Gimme shelter

During their copious free time, Holden and Daniel seem to have discovered that the library is a good spot to get cozy. Just don't start any campfires, guys.

Now THIS is exciting

At least for a librarian. I've been able to work out a solution to a problem that's been bugging me for the 19 years I've been here. Because we are a unit of the University Library, our cataloging (which is done for us) follows practices that are designed for an enormous research library. This is fine in most respects, with one major exception -- fiction. Research libraries don't do fiction. They do literature, which means that books are classified according to an author's geographic origins. Literary criticism, commentary, and the like are classified to sit on the shelves next to the works they describe. In our library, this means that fiction is scattered all over the 800s, like so:



Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now has an 813 call number since she's American, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has an 823 call number since she's British, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude has an 869 call number since he's Latin American. (Don't tell anyone, but over the years we've created all sorts of workarounds--like an uncataloged paperback collection--just to get some fiction in alphabetical order by author.)

So the good news is that, with the help of some very fine (and open-minded) people at the University Library, we've been given the go-ahead to start a genuine fiction section. So now the call numbers look like this:



In one streamlined order, we have Sweetblood by Pete Hautman (American) followed by The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett (British). And see that third item? Yes - it's a new graphic novel section! The Plot by Will Eisner has a GN prefix.

It feels good to finally catch up with all the other school libraries in America and be able to offer this bread-and-butter service.

New computers installed!

The stack-o-boxes is no more. Alex from the Systems Office came to install their contents today. Collette and Nuole are SO happy to be the first to do their research on these swift machines.

Conference swag

Swag is the fun stuff you can pick up from vendors at conferences. And then you look good when you re-gift the items at school. This morning I gave away copies of Shojo Beat manga, some fine Shakespeare magnets, Strangers in Paradise bookmarks, and assorted other goodies.

But I may have to keep my issue of Emily the Strange: Chairman of the Bored. After all, the episode of Scarytale Theater (Happily Never After) is a retelling of the "Sindarella" story.

I've been busy

And it's cool that other people have been keeping track of me. Here, and here, and here. Not that it's going to make any difference to the mice.

All creatures great and small

Tomorrow I leave for the ALA Midwinter Conference in San Antonio. Here is the message I left for Jenny and Corinne:

There are two mousetraps under my computer desk (at the waaaaaaay back). Could you please check them periodically for dead mice? If there are any, let Barb know. She'll call the mouse trap ladies, who will hold the funerals and reset the traps.

Apparently the tiny mouse that scurried under my feet last week is one of many inhabiting our aged building. The mousetrap ladies were very busy today.

I'm happy about going to the conference, but I'm sorry to be missing the first day of Spirit Week on Monday. I was looking forward to reprising my role as a cheerleader at this year's Faculty-Student basketball game. Beesley should be relieved, though. Last year I had some trouble understanding exactly where the court ended and the sidelines started. Not a good quality in a cheerleader.

Some days I hate computers

My husband and I spent all day Sunday rebuilding my hard drive. First, back up all files. Boring. Second, wipe hard drive. Scary. Third reload operating system and check for those bad blocks (none). Relief. Fourth, reload all files. Boring. Fifth, fuss with all the settings and preferences. Frustrating. Fifth, buy a portable hard drive and backup software. Righteous. But only if I stick to a regular schedule of backing up. I remember a workshop instructor who taught us this mantra: "Breathe, save, breathe, save, breath, save..." Just substitute "back up" for "save." Let that be a lesson to me.

On the bright side, today I get to tell people that their books are due on Valentine's Day.

Ethical behavior during ethics lessons

This being Day 2 of Computer Literacy 2, we jumped right into the Whodunnit exercise. This lesson is my attempt to get students to really examine what they see online. Who put it there? Why did they put it there? How would you tell someone else where to find it (i.e., how would you cite it)? Well, when we got to the Wikipedia example and looked at the "History" of the article, the IP addresses responsible for the most recent changes (just moments old) looked strangely familiar. In fact, emanated from our very own lab. Fortunately, the (pretty goofy) damage seems to be fixed. So sorry to be the source of trouble for some kindly, more responsible editors. Sigh. Good thing we have a three-day weekend.

Checking the pulse

It's strange to start the semester in the middle of the week. But here we are, with a new batch of victims for Computer Literacy 1 and 2. We did our usual unscientific show-of-hands survey to find out how many students have access to the Internet at home (100%, wow), how many use Macs (very few, so sad), how many have mp3 players (lots, not surprising), how many know what RSS is (about 1, surprising), how many have downloaded podcasts (a good-sized handful, even though they don't know what RSS is), etc. One interesting find is that many seem to be abandoning personal blogging in favor of social networking sites like MySpace. When I asked why, one girl said "I found out that I just wasn't that interesting." I don't think that's true of her, but I can see that keeping up a blog is burdensome at times. Another student felt that social networking sites win out because they serve multiple functions -- photo displaying, messaging, blogging, etc. I think of them as yearbooks on steroids. Here's another good quote about MySpace: "It is pretty much like a xanga just with a touch of AIM in it."

Value-added subtitles

Good subtitles are like short-cut indexing, a keyword alternative to Library of Congress Subject Headings. I know that some of us are getting tired of seeing colons in every title these days, but think about it. Having both title and subtitle real estate to play with, authors can be catchy and enigmatic, as well as fully descriptive.

Here are a couple of good examples from our new book shelf. The first one is called Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (306.484249 K658w) by Bakari Kitwana. The main title tells us the basic subject, but the subtitle gives us a real feel for the book's focus. Kitwana makes the argument that "the cross-cultural appeal of hip-hop is breaking down more racial barriers in America than any other social development since the Civil Rights Movement."

Then there's Howard Bryant's Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball (796.35764 B841j). The descriptive subtitle provides context for the clever-but-mysterious main title. Of course, the photo on the cover doesn't hurt either:

New computers!

Jenny and Becca are posing here with the stack 'o boxes containing our new computers and monitors. The Systems people will be here in the coming days to install them and cycle the old machines to different purposes.



These beauties come loaded with all kinds of productivity software, from word processing to CD/DVD burning. It's a big departure in philosopy for the University Library, which has historically confined public computer use to "library" research purposes simply by not installing productivity software. For a long time, e-mail was also restricted, until web-based e-mail made it too pervasive to prohibit. Now I think we have a better understanding of how people actually search for information, which generally involves moving freely among information, communication, and productivity technologies. I've long felt this way, but was reluctant to push the issue because we have so few computers in our library -- these four and the one we purchased with the prize money from our website design award (yes, we're a small, small shop!). All it takes is three students writing papers or reading their e-mail and only two computers are left for research. But I'm ready to try it now. After all, we've never had a problem when classes come in. The web surfers graciously move to a lab, pick up People or Sports Illustrated, or go back to doing math homework.

And to think that when I started here, we had one dumb terminal that had to be booted up from - I kid you not - a cassette tape player. I won't tell you what year that was.

What's your brand essence?

Speaking of dictionaries, Resource Shelf led me to some online word lists of interest. Lake Superior State University has published its 2006 List of Banished Words. It's true. Life would definitely be better if I never again had to hear anyone say "person of interest," "pass the savings onto you," or "holiday tree." Next year, though, their award committee should take a look at The Dictionary of Branding Terms, which defines brand essence as "The distillation of a brand's intrinsic characteristics into a succinct core concept." Huh? I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the committee did consult Regret the Error, a compilation of "corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media." Some real back-pedaling to be found there.

Visual dictionaries are so cool

They are even more cool when they are in five languages, like our new Firefly Five Language Visual Dictionary (R 413.21 C81f). I'm especially enjoying finding names for things I don't even know in English, let alone Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Here's a nice shot of a flat-back brush, a round brush, and a quill brush - distinctions in vocabulary I'd never imagined.



You should see the pages on cutlery and shirt collars...

And the winner is ... Anonymous!

aka, John Doe. The librarian known merely as plaintiff "John Doe" in the case John Doe v. Gonzales, along with Doe's unidentified employer, is this year's winner of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, given by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The case challenges the constitutionality of Section 505 of the USA Patriot Act, which allows the FBI to issue an administrative subpoena known as a national security letter without judicial oversight. The act also gags those receiving one of these nasty letters from revealing that fact to anyone. "Since Doe and his employer cannot directly accept the award, a third party will stand in on their behalf January 21, during a reception at the 2006 ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio." Think I might attend to see if anyone lurking in the shadows looks John Doe-ish.

Numbers for the new year

Re-entry is hard. But I am cheered by plowing through the accumulation of the Winter Break mail, which contains all those end-of-year sum-everything-up magazine issues. The best-of lists, the worst-of lists, the most-of lists, etc. Becca brought my attention to an essay by Patricia Marx in the December 19 issue of Time Magazine called "Check Out My New Numbers." It's a fun ride at the expense of the President, a theoretical response to his dismal poll ratings. Here's a sample of numbers that his "people in the White House have totally made up":

69% of heads of families who have saved $1 million or more due to the President's tax laws enthusiastically support the President's tax laws.

Only 2% of Americans who have at least four years of college education blame George W. Bush for the defeat of our country in Vietnam.

87% of the ranchers in Montana say they are in favor of the way the President handles dry brush and scrub on the Crawford ranch.

And...97% of stem cells zealously endorse the President's stem-cell policies.

Fun stuff.