LaughAloud

From the Vaults

I was going through a box of old papers this evening, and came across something I wrote on the plane while on my way to San Diego for my interview in 2005. Apparently I intended to post it here, and simply never did...until now! 

 

"To be posted later:

12:05pm Central, Tuesday, June 7, 2005

 

On the plane, preparing for my interview...

Reading and re-reading information about UCSD Libraries & people. From the UCSD Libraries Strategic Plan 2002-2005:

Strategy 1: Organizational Effectiveness

Cultivate a healthy, diverse and dynamic environment that attracts and retains competent and creative employees. Structure our organization to motivate and enable Library employees to provide the highest-quality services. (emphasis added)

As Smitty would say - Must be Nice!"

 

It sounded good reading it then, and in six years working at UCSD, I'd say this grand sounding strategy was actually part of the institutional culture of the library. Like most goals, not every aspect always 100% realized, but more than just words that look good on paper.

Don't Breathe a Word

The big Midwinter Library convention was in San Diego earlier this month, close enough for me to walk down each day to the Convention Center. Normally, although the exhibits are chock full of free advanced copies of upcoming books, I try not to pick up many, if any at all. My bags are usually close enough to the 50lb limit without piling in a bunch of books. But, since all I had to do was carry them home, I ended up with about 30 books. If they're all as good as the first one I read, I totally hit a goldmine this year!

  Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon comes out in May 2011.

The back cover description made this book sound compelling, but I had no idea. I couldn't put it down and couldn't stop thinking about it when I did. The evening I started it, I made the mistake of staying up late, the only one awake in a dark house. Fair warning - if you read this book, don't do that.  It doesn't look terrifiying, but it is, in a spooky, things that go bump in the night are real and after you kind of way.

Fifteen years ago, 12 year old Lisa, disappears into the wood, leaving behind her brother Sam who never believes the story Lisa tells him before she leaves - She is going through a secret door in the wood to meet the Fairy King and become his Queen.

Chapters alternate between the days leading up to Lisa's disappearance and fifteen years later when Lisa's brother Sam has tried to put the past behind him. Tried to forget about the sister he lost as a child and move on with his life. Until his girlfriend, Phoebe, receives a call that seems to be from Lisa. She is coming back from the land of Fairies and she needs their help.

It might not seem so terribly dark, but you'll be wanting to pile things under your bed and will be guessing till the very end whether this is a real supernatural tale, or a tale of evil people doing things that make them seem other worldly.

Dream a Little Dream

I am on a ladder, shoving documents onto the top shelf, hiding them under other books. There are soldiers with guns all over the library. Demanding specific documents be removed and handed over. One approaches me, still on the ladder, and demands we hand over the Census CDs from earlier than 1990. The same CDs that stopped working the week before. They've infiltrated the software, not just come in person demanding we turn over documents.

Once they've removed whatever government information they are trying to suppress, we are loaded onto a bus. The bus is full, are they all from the library? I'm not sure, but the buss is full. We stop for gas, and get out, stretch our legs, buy supplies. It does not feel like we are prisoners. We continue on our journey, to where we're not sure. We make another stop and this time and the military brass and the suit who have been on the bus with us, get off. They speak with one of the soldiers off the bus. He gets back on big gun in hand. Somehow, we know, he's been ordered to kill us.

But he doesn't. What we do to convince him not to kill us is unclear. Instead, they are going to break our hands. Just one hand each.

We're no longer on the bus, but waiting, huddled on the floor of an empty building. They take 3 of us at a time into a room. Use a hammer, smash a finger at a time, while the rest of us sit outside and listen and wait for our turn to come. Through all of this, I somehow manage to sleep. When I wake, Chip is there with me and he has brought me different clothes. He says he knows how much I like the ones I'm wearing, and he doesn't want them ruined by the blood. And I know then, I'm ready, I'm prepared knowing they're going to break my hand in such a way, I know I'll probably never be able to use it again, or at least not for a long time. And I decide, or rather, I know, I will give him my right hand. And it feels surreal because my left hand was always the less important, the extra, the helper. And in half my life it still is. But without my left hand, I wouldn't be able to shoot my bow.

And I prepare to give my right hand over to the hammer.

Art

...in front of the Boston Public Library

After All

Last year, from January to June, I participated in an ALA leadership initiative for "newer librarians" called Emerging Leaders.  We met for a day in January at the Midwinter conference, and for a day in June at the Annual conference.  In between the conferences, we had small groups in which we worked on a variety of library related projects. When I applied for this program, it seemed like a good idea, even though the program was new and no one really knew what to expect.

But after it started, I thought it was a mistake...the first session wasn't that great and it didn't help that I had taken on way too much during that time and was overwhelmed and stressed. Although Emerging Leaders was just an additional stress and not the BIG stress, it still didn't seem that worthwhile.  Come June, I was so relieved that everything was over. I figured I had at least made a couple good friends in the process, even if I didn't get much more out of it.

But then, in October, two of my group members, Wendy & Rachel, who had been sponsored by Ohio Library Council, gave a presentation on the project at the OLC Conference.  It was so impressive, OhioNet approached them to do a workshop on the topic.  Unfortunately, Wendy was going to be opening a new branch around the time they wanted to workshop done, and so Rachel asked if I would do the workshop with her.

And so it happened, that last week, I found myself in Columbus, teaching a workshop on library marketing & community demographics with my good friend Rachel, a public librarian in Ohio, who I probably would have never even met if not for Emerging Leaders.  And now, after the successful workshop, we're thinking of turning the content into a pre-conference, though we're still deciding where to submit it. On top of that, I had a wonderful time in Columbus, and I hope to go back soon.

So maybe Emerging Leaders wasn't such a waste of time after all.

Dr. Suess is 104

Or at least, he would be if he were still alive.  This picture was taken last Monday at his annual birthday celebration in front of the Geisel Library. Have you ever seen a Cat in the Hat this big!?!

Librarian Kirk

In this short YouTube clip from the Star Trek animated series, Captain Kirk briefly opines that he should have been a librarian.  As always, Spock has a very logical response.

At the Ref Desk

ME: Podcast?

STUDENT: (looks at me blankly) What's that?

ME: explains.

STUDENT: (looks at me like I'm crazy) Isn't there something I can read?

Free Books?!

So one thing about going to a ginormous library conference  (that's 18,000 attendees) with a huge exhibit floor (about 650 booths) is that at the end of the whole shebang, there are lots of publishers with lots of books they don't want to ship back to wherever they happen to be from.  For some publishers, that means selling their books at a discount of 20% or even 50%. But as the deadline approaches for the gates to close for the last time, they start to just giving away books willy nilly. Even when they don't choose to give away their published books, they often have lots of advanced reader copies of books to be published sometime  in the next several months, and they can't sell these. I walked around for about an hour on Tuesday morning and came away with 5 advance copies, 2 books bought cheaply, and 4 already published books. Yay! You can already see two I've read below, and I'm sure more will be appearing soon!

Crazy Library

A couple weeks ago I was in Seattle for a conference, and I stayed in a hotel right across the street form the Seattle Public Library.  It is a really cool building, on the outside and the inside.  This is a picture of the escalator which is even more neon in person, and is the same color as the inside of the elevators.

My favorite floor is the fourth floor, which is mostly meeting rooms. You walk onto the fourth level, and everything is deep red.  The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything. As I walked along the empty red halls, it felt rather surreal, and my vision adjusted to the darker red light.  I stepped into the women's restroom, and everything was suddenly pale blue. The walls, ceiling, floor, stalls, everything. It seriously felt like I was in some '70s futuristic space movie, walking through the strangely empty ship, waiting for the aliens to strike. Weird.

Distant Mountains

Catching Up

Why haven't I posted for a month?  Really, I have no good excuse.  Blog worthy things have happened, as well as unworthy events I would normally have blogged about it.  But I still haven't written.  Maybe it was laziness or Civ addiction or just falling out of the habit, I don't know.  But here's trying to change the pattern with a few updates.

Chip update
Chip has a job!  He started working three weeks ago, and is really enjoying it.  He's doing scientific programming using Fortran, and it has something to do with fluid dynamics.  Its very similar to the kind of programming he did in grad school, but in a very different environment with different sorts of results.  So its familiar yet challenging and fun.  We went out last night for a sushi dinner to celebrate our first month with 2 pay checks since we moved to San Diego.  It was oh, so yummy.

My job update
I really love my job! It can be a little overwhelming at times, especially since its really up to full speed, but I still feel like I have a lot of learn. It recently became official that I am in charge of the Urban Studies and Environmental Studies collections in addition to my Government Documents duties. A few weeks ago, I taught my first library instruction sessions for a couple Urban Studies classes which was very stressful, but I think they turned out well, and were kind of fun! I've already had one of the professors ask me to do an instruction session for his other class, which made me feel like the first one couldn't have been too bad!  In other job related news, Alanna has an interview at the end of March for a job in my department.  How fun would that be if one of my super good friends came to live in San Diego and work in the library with me!

Other random tidbits
We recently played Clue. I love Clue. We went to a really fun Mardi Gras party. It was the first Mardi Gras party either of us had been to. This is a bigger deal for Chip, being from St. Louis, which usually has the 2nd largest Mardi Gras parade in the country (the largest this year.) No paczki though. Today a couple friends took us to Ramos House Cafe.  It was an hour drive away, but boy was it worth it!  Yummy, yummy.

I'm sure I'm leaving out key features of the past month, but I think this is long enough for now.  Anyone who has missed my posting, can thank L (who likes to remain mysterious & anonymous) for prompting me into action.

San Antonio

So one reason (other than laziness and addiction to CivIV) that I haven't posted for a while is that last week I was in San Antonio at the library association conference.  I'm sure you non-librarians out there (and maybe even some librarians) are thinking that it must have been really boring, but it was tons of fun! Not only did I go to lots of fun meetings and exhibits, but I also hung out with friends from Chicago that I hadn't seen in months!  The exhibits were pretty cool.  I left with way too much stuff, but I did get some cool free books and I even won a $50 amazon gift card!  I was also able to meet my goal of attending at least one non-government documents session (I mean, you all know I love documents, but I just can't let myself do nothing but GODORT at the conferences.)

I put together a little album of some photos I took during my trip.  (Just for you, Alanna! OK for the rest of you, too!) I roomed with one of my best friends from library school, Martinique.  Here's a picture of us the first day of the conference, with our badges and everything.  Click on the picture to see the rest of the album!

[WARNING! This photo album contains Star Trek references. Extra geeky ones.]

Scripps Pier

Last Friday I had a tour of the Library at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  It was really interesting and they had lots of cool old books and maps.  You can see this pier when you walk out of the library and kind of peer through some trees down to the shore.  Pretty isn't it? 

I have some more pictures to post if I ever get around to it.  I have a little album of pictures I started to make from a walk around the neighborhood Chip and I took last week.  Hopefully I'll get them up one of these days!

Double Vision

How it Went

So I had my second interview yesterday and I think it went pretty well.  I already knew everyone I met with which made everything more relaxed but also more difficult in some ways.  It wasn't so stressful because I didn't feel like I had a limited time to convince everyone I met I was wonderful and would be a great asset to the library.  If they don't already think that, after working with me for four years, there would be no way for me to convince them of that in one day.  I did feel like I was successful in convincing everyone that I was capable of doing THAT job, and being a great International Documents Librarian.  We'll see how it turns out.  Now I just have to wait.

I hope to get two offers, and then the difficult part will be choosing between them.  I like to think positive. :)

Interview #2

I spent this afternoon at Starbucks preparing for my interview at Northwestern on Tuesday.  I had a lot of reading I wanted to do and questions to write up. 

I definitely feel less nervous for this interview than I did for my last one, but I'm not sure how much of it has to do with interviewing in a familiar place with people I know, or at least have met before.  I think a lot of it also has to do with the day's schedule being less packed, and not having to give a presentation.  There's also something about it not being the FIRST interview that makes it seem just a little easier.  I feel more prepared though than I did before San Diego, like I have a better idea of what to expect.

All that said, I still feel quite nervous.  But excited, too.

Civilization and Libraries

As of Wednesday, I am unofficially done with my Master's in Library Science.  Although I won't officially get my degree until August, I am finished with everything that needs to be done. 

Between Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon I basically did two things:  Play Civilization and Library stuff. 

I went to work (in a library) Thursday and part of Friday. I went to ALA (American Library Association) conference events Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and on Sunday morning.  Pretty much the rest of the time, when I wasn't sleeping I was playing Civilization. 

I have been addicted to Civilization since probably sometime in high school when my family got the first version.  My addiction always comes in fits and starts.  Sometimes I won't play it for like a year, and then I'll just get the urge and I won't be able to stop playing it.  In college, when I bought Civilization II, I only installed it on Chip's computer at his apartment, so I couldn't play it at home instead of doing homework.  Although sometimes I went to his house when my classes finished early, and he would come home to find me playing Civilization in the dark. 

This Fall, Civilization IV comes out.  It looks really cool and I can't wait.  In the mean time, I'll be playing CivIII.  But hopefully doing some other things with my free time, too.

Made it!

I made it through the interview and made it back home!  It really wasn't as bad as I expected and I think it went fairly well.  I could definitely see myself working there and working with the people there.  Everyone was very nice and it seemed like a good place to work.  I won't know until about mid-July just how good it was, but that will give me the chance to explore some other options.  San Diego was nice, although to be honest, I was mostly too stressed and tired to really explore and enjoy it much.  I did get to see my brother Tyson and eat dinner with him the night before my interview.  That was really nice :)  I hadn't seen him for almost a year!  Yay, Tyson!  Fun dinner and visit that took my mind off the interview!

Here's a picture from the side of Geisel Library, where my interview was.  Its a really cool building, and there will of course be more to come.

Distractions

My mind has always tended to wander a lot in class.  I have trouble paying attention for long periods of time anyway, but especially when the lecture goes on too long on a certain topic or unrelated tangent, or, well, a lot of other things.  The really cool thing about Library School is that almost always, my mind wanders in very productive ways.  I make lists of things I need to accomplish, chores at home, things for school, things at work.  Sometimes I come with exciting new ideas or fun projects for work. 

Today, when our professor was explaining at length what might be involved in setting up a business for abstracting journals of a certain type and creating an index of articles, he used Library Science as an example subject.  Which got me thinking.  I don't remember my chain of thought, so don't expect the connections to make sense.

I think I don't read (skim, look at, etc) enough journals on librarianship.  Most of the news I hear come from the GovDocs listserv or maybe someone sends a link at work, or I read about it in a non-library news source.  I should read more things, have a broader base. 

This is one of the things that really excites me about UCSD.  the more I look at the staff members there, and what they have done and published and been involved in, the more I am excited about the possibility of working there.  There seems to be so many of them who have wide ranging interests that go far beyond the job they do there.  There are people who are publishing in multiple, mostly unrelated areas, and seem so excited about all of it, and that really excites me.  How cool would it be to work in a place where professional development is encouraged and expected to deviate from the type of librarian position you have, and everyone is excited about the things they do.  But, I don't want to get too excited.  Not yet.