This isn’t exactly a “fun” link but this photo has been making the rounds of various library blogs (not sure where I first saw it so I can’t give credit unfortunately)
Here’s the photo. Flickr has a few others plus some discussion you might want to check out as well.
Tomorrow marks the halfway point of the summer semester. I'll be at the Grad Club around noon to have a drink and to celebrate this milestone in “flimsy excuses to go for a drink.” Anybody who's reading this and around campus is invited to join me (and the crowds of soccer hooligans who are sure to be there as well) for a pint or a pop or another alliterative 'p' word for coffee.
Talking (does e-mailing = talking) to Sabina about the book zine inspired me to pull out my copy of the one they put together last semester. (If you haven't heard about it, The Book Zine is a fun little booklet that's put together every semester with lists of “Top 10 Books” and various other oddities submitted by students and profs.)
A classmate whose on co-op right now had the funniest list of all-time, especially when you realise these are all actual things he said in class. (I know, I was there.)
Mike M.'s Top Ten Ways To Annoy/Astonish Your Professors
10. Suggest there should be showers in public libraries.
9. Point out that you need to know the Volume to Issue to Page ratio of journals for binding purposes.
8. Ask “So that's what the books say but what's it like in REAL LIFE?”
7. Note that “How do you intend to use that information?” is not a neutral question.
6. Point out that the most important part of Reader's Advisory service is persuasion skills.
5. State that since libraries are government funded, that librarians should “just toe the party line!”
4. Ask “Why do we have ethics?”
3. Point out that “charisma of the speaker” is the most important aspect of effective presentations.
2. Ask “Why are we learning this?”
1. Come to class wearing the clothes you had on yesterday, still drunk, half hungover, reeking of beer with a really bad haircut and sunglasses.
I've been pretty good about asking people's permission if I mention them in any sort of embarrasing light or whatever but to celebrate the semester being half over as of today (Friday), I'm going to post a few never-released photos of #1 on Mike's list…sorry buddy!
Access Copyright's “Captain Copyright” campaign raised some hackles at CLA and had a few of us subverting the promotional materials that Access Copyright had at their booth by modifying the stickers they were giving out…
For anyone who doesn't know, Captain Copyright is a character created by Access Copyright to promote copyright to students and teachers. Unfortunately, it presents a very biased view of copyright without many (any?) mention of fair use provisions and containing various other misrepresentations on the site.
Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and
E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, sums up the problems with this campaign way better than I ever could. His post also has some good discussion about the issue by his site visitors.
The CLA membership (who weren't consulted about this campaign before it was launched although they apparently should've been) passed a resolution at their AGM (PDF – scroll to page four) that was brought by their Copyright Working Group and the Information Commons Interest Group for the organization to write a letter of condemnation to Access Copyright about this program and to monitor future developments.
There are two ironies with this whole thing – the Captain Copyright web site explicitly restricts anyone's ability to use materials on the site or even link to the site. (My use of the modified graphic above would be a violation in their opinion. I'm claiming the non-legal but commonly understood “anything on the Net is free for the taking” precedent as my defense. 
)
The other irony is that Captain Copryight himself is apparently comprised of a number of potential copyright infractions including one image that evokes the infamous “goatse” (which I think Access Copyright should be ashamed of exposing children to!) Boing Boing has a post which summarizes the possible copyright infringements in the character.
Bloglines Search Result for “Canadian Library Association”
A couple favourites from the above list of results…
Summary of Stephen and Avi Lewis Opening Keynote Presentation
(via the Green Kangaroo)
Dumb Things I Have Done So Far at CLA
(via Inspyration)
Why The CLA Should Have Their 2010 Conference in Whitehorse
(via Laurie the Librarian)
…and the CLA conference in Calgary apparently had both a blog and a wiki in 2005. The Wiki has the potential to be particularly useful including a list of “Tips for Newbies” and “Conference Bloggers” although neither was utilized very much. Did CLA offer these things in 2006? I couldn't find anything…
[2006-08-24 – the new “Feliciter” listed the blog of Jeremiah Saunders who was UBC's “Student to CLA” representative. He has a blog with some of his thoughts and experiences. Blogger doesn't allow tagging as far as I know but if you scan through his June 2006 entries, you'll hit most of his CLA conference-related content.)
Am I ever going to do a post where I'm happy about something instead of suggesting how to change and improve it? (Probably not…)
Obviously these suggestions come heavily from the perspective of a student and a first-time CLA attendee.
Twelve Ways To Improve The CLA Conference
1. Don't charge students to attend
2. Don't have an $18 per person first-timer's breakfast. Maybe an $8 one at a nearby restaurant with a private room would work better and have more people out?
3. Have free wireless internet available at the conference site
4. Make video (preferably – or audio or text) streams of all presentations (as well as any powerpoint slides and handouts) available on the CLA web site. Ideally, this information would be made available to anyone but if you had to limit it, a simple password system for registered conference participants (or all CLA members) would suffice.
5. Have a first-timers-only mixer early in the week so students get a chance to meet people from across Canada in the same situation as themselves. Let people in for free instead of charging $18 to attend. Don't have it in a venue (like a high-end hotel) that's going to charge $7 for a beer and $4 for cranberry juice either (that's one's for Michelle Lake.)
6. Send out a first-timer's package that pulls all the most relevant information from the conference program along with tips and tricks about negotiating a conference like this. A lot of my fellow attendees expressed disappointment with their experience and I think this is partly due to the overwhelming nature of a conference like this. I know I missed a lot in the conference program and I'm sure many other people did as well.
7. Include a list of registered conference participants in each person's registration package (may have privacy implications but I've seen it done and always appreciated it if I met someone and wanted to contact them at a later date.)
8. This is something we tried to do at the WGA and SPG with our conferences. Why not partner with local tourist attractions to host some of the events? Instead of having the opening keynote at the hotel, imagine how memorable it would have been to have it at the Museum of Civilization or even on Parliament Hill?
9. Fairly minor but listing not only the start point but the end point for the pub crawl in the program would have been helpful for those wishing to join the revellers later. (The retired children's librarian I had a drink with the first night wanted to join the pub crawl after the awards ceremony but didn't know where we'd be for instance.)
10. My classmate, Paul hit the nail on the head. No Elvis. No Marilyn. No clowns. If you need to waste money on wandering entertainment (I mean, they weren't even performing), why not have some literary characters or famous librarians depicted?
11. Spend more money on the lunches and have a WAY better selection than two kinds of crappy wraps as the only choices (seriously, no salad, no pasta, no dessert, no juice.)
12. Make sure I win a door prize next time! 
Here's the report that a couple classmates sent to our class listserv with their take on the CLA conference…
—
The good:
The 2 best presentations we saw were on Thursday, one
on recruitment in Academic Libraries, and the other was a debate on
whether we as librarians have made ourselves obsolete over the past
decade. The Academic libraries presentation was useful in that it gave
tips on applying, to make your cover letter stand out, the interview
process (a whole day, often), our generation's job prospects (not bad,
but there aren't as many retiring as we predicted – things should be
good between 2009-2014). They also raised a commonly-heard complaint at
FIMS, ie library schools' lack of adequately preparing its students for
jobs, especially the lack of technological skills….505, anyone?
anyway, it was probably the most informative seminar I saw.
The
“debate”, apparently a tradition at the conference, was on “It may not
be a paper-less society, but it could be a librarian-less society”. I'm
sorry to say, but the side arguing that it will be a librarian-less
society had the better arguments – in a nutshell, we've made it so easy
for the user, that they don't need us, and the fact that we've gotten
into bed with all the vendors. Soon, every library (academic,
especially) will be as similar as one Chapters to another, if we've all
bought the same package(s) from the same vendors. Another good point,
was that as a profession, we're too hung up on getting “respect” from
the outside, we have an inferiority complex, etc, and this is why we've
let big business slowly creep in to libraries. Kinda like a lively 501
class. But, good stuff to hear for us who
are entering the profession; maybe we'll put up more of a fight than
the people w ho've been there all their lives, and who don't really
care anymore….
The Bad:
For
$90, the “lunch” provided was pretty pitiful, a wrap, either with
chicken, or “cup of noodles” thrown into a wrap, and called vegetarian.
And pop (2 kinds, 7up and Pepsi, guess we made a deal with only one
vendor). And, there were some fairly boring presentations, but you
never know til you go. And nobody knows how to use powerpoint effectively. Really, the worst I can say about the conference is this (apart from below).
The Ugly:
And,
I'm not sure how much CLA paid to have Elvis , a middle-aged Marilyn
Monroe, and an annoying clown wander around, but this money could've
been better spent on food, at the very least…
Anyhoo, time's
running out here on the internet access, but overall, it was definitley
worth going to. Maybe didn't shmooze as much as we should've, but
others may have had luck in this department.
And someday, we predict that Jason will be the CLA president 🙂
Paul and Kelly
Classmate of the Day:
Emilie McLachlan for her Dell-inspired weekly summary for Management
class today (and I'm not referring to the Dell laptop she brings to
class).
Shea had the camera while being a tourist (and we didn't think to take our old-fashioned film camera which still needs to have its current roll finished) so I didn't take as many shots at CLA as I normally would have. Here are some though…
The view from the President's Suite of Parliament Hill at the Saturday night reception (sorry it's a bit blurry – it looked like it was in focus when I took it! )
A Flickr photoset of the things a library volunteer finds on the book cart or stuffed in books in the prison where they volunteer:
Jail finds – a photoset on Flickr (via Librarian.net)
Just back from the CLA conference (it officially ended up Saturday but we stayed an extra day to do some sightseeing and so we'd have a full day to drive home instead of rushing on Saturday.) Turns out this was a wise decision as I'll explain later…
Saturday, I was again up very early and over to an 8am session by Toni Samek on Intellectual Freedom issues and their relevance in library schools. After that, I finally went to be a tourist with Shea, taking the van for a cruise around the city (tried to stop to say 'hi' to fellow Westerner Stephen Harper but he was apparently in Edmonton cheering on the Oilers) then went to the War Museum which was okay but not great.
We had lunch in Byward Market (Chris Dixon sent me a great suggestion for a restaurant but it was closed for lunch on Saturdays!) then went back to The Westin in time for the AGM which, contrary to the popular opinion, was very interesting and yes, even exciting in parts! After years of non-profit AGM's which tend to be very informal with a lot of “uhm, do we vote now? No, I think we do discussion then the amendment then call the question. Er, or that but the other way”, being at an AGM with a parlimentarian to guide the proceedings, a PowerPoint to follow as we moved through the agenda as well as to display a Word document with bylaws and resolutions so we could all see amendments as they were made – was pretty cool.
Not sure whether I should be happy or embarrassed (probably the latter) that a few of my comments were paraphrased into the remarks of one of the speakers during the debate about a resolution to change the membership options slightly. The resolution on the floor was that members shouldn't just get to pick one free division as happens now (the five divisions being public, academic, special, school libraries as well as one for trustees) but that they should also get the option of one division (for more established librarians or new librarians who know what they're interested in) or two interest groups (which are perhaps of more relevance to newer librarians, students and established librarians who don't fit in any of the five divisions – information technology librarians or librarian technicians for example.) A compromise was proposed that it would be better to say “one division AND one special interest group free” rather than still making people choose.
How Shea and I came into all of this was that there was a lot of debate about how much this change would cost the CLA ($6000-$30000 was their quickie-math prediction although I'm not sure I agree with how they arrived at these figures as they were using the “Every person who downloads a Britney Spears album for free would've otherwise bought it” technique so popular with the RIAA.) Someone I'd talked to at the pub crawl got up to say how important it was to make this change to support students – including some students who couldn't afford to pay the reduced conference fee let alone pay $15 for interest groups. She then went on to say that “some students including one who won the Spirit Award at UWO is here today but he couldn't even bring his wife to the opening keynote because of the cost of tickets for non-delegates on top of the costs he'd already incurred to attend the conference” (a slight exaggeration but the principle of the thing is definitely true. It's pretty outrageous to me that in an organization dedicated to removing barriers to access, students who often have $0 income, pay their own registration, meals, accommodation and travel costs while working librarians who are likely in a better position to afford the related costs to attend the conference (even though their registration fee is higher.) This is also assuming that their attendance isn't covered by their employer as it was for many of the librarians I spoke with. My classmate, Alex Homanchuk puts it a bit more succinctly in his blog post entitled “Fuck The CLA!”)
I actually went to the conference with the intention of making a resolution that students shouldn't have to pay a conference registration fee (for the reasons I outlined above, for the fact that it's a gesture of goodwill to their newest members who will presumably soon be making $50 000-75 000/year and will be able to afford to attend the conference regularly, because the CLA web site misleadingly said “Complimentary” beside the student registration option.) But I let myself get a bit overwhelmed and intimidated at the conference and though I told a few friendly faces my idea (fellow students, sympathetic librarians and profs), I never took the initiative to find an Executive Member and find out how to get this resolution on the agenda. (I did bring the idea to the First Timers interest group on Thursday and they were very supportive but by this point, we'd missed the resolution approval meeting.) Next year I guess…
The President, Barbara Clubb, ended the AGM by inviting everyone who'd lasted until the end of the meeting to join her for the traditional reception at the President's Suite in the host hotel which “has more square footage than my house” according to her. Walked back to the University and relaxed for awhile then went to the reception (Shea wasn't feeling well and stayed at the University residence unfortunately.) The reception was great and I got to meet the past-President, current President, President-elect, Executive Director as well as many other long-time members of CLA. Also got some great information for my Independent Study and a possible lead on a research project! The setting was amazing – 23rd floor of the hotel with a gigantic wrap-around balcony with views of Parliament Hill, the American Embassy and pretty much all of the major attractions of Ottawa that are in the area.) Finished the day by having a drink at a nearby pub with two librarians who both previously worked in the Saskatoon Public System and who were able to give me a lot of the insights you don't get from sitting at a conference with no beer in you. All of this is why I'm glad we stayed the extra night.
I guess that's it for now. I'm debating whether to just spend the next week of entries posting about various aspects of the conference since there was so much that I took from it. I've blogged about how I always carry a notepad to jot down ideas, quotes, book titles and whatever else I might come across. I usually fill up a page every few days but this week, I filled an entire notebook in four days!
Oh, I also wanted to give a long-neglected Classmate of the Day award to Paul and Kelly who sent their impressions of the conference to our cohort's listserv after a request from Kerry about how it was and tagged on the prediction that I will be President of CLA someday. I don't know about that – I've got to learn my Roberts Rules of Order a bit better first and be a lot less chicken about introducing resolutions – but thanks for the vote of confidence. Paul, if you're reading this, feel free to post your report in the comments!
I'm actually going to post an entry on the day I'm writing about if you can believe it! Up early and over to hotel but the shuttle bus was full so I had to wait for the 9:20am one, missing half of the session I wanted to attend – “Public Library Statistics Across Canada” which was MUCH more interesting than the title would lead you to believe. Skipped out of the second session (I think I went to something but it was boring so left) and ended up talking to various people who were also doing the “networking” thing. Met one guy who convocated a couple years ago and who recognized me from my blog! I sometimes forget that I'm not just doing this little project for myself. Yikes! Went to the First Timers Interest Group (not the real name) meeting at noon and a couple of my suggestions – a mixer for students and recent grads only as an alternate to the pub crawl and also the idea of bringing forward a resolution that students should be allowed to attend the conference for free were well-received. Unfortunately, found out later that we were too late to get the resolution on the agenda. Perhaps we can make it happen for next year? Or maybe they don't even need a formal resolution and can just work towards it as an executive? Who knows – I have no idea how the politics of an organization this large work. I'm used to organizations of betwen 50-500 members with about 10 active members in each! What else? Time's running out at the Internet cafe and I'm too tired and poor to pay another couple bucks so I'll wrap up quickly. Went to the UWO Alumni Reception at the Honest Lawyer pub and it was good. Mostly hung out with Sabina and David but also a few others. Taking trays of food at a time was a risky proposition but no one stopped us which was good. Went for a wander with Shea and that was enjoyable and made me realise that I've missed a lot being in conference all week while she did the touristy stuff. Ended up bumping into Denise, Ella and Guida so had supper with them. One minute left…bye! (Off-topic – how embarrasing that my last song listened to on the sidebar for the last few days was left as Paris Hilton's “Stars Are Blind”???)
