And so, another year wraps up

I love end of the year goodness. Like top ten lists, summarizing the year into small moments and events, and all sorts of cheeriness. And I like looking forward, to the new year, to making lists and having new goals.

I attended a WebJunction webinar today, The Personal Learning Experience for Library Staff and other Busy Professionals. (Archive should be up soon.) It was a great little reminder on organizing myself and having a learning program. Which I feel like I have through twitter, bloglines, facebook and all the assorted other tools in my life. I think I am a bit of a absentminded creative type, ideas bursting at the seams but sometimes lacking in the follow through. I will open a tab to go to site XYZ and by the time I enter in the url I can not recall where I wanted to go. I follow blogs and read about things that I want to learn and do, and sometimes they get lost in the shuffle. And I want to write more, professionally and personally. So in short, I decided to start my 2008 resolutions a month early?

Why you ask?
Well, because I believe that resolutions are about changing patterns and behaviors, two things that don't happen overnight or in a 7.5 hour workday. Behaviors and patterns that are a result of life experiences. I also believe in success and the ability to overcome obstacles, so by starting a month early, I will have some groundwork for my resolutions to stick, thereby not setting myself up for failure. I will also be more measurable in my goals, to ensure there are outcomes and products. So one of these is to write more, blog more. About library stuff, about nonlibrary stuff. I'll leave the fabulous blog entries about library philosophy and service to the folks who do that best, and figure out what works best for me. I know that I want to write about my family and mental illness. I want to write about my experiences in retail therapy. I want to write about the little moments of library joy.

Oh, and I totally want one of these.

Playing Librarian

In the past 8 weeks, I have spent many hours reading through the blogs of my colleagues involved in Learning 2.0. The other week, one of our Things was LibraryThing. One of the participants blog entries about LibraryThing struck a childhood memory of playing library. I would organize my Baby-sitter's Club and Sweet Valley High books in numbered order and the rest in some order that made sense. Alphabetical by title, organized into height groups, colors. I would make little catalog records and due date cards for the title verso. It was quite the operation with a notebook detailing who borrowed what book and when it was due.

LibraryThing allowed me to organize my personal library, with the bonus of adding tags, emotional keywords. I found 15 other people who also have this book in their library. Play is the locus of Learning 2.0, encouraging staff to experiment, explore, discover the new web tools. It has been a challenge to shift the focus to play and explore, away from protocol and procedure. Play is fun, creative and one of the great benefits of play is the development of ideas, solutions; it fosters an informal setting and changes our way of thinking.

So, in thinking about play and libraries, I wonder what 'playing librarian' would look like today. Our catalogs are digital. Instead of stamping the inside of the cover, we print a receipt with the due dates. In retrospect, librarianship was probably always in my cards and as I developed intellectually my interests were aligned with the missions and goals of libraries. When asked what I might be doing if I wasn't in libraries, I am hard pressed to answer. Perhaps something in museums or art, developing training modules and staff development, teaching or tucked away in the ivory tower for the love of anthropology, of perhaps something IT related; work that complimentary to the work of libraries.

Kate mused about the word library in Bloglines, iTunes, and for every bibliophile on your holiday list, the personal library kit. Understanding what a ten year old playing library means in 2007 requires a different historical context. A child born in 1997 entered into a world when the internet was reaching toddler years. At the end of 1999, parents would be concerned about Y2K and backing up data. The child is probably playing educational video games and has mastered the mouse before kindergarten. At age ten in 2007, we would have a fifth grader on our hands, perhaps with a computer at home, maybe even one in their room. Maybe our ten year old would have a portable gaming system or mp3 player, familiar with accessing digital content online. There might not be a concern for authenticity or authorship, but rather an immediate need. Instead of the home encyclopedia collection, Google would serve as a research tool directing most search queries to Wikipedia. (Perhaps the parents are savvy and aware of iConn!) So, playing library... would the child who loves books and/or technology seek this out? Perhaps the playing would be orientated around the customer experience, like playing store , and focusing on the customer service exchange rather than the objects. Sample scenarios could be looking for the latest magna title or assistance in looking for Grand Theft Auto cheat codes.

And to take an incredibly sappy and nostalgic turn, I hope that play isn't something of the 20th centruy. And by play I mean using ones imagination and assorted objects to create a reality, outside of technology. I adore The Dangerous Book for Boys and now The Daring Book for Girls. It is a way of acting out experiences, practicing behaviors and responses, taking on a new personality and building interpersonal skills. Playing is learning.

Population

Census data. Yum. Excel spreadsheets, the most one can have before noon.

Information request was for the Caribbean or Haitian population of Fairfield, CT. One of my favorite information sources that is census.gov, and I was particularly excited to use it this morning to look for data. This post is more of a post-it reminder to myself on accessing the resources. (Or if my patron calls back.) I stumbled a bit on where to go and ran a few different searches until I found an accurate match.

Using American Fact Finder, I can create a custom search that yielded me the specific data, with the ability to narrow down to specific ethnic groups and areas within a city. I used the QuickTables to access information about ancestry, and click-click-show! Population data downloadable to a spreadsheet!

A glorious way to start the week!

I'm on my air cell phone

A little known fact about Maura: I like to air guitar. I like to air sitar. I like to play air stringed instruments. Always have, and hopefully always will. Air guitar is a part of who I am.

We have hosted a few Dance Dance Revolution Programs at the library, and I have looked on with envy as teenagers bopped around, their feet reaching for the right pads. I would be awkward and self-conscious without proper liquid libations. Libraries are picking up Guitar Hero as well and I hope having air guitar programs, with teenagers shredding like they are at Madison Square in '82. (However, most of them probably weren't born in '82...)

I recently attended an air guitar event and it was nothing short of amazing. May I suggest a few titles for your collection?

I recommend Air Guitar Nation, a witty documentary about one man's path to airness. The same man also published a hilarious memoir, a quick satisfying read with diagrams to develop technique.

sticks to stacks.

I am from Massachusetts. I say wicked, love the Red Sox, fall is my favorite season, and I've been told I am a bad driver.

I've worked in libraries in Western Mass, at the tony library of Mount Holyoke and the quaint library of Northampton. I have always been dazzled and in love with cities, from the grittiness to the glamour, and all the little communities in between. My younger sister came down to spend a bit of time in the city with me. Our adventure started in Port Authority and quickly went to the Upper West Side, down to Brooklyn, up to Harlem, back down to Chelsea, SoHo via Chinatown, and then back to Port Authority. We even had Pinkberry.

I was catching up on my blogs this morning, and the always fabulous Jenny posted a shout out to us western mass girls. I laughed out loud, as the reference was timely. Yesterday, I watched my sister's face turn to sheer horror over the screeching subway, her nose crawl into a little acorn at the olfactory subway experience, and her wide eyes as a woman got into a shouting match with a perfect stranger in the subway for being "too old to be so rude". I got a kick out of watching her facial expressions and her face taking in the sites, sounds and smells of the city. We got to see Jenny today and meet her coworkers! (One of which told me she reads my blog, which made me realize maybe I should be more regular about updating this business...) And kudos to Jenny and her coworkers for their fantastic costumes!

From there, Maggie and I strolled down to Chinatown, so she could pick up an I Heart NY tee shirt. I haven't been down there in years, and since then the faux handbag market has grown. The marketing/harassment seems so much more intense. Small women would stand at the street corners, with small pieces of paper showing handbags whispering, fendi gucci coach chanel handbags miss. SO AGGRESSIVE. And this kept happening over and over again for a few blocks. And one woman practically had me cornered after I said no to her twice. I mused to my sister about being that aggressive for promoting new books. I would follow commuters whispering our latest new books and dvds, james patterson the new alice sebold steven colbert, handing out little informational flyers, enticing them to come back to our information lair to look at our books. I digress, I am much too literal. I need to work on this. (And because old habits die hard, I spent some time discussing the knock off industry and legislation surrounding counter fitting. Really, I just needed to lecture about something...)

Outsourcing: Yay or Nay.

Picture this scene:

Just past 3pm, on a warm Indian summer September our heroine, sits at a red light, with NPR quietly playing in the background. Her mobile ear piece is attached to her right here, her planner open on her lap. She punches through her contacts list and makes a call.

A woman with a slight accent answers, "Dr. Doctor's answering service. How can I help you?" Our heroine inwardly groans, her second attempt to make an appointment is thwarted yet again by the answering service. The lady advises our girl the office will not be open again until Monday and she politely responds that she would like to receive a call back when the office is open. The customer service representative seems slightly annoyed, going over the hours again, expressing she will have to wait until Monday. Our heroine acknowledges this, thinking that the callback will serve as a reminder to make the appointment even if she misses the call, and if she has waited this long to make the appointment, how long will she have to wait to see the Doctor. Sheesh, she thinks.

Our heroine ends the call after giving her name and phone number, and closes her address book. She decides not to call Dr. Her Other Doctor , as this was just exhausting. She arrives home and lists a few things on ebay and craigslist, thereby crossing a few things off on her to-do list. After those tasks are completed, she lounges in bed nursing a small bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and watching Izzie perform surgery with a hand drill while McDreamy searches for Meredith. There is no time for the nap she was hoping to take before returning to work.

The to-do list is filled with simple tasks that sometimes take much longer to complete than they should. Scheduling appointments, inquiring about rates, checking the weather, listing items for sale, answering emails, finding recipes. All this sort of busy work that gets in the way of daily life. Gosh, wouldn't it be great to hire someone for five hours a week to take care of these tasks for me, freeing up my time to focus on work or leisure. I found myself thinking of the The 4-Hour Workweek (which I have placed on hold at my library), and how we can hire personal assistants to take care of tasks in our lives.

Lifehacker posted about the case for personal outsourcing, and invited users to comment about the practice of outsourcing tasks in their lives. While clicking through and wondering how I might locate a personal assistant company, I came across GetFriday, a firm in Banglore India that I can hire for as little as $120 a month for 12 hours. There are pay-as-you-go plans as well as a task based plan. What do they do you may be wondering:

• Online research for updating blogs
• Reading bedtime stories to a young child on phone
• Get an authenticated weather forecast and weather report for a particular time in a particular place on a particular day, five years ago. This was to be used as supportive evidence for a law suit
• Posting job vacancies on the web
• Educational research for 8-year-old (on behalf of his father)

Wow. Sounds like they do it all and more. Sounds like they could potentially be doing the work of librarians. So much of what we do is the personal touch, the face to face interaction, reading the body and face for clues, asking questions. Libraries are democratic institutions open to the people. I have researched stock prices from years ago, helped children research touch screen technologies, looked up phone numbers and provided directions at no cost to my patrons. Oh, and there are days when I feel like a patron's assistant. I often think about the value add in library services and the cost of the services we provide. I like this estimated cost calculator from Central Massachusetts Regional Library System. I can enter in my use of library services for a month and see what the value of services is. Perhaps we could end every reference with a friendly reminder of how much we are saving our patrons, "Alright, so here is the most recent review of desktop computers from Consumer Reports printed from a database, and your savings is $10.50." Because really, we are not giving our customers something for nothing.

I was having a similar discussion this morning with a friend, regarding fee 411 services. Google offers a free 411 service, as well as Free 411. I haven't tried Google's yet, but Free 411 has a 30 second or so advertisement before your information is provided. 411 costs $1.49, plus airtime with Verizon Wireless. Outsourcing, free vs. fee all come down to a matter of "how much is my time worth?" which is a very personal question that has many different answers. I also feel somewhat suspect that when you add a cost to a service, the value is almost automatic. I paid for this so I must be getting value out of it. Would library services and reference work be more valued if there was an invoice attached to each interaction? Are library services taken for granted because they are "free"?

Oh, and our heroine? Her doctor's office called back the next day for an appointment, at the end of October. And she participates in some outsourcing, on a local level. She still makes her own appointments and does her own research.

Manolo loves us!!

One of my favorite blog is Manolo's Shoe Blog which is related to all things shoe. Manolo writes for a column for the Express of the Washington Post, and recently ran one from a librarian!
Manolo gives props to the librarians,

Now, the librarians compete with each other to be the hippest young “information specialist” in the main branch, the one with the dreadlocks, the radical politics, and the uncanny ability to access arcane databases on remote servers in Tajikistan.

Truly, this is the noblest of professions!

AHH!! Manolo loves us!!

And in a nutshell...

Excuse the f-bomb in the cartoon, but this sums up my attitude on life. Having adventures, seizing the moment, doing the unexpected, taking risks and chances.























image from: xkcd.com

Vacation is good for the librarian

I am back after a week long cross country road trip. My friend relocated out to Seattle, so I jumped in the UHaul and went along for the drive. It was a great adventure that generated our own list of reference questions, appreciation for the diversity of our country in terms of landscape and people, and inside jokes (camping!).

My friend is a middle school science teacher who is involved in professional development activities within the science education community, so we always have a lot to talk about. We were very excited that our UHaul was teaching evolution, and it sparked at least one conversation with fellow travelers along the way.

Reference Question of the Day:
Mario Cantone was on the View today. Wasn't he on a children's show in the 80s?

Life as a Library School Professor

I came to library science out of a love of information, data, education, and technology. Library School taught me the nuts and bolts of being a librarian, the theory and the practice. I had some wonderful professors whose love of their work and career path came through in their lectures and conversations outside the classroom. One of my favorite library school professors, Stephanie Willen Brown, wrote an article for Library Journal about being an adjunct professor. I learned quite a bit from Stephanie on how to be an effective reference librarian.

Brown, Stephanie Willen . "The Adjunct Life." Library Journal 15 June 2007. 22 Jun 2007 .

Homework Help.

It appears a rumor is going around in Stamford. That the librarians will answer your homework questions for you.

Fancy Friday!

Hi! It has been awhile. Took a break from refgrunting, for a variety of reasons. None of them very good. Here are some loose ends that I am typing up from the last week or so.

Ahhh.. the basic questions can send us into a tailspin. A gentleman called in to obtain the conversion between an inch and a centimeter. Pretty obvious... I know it is somewhere in the area of 1 inch to 2.5 centimeters, but how to quickly access that information. The short answer is World Almanac, but for some reason I thought, the back of the dictionary! Why? Because my dictionary has all sorts of cool charts and conversion tables in the back.


I really like the ideas of roving reference, SMS or text message reference, reference through social networking, reference everywhere! Getting into the environment where are patrons are, providing services in the tools and formats they recognize. I had a reference question that came through the local hardware store regarding book binders. To get inside the mind of the patron, and follow the thought process which brought him to his local hardware store would have been fascinating, or rather simple. Perhaps he has an established relationship with John (not his real name) at the hardware store, and John seems to know everything. Or, perhaps seeing the process of book binding requiring various tools and machines, that could be purchased or supplied through a hardware store.

Tuesday!

T stands for Tuesday and Technology! The third floor public computers being upgraded, so the second floor is a bit of a mad house. Also: no school today?

A patron wanted a legal sounding synonym for the "truth of the matter". Patron also requested my opinion on a sentence and whether or not something sounded legal.
Do you have wireless at any of the branches? (Yes! We do!)
Where can I buy a used computer monitor?
I lost my floppy disk. Did anyone turn one in?
Can I use that computer?
Why are all these teenagers here? Is it school vacation week? When will the computers be available on the third floor?
Where is your catalog?

Monday Reference

I am really feeling energized today! I traveled to Ithaca, New York over the weekend to see a friend who has returned from The Gambia, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer. It was really wonderful to catch up and talk about our lives.
We talked a bit about technology and computers. It is really amazing to think about all the changes that have occurred in the last three years: YouTube, Wikipedia, iPod and iTunes, social networking, blogging. All of this Web 2.0 business really took off while she was away. She said, I just found out about Wikipedia a few months ago! My interests and position have me engaged in technology daily, experimenting with, learning about, teaching to others. It was a really great moment, like the internet was invented! (Don't worry. Soon enough she'll be up and running with Flickr and a blog...)


Now, the reference questions:
What is the name of the radio station for 96.3 FM out of New York. Is there a website or telephone number.
WQXR, New York Times radio station. (Who knew the Times had a station!) http://www.wqxr.com/
Can I use a pen?
Why can't I delete sent messages in my eBay account?
Since I taught this eBay class (which was very popular!), I am getting lots of questions about eBay! I love it! So the answer: turns out, I don't know why. It looks like 60 days of sent messages are kept. I imagine if there is any dispute over items, this keeps the "paper trail".
A few technology issues: converting a .wps to .doc, some of the workstations were wonky, and a teenage patron listening to gangsta rap so loud I could make out every word.
Where can I find nonfiction? (Moved into a discussion of how our library is organized rather than relying on chaos... Though a valid point was made about organizing biographies in a separate section. )
Where can I find information on Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad, Mali and biographies on Lefty O'Doul and other assorted Yankees (boo.. GO SOX!)
How many floors are here?
3 au pairs for the internet. Two card number look ups.
Where is the most recent issue of Barron's?
Do you have the White Pages?
Do you have change for a $20?
Looking for a French-English Dictionary.
Request for a book called A Steel Man in India. (two colleges have it)
A biography on Christian Lacroix (swoon! no book biographies, but something from Wilson's and article in Women's Wear Daily. Also my most favorite reference question of the day!)
Where can I find these books? and shows call numbers.
The machine ate my dollar! Look, it is all crinkly and torn! What should I do?

Overhead:
Rather loudly: "... and lack of sex!!!" And then something about Roman Catholics.

I'm going to count that as a reference question.

One of our teenage computer regulars walks up to the desk, and asks for some scotch tape. He is about to tape a paper towel over his tattoo. I say, I think we have some gauze and hand some over to him. I inquire about when he got the tattoo, and suggest using moisturizing the tattoo and keeping it clean.

I need to look up resources on STDs for a school paper.
Can you help me set up a hotmail and myspace account?