. Answering questions also nurtures the nerd in my soul, but teaching people how they can find what they need is my true love. There are very few ways to make database searching interesting for students, no matter how much I love the Thesaurus or RSS alert options. I am left wondering if this is the spot where the 2.0 folks are relying too much on technology. Tutorials and podcasts are useful for introductory topics and basic training, but eventually, you need to get the students hands-on, with a librarian available for help. An electronic lesson is fine, but having a live person help you brainstorm keywords and re-framing your topic so that you can get the most out of your resources should be a personal experience. This, of course, helps me keep my job. But it should also inform our practices - before we outsource all of ...

I have to admit, I don't expect to become famous in my first two (or even three, or four) years of librarianship. (I do hope my boss doesn't mind.) Mind you, this doesn't mean I'm not working hard. I am working on coauthoring an article on something practical with my dean (I know, practicality and publication don't necessarily go together), I'm still learning the ropes and such at my position since I've been here all of five-and-a-half months in my first professional position. I'm learning more about areas outside my subject expertise, because we're a smaller university and haven't an abundance of separate libraries or subject specialists - we're all happy know-it-alls (or at least, know-most-of-its). I'm reviewing regularly (6 book reviews published since August, one chapter reviewed), and just getting on the ball with creating tutorials. I enjoy my reference desk work, and I love, love , LOVE teaching library instruction, because I...

Apparently J.K. Rowling claims that fan-fiction, or compendium volumes are violating her copyright. Tim Wu has an excellent article here with all of the gory details, but I'm going to put my two cents in anyway. Fan guides are a perfectly non-offensive (and, IMHO, non-copyright violating) pursuit. It's not a substitute for the actual books, and it's not an adaptation to a different media - it is, in fact, a completely new work. There are many examples of these - The Lord of the Rings has a number of intricately crafted fan guides. Even Diana Gabaldon's Outlander romance series has two companion guides (though Gabaldon is listed as the author). If Rowling wanted to ride the cash cow a little longer, she should have thought of this herself. Frankly, I am surprised she didn't, given how she wants total control over her characters, even once they've left her hands. When she announced that Dumbeldore is gay , she made it onto my "top Authors not to Like in p...

Well, 2007 ended with a suddenly corrupted flash drive, which ate my 27-page MFA packet, due for emailing on January 9th. Despite a slight moment of panic, I decided that if Dick Clark could show up for his Rockin' Eve and be as excellent as he always is, then I, as a librarian, had a duty to help myself restore my data. Now, an aside. I know that backing things up is key. And I believe I actually have this document on my work computer, even if it is a version that's a few days older. I had gotten into the habit of carrying the flash drive with me, and neglected my own sage advice - save it everywhere, keep copious printed copies on hand in case of technology failure, and always, ALWAYS save to both the hard drive and the portable memory whenever working on something. Back to the crisis. I found some software online that would attempt to recover the file, which I saved in multiple places and emailed to myself (make a note of that email part, it'll be important later ~G) - ...

On the review front: still waiting to hear from the Journal of Web Librarianship about my review on Teaching with Technology: An Academic Librarian's Guide and Choice about my admittedly lukewarm (more luke than warm) review of Electionguide.org, but: Happy days! My review of Bell & Shank's 2007 Academic Librarianship by Design: The Blended Librarian's Guide to the Tools and Techniques was published in the November 15 Library Journal. It really should be on your shelf if you're an academic librarian who has anything to do with planning or implementing library programs or instruction. If you are an academic librarian who is not involved in those things...perhaps you should rethink where you work. Get involved or get out - it'll help your library become far more fabulous if you let someone who is interested in the work - and the welfare of the students - participate in building the library's future. I say this not out of spite, but because I've se...

Just returned from Louisville late last night, and am recovering from a hugely intensive residency week. (Who knew being a writer could be so exhausting?) In other news, I've had poems picked up by Poetry Midwest , Creekwalker , and just had another nabbed by Survivor's Review . (I also heard a tale at residency of a librarian who became such a good poet she was able to quit her job...) This, combined with the recent workshopping, my first public reading, and the work I have planned for next semester all have me raring to go, submitting manuscripts and wildly revising what I have already written. I'm even feeling kindly towards the editors that have, to date, rejected me. The ones who hand-write their rejections I consider actual fans. Yep, definitely a good place to be. On the other hand, I am back at work (which I did miss), and working on deleting a backlog of emails, as well as planning a workshop I am to teach tomorrow on alerts. (You know, where you can have the datab...

Sadly, this is the first year in quite awhile that I haven't costumed up for my stint at the reference desk. Call it moving fatigue, call it paycheck fatigue, call it "leaving-for-a-week-and-a-half-on-Friday-and-tons-left-to-do" burnout. I know. I'm disappointed in myself. Way down deep, there's a pirate gypsy that's dying to make her entrance. Having only been here three months at this point, I think I'll wait until next Halloween to bust out my glaringly ridiculous Halloween self. Hopefully, by then they'll love me far too much to retract the employment offer. *grin* But I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that not all librarians are as lame as I happened to be today. In fact, I harbor some serious nerd-love for the Maker of the MARC Pumpkin. not that I have general affection for makers of MARC records, as a rule - while I appreciate their work, catalogers are a breed I cannot claim to understand. The Librarian Avengers draw our atte...

Do YOU want to be a librarian? You should, after watching the music video. The music video by HauntedLove, "I want to be a librarian," was posted quite awhile ago, but I'd like to re-post it here, because it's the most fabulous song about librarians ever. (Not to mention that they squish a problem patron in the movable stacks, which I have been tempted to do...muahahahaha.) I want to be a librarian I want to check out your books Please give them to me With the bar code facing up Please don't bring them back too late or I'll have to charge you fifty cents a day (and you won't like that) I want to be a librarian Wearing glasses every single day Don't you find me appealing in a nerdy sort of way? Please don't talk so loudly Please Please Sshhhhhhhhhhhhh...... Meet me in the closed reserve I'll let you read all the new magazines I'll let you touch the first editions If you promise me If you promise me If you promise me your hands are clean (...

What does a librarian do after a long day of answering reference question, reading books and writing reviews, planning presentations, teaching classes, conducting some original research and pondering podcasting? I could give you the dull (but true) answer that I read. I read ravenously. (You would too, if what you read for reviewing were titled "The Beginning of Collegiate Education West of the Appalachians, 1795-1833: The Achievement of Dr. Charles Coffin of Greeneville College and East Tennessee College." No offense, Mr. Patrick.) While that last title may prove fascinating, I approach what I deem my 'trashy reading' with far less apprehension, perhaps because the titles are shorter - or because no one's expecting a review, so they feel a bit less like homework. Pressfield's Gates of Fire , Byrne's new book of poetry Flammable Bird , and Catherine Coulter's Blindside (which I happen to be reading completely out of order, because I didn't re...

We hear a lot about how many librarians and IT folks figure that with all of the nifty technology we've got nowadays, they'd much rather run their libraries off in the ether, behind the scenes without having to deal with that nasty, germy face-to-face business we have in walk-in libraries now. Most of the rhetoric surrounding \that has to do with the fact that hey - doesn't it increase access if you put it online? Then you don't have to deal with building hours! Or staff time off! Or worrying about creepy porninators coming in and bothering everyone! Jolly good! These are the same folks who believe that digitization is a panacea for all building-laden woes, that if can be made available online, the physical access to something is just a ridiculous redundancy. As it was stated in the Billings Gazette: "phasing out services associated with the library as public space" is part of the plan. *sigh* Those pesky patrons again, bothering us in person, when they could...