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And The Spirit of Librarianship – Fall 2006 – Goes To…

…Lindsay Holdsworth.  Congrats to probably the biggest volunteer in the entire MLIS program.  (I know she makes my head spin, just watching what she's involved with.) 

Kathleen C. took some abuse tonight for breaking the “Spirit of Peer Mentorship” chain that led from Sabina to me to her.  (The first two won the award, Kathleen allegedly broke the chain.) 

But upon further reflection, we realised the chain was connected by nominators, not peer mentors.  Sabina was my peer mentor but she also nominated me for the award.  Then I nominated Lindsay.  So that's the real Skull & Bones connection of the award.  (We won't mention my summer nomination who didn't come through with the SoL victory nor the fact that, although of course we were both deserving, Lindsay and I each happened to win in a term where no one else from our cohort was nominated to split the vote. ) 

I'll have photos just as soon as I can figure out how to get my digital camera to talk to my computer.  (Sometimes, they're like an old married couple on the step giving each other the silent treatment.)

Classmate of the Day: Jeremie LeBlanc for offering a ride to Molly Bloom's tonight after the summer cohort finished their final 506 class and then a ride home afterwards.  Had a good visit with lots of students from summer term plus a couple grads who showed up as well. 

Posted 06 December 2006 § LibrarySchool § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Reading Library School

“For decades, reading studies have repeatedly found that 'heavy readers' not only read more books than light readers and nonreaders but also do more of almost everything else, including traveling, attending sports events and concerts, visiting museums, and participating in community organizations and politics.  For many, reading is a way of being engaged with the world.  These readers like to know about things and they read to find out.” 
– “Reading Non-Fiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers?” – Catherine Ross in Nonfiction Readers' Advisory, Robert Burgin (ed)

Since I've mentioned a few times in this blog that many students end up not doing all the required readings (and are frequently given that advice directly by upper level students), I thought I'd do a post about the type of things I have read during library school because I think it is important to do some sort of reading obviously, even if it's not always what the professor tells you to read.

Required Readings
Even if people tell you to not even try to do all the readings, it shouldn't preclude you from trying to do some of them.  I'm not going to admit how much I've done this year but it's higher than “none” and lower than “all of them”.

Articles You Find For Assignments
LibraryLit will soon become your best friend but there are other databases out there and everybody seems to end up with their own favourite.  I grew to like Emerald which someone pointed me to early as having lots of full-text articles (always an important thing to look for.)

Articles You Find Out of Interest
I've spent some time punching random subjects I'm interested in into online databases (like LibraryLit and Emerald among others) just to see what articles I can find. CPIQ has back issues of numerous magazines and CanadianNewsstand has newspapers. 

Internet Articles & Web Sites
Doing Internet searches is sort of like browsing in a library as sites lead to other sites which lead to other sites and all of a sudden, you're nowhere near where you started but finding out about something completely unique and interesting. 

Library Blogs
For the latest developments, news and plain old gossip in the library world, you really can't beat library blogs.  There are probably hundreds of them out there.  (That last one is a Wiki so it's easy to add yourself if you're a librarian blogger.  <hint>)  I've got about maybe twenty that I read on a regular basis (where “reading” equals scanning the RSS feeds than clicking on interesting sounding articles) and maybe that many more that I don't often visit at all.

Friend Blogs
This partly blurs the line with the last category but I have maybe a dozen blogs that aren't necessarily all about libraries or library school but that I read to keep up with friends lives and thoughts.  Many of them are linked on the left side of this page. 

Classmates' Papers
Anytime I heard a classmate talking about an interesting topic or project they did, I'd ask them to send me the paper so I could have a look.  I often ended up learning more about the most cutting-edge issues, the most unique takes on library-related topics and lots of local or regional information I wouldn't get anywhere else. 

Library Journals, Other Periodicals
Sam Trosow gave us shit for not reading any library journals early in our 501 class so I've taken that lesson to heart and sometimes like to go into the GRC and just flip through some of the journals, stopping to read things that catch my eye.  It's especially fun to pick something you'd never normally pick up – I picked up some cataloguing journal once and ended up reading a very engaging article comparing the classification system for the Internet Movie Database with traditional library classification systems.  I also try to at least glance through Quill & Quire every issue to keep in touch with my old life. 

Serendipitous Searches
Probably one of my greatest pleasures in life is going in the library stacks and just wandering randomly waiting for books to find me rather than me finding them.  I've come across a few this way (including the one that included the quote that leads off this post.) 

Books With Library Connection in Broadest Sense
Ian S. and I spent an enjoyable couple hours at the Grad Club, I think before the summer course selection meeting,  talking about “pop science” books – the latest trend in books where various authors are trying to come up with broad theories to explain some element of our society in a style that's accessible to a lay audience.  “Pop society” – maybe that was the term we used?  Anywho, some examples of these types of books we came up with which are great for giving a lot of material and ideas for virtually any essay or assignment you might do in library school include:

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Free Culture – Lawrence Lessig
Linked – Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
The Cathedral and the Bazaar – Eric S. Raymond
The Ingenuity Gap – Thomas Homer-Dixon
The Long Tail – Chris Anderson
The Rebel Sell – Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
The Rise of the Creative Class – Richard Florida
The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
The Triple Bottom Line: How Today's Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success – Andrew W. Savitz
The Wisdom of Crowds – James Surowiecki
The World Is Flat – Thomas Friedman

(Full disclosure – I have not read all of these books although all that I haven't are on my “To Read Soon” list.)

Real Books For Pleasure
I think I've mentioned on the blog already that before library school, I averaged about a book to a boo
k and a half read per week.  Since getting here, I'm lucky if I read one (non-school related) book per month.  (I just checked – 24 non-school related books this year so two per month.  Not as bad I as thought considering how much other types of reading I've done that wasn't book length – though I've learned that this type of reading counts too! Lots of the books that I did read were powered through during semester breaks though.) 

The Best Article I Read All Year
Finally, our managment professor talked about an article from the 1950's (?) on how much of management theory is bunk and really, people just stumble from decision-to-decision making the best choices they can, given the limited information they have.  He read it as an undergrad and said it was the best article he ever read as he progressed on through grad school and his eventual doctorate (of which he was sure to mention on every slide of every Powerpoint he ever created but that's getting off-topic.) 

Anyhow, that leads me to my favourite article that I've read this year, interestingly enough, something that was either assigned or found during this semester's 506 class (mabye there is something to management after all? ).  Barb J. sent it to me because it talked about Regina Public Library but beyond my natural bias for the topic, the actual subject matter was just incredibly inspirational.  It's called “Lasting Lessons in Leadership” (PDF) and talks about why Ronald Yeo, one of the former head librarians at Regina Public Library was such a successful manager which in turn, made for an innovative, nation-leading library system. 

(I asked the original publisher of the article for permission to reprint the article but never heard back from them.  But since the original journal (10MB PDF) that included the article is available freely online, I didn't think it would be a problem to reprint it here.  Shhh!)

Classmate of the Day: Time to resurrect a long forgotten “feature” of this blog – classmate of the day, where I acknowledge people who have made my life at library school a bit more fun, enjoyable or easy.  We have a double winner today – Linda B. who hosted an incredibly fun farewell party for a few people from our cohort – some who are done for good, some who are done for the term – on Saturday night at her home.  Also have to thank Lara A. who gave me 24 beer as a very personalized Advent calendar (and as a thank-you for helping her move a couple times this year.)  I've only got a couple weeks left here but will do my best! 

Posted 04 December 2006 § LibrarySchool § List § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (5) ° Tagged: ,

Christmas Gifts for the Self-Centered Blogger Who Has Everything

I also like the beer stein.  Highbrow | T-shirts, mugs, mousepads & gifts

(Thanks to Meshell for the tip!)

And here's the reason my entries have been a bit on the light side the past couple days.   (Who knew you could have 40 tabs open in Firefox at a time?)

Our mini-conference for LIS532, the joint class with the journalism students, is on Tuesday.  Feel free to drop by the board room on the fourth floor of NCB to take in presentations anytime between 10am and 3pm.  I'm up at 2:20pm if you want to come out and hear more than you ever wanted to know about online broadcasting. 


Posted 04 December 2006 § Blog § Humour § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

"The OPAC Sucks" (C'mon MuchMusic, Play It Once!)

(Thanks to Denise H. for the tip!)

Posted 02 December 2006 § Library § Main Page § Video ‡ Comments (2) °

Friday Fun Link – Wikipedia Brown (Dec 1, 2006)

Oh, but how I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books as a child.

Wikipedia Brown: A Mini-Mystery for the Internet Generation (via MetaFilter)

Posted 01 December 2006 § FridayFunLink § Main Page ‡ Comments (1) °

Five Things You Can't Say About Libraries, Librarians, and Library School

As with any sector, there are a lot of unchallenged statements, pieces of accepted wisdom and politically incorrect sentiments in the library world that seem to be lurking just beneath the surface.  But for a profession concerned with freedom of expression and sharing of information, this restraint seems to be especially preposterous.  So here are a few I've come across…

(Disclaimer: these aren't necessarily things I believe, they're just some provocative statements I've heard (or heard hinted at) over the past year.  Okay, some that I believe.  You have to guess which are which.)

Five Things You Can't Say About Libraries
1.  Libraries basically exist to serve the middle class and for all the talk of serving everyone equally, do an extremely poor job of serving both upper and lower classes (and not surprisingly, especially how they serve marginalized people.)  To put that another way, John Pateman says: “libraries are used most by people who don't need them and least by people who need them the most.”

2. A related point.  For all our talk of serving everyone equally and fairly (which is a fine and noble goal), maybe sometimes you have to serve people according to their needs even if it means one group receives “special” or extra service. (also John Pateman – who I apparently am in love with! )

3. Libraries are not in competition with Chapters (or Starbucks or Blockbuster) although this is a fairly common sentiment, especially in recent library literature and the library school classroom.  Those are private enterprises and libraries are public institutions (at least for the time being) and in my mind, this means they aren't (or at least shouldn't be) considered competitors. Does a high school “compete” with the television news to educate teenagers?  Only in the loosest sense.  Does a hospital “compete” with a pharmacy?  Not really.

4. Libraries don't do nearly as good of a job at promoting the full range of services and programs that the library offers as they could.  For most people, “library = free books” (I think one study I saw said that 80% of people use the library for borrowing books and nothing else.)

5.  Andrew Carnegie may have built the majority of libraries that exist across North America but he was still a robber baron who made his fortune off the backs of his workers and we shouldn't forget that either.  Put another way – your second half of life can't buy a pass for the first. 

Five Things You Can't Say About Librarians
1.  This is buying into the stereotype a bit but stereotypes often have roots in reality.  So, in my opinion, we could probably all use a course in assertiveness training.  Not to become domineering, loud personalities but to help us to not be afraid to ask for what we want or do something we want to do. 

2. Another stereotype that I find has its roots in truth.  A lot of librarians don't embrace technology and the possibilities it allows in a way that they should or could. 

3. Just because you can give somebody access to something, doesn't mean you should give somebody access to something.  (This was put more succinctly by a professor, talking about how we'll get used to educators in our libraries whining “But I'm a teacher…” as justification for any request they might have.  “I wonder what the equivalent phrase for a librarian would be?” she wondered aloud.  “Probably 'But of course your six year old has a right to look at pornography!'”)

4. Some librarians are terrible at their jobs.  They hate work.  They hate patrons.  They even hate books! 

5. On the flip side, the majority of librarians are some of the coolest, smartest, most creative, most amazing people you will ever meet.  (Yes, librarians.)

Five Things You Can't Say About Library School
1. Why do librarians need a Masters degree when a range of other professionals – from teachers to nurses to engineers to pharmacists – get by with an undergrad degree?

2. Library schools are more about “school” than “library”. 

3. Students might feel like a McDonald's hamburger – processed and fried assembly-line style to be spit out at the end – by their library school experience. 

4. Not every
professor is a wonderful teacher and out of all the classes you take
(we do 15 in this program), there's a pretty good chance that anywhere
from one to three of them will be complete duds.  (Trust me on this
one!)

5. Just like journalists become public relations officers to earn twice the salary, librarians should probably go get a business or a computer science degree if they want to make the really big money in this profession. 


On a different topic, I'm screening Party Girl in NCB113 tomorrow at 1pm.  I decided that instead of doing the traditional poster and a mass e-mail thing, I'd try that “viral marketing” all the kids at Ivey are talking about.  I sent an e-mail invitation to a few people and asked them to invite a few people and tell them to invite a few more.  I didn't even tell them which movie I was screening.  Which probably means that I'll be sitting in NCB113 tomorrow afternoon watching a movie by myself! So if you want to keep me company, feel free to drop by.  

By the way, the IMDB link above says that Party Girl was the first movie to be shown in its entirety over the Internet.  <Johnny Carson voice> I did not know that. </Carson> 

And speaking of trivia, “Murph and the Orillia Silencers” lived up to their “nom du semaine” by going out with not a bang but a whimper last night at the final Trivia Night of the semester.  After a first round where we thought we'd finally done the impossible and got 20/20 (except we got three wrong – most career goals after Gretzky was Howe but the three sports guys at the table somehow talked themselves into Messier; the most common blood type was O, not AB and I would've got that but I didn't hear the question as I was lolly-gagging; and then the worst, I jokingly said the Wall Street Journal was the highest circulation daily before guaranteeing it was USA Today.  And the answer was…the Wall Street Journal.)  So, after a couple third-round come-from-behind victories in the last few weeks, there was no comeback and instead, we went down in a burning platter of fried pitas and chicken wings. 

Here's hoping Melissa implements a “virtual trivia” option for next semester for those of us who won't be there in person anymore but who let probably too much of our lives revolve around knowing the name of Ziggy Marley's band (trick question – it was the Melody Makers, not the Wailers) and which Simpsons character has a superfluous third nipple (you'll have to Google that one yourself!)

Posted 01 December 2006 § Library § LibrarySchool § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) °

"Should We Be Surprised? After All, Librarians Donated to Kerry Over Bush By A Ratio of 223:1"

“Librarians are extremely liberal and, thanks to our tax dollars, insulated from their consumers' preferences.”

The National Post looks at the bias against conservative books in bookstores and public libraries in an article titled “Ignoring Canada's Conservative Readers”.  (Thanks to Christina W. for the tip!)  

(By the way, the second last book I read was Ari Fleischer's Taking Heat,: The President, The Press and My Years in the White House…which I got at the London Public Library.)

Posted 29 November 2006 § Library § Main Page § Politics § PopCulture ‡ Comments (9) ° Tagged:

Five Minute FIMS Survival Guide

Before I started the program, I talked to three different alumni for their tips and suggestions.  Although these may sound very obvious, here's their suggestions which I've implemented for myself to various degrees this year (although to be honest, many of these are also “do as I say, not as I do” type things!):

1. Exercise
2. If you don't exercise, try to at least change your lifestyle a bit – walk to school, take the stairs at FIMS, walk downtown instead of taking the bus sometimes. 

3. Eat healthy and regularly
4. You won't always eat healthy or regularly so start taking multi-vitamins.

5. Get eight hours of sleep, preferably in order.  (I recommend either gravol or melatonin as a sleep aid.)
6. You won't get regular sleep so take naps when you can. 

7. Classes are only three hours a day but get used to working eight plus hours per day and/or on the weekends to keep up. 
8. Do whatever works to not allow yourself to get stressed about working this much and this intensely – meditate, start a window garden, volunteer, participate in extracurricular activities, do something outside of school. 

9. Use both a day timer and a four-month wall calendar to keep track of assignments, presentations, critiques, summaries, worksheets, proposals, plans, and poster sessions you'll be asked to do.
10. Focus on the assignments and if you don't have time, don't do all the readings – it's all but impossible to do both.

Posted 29 November 2006 § LibrarySchool § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (8) °

Full Circle: Yet Another Library Student's Blog

I swear to god that I should just change the name of this blog to “Full Circle” and be done with it.  I'm seeing echoes everywhere…

I went over to school tonight to work on my Special Libraries assignment and bumped into a first-termer who was working with her group on a presentation they have due this week.  I asked what it was and it turns out it's the same topic and the same instructor I had at the end of my first term!  (Am I allowed to admit that I immediately did the librarian thing and offered to pass along my presentation so they could see what my group had done?  Well, I'll admit that but I won't admit whether they accepted it – how's that?  Plus their presentation was well-in-hand and I don't think they're going to get anything from what my group did at this point.) 

So anyhow, about half an hour, maybe even an hour, later, I was ready to leave and saw that they were still practicing in a classroom.  (I think my group had one rehearsal about half an hour before we presented. )  I stuck my head in to see how it was going and they asked if I'd mind sitting through it since I'd done the same topic.  Shea's at work tonight and I'll take anything that isn't my own homework every time.  So I said “yes” (just kidding – I love seeing other people's work – both presentations and papers.) 

I sat through it and, no offense to any of my old teammates who may be reading this, but I have to admit that it was way better than what we had done.  Actually, I'd go so far as to say it was right up there with some of the best presentations I saw in my cohort and classes all year. 

It was like a weird deja vu – hearing a group cover the same resources and issues that my group had done but with a completely different spin.  I wonder if professors like this or do they eventually get bored of hearing the same thing, year after year, with only the changing people and format for the presentation? 

If you saw my list of Top Ten memories, I made a joking reference to that one time a group did a presentation without Powerpoint…except I wasn't joking.  That is literally the only time somebody has done a presentation without Powerpoint in any of my classes this year. 
That also happened in this class and it was by a group who did a presentation on another topic that seems like it couldn't be done without Powerpoint.  (Why am I being so mysterious by the way?  I guess I'm trying not to come right out and say the class or topic in case some of their classmates get tipped off in advance of what they're doing?  Or their instructor?  Who knows.  Opinions shouldn't be allowed on the Internet, dammit!)

I'm no expert but I'll probably do a post someday on tips for giving a good presentation (at least what I think works.)  It will mostly revolve around the most effective way to use puppets.  And how it's probably not a good idea to blurt out “oh, shit!” when the projector's remote control batteries are dead all of a sudden. 

Posted 27 November 2006 § LibrarySchool § Main Page ‡ Comments (4) °

2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards Winners Announced

This year was the first year since 1997 that I had to miss the Saskatchewan Book Awards which was a bit sad for me. 

I attended my first Gala when I started working at the Saskatchewan Publishers Group that same year.  That led to me serving on the SBA board from 1998-2001.  After we moved to Calgary, I still returned for the SBA Gala every fall from 2001-2004 and even though my job in Regina meant I had to work on Gala night in 2005, I still managed to catch most of it (mostly due to Alistair MacLeod giving a two and a half hour speech when he probably should've given a forty-five minute one!)

But my hope that some library might fly me back to Saskatchewan for a job interview right around this weekend wasn't to be so that streak is over.  (On a positive note, I've been the SBA's webmaster since 1999 and this was the first year that I was able to upload the list of winners immediately following the Gala whereas there was usually a lag of a couple hours to a couple days depending on where I was and what my computer access was like.)

The old web site is showing its age a bit these days (not a blog or a wiki to be seen!) but it still gets positive feedback for its simplicity and ease-of-use which always makes me happy. 

Long before I officially decided to come to library school, I had  this message forwarded to me by the SBA Executive Director.  I liked it so much I used it in the “References” section of my resume for awhile:

“You have the best – most informative – Web site
for your book awards of any that I have seen. And, I have seen
quite a few as we are compiling a listing of the winners of Canadian literary
awards (1923-2000) which will be published by the Canadian Library
Association.”

– Suzanne Sexty,
Information Services, Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of
Newfoundland

As for the Gala itself, Saskatchewan's has been recognized by many, including author & publisher Anna Porter (who was our guest speaker in 2001) who wrote in Quill & Quire that it was “…arguably the best-run writers' event outside of Toronto's Giller Prize…“

Unlike the other prairie book awards programs in Alberta and Manitoba, Saskatchewan's is held in the fall (not the spring) so that the winners are announced right before Christmas, the biggest book buying time of year.  Although the books submitted don't necessarily fall within the last calendar year (which is why Alberta and Manitoba hold their awards in the spring), having the Gala in November is also a great chance for everybody in the very small, very tightknit communities of Saskatchewan book people (writers, publishers, librarians, editors, etc.) and book lovers (book clubs, politicians, media, teachers, professors) to get together to celebrate the successes of the year.  

It's always a lavish affair but also has a streak of fun to it – one year to celebrate the 25th anniversaries of Saskatchewan two oldest literary presses, birthday cake was delivered to each table as the Beatles' “Birthday” blared from the speakers (and yes, I'm a Beatles fan but no, I had nothing to do with that decision.)  We've had musicians perform, special meals prepared from recipes contained in a creative non-fiction book about the province.  We've had hilarious speeches from sponsors and long-winded ones from winners.  We've had special moments (Yann Martel's speech where he defended Saskatchewan in a way I've rarely heard people from the province defend it was amazing) and controversial (the year that three authors tied for the City of Regina Award was …awkward…to say the least.  And I felt really bad for the RPL representatives who had to get up to present an award about a month after their board had announced closures of numerous branches.) 

All in all, it's a great event and if you're looking for some books for Christmas gifts outside of the usual G&M or MacLean's Top Ten, why not look up some of the books that were nominated this year?  (Or if you're in a library someday doing collection development, why not make sure that you collect these books that may be a bit more under-the-radar than those by the big Toronto and New York publishers?)

Posted 26 November 2006 § Main Page § PopCulture § Saskatchewan § Work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: