do you make stuff? library stuff?

Since my bank receipt today came with holly berries on it, I figure it’s time to start the holiday sidebar.

I’m not much of a shopper, but I’m aware that I am not particularly normal in this regard. So, similar to last year I’ll have a sidebar on librarian.net illustrating particularly excellent things that mike make good gifts for librarians. Feel free to add your own in the comments. Last year I got both of my parents woodblock prints from David Bull — a guy I know from MetaFilter — and am particpating in his affiliate program this year. I also have a pair of miniature book earrings from ShoeString press that are pretty nifty. Every year at MetaFilter we do a listing of shops run by MeFites, if there are librarian.net readers that have wares to hock, please feel free to drop me a note or put a comment below.

hi – 27nov07

Hi. I used to start quite a large number of these posts this way, but I haven’t lately. This is just a little heads up about a few things that you might be interested in.

  • I’m adding a little holiday sidebar with a few links to things you can get your favorite librarian. I’ve seen a few things where I’ve been like “Oh, isn’t that clever/appropriate?” so I figured I’d add them. The woodblock link is to a MetaFilter buddy who makes and sells amazingly lovely woodblock prints and has a little “help me advertise” program that I figured I’d help with. If you have other links, to your own stuff or great stuff from others, add it to the comments and I’ll put it up. I’ll take the sidebar down after the holidays. Please don’t get me anything, I have all that I need.
  • I may not have mentioned it here, but I took the Vermont Library Association website and ported it over to a bloggish format using WordPress and a few choice plugins that do things like put the jobs on their own page withough putting them on the front page, and allow people to add posts that are also events on the sidebar. I’d love to say that it went off without a hitch but the process was a little bumpy, mostly because of difficulty figuring out who had passwords to which pieces of the site. Folks, make sure you get this stuff in your binders! The switch from having one webmaster to making groups more responsible for their own content is a challenge as well. I’m lucky to be supported strongly by the VLA president as well as Judah Hamer from my former library who does the diplomacy stuff while I do the coding stuff.
  • I’ll be speaking at a conference in Dubai at the end of next week which I am very excited about. My friend Step who you may know from her various blogs is working at Zayed University and I am speaking at their conference and then Step and I are leading a blogging/wiki workshop. It will be the first time I’ve been out of the country to a non-English speaking locale (I know many people speak English, but not compared to Australia or Canada) in years. I am making an assumption that there are not many librarian.net readers in Dubai, but if anyone is, please look me up.

holiday shopping, early

I have had a lot of people send me links to excellent things that I think other librarians might want. However, since I’m such a stuffy anti-capitalist, I sometimes shy away from “you might want to buy this” posts. Then my inbox fills up and I get into competitive Inbox Zero mode and I realize that one of the things that I like about my readers is that they’re not all like me and so this is why I am posting these.

  • Excellent library love t-shirt from Gluekit’s new PartofIt project (launching any day now) which designs neat looking stuff to help raise funds for non-profits.
  • Threadless “check out” double entendre t-shirt for your favorite bibliophile
  • If you read the BibliOdyssey blog (and you should) you might be pleased to know that there is a companion book full of delightful images from ancient texts. I had the pleasure of meeting PK when I was in Australia and I had no idea something like this was in the works. However, I got a copy last week and while I’m still poring through the frontmatter, the restof it is the real deal. Nice book and the blog post about it has more information on the convoluted process of getting a blog into print with associated rights-haggling etc.
  • Lastly, I was cleaning up my house up north and came across a few copies of Revolting Librarians Redux still in their “prepared for mailing” state. If you want one, KR and I are e-baying them off with the proceeds to go to the EFF (or another deserving charity if you’re so inclined). KR and I are pretty geographically dispersed, so signed copies might be a non-option, but ask us and we’ll do what we can. Want a copy? Click here.

Feel free to add other “perfect for the librarian who has everything” links below.