Pace has recently added “kisses” to his bag of tricks. When you say “kisses” or make a lip smacking kissing noise, he'll do the same thing.
That's pretty cool in and of itself but the other night, he was sleeping on the couch between Shea and I. I leaned over him to give Shea a kiss goodnight as I was off to bed. From between us, we hear “Smmmacck!” as Pace, still asleep, must've heard me kissing Shea and decided to make the noise himself from wherever he was in dreamland!
Ever wonder how “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” seems to have access to pretty much any news clip they want? A former technician on the show posts a comment on a PVR blog with some insight into how they do it.
(via MetaFilter)
Shea's cousin got married today to a recent RCMP graduate. The ceremony was at the chapel at the RCMP Training Depot (apparently the oldest building in Regina – I did not know that!) then the reception was in a small town forty minutes outside Regina and about ten minutes down the road from where Shea grew up (and where we had our very similar, small-town wedding reception five years ago!)
Here are a few shots from our day…
RCMP Training Depot Chapel, Regina, SK
Our Family on the Depot Grounds
Pace hanging out by the bar…literally!
“Do you know the two-step?”
A bit of hypothetical reality question for you – what is the single most important thing you should do as a manager to help staff accept institutional change?
No matter how aware you are of them, inevitably when you are charged with buying non-fiction for your library, your personal preferences will creep through.
We had a discussion at work recently about the biases of our current and past librarians and here's what we came up with as some of the biases over the years (aka “there wasn't a book in this category that the librarian couldn't pass up”)
– business books
– cookbooks
– technology books (guess who?)
– parenting books (guess who part two?)
– military history books (guess who – part three? Hint: I'm replacing a guy who volunteered to go to Afghanistan)
– political books
– new age books
I think there was only one librarian who we couldn't really peg as showing any noticeable bias in his buying – though we think he's the one responsible for buying “The Joy of Sex” as a branch perm for each of our locations so that sort of trumps any biases anyone may have! 
(Some of the stories I've heard about this book at the branches: some librarians keep it behind the counter, not out of censorship but out of fear of it being stolen or “abused”. One found it moved to the children's section. One found it in the humour section. One moved it to the top shelf even though it was supposed to be on a lower one. And I'm sure there are tons of other stories like that.)
Canuck Librarian recently posted that the Librarian Gear store is back in operation as well as listing a couple other places to get library-related swag.
I'd also add CafePress to the list although I'm not sure how good of quality their stuff is – I've never ordered from them but have heard mixed reviews. Hmm, Cafe Press allows you to create your own designs. Maybe I should start a sideline? In that case, I'm sure their quality is top-notch!
AskMetaFilter recently featured an interesting question about how many books in a typical University library rarely or never get used.
It was timely for me because, although I'm in a public library setting, I'm in the midst of a major weeding project so I've had occasion to look at the usage statistics for over a thousand books in the last couple weeks.
I'm happy to report that it is extremely rare to find a book that has never been used. Slightly more common are books that haven't been checked out since the early 1990's (which is when our system automated) and unfortunately quite common to find books that haven't been checked out since the late 1990's to early 2000's (which corresponds to the emergence of the Internet in the consciousness of the general public which is my best guess for this decline/shift in reading habits.)
Make sure you read down to the comment marked as “Best Answer”.
On a semi-related note, does anybody know of an organization or method to dispose of a large number of weeded books short of the perennial “LIBRARY BOOK SALE – ON NOW!!!” As always, AskMetafilter has a couple suggestions (I'm only linking to one thread because I can't find the other one that was on the same topic that I saw last week.)
