Guardienne of the Tomes

Today the topic is: the pretentiousness of advertising your degrees. Discuss. One of the hotter topics on Friendfeed lately, sparked by Christa Burns, was the discussion of whether or not to include the MLS in your signature line or on business cards . I found this very interesting, for a number of reasons. Working in academia, there is a certain overwhelming snobbery that happens when academics get together and discuss themselves (as they inevitably do). People toss out their pedigrees and are measured and judged to be found wanting (or not) depending on those academic family ties. it's the way the world works, and from what I've seen, many librarians simply don't engage when other faculty do this, or they join good-naturedly into the fray. Most librarians I've seen in these scenarios do the former. Because I firmly believe in the value of having librarians as full faculty (okay, and because despite my lack of a PhD, I likely have far more hours of graduate school und...

Talking to my good friend Allison ( humorette of last post ), we were discussing being exhausted. As in, tired beyond to-the-bone, and no end in sight unless we drop something which, as overachieving twenty-somethings, we are loathe to do because tv and magazines and our own fickle brains tell us we must do it all. Allison, for instance, not only works full time as a higher education PR pro, she is also a member of the Junior League and helps run their Horse Show in Lexington, which is a BFD, has graduate classes two days a week, goes to a knitting group, has a book group, just hit her 17-month anniversary with her man (congrats, by the way), has family commitments (her fam lives semi-locally) and is generally on-call for work as well. (I am sure there is more, but you get the idea.) And just where, may I ask, is she supposed to fit in fixing nutritious (or even semi-nutritious) meals, grocerying, general errands (like yarn-purchasing!), general cleaning of her living space, blowing of...

I have to share this as quote-slash-conversation-piece of the day, because it made me snort my water. Chatting with my good pal PinkandChocolateBrown , she came out with this gem (which is one of the many many reasons I love her): "so first day of public school here" "kids are back where they belong, locked up" Bwahahahaha. Yes, this is what years of service in academia do to a person. There are also mitigating factors, like getting older and crochetier as we watch parents not discipline their own crotchfruit, and remembering the good old days of beating misbehaving children and telling them to get jobs in mines. But school is an okay alternative, I guess. Thank God for all of the teachers out there willing to put up with little kids. I, dear, underappreciated friends, salute you. But please do not go about letting them out early, mkay?. ~ Guardienne

On random occasions, I feel the need to check my Outlook's junk mail folder. Mostly because everything that ends up in there is, indeed, not junk. Only I rarely check it because most important things make it through, and it's usually the odd listserv junk that gets in there. I've been meaning to check it for a couple of days, and I'm very glad the bug bit me today to actually do it. What did I find in there, you ask? Oh, nothing much. Just an email note that I won another faculty development grant. Like the one that saved my financial bacon for ALA. The gist: Congratulations! The Faculty Development Committee has approved a grant of $1000 to provide funds for travel expenses related to your presentation of "Dance, Dance, Library Evolution" in Monterey, CA, October 18-22, 2008. An official award letter will arrive in a few weeks, but I wanted to let you know as quickly as possible that your proposal had been funded. So, yes, I would have received an actual pa...

Courtesy of Rudy , this is my version of Library Thing’s most unread books. The key is below, and like Rudy, I’ve asterisked the titles that are sitting on my shelves, but I haven’t ever started. This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Give me a link in the comments if you've done this one. I don't think I've done too poorly, and I have to go ahead and admit my complete and utter loathing for all things written by the Brontes, so those books will never get finished. I also hate Dickens, so I'm not likely to read David Copperfield in this lifetime, either. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell *Anna Karenina *Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights *The Silmarillion Life of Pi : a novel The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey *Pr...

As I was driving him to the airport this morning, a colleague of mine from the history department asked me what my day looked like. I told him that (per department agreement about the disgusting status of the computers) I'd be scrubbing some grody computer stations, working on a proceedings paper, planning an instruction session for a graduate English class, working a 2-hour refdesk shift, and fitting in some odds and ends before I had to leave at 3 to take care of some personal business. And then, of course, after that, I spend my Friday evenings nowadays with my personal trainer and sweat buckets of icky goodness in my pursuit of an Angeline Jolie-like body, followed by a shower and limp-bodied exhaustion splayed on the couch with the dog at my feet. Now, to me, other than the whole leaving-early thing, which isn't usual, that sounds like a perfectly respectable Friday. I mean, I've got both research and bona fide librarian work at the refdesk listed! Plus teaching prep! ...

If you know me at all, you likely know that my sister and I don't see eye to eye on a great many things, and so we don't speak much. Other than our appearance, which is totally different (she is a tall, thin, gorgeous cross country runner, whereas I am a rather short chunky on-my-butt-with-a-book type), I usually can't decide if we're too much alike, or too different. It makes me sad, but that's the way our cookie crumbled. But talking to my mother on the phone the other night, she reported that my sister finished her master's degree. (She is a high school math teacher back home in New York.) I am just about busting with pride, despite the fact that I had zero to do with it. I'm proud of her for pursuing a career I could never imagine. (Really? Teaching calculus to high schoolers?) I'm proud of her for deciding to stay in New York (I often think that I took the easy way out, running away to someplace new and starting over fresh). I'm proud of her for...

Today marks my one year anniversary an an official professional librarian. I started working here at UTC on August 6th of 2007, and it has been quite the whirlwind of a year. I am surprised at the "year" marker - mostly because it both feels like I haven't been here that long, and that I've been here forever. Let's do a mini-catalog of what I've accomplished since getting here: Had small article published in InfoCareerTrends ; Had over 14 book reviews published; Peer-reviewed two book chapters; Peer-reviewed three articles; Elected to 2-year term on the University's Faculty Senate; Joined 2 ALA RUSA committees; Won a $1000 professional development grant from the University; Had poster session at ALA Annual; Wrote 3 book chapters (all still pending publication); Scheduled to co-speak at a preconference and a regular session at Internet Librarian in October; Expecting to have co-written conference proceedings paper published for IL08; Completed 2 semesters (...

Lots of writing projects, and my wee brain is a bit friend with them all, and trying to keep myself straight. First: I am attempting to draft a short paper for the Internet Librarian proceedings. I can't help it, Rudy practically dared me when she said it was a timesuck and that very few people included them. I have about half of the eight pages done (doesn't sound like a lot, but some of the research I need has been tough to find). I'm hoping to shoot a draft over to Rudy by the end of next week on that one, since it's due August 22nd. I doubt we'll worry about putting our slides in there, since they'll be made available online later, and the slides are likely to change since the presentation's not until October anyway. one of Rudy's concerns was that a paper written now may not reflect exactly what's going on come October...I absolutely agree with her, and would find it shady if anything someone wrote up on technology in August *was* the same after...

I spent this weekend at home completely sans -internet. My Dell desktop (circa 2000) is in its final death throes, and I inadvertently left my work laptop at work on Friday afternoon. I returned to my apartment - which was covered in the books I had shipped myself from ALA, books and paperwork related to my MFA stuff, and the kitchen table....um, let's just say the kitchen table is where I toss all my crap when I walk through the door. I've been needing to tidy up for weeks, but it's tough to concentrate on something like that when my IM is always bleeping, and my Gmail needs checking. So, I restrained myself. I hit the gym and the grocery on Saturday and did not go to the office to get my computer. Some of you will understand the restraint I exhibited there. Instead, I went home, showered, played with the dogster, tidied, read Envy the Night (yes, that's right, I have an Advance Reader's Copy. Thank you, ALA vendors), and saw The Dark Knight (which was fabulous)...

I was just informed by a good friend of mine who loves her literature that when you type "David Copperfield" into Google, the first few results are the magician, and not the novel. We are pretty certain this means that the end of civilization as we know it is imminent. How utterly depressing.

Something happened today that has me thinking about customer service. It's rarely a topic I address, since (and I realize this sounds a bit harsh) you either provide excellent customer service, or you don't. If you don't, there's something wrong with your organization, and you need to deal with it. 'Nuff said. Now, I say this as someone who has managed people in various capacities (Dunkin Donuts and Coldstone as well as libraries), and to be quite honest, excellent customer service really looks the same everywhere, whether you're at a reference desk or schlepping deep-fried dough and coffee across a counter. It's a smile, a genuine interest in helping your customer/patron/whomever, and a collegial atmosphere that prevents an occasionally tedious job from becoming horrible. A good work environment usually leads to better customer service. The reason I'm thinking about this is that I've been looking for a second job. (No, not leaving MPOW, love it the...

I decided that if I get to do a presentation that requires some sort of slides, I will *not* be a failbucket and read from the slides. In fact, I will only use pictures as cues (which I tend to do anyway). In even more fact, I am trying to convince myself to only use appropriate lolcat and failblog pictures. (Heck, every audience loves some amusement. In that vein, expect to see this pic in at least one of my IL08 presentations:

A few things I've been thinking on the flights back to Chattanooga from Anaheim today. One problem with having everyone submit their programs by the end of July for next Annual? Things get stale. If I had to sit through one more talk on how someone implemented a Library 2.0 program I was going to scream. Very few of those had anything new to say about it - if there's no new spin, it's just rehash. I'm not into hash of any kind. Hot Topics and Trends type programs are great, but the rest of the programming suffers a bit. The in-between time. Morning programs ran from 8:30 to 10:30, and then the next program sessions began at 10:30. I don't know about you, but I am not made of magic. Even ten minutes would have been appreciated so that we could have attended more programs per day. Of course, this could be a ploy to give us downtime so we can troll the exhibits and be wooed by vendors. (Props to the Ibis guys for the flying monkeys. Those were a *huge* hit.) ALA should...

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 ...