what’s in my librarian toolbox?

Posted on by jessamyn

Keeping with what Roy Tennant mentioned a few weeks back, here’s what i told Blake about my librarian toolbox.

1. Hardware/Software – I can use computers with basically any operating system with nearly equal fluency. Mac, Windows, Linux, command line. Firefox, Opera, IE, Chrome. I don’t expect other people to have this flexibility, but it’s good to know if a problem you’re looking at is due to a misfit in terms of this sort of thing.

2. Access – it’s sort of a dirty secret, but I have library cards (mine or loaners) at maybe ten different libraries which gives me access to pretty much any database that I might need access to. Looking up stuff that is a little esoteric is just a few clicks away. Knowing which database has what then becomes the big trick.

3. Discerning Eyes – I can usually tell if an answer is in my Google results list without even clicking on the link. This helps me be fast and accurate.

4. Wetware – I’m pretty patient and pretty tolerant but at the same time, I know when to say “no” and know when to say “that is a suboptimal solution” It’s important that as professionals we need to be able to “play it as it lays” but also be open to newer and better solutions.

5. Tenacity – I don’t like to let go of a problem, particularly a technological problem, until I’ve solved it.

6. The hot potato thing – if I find out something that is awesome, I want to pass it around. This goes equally well for my ideas as well as the ideas of others. Pass it along so that others can benefit too!

What’s in yours?

making a difference, general and specific

Posted on by jessamyn

I have some odds and ends here that I wasn’t too sure where to put. I try to do linkdumps infrequently. Here are some things I’ve come across in the past week or so that seem to be a few people deciding to improve something and what came out of that decision.

the discriminating librarian

Posted on by jessamyn

I went through and did a whole bunch of adding and subtracting to my RSS feeds now that I’m feeling better (woohoo, the raring librarian, I also switched to a new file cabinet! *swoons*) so I may be reading some stuff that you’ve read a few weeks back. Of particular interest this week was Iris Jastram’s short post about someone trying to pretend to be a student in order to get the library to buy a particular book. Steve Lawson adds a little color commentary. Iris smelled something fishy and put the kibosh on it. Nice work. In related news, I am still getting the occasional email from spammers and other press-release mailers trying to get me to link to their blogs or review their books. If I get an email from a publisher, even a press release email, I always write them back and politely tell them

– that my blog is not a book review blog
– that I do not work in a library in a book-buying capacity
– that I do not appreciate getting emails like these
– that whoever they bought my email address from has sold them a bad list

I often get responses saying that they didn’t buy a list [is it against the rules to admit it if you do this?] and they just really liked my blog and thought I’d like their book. I’m at a loss. My particular problem isn’t terribly difficult. I block their address and my problem is solved. The larger problem of clueless marketing and (in Iris’ case, not so much in mine) aggressive responses to being declined seems to be a whole ‘nother piece of collateral damage from the economic downturn.

what’s happening from the middle of “banned books week” websites

Posted on by jessamyn

Here are my old Banned Books Weeks posts: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008. I skipped 2005.

I’ve been down with The Crud for the past few weeks. Not really sick, but not having a lot of extra energy to get involved in things outside my own library and jobs. Banned Books Week started on Saturday and runs through this week. I’ve been invited to an evening with readings from banned books tomorrow night and I think I’m staying home.

I’m not sure if I’m getting complacent, sick of this holiday, sick generally, or there really is a lot less enthusiasm this year from years previous. The ALA page is usually my starting point and it seems a little less lively than usual. Their calendar of events is Chicago based (wouldn’t it be great if they were an aggregator to BBW activity worldwide? Does such a thing exist) and indicates to me that they still haven’t learned to resize images before uploading them. The ALAOIF blog hasn’t posted yet this week though they did link to this cute video put out by ALA which I enjoyed. The main ALA BBW page doesn’t even link to the Banned Books Week page which is supposedly the “go to” page for current information — and does have a calendar of sorts — which has a broken stylesheet declaration which makes all the pages look like they were designed in 2003.

As usual, I clicked through from the ALA web page to the home pages of all the organizations who are co-sponsors of Banned Books Week. Here’s what I found.

Even ALA’s home page doesn’t mention Banned Books Week except on page six of their slide show where they tell us what we can buy to support it.

I wonder a little bit if this is what a post-Judith Krug ALA looks like? On a brighter note, let’s look at some Banned Books Week web pages that are useful and/or interesting

While I’m talking about this, I’d also like to mention the data on the PBS page.

According to the ALA there have been 3,736 challenges from 2001-2008:

* 1,225 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material
* 1,008 challenges due to “offensive language”
* 720 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”
* 458 challenges due to “violence”
* 269 challenges due to “homosexuality”
* 103 challenges due to “anti-family”
* 233 challenges due to “religious viewpoints”

I think we need to look hard at this list and draw some conclusions about what sort of people believe that restricting access to books for these reasons is both a good idea or a reasonable thing to expect to be able to get away with. And then, if we want to get serious, I think we need to hit these points directly and ask people why they’re afraid of sex, or gay people (or penguins), or swearing. It’s nice to say that “free people read freely” but it’s another to be in a situation where your institutions are getting pressured by people who are intolerant and thinking that speaking truth to power is all you need to do. I’ve talked a little more about this in the MetaFilter thread about Banned Books Week, it’s always a reflective time of year for me.

Also, ALA knows that BBW means something else, right?

library update from the “bookless” library

Posted on by jessamyn

Cushing Academy headmaster James Tracy explains the bookless library idea a little further in this recent update. A few bullet pointed notes

– this “transformation is happening over two years”
– many books removed from the library are going to departmental offices
– they are adding librarians to staff

I remain skeptical and note the absence of the library director’s statement in any of this. This page is just a restatement of Tracy’s note. Where is the library’s voice? Why does the library’s homepage link to a Teaching & Learning With Technology newsletter that hasn’t been updated in four years?