Boo – no Canada in this list of national flags made from 18 countries’ most representative foods – how easy would it be to make the red stripes of our flag out of back bacon and the maple leaf out of…maple syrup of course!
Geez, one of the first results when you Google “Canadian flag bacon” is exactly what I’m talking about!
Ended up having a conversation with someone at the library today and the question of what the library is going to look like in twenty years came up.
My initial response was “That’s impossible to predict – who in 1993 would’ve predicted the rise of the e-book, DRM, Amazon, Google – and the impact all of those things would have on libraries?”
The person pointed out that although you can’t predict exactly what will happen, you can be close – many people around that time or earlier predicted that the microfiche would be the future of libraries – they got the idea right (all the world’s information at your fingertips) and just got the container wrong.
They also pointed out that you need to try to envision the future so you can start building policy today towards where you think the library will be, maybe not in 20 years necessarily but definitely in 5-10 years.
I did concede that some do get the predictions correct, almost eerily so when you think of something like George Orwell and how much of “1984”, (written in 1948) was prescient about today’s world – not just the politics of the book but also the way it envisioned technologies like always-on cameras in our homes (hello X-Box!) and tracking devices (hello iPhone!) and even how citizenry *willingly* allows this.
So anyhow, I revised my initial statement a bit – if enough people are making predictions, eventually maybe 1 in 100 of us (or 1 in 10 or 1 in 1000) are going to be right.
But another problem for me in attempting to make these types of predictions is I oscillate wildly in my view of what the future of the library will be – my optimistic side says that libraries have been an important part of society for over 100 years, that society recognizes that value, and that libraries have always managed to incorporate new media formats, new technologies and the best ideas from other sectors to evolve and stay current.
My pessimistic side thinks there are some very powerful forces aligned against libraries – major publishers, Google, Amazon and other multi-million/multi-billion dollar interests often appear to see libraries as a major hinderance to selling more stuff. Beyond that, there is a general movement towards a more privatized/corporate/retail approach to how we offer public services in general to which libraries are not immune. E-books have moved us to a world where the main ways to obtain content are by licensing or buying, not borrowing or lending. Across the US and UK, recent economic troubles have caused municipalities to make major cuts and the library is an “easy” target (often at a time when citizens most need the library for internet access, job hunting resources, and general entertainment that’s suddenly a lot less affordable.)
The conversation covered a lot of ground – and reminded me of the types of conversations I used to regularly have in library school but don’t have often enough anymore.
That, in turn, led me to wonder why those types of big “Future of the Library!!!” conversations often felt so “real” in an academic setting and often feel less “real” when you’re out in the real world talking about it. Perhaps because the University setting is a place where you have dedicated time to mull over these things while in the real world, you’re just making sure that nobody’s vandalizing the building, staff time sheets are filled out properly and the person arguing with a staff member about ninety cents in fines isn’t going to get violent and start hitting people!
As is often the case, I also wondered if some of my library thoughts could cross-pollinate with my political interests? What if there was a middle ground between purely academic discussions of these questions and purely real world attempts to answer these questions in between unjamming photocopiers and handing out guest passes for the Internet?
In politics, there exist a number of “think tanks” that study various issues, sometimes from a partisan perspective (left or right) and sometimes not – and maybe I’m missing something obvious – but I couldn’t think of a similar organization that exists for libraries. We have associations and leadership training institutes and forums and conferences but perhaps what we really need is a think tank? (A real one although the ALA (Awesome Librarians Associated) Think Tank Facebook group provides a fun substitute.)
And that’s a bit of what I thought about today. 😉
…Pace showing Sasha how do to Irish dancing.
I’m back from a couple weeks off and this week will be a transition week with me splitting my time between the Outreach Unit where I’ve worked for the last 18 months and the Regent Place Branch where I’ll (officially) be the Branch Head as of next Tuesday.
Sometimes it’s the small things – I love taking transit for a number of reasons but the reality is that each day I spent nearly an hour round-trip commuting to and from work downtown. I timed it today and it took five minutes from door-to-door to drive from home to Regent Place.
When I walked home from work, it took over an hour. My new branch is twenty minutes. Plus, as was the case today, I’ll be able to get home at lunch many days for a baby fix which will be great! (Of course, there’s also the possibility that I’ll return to work with a poop stain on my shirt – as happened one unfortunate time when I worked at Southeast Regional Library and didn’t realise Pace had tagged me when I changed his diaper at noon until I got back to work!)
This morning, I went to a training session for some newly hired/moving staff and then spent the afternoon at my new branch doing some orientation with the Manager I’ll be reporting to as well as spending some time with staff (and even jumping in to help on the desk a couple times – once for someone needing a guest pass and once to accept someone’s fine payment.)
Working at Regent Place reminded me that Regina Public Library has some unfortunately named branches…
My personal preference is for branches to have names that somehow describe where they’re physically located – their community, street or whatever. RPL’s Glen Elm Branch is a perfect example – it’s a branch located in the Glen Elm area of Regina – imagine! 😉
So everybody’s talking about the raunchy Miley Cyrus performance last night at the MTV Video Music Awards (including perhaps the weirdest MetaFilter thread ever where a discussion of whether the Miley Cyrus performance is pushing the “real” news about Syria off of front pages leads to a long parallel thread that jumps back and forth with people alternating comments about Cyrus & Syria.)
As always with these “controversies”, the funniest part to me is how they inevitably get what the performer wants – attention and buzz – going back to Elvis shaking his hips on Ed Sullivan although that (probably) wasn’t quite so calculated as compared to more recent yet surprisingly similar stunts.
It’s also hilarious how these performances enrage everyone – liberals are screaming about how it was demeaning to women, African Americans, African American women, and cruel to animals. Conservatives are screaming about how it was heavily sexualized and corrupting our youth (although some basically just threw up their hands at how ludicrous the whole thing was.)
Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus has the record for most video views in a 24-hour period and, as the most buzzed about moment of the show that featured non-shrinking violets such as Lady Gaga, Kayne West and even an N-Sync reunion, she’s well-positioned to break her own record when she releases her next single. [2013-09-19 – Edit: Also, she might be, for real, the most punk rock artist out there today.]
Yawn.
Oh, well, at least this grumpy old man has learned a new word.
Most of the clips I’ve seen of the controversial performance are being removed from YouTube as soon as they’re uploaded so I figured I’d post another Cyrus video that was extremely controversial when it first came out…
“Achy Breaky Heart” – Billy Ray Cyrus
I’m not even kidding about how that video was controversial when it came out. But I’ve got to be completely honest – I actually quite liked this Billy Ray Cyrus song when I was in high school:
“Could’ve Been Me” – Billy Ray Cyrus
Edit: Popular YouTube comedian/songwriter Jon Lajoie quickly released a song which perfectly captures the hypocrisy of the whole situation…
A great book that is “loaded with librarian appeal” is becoming a movie…
After today’s win, the Riders are 7-1, their best start since 1971.
Even Sasha’s on the bandwagon, courtesy of an old outfit she inherited from her brother (first of many I’m sure!)
With all the recent books, blog posts and articles about the care and feeding of introverts, I thought this response from an extrovert’s point of view was pretty funny (and true!)
Spending a couple nights camping at beautiful Crooked Lake, one of the few campgrounds I know with lakeside sites.
Wish I’d seen this list of camping hacks before we’d arrived!
Paul McCartney is well-known as a multi-instrumentalist – proficient on drums, skilled on guitar and keyboard and virtuoso on bass. After yesterday’s post about how I used to read rec.music.beatles, I stumbled across an analysis of his bass playing over the years which is quite good.
Here’s the end of the article where a few well-known bassists talk about McCartney’s influence on their own playing…
Whether on his Rickenbacker, his Wal 5 string or whatever, he remains one of the top bass players in the world. For a guy who could rest on his laurels as one of the prime innovators of rock bass playing, that is a solid testament to him as a musician.
DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT:
STING: It’s hard to seperate McCartney’s influence on my bass playing from his influence on everything else-singing, songwriting, even becoming a musician in the first place. As a child, I would play my Beatles albums at 45 RPM so I could hear the bass better. he’s the Guvnor.
WILL LEE: Growing up in Texas in the early ’60s I was so obsessed with the Beatles’ music that I didn’t feel like a fan, I felt like I was in the Beatles! About the same time I switched from drums to bass I became aware of who gave the band its charm and personality, from visual tunes like “Penny Lane” to the group’s repartee wtih the press. It was the same fellow who was ableto take a poor-quality instrument like the Hofner bass and create magic on it. I especially dug Paul’s funky, Motown-influenced side, evident in the bass line from Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” or even in the syncopated part from “A Day In The Life.”
Paul’s influence on bassists has been so wide-spread over numerous generations that ther’s no denying he’s in everybody’s playing at this point. We’re all descendants. He played simple and solid when it was called for. But because he had so many different flavors to add to a song, he was able to take the instrument far beyond a supportive role. Paul taught the bass howto sing.
STANLEY CLARKE: Paul definitely had an influence on my bass playing, not so much technically, but more with his philosophy of melodic bass liens-especially as I hit my teens and the Beatles’ records became more adventurous. On tracks like “Come Together,” the bass line WAS the song. I’ve always liked that. The only other person I knew of who was doing that was James Jamerson. That was one of the reasons I was inspired to write “School Days”: so I could just play the bass lines and people would hear a whole song.
I had the honor of being contacted by Paul through George Martin to play on Tug of War, and I also appeared on Pipes of Peace [both on Capitol]. Paul was very nice. He asked me to show him how to slap. During Pipes we got a groove going in a studio jam, and it ended up making on the album as “Hey Hey.” He graciously gave me a co-writing credit, and it’s still a thrill to see my name next to his above the music in the song book.
BILLY SHEEHAN: The reason I got involved with music in the first place was because I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. I watched all the girls going crazy, and I figured this was thebest business in the world to be in. Later on, when I got more deeply into music, Sgt. Pepper was a break-through record for me. I must have listened to it several hundred times. What intrigued me was how totally musical every aspect of it was -especially Paul’s melodic, fluid bass lines. When my band Talas was starting in the mid ’70s [the Beatles’ tribute show] Beatlemania was big, and we used to play entire gigs of just Beatles tunes. I’ve learned so much from Paul about playing, writing, and playing and singing at the same time that I should probably start sending him checks!
Most bassists get into the flashy players, but I think the reason Paul is often overlooked is that what he was doing wasn’t really obvious. It was so brilliantly woven into the context of the songs. One of my favorites is the bass line from “Rain.” I still use it to test the low end of an amp. That Paul happens to play bass is a great boon to all of us, because he made us realize that there are no limitations to being a bass player.
(from Bass Player magazine: Volume 6, Number 5 July August 1995)
And if that whole “World Famous Rock Star” thing doesn’t work out, he can probably get work teaching high school band…
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