I'm sort of burnt out after a full day of inventory & weeding on Friday (more than a full day – we were at it from 6am until 9pm or so) and then a full day today spent at Nickel Lake, just outside Weyburn, getting ready for the big birthday party coming up on Monday.
So instead of original content or thought, I present “Dice Stacking”:
“For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making (some)
Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time
and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the sequalitis
that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic
building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going
experience.
Every once in a while, though, a film comes along
that takes an assumption about how American movies are supposed to be
made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable.
Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten
rules of motion pictures risk a lot – studios might not want to fund
the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to
it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being
a really interesting experiment, or, in some cases, taking your place
among the greatest films ever made.”
As I may have mentioned before, the younger me would probably punch the older me in the mush if he could see how much management theory I'd be reading (and enjoying ) at this point in my life.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of management theory today is the interplay between different generations.
This article has one of the most succinct set of definitions that I've seen for the defining characteristics for each of the four generations that are currently in the workplace.
Whenever one of those “100 Books You Must Read” lists come out, I'm always a bit ashamed that, even as a former English major, I find that I've barely read any of them.
But now, finally, a list where I have read, well, about the same proportion as any other “Top 100 Books” list.
I drove nearly four hours round-trip today to do a five minute presentation at a tea in honour of a branch assistant who's been with our region for fifteen years…
…which makes me think that rural librarianship has some unique requirements you won't find in any other type of library…
…which makes me think that rural librarianship also has some unique rewards including the joy of homebaked cookies and dainties, a fly on the wall perspective for two hours conversation covering all manner of small town comings and goings plus the inevitable “Saskatchewan One Degree of Separation” moment of finding out that one person attending the tea has a daughter who signed a document for you in her role as a Justice of the Peace in your hometown and the former librarian who is also attending has a son who is married to a friend of yours from University…
…which makes me think that the afternoon tea is the small town female equivalent of the more male dominated “coffee row” which I've also sat in on in a couple different communities while traveling as part of this job… …which makes me think of how, when we were traveling to a series of meeting in branches near my hometown and after hearing me talk about my experiences growing up in the area, my boss commented “I don't know why you want to work in Regina. You belong in a rural library.”…
…which also makes me think about how many people have said (some variation of) “we'll miss you – you understand rural libraries” as my contract begins coming to a close…
…which makes me think that sentiment is properly better captured as “you understand the rural mindset” (trust me – I've barely begun to get a handle on rural libraries!)…
…which makes me think of the fact that we have a special line in our acquisitions budget to buy copies of one book for every branch in our region (rather than the more usual practice of buying one copy that rotates through the region one branch at a time) and how this year, I bought a book called “Our Towns” which features historical information and background about hundreds of towns across Saskatchewan…
…which makes
me think about how this book was being discussed on talk radio today
and I got the tidbit that “coffee row” is a phrase that originated in Saskatchewan and another tidbit that, at its peak in the late
1800's, my hometown of Indian Head had the most elevators of
any community in Saskatchewan (12), a fact I never knew…
…which makes me think that this book was a pretty good pick for a “branch perm” as we call them whereas the books I picked last year on “The History of Patents”, “The History of Inventions”, “A Child's Guide to the Night Sky” and “A Health Guide for Those Over 50” weren't maybe as good of picks (long story!)…
…which (also) makes me think how those picks led to one of many screw-ups I've had over the past year when I asked that the books be catalogued as “reference” materials when in fact, the proper designation was “branch permanents” which means people could actually, you know, take them out…
…which makes me think that as excited as I am about whatever may come next, I will truly and honestly miss working in a rural library system, with all of its quirks and challenges and small magical moments such as the care taken to design a perfectly arranged tray of goodies…
Quite often, I'll do a post on a topic then come across further information at a later date that would expand and improve the post.
Usually, I just go back and add the information to the original post, even though I know the odds of anyone seeing it are slim. But in this case, as a supplement to my recent post about the end of copyright (cleverly disguised as a post about a cheesy 1970's action TV show), here's a good essay about the end of copyright.
I think we
are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world
history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of
copyright is drawing to a close. I don’t know if this is a good thing
or a bad thing, but it’s inevitable. And I say this as the author of
two books and over 75 columns like this one, all copyrighted.
This especially ties into the point that someone recently conveyed me about how people struggle to hold onto something hardest when they know it's already over (paging Hillary Clinton! )
Right now,
the music and movie industries are howling and beating their breasts
and doing their best to go after anybody who violates their copyrights
on a large scale. The fury with which they’re doing it is a measure of
their desperation. The Sony rootkit debacle is a perfect example: in an
effort to prevent piracy, they secretly installed dangerous spyware
into people’s PCs, which itself may have been a criminal act. This was
about the dumbest public-relations move since Take-Two lied about the
Hot Coffee content, and as with Take-Two, it will cost them vastly more
than they could hope to gain from it. Did they really think nobody
would find out?
Jessamyn passed along word that she's got both the speaking notes and the slides from her presentation at the recent Sask Library Association-Manitoba Library Association joint conference online (good thing she has the speaking notes up – she uses that minimalistic “one photo, one caption” style for her presentations so you might not get much out of just the slides.)
I have to say it's been interesting to ask people what they thought of her presentation over the last couple weeks.
I'm a bit naive but every time I ask, I expect the person to be similarly enamoured and, like me, think “yeah. Yeah! That's it. That's what it's all about. Whoo-hooo!” (or something along those lines anyhew. )
Instead, I've heard from a few people who were underwhelmed or even disappointed by the presentation.
I hate to generalize but so far, this division has broken down completely along generational lines – older librarians I ask who weren't very impressed found the presentation meandering, off-point, etc. etc. Younger and/or newer librarians found the presentation engaging, exciting and inspirational.
This isn't just about a conference closing presentation though. Instead, it embodies a generational divide that is causing a lot of tension within our profession in general. On one side, you (tend to) have younger, technology-focused, cutting-edge, “just do it” new librarians. On the other, you have more hierarchy-based, old-school, cautious “voice of experience” librarians.
(I hasten to add that there are older boomer librarians updating their Facebook profiles from their Blackberries and their are curmudgeonly new, young librarians who think Web 2.0 was the sub-title of the second Spiderman movie. I also admit to having had more than one sleepness night in the past year wondering if I'll acquire some or all of the traits I currently find so frustrating as I move forward in my library career? And whether this is necessarily such a bad thing?)
Anyhow, in my mind, Jessamyn's presentation did not suck (“was not sub-optimal” to use her suggested terminology substitution for the word that we X'ers do tend to over-use way too often!) but it apparently did not always reach the people that it should have either.
Sometimes it's the stupidest things that make you realise how amazing and cool and awesome the Internet truly is.
Yesterday, we saw a fire truck leaving its station while we were out and about and, for the first time in about, oh, twenty-five years, I thought about a TV show I loved as a kid – Emergency!I went on YouTube and of course, the opening credits for the show were there as well as a few related clips and scenes.
I can't wait for that inevitable day when ALL creative content like this, including full programs, is out there, ready for us to access.
As someone told me recently, when you're at the end of an era, that's when the people who will suffer most from the change hold on the tightest.
Translation: goodbye current copyright laws, hello future!
TimeTube is a site that creates a timeline of YouTube videos based on any keyword you enter and sorted based on the date they were added. You can also
view the results in a couple other modes – “list view”, “flipbook” and
“map view” for videos that have been tagged with a location. They have some samples of how this works best – things like major news stories that develop over time. For example, you can see a timeline of Barack Obama videos from when he first came to national prominence on through the Democratic primary right up until his most recent speech. It's not just for news stories – trying pretty much any keyword can provide interesting results. I've tried “Saskatchewan” and “Library 2.0” so far although, for these types of searches, it's probably just as easy to look at YouTube's “Sort by Date Added” feature.
One other major shortcoming of the site, evidenced by the lack of links for my sample timelines above – you can't link directly to a TimeTube that you've created.
Still, a very cool mash-up that has a lot of potential, especially as YouTube continues to gain content about all manner of subjects over time.
) at this point in my life. 
