I never really liked this song before, but now that I’ve seen the video for “Every time we touch” (which takes place in a library in a sort of “hot for teacher” manner” I’m a fan. [thanks john13!]
hi – 03jan07
Hi — I’m pretty sure I’m finished with the redesign/retheming of librarian.net. The RSS feed will look a little different, but not much. The site looks cleaner and easier to use in my opinion. If you notice something missing or not working please let me know. If you do read the site only through RSS, you might want to stop by the place and take a look.
I just did a small retrospective at my personal blog about my last ten years of blogging. Yeah you read that right. I started jessamyn.com/journal (rss) January first 1997, in what feels now like a totally different life. I was out of library school but hadn’t been working as a librarian anyplace outside of the University of Washington. For a long time, my main web presence was at jessamyn.com and that didn’t change until the last three or four years. Now I’ve got four or maybe five little subsites spread all over the com/info/net universe and my work time is split between fixing little computers in little libraries and managing a large online community with a popular question answering site.
I’ll do a little “my library year in review” post this week, but I just wanted to note this little milestone here as well.
DOPA dies on the vine
With the shift in power in Congress, DOPA looks like it’s done.
the final nail in DOPA’s coffin came with the switch of Congress from Republican to Democrat. Legislation that doesn’t get signed into law by the end of a congressional term has to start from scratch during the next term. In January, the Democrats will be in charge of both houses of Congress, and there’s no sign that they’re going to rush and re-introduce DOPA. Key DOPA critics in the House and Senate, including Reps Ed Markey, John Dingell and Sen. Patrick Leahy, will soon be in leadership positions. With the Republican losses in November, it will be harder for their caucus members to re-introduce DOPA, especially since Fitzpatrick is gone and they lacked Democrat co-sponsors in the first place.
library too popular with teens? close it after school. brilliant!
In the article Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over one New Jersey library claims it has to resort to closing the library during after school hours because the library is being overrrun by unruly teenagers who are fighting, peeing on the bathroom floor and, apparently “talk[ing] back to librarians.” Here’s the library’s announcement on their website. Looks like the library will be available via phone, IM and email after school, just not in person. [thanks kelly!]
2006 reading list, a year end summary
I liked doing this last year. I think I’ll do it again this year. Slow year for reading for me. I was busy, busier maybe than I’ve been lately.
number of books read in 2006: 60
number of books read in 2005: 86
number of books read in 2004: 103
number of books read in 2003: 75
number of books read in 2002: 91
number of books read in 2001: 78
average read per month: 5
average read per week: 1.25
number read in worst month: 0 (December)
number read in best month: 8 (November, August)
percentage by male authors: 59
percentage by female authors: 41
fiction as percentage of total: 60
non-fiction as percentage of total: 40
percentage of total liked: 77
percentage of total ambivalent: 23
percentage of total disliked: 0
I made a little spreadsheet of all the books. There was only one that I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. There were two that followed me through the entire year: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and And Their Children After Them, both terribly haunting depictions of the short and long term effects of rural poverty. I think of them every day when I’m at work, trying to help.
Looking for something to read? Check out this compilation of “best of 2006” reading lists that the Seldovia Public Library has assembled on their delightfully bloggy library website.