librarian.net

Normal Bob Smith has designed a Librarian Dress Up page. Not as involved as the one for Amber Ray (and the librarian does not get quite as naked) but fun nonetheless. [mofo]

I got back Monday night from a weekend which included ROFLcon and a talk at the Central MA Regional Library System. It was fun getting to do both. ROFLcon is sort of a laugh a minute and the CMRLS talk was particularly gratifying because the people in the audience (who had driven through a DELUGE to get there) were engaged and interesting and brought a lot to the table. CMRLS is also the system for my hometown library in Boxborough, so I enjoyed getting to see their tag for the boxes of materials that went to the library from the regional sorting facility. My talk notes are here

Tiny Tech/High Tech - How Small Libraries Can Use Technology Sensibly

This post is a day or two late because I already wrote this post yesterday, but due to some confusion about how to differentiate between a draft and an actual published post in WordPress 2.5 I managed to delete it before it went live. This is entirely my own fault and yet the interface to the new WordPress [if you haven’t upgraded, do so quicklike] is different enough that it makes certain parts of WordPress operate differently. This, in turn, changes my user behavior because my muscle memory wants to click certain places and look for certain visual cues for things. And again, when I’m wrassling with confusing interfaces — and this one is mostly that way because it’s new and I’m not used to it — my thoughts turn to the OPAC and the small wonder that people even come to our libraries at all sometimes when we make our materials so difficult to retrieve, sometimes.

In any case ROFLcon was a good time not just because it was fun and I got to see my boss Matt Haughey speak on a panel but also because there were a lot of librarians there. It was a pretty small conference but in addition to Casey Bisson who took some great photos, I also got to meet Wikipedian librarian Phoebe Ayers and Nathan from Shushing Action as well as some Simmons library students and just a few people who were like “You’re a librarian, that’s SO COOL!” It’s always gratifying to be somewhere where the nerd and librarian forces are strong.

“Oh Jessamyn, you are such a fashion plate, I am sure you must know how to make some of those styling book earrings that every hip librarian is wearing lately, don’t you?”
“Well no, but a wiki can show you how.”

Just got this in my inbox this morning and figured I’d share. I edited a little bit and added some hyperlinks, also suggested that BPL needs an announcement blog along the lines of the nifty one at NYPL Labs.

Hi Jessamyn and Alison,

Thanks for blogging about our Flickr presence last week… your influence was greatly felt (to the tune of 2,500 hits on the day of your post, with virtually no other publicity at all).

I wanted to let you know about a couple of this week’s developments:

• In response to comments on Jessamyn’s blog, we’ve gone ahead and opened up all of our items to tags and comments from any Flickr user; we welcome/encourage/request any and all submissions. We’ve made the photo titles more meaningful as well, instead of simply using our digital accession numbers.
• In addition to the 1,227 items posted last week, we’ve added 4,523 really cool vintage postcards of New England, geotagged by the location pictured (and therefore viewable on our map). It’s so cool that I’d probably lose a lot of productive time playing with this stuff if it weren’t my actual job to play with this stuff.
• We’ve got two or three more collections identified for uploading in the very near future, with plenty more to come after that.
• We’re still waiting to see if Flickr will let us use the “No known copyright restrictions” license that they created for the Flickr Commons pilot project.

  If you feel like any of this is newsworthy enough to treat your readers to a followup, we can always use a little pre-launch publicity. :-) Either way, I’ll be sure to keep you both posted as the project continues to grow.

  Thanks!
  Michael

  –
  Michael B. Klein
  Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian

Library Journal has put the list of Movers and Shakers online. Well, they have a list of their cutesy taglines, you have to click through to get the names. The page where they list all the Movers & Shakers by state has the names of every Mover and Shaker, though they’re not hyperlinked. Maybe we need to wikify this? I have included the list here. Can you guess any of the names? Life is too short, I copied the names over as well. update: Librarian by Day has gone a step further and linked to their blogs too, if available. Congrats to all of you.

• Grace Under Pressure (Maria Redburn)
• The Man Who Said No to Dewey (Marshall Shore)
• In Context (Hilary Davis)
• Films ‘R’ Us (Jim Cheng)
• Giving Back (Darci Hanning)
• Thrill Seeker (Allyson Mower)
• User-Centered Technologist (David Lee King)
• Deep Impact (Christopher Harris)
• Expanding OPACs (Steven Bowers)
• Multitalented (Evette Atkin)
• Pathfinder (Elisabeth Jacobsen Marrapodi)
• Collaborative Experimentation (Char Booth)
• Geek Librarian (Michelle Boulé)
• Metadata Man (Tim Spalding)
• Never Satisfied (Caleb Tucker-Raymond)
• Dynamo (Nancy Teger)
• Reader’s Best Friend (Jessica Moyer)
• Push Technology (Marcia Mardis)
• Direct Effects (David Rothman)
• Restoring History (Mark Greek)
• The Translator (Lisa Sweeney)
• Show Me the Evidence (Mark Vrabel)
• Anger into Fuel (Mario Ascencio)
• Global Thinker (Robin Kear)
• Life Work (Annabelle V. Núñez)
• On the Line (Alex Youngberg)
• Open Source Evangelist (Josh Ferraro)
• Leveling the Field (Jennifer Nelson)
• On a Mission (Daniel Cornwall)
• Passion for Diversity (Padma Polepeddi)
• Rural Improvement (Amanda McKeraghan)
• Community Ambassador (Mary Ellen Stasek)
• On the Same Page (Jennifer Schember)
• Do Something! (Amy Buckland)
• Data Tracker (Kim Ricker)
• A Blended Passion (Alexia Hudson)
• Razzle Dazzler (Tony Tallent)
• Creating Customers (Penny Sympson)
• Action Figure (Stephanie Squicciarini)
• Not Clowning Around (Devona Carpenter )
• Better Than Cool (Karen Brooks-Reese )
• Working the Crossroads (Alison Cody)
• Storyteller (Lucía González )
• Spark Plug (Jamie Watson)
• Transformer (Peter Bromberg)
• Team Effort (Sarah Erwin & Candice Gwin)
• Paying It Forward (Sol Gómez)
• On Time, on Budget ( Kim Fuller)
• Cowgirl (Lisa Wells)

donnagirl asks MetaFilter: “I have two weeks to learn PHP. Help me make a plan! Because my library job is ridiculously awesome, I’m being given two weeks to devote myself to learning php.” Good advice follows from the hive mind.

Scott Douglas is getting married and sent out library-themed invites that I am sure you will find charming. Meanwhile, Offbeat Bride has a post about Raina’s $600 library themed wedding that I think will also put a smile on your face. [thanks sharyn!]

Celeste West’s obituary is up on the SFGate website with a link about who to contact about the memorial, noting “If you cannot donate, no worries, you can creatively agitate for peace and justice, and follow your bliss.”

Karen Schneider has a great post that is just now crossing my radar because I’ve been ignoring my RSS feed for a while and spending more time cooking. It’s called How To Be Famous and there are two things I like about it a great deal.

First, when I scanned it the first time I was like “Oh this was great but she forgot…” and then on a second read I realized she didn’t forget a thing, at least as I see things. Second, she wrote this list so I don’t have to. People in libraryland ask me what I do or did to travel and speak like I do — less than most but more than many others — and I let them in on my little pair of secrets which is 1) you have to want to do it to be able to do it, which already rules out a ton of people with other obligations or who just hate travel, public speaking or, frankly, other people. 2) I can manage to do what I do because I live a very small and simple life in rural Vermont with no pets or children and only a few peaked looking houseplants. The town rolls up the sidewalks at eight and most evenings I noodle away working. I am lucky to have a job, or a few jobs, that are flexible enough to allow me to travel and I’m equally fortunate to actually enjoy schlepping around and meeting other people.

The most important things I would point to on Karen’s list are these. The importance of taking care of yourself or as she says “pace yourself.” Not only are you no good to anyone if you haven’t gotten enough sleep or down-time, but being continually on-the-road exhausted is a lifestyle problem at some level. If you’re a brain surgeon, this may not be true. If you’re a librarian, it definitely is. Also, I believe strongly in helping up-and-comers and mentoring people newer to the profession or even people just considering the profession. People were there to answer my million questions when I was an early WLA and ALA member, I figure I can do the same for early bloggers and facebookers and whoever. Time and effort you invest in other people, for the most part, is time and effort well-invested.

“The following would be the best job ever for a rollergirl/librarian type.” Director/Curator, National Museum of Roller Skating. [pubhist]