At the risk of turning this blog into Cute Overload, here's another Pace-related clip.
There's an indoor playground in Regina called "It's A Blast" (think a typical McDonald's playground but, uh, super-sized) that's apparently the largest of its kind in western Canada. We'd known about it for awhile but thought he'd be too small for it. Nope, turns out that not only does he enjoy the toddler area (see below), he also *loves* the giant structure for bigger kids (as long as mommy and daddy are with him which we are since adults are allowed on the thing too! Or at least nobody told us to get off.) Shea's got the day's adventure fully documented (plus lots of other recent photos) on Flickr.
Oh, and the best part? Their pricing structure starts at 1 year olds. So Pace, who is 11 1/2 months got in for free! (Parents don't have to pay either so we got to use their business for free all afternoon. What do they think they are - a library? )
And not the gardening kind either (although we are in spring cleaning mode at our city home (ie. Regina) since I took a few days off before the SLA conference later this week. Take a look at the program and see if you can spot two of my former colleagues who are presenting. Hints: one is also a former Spirit of Librarianship award winner who was also my student mentor and one is a published author who I think I had given his first public reading as part of the "Lunch Bucket Speaker Series" to a rapturous crowd of, oh, about four.)
Anyhow, back to the subject at hand...
I've done a bit of weeding here and there during the past year but a couple weeks ago, I had my first opportunity to do some more involved weeding in (of course) my hometown branch.
(I should note that I'm really trying hard to temper my natural biases, working in my home region and having family and friends in so many of the 48 communities I serve including having grown up in one that I seem to end up spending a lot of time at. But Indian Head just happened to be the first of about four (so far) branches that have asked for me to come help with weeding this summer - honest!)
Here are some random thoughts and impressions... - one of the hardest things you have to learn as a librarian (and presumably a book lover) is to be ruthless when weeding. The book is tattered? Gone. Hasn't been checked out in five years or more? Gone. Has outdated information? Gone. Has less than one use per year in the last few years? Gone.
- the weeded
books get a chance at second life in the library's book sale but I
suspect many of them end up in that big book sale in the sky after that
brief reprieve. - this is a point of contention for some librarians (yes, we get worked up about this stuff) but there are different views on what constitutes a "perfect shelf." Some like to see the shelf fully stocked so that you can barely squeeze a finger in and all the books in your collection are available to the patron. Others like to have their shelves 80-90% full to make re-shelfing easier. Others go even lower - maybe 60- 75% - which aids reshelfing and also gives the advantage of allowing to place more books face out and... (warning: Jason actually endorses a retail marketing concept ahead ) ...increasing the chances that the book will be picked up by a customer. (Ooops, Jason goes too far! )
I know one library that did an aggressive weed taking out 10% of their books. You'd suspect that their circulation would fall by 10%. Instead, it went up by 25% because they could do face-out shelfing and because the books that were left simply looked nicer and/or newer which made patrons more likely to take them out.
- even worse than killing the books is seeing all the work of somebody who came long before, back in the day's when a cataloging record wasn't a mouse click away but each entry had to be manually typed and labourously inserted into the book. I guess that's the nature of the beast and it happens in all fields but it's still tough to think of that work disappearing with the rip of the barcoded page.
- being in my hometown library, it was a bit eerie to see familiar titles including at least one series of sports tips for youngsters books I am positive I checked out in my younger days. (GONE!)
- further to that last point, I know all of the security and privacy issues around it but I still regret that libraries don't at least give us the option of keeping a permanent record of our borrowing. It's too late for me, having grown up in the analog age of date due stamps and handwritten library card numbers on the date due slip but wouldn't it be amazing if Pace could look back on his entire reading history when he turned 25 or 40 or 80?
- What happened in the early 2000's that kids simply stopped reading juvenile non-fiction? It's a bit early for the Internet so it must've been something else. CD-ROM's? So many of the books I looked at had good, regular usage and then 2000-2002 hits and they just stop circulating.
- The date due slips aren't just a history of which patron # took the book out and when but also, like marginalia that you often find in library books, a bit of insight into the history of the book itself. Notes from the librarian about the book: "Called M. Smith re: overdue. Said she'll check again." and from one librarian to another ("I enjoyed this one so thought you might too."). Card numbers are used instead of names but occasionally (usually when teachers borrowed a group of books or for non-local fulfillment), the full name and community of the borrower is written in instead. So I get to see that one of our current branch librarians (who I'll be weeding with in the next few weeks) was borrowing books for her children long before she began working for us. Or that one of my elementary school teachers regularly used public library books to supplement her lessons at school.
- when you go to delete the records of the books you've weeded, you should always ask someone who knows the system better than you do if you're doing it right. Otherwise, you could end up doing twice as much work. Or so I've heard...
In roughly a decade or so, we've gone from the Internet just entering the general public's consciousness to being ubiquitous and something most of us pretty much take for granted.
We expect wireless Internet connections for our laptops every where we go, we post to Twitter and receive Facebook updates on our mobile phones, we order everything online from airline tickets to "new to us" goods on E-bay to prints of our digital photos. The Internet has finally caused time and space to have no meaning in terms of how we communicate in a way that no other previous communication media could.
But, although it seems incredibly unlikely right now, the Internet isn't necessarily as secure nor as stable as we may think.
"You can however, see a screening of 'I Am Legend'. Of course, somebody probably downloaded it from the Net." - Brad Fidler Searches For the Actual Physical Location Where the Internet Began
This story about Web 4.0 (I don't know about you but I'm still trying to get my head around Web 2.0!) reminded me of a hilariously prescient Onion article titled "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades!"
Here's the TechCrunch reference to Web 4.0 that got the linked author all lathered up (there, I tied the two themes together!) For those keeping score: Web 1.0 - The Information Web Web 2.0 - The Social Web Web 3.0 - The Semantic Web Web 4.0 - The Intelligent Web (in ~20 years according to the poster linked above)
And while I'm at it, I think I've already figured out Web 5.0:
Book beer pairings sees authors suggesting brews that are best enjoyed with their work. What brews go with your favourite books - a very important question for the ages.
In semi-related news, the next "Books to Beers and Stacks to Snacks" social gathering will happen following the final day of the SLA conference, Saturday May 3 at 5pm at the Cathedral Village Free House in Regina. Endnote speaker, Jessamyn West, is planning to attend so why not drop by if you're already taking in the conference and/or a MetaFilter member?
Shea got this off her mommy board and wanted me to do it. I got 68 and she got 92. ("Crunchy" by the way is what the kids call "hippies" these days. This quiz happens to be in reference to your parenting choices.)
The Flames are out after an all-around terrible performance in game 7 against San Jose and, for the third year when they went out in the first round, I have mixed feelings. I'm sad that my team lost of course but also relieved that I'll be able to avoid spending three hours on the couch every second night.
Anyhow, I was 4/8 in the first round (strangely, picking 3/4 in the East which is the conference I watch a lot less of) but in my defense, it was only because I'm a homer for the Flames (I knew they were in an uphill battle against the Sharks) and I picked the wrong upset (Nashville over Detroit instead of Dallas over Anaheim.)
With the excuses out of the way, here's my picks for round two. (This gets easier each round - by the time some team's won the Cup, I bet I'll be able to predict the winner with 100% accuracy!)
Montreal over Philadelphia Pittsburgh over NY Rangers
Colorado over Detroit San Jose over Dallas
Oh hell, while I'm predicting, I'll also say that Montreal will beat Pittsburgh (to be the fourth different Canadian team in four years to make the Stanley Cup final) and San Jose will beat Colorado and then Montreal will beat the Canadian curse to win their, what, 26th Cup in their storied history? In a related story, there will be a huge upswing in the number of sports fans jumping off tall buildings in downtown Toronto.
...is what Shea said when she caught me feeding Pace chips while watching the hockey game last night. (At least she didn't catch me giving him sips of beer!)
She sent "The Story of Stuff" last Christmas and the "Garbage Dump Reality Show" one a couple months later. I didn't get the first one posted last Christmas so put it in the "on deck" circle for next Christmas (which is why there's been a "December 2008" line showing up on the calendar on the left side of this blog for the last little while.)
When she sent the other one, she pointed out that Earth Day would also be a good time to post these stories. So that's what I'm doing. Here's her original "Story of Stuff" e-mail...
Apologies if you've already seen this or heard about it - it seems to be spreading across Facebook and the 'web pretty quickly. But it's a concise and humbling (if also somewhat politically charged) description of the consumption cycle. More than your usual "rah-rah go environment" stuff, this really examines the role that WE play in consumption (including the psychological effects of fashion and advertising). It's a pretty good site, although the video is long (over 10 minutes, I think) so watch it when you have the time to sit through it.
An especially potent message at this time of year, when it's ALL about consumption (especially as a way to demonstrate your feelings for others).
And here's the other one she sent...
Came across this article in Salon about a new reality show which places contestants in a garbage dump to demonstrate how much good "stuff" gets thrown away. Reminded me of the Story of Stuff clip. I know you said you have it bookmarked or whatever for next Christmas. It could also work for Earth Day (in April). At any rate, this story seemed to go hand in hand with the Story of Stuff:
Today was our semi-annual branch librarian's workshop where we hold a day-long series of presentations related to librarianship and our library system specifically.
It went off fairly well with the usual mix of the good (the Dilly Bars from DQ for the afternoon "stretch break" were a hit, even if the weather had turned bitterly cold in the last couple days), the bad (one presenter didn't show up) and the ugly (most of my jokes at the podium. )
An unexpected highlight was meeting David Sparvier who is Canada's first Aboriginal professional librarian. We had invited a number of librarians from various First Nations in our region and Mr. Sparvier came even though he is now retired. (He told me his age and I said I would've guessed twenty years younger!)
I got to sit with him at lunch and spent an enjoyable but all too brief bit of time hearing about his experiences at U of T in the 60's doing his MLS, his early work with Provincial Library setting up the regional library system and various other related topics. I didn't even know that he had that small claim to fame as Canada's first Aboriginal professional librarian until a colleague pointed it out.
Some of these suggestions could be very useful in a library setting if you're trying to encourage movement towards more technology-based solutions and are feeling resistance from colleagues and/or management.
(PS - I've had this link kicking around for a LONG time and suspect I initially got it from someone else's blog. So if it was you that posted this, apologies for not giving proper credit.)
I knew exactly one and somewhat unsurprisingly, it was "dingbat". (As an aside, there is a book called "The Joy of Lex" that was one of my absolute favourites as a kid. If you're a fan of words and language and linguistics, I highly recommend it and it's sequel, "More Joy of Lex")
[Edit: I can't believe I used the wrong "its" in that last line, especially in a post about language! I know the rules for (most of) the typical grammar mistakes - honest - but frequently find that my brain and hands don't always keep up to each other when typing.]
I love when I see something that shows me what the future of the Internet will look like. Though only available for San Francisco and a couple other locations, seeing MapJack (which puts Google StreetView to shame) is one of those moments.
I may have mentioned before that the person I'm replacing at work is a member of ALA and, since he had his subscription to their e-mail newsletter, "American Libraries Direct", coming to his work e-mail address, it's been forwarded to me for the past year.
I don't get to look at every issue but have been very impressed with the ones I have read. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's one of my favourite e-newsletters that I've ever subscribed to happened to have land in my in-box - a nice mix of topics, a section specifically for library-related technology news, a very intuitive layout, nice use of photos.
I'm trying to minimize the number of association memberships I buy (currently, only CLA and Sask Library Association) but might have to consider an ALA membership just to get this newsletter when I move on. (Hmm, how does this auto forward feature work in Outlook again? )
I glanced through a couple of the most recent issues and here are some things I came across (as well as a few other articles/stories/posts I have come across that make a good fit for a "housecleaning" post like this one)...
"20 Things To Watch" (PDF) - Stephen Abram in prognosticator mode. (On that note, I still have a $75 CLA gift certificate from getting runner-up in their student essay contest last year. I have to use it by the end of this month and Stephen Abram's book is one thing I'm looking at. Any other suggestions?)
"Amazon's Cookie Tax" - does Amazon charge different prices based on the previous buying history attached to your membership? MetaFilter discussion covers
"From Static to Dynamic" - a science library makes the long overdue move from static HTML pages to a dynamic CMS. Here's the blow-by-blow of the process, the hurdles and the outcome.
"Visting the Most Modern Library in the World" - the Shifted Librarian visits a library in Holland someone jokingly calls "an IKEAbrary" in the comments (and they mean it in a good way.)
Where do you go to look for library job sites? Here are some sites
I've seen. All are free for job seekers to search but some charge
employers for posting ads (which means they may not get the range of
postings that you'd expect.)
Foothills Library Association (http://www.fla.org/jobline.html) -
by far, my favourite job board. Focused on western Canada, has an RSS
feed, doesn't charge employers to post ads (but encourages them to buy
a $25 annual membership to support the volunteer-run board) so they
have lots of ads from all types of libraries rather than the other ones
I list below which seem to only have listings from big libraries with budgets
for recruiting people. This also forces institutions to choose - one might post to the Partnership while another might post to CLA - but not both which means you're forced to monitor both boards.
There
are probably also job boards for the library tech programs across
Canada, job boards targeted at specific areas of librarianship (the Special Libraries
Association has a job board, there's probably one for health science librarians, etc.). There are also the "big" job sites like monster.ca that post a range of jobs including the occasional one requiring an MLIS or others that might be of interest to MLS grads...but I'm not going to search out all of those!
Governments of all sizes tends have good job boards. Here's the Government of Canada's job site. Most provinces has similar sitesas do larger municipalities. These types of sites might not have
MLIS-specific jobs but could have others in a related area that
appeals to you.
One of our branch librarians also works for Regina Public Library. She wrote this article comparing and contrasting the two types of libraries for the Sask Library Association newsletter a couple years ago. I'm reprinting it with her permission. more»
Shea's on a mommy board (er, an online message board for moms if that's not clear) where they're currently having a discussion about "free range parenting".
This is the idea that you should allow your children lots of freedom to explore, learn and become self-reliant (ie. presumably the way that many of us grew up.)
From the MetaFilter thread I link to below...
There was a really amazing article out of England about a year ago
about the distances youths travel. Basically, the grandfather would
walk several Km to his favorite fishing hole as a child, and he never
fell in, never drowned, never died, never got raped or molested. Then
the father (the author of the article) as a child would routinely
travel several hundred yards away from home as a young child to visit
his favorite swimming hole, alone, or with friends...and he was always
fine, and that was the 60's/70's. Now this guy has a kid, and that kid
isn't allowed outside of his yard, and the author basically just
discussed the affects of quashing the exploratory and independent side
of young boys.
As evidenced by the story above, many parents today are a lot more protective, hovering over their children, fearful that a pedophile lurked around every corner or that children were fragile little creatures who can't cross the street by themselves, let alone go down the block to the playground to hang out with friends unsupervised ("Hey kids, time for a PLAY DATE!" )
On the mommy board, someone linked to an article that's causing an uproar in the States, written by a mom who let her nine year old find her own way home on the subway. I can't link to the discussion on the mommy board because it's members-only (er, which probably is more proof about the paranoia of new parents these days. When I was a kid, the Internet was about openness, dammit! Of course, ironically, being closed does allow people to be more open - the recent discussion about the mommy's sex lives post-pregnancy was very revealing. Also very disturbing since we know a few of the posters to the board in real life. Oh, and apparently half the new dads in Regina are on the verge of divorce from the sounds of it!)
Anyhow, I logged in to good ol' Metafilter to find that the discussion was raging there too. So if you're interested in the topic, have a peek.
Here's a bonus list... TEN THINGS I DID (OR WAS ALLOWED TO DO) AS A KID WHICH I'M NOT SURE IF I'LL LET PACE DO OR NOT 1. Drove vehicles on the farm and back roads without adult accompaniment or supervision. (Shea was instructed to tell the cops that she stole the vehicle if she was in an accident so her parents would still have insurance! )
2. Got left in the toy area of the department stores in Regina while my parents shopped. Often got "lost" when I got bored and went looking for them. 3. Left home at 9am on a summer day. Wandered all over town with friends doing whatever we wanted to do. Made it home by sun down at 10pm. 4. Rode my bike to a nearby lake (is 10km nearby? When you're a kid it is) on a semi-busy highway (especially in summer). Didn't wear a helmet (or knee pads or elbow pads.) The bike had no light. No bell. And very crappy brakes. 5. Rode a small motorcycle to a nearby friend's farm, traveling on a gravel road and crossing one highway (this is Shea's contribution to the list) 6. Swam in a dugout. ("A characteristic feature of the Saskatchewan farming landscape is the
dugout, a large excavation designed to catch the spring runoff from the
fields.") 7. Ate dirt. And small rocks. And grass. And leaves. And random berries off random bushes and trees. And probably worms. 8. Walked to school in -40 weather ("uphill both ways" - oh wait, that's our parents' tall tale, not ours.) Went outside at recess and played for fifteen minutes. When school was over, stayed outside playing some more. 9. Talked to strangers. Occasionally got in their cars and/or went in their houses and/or took food or other pro-offered items from them.
10 Ran with scissors (okay, I don't remember doing this for sure but I'm fairly certain I must have at some point.)
So I've had this list of "10 Things Every Adult Should Know" kicking around for a few weeks, never sure when to post it. I really like a lot of what the guy says...
8. You have no right to be proud, unless you did it yourself.
That goes for anything from racial pride to patriotism. Your race,
gender and nationality are fucking accidents of birth. Being proud of
something you got stuck with when mamma squeezed you out is stupid. You
have a right to be proud of your own personal accomplishments, and
perhaps those of your children (if you were actually a good parent, and
your kids didn't succeed by sheer bloody-mindedness alone). That's it.
Your parents fucked, Mom got knocked up, and ~9 months later, there you
were. Race, gender and nationality handed to you out of some cosmic
lottery machine. Fuck your white pride, black pride, national pride,
and all the horseshit that goes along with it.
...but the obsession with anal sex (two of the ten items, three if you count the one about "if you have sex, you will get pregnant" as some sort of subtle pro-anal message, are about bum sex) sort of takes away the impact of the foul-mouthed but otherwise accurate points in the other 7/10 of the list.
(via Reddit though I've long since lost the link to the thread with comments.)
Flickr has added the option to upload short video clips. They've got some major differences from other video sites and appear to be treating the videos mostly as a way to complement your photos for the time being.
The goal is not to have people upload long videos or clips of
copyrighted material. To reinforce that, videos can be only 90 seconds
in length and 150MB in size.
I heard "Sliver" by Nirvana on the Regina community radio station this morning and it made me think of Pace's current trick.
He now understands that Shea sometimes leaves the room or isn't in his line of sight. He still doesn't understand that she always come back. So as soon as it happens, he FREAKS OUT!
It's to the point that the other day, I felt obligated to tell Shea, "just so you know, I don't start beating him as soon as you leave the room" when she popped out to the kitchen to get a drink.
(Man, I hope this is a phase and that it passes quickly!)
Back in October, I predicted a Calgary-Tampa Bay 2004 re-match as this year's Stanley Cup final with the right team winning this time. (For the record, Pace predicted Anaheim over Boston, mainly because he likes cute animals for team logos.) Of course Tampa went and screwed up my plan by playing beyond terribly this year and not even making the playoffs (which also means Pace already has more hockey insight than his old man.)
Anyhow, I thought I'd redo it now that the crystal ball is a little bit less murky. (I hate how the NHL now seeds teams in the second round by record. I like the old days when you had division-based, bracketed playoffs so you could project a team's potential progress through the whole "second season".) Anyhow, if I think of it, I'll do another post when the seeding for the second round is confirmed.
Montreal over Boston Pittsburgh over Ottawa Washington over Philadelphia New York Rangers over New Jersey
Nashville over Detroit Calgary over San Jose Colorado over Minnesota Anaheim over Dallas
Today was our library region's AGM and, though it fell on a different day (April 5 this year, March 31 last year), in my mind this marks one year that I've been with Southeast Regional since that was the day that I officially started.
It's funny to think back to that first day - just trying to remember the names of my new co-workers let alone figure out what was going on with all the policy and budget discussions that were happening as the day progressed.
Here are some other random memories of my first day on the job...
All the staff were wearing library golf shirts so I asked the staffer working the merch table (yeah, librarians are like rock stars - we sell t-shirts! ) if I could get one. "Oh no, you don't get yours until you pass your six month probation," he replied. "Oh...uhm...okay" I kinda mumbled (while thinking something a bit stronger in my head.)
The funniest part is that the shirts are stored in my office so I happened to "acquire" one quite a bit earlier than the passing of my six month probation. Oh, and that's something else that I think I first heard that day - my boss doesn't usually pass professional staff at their six month performance review even if they do a really good job because (I think) he believes very few people make enough progress in six months to earn a passing grade. Something like that anyhow. Well, I must've managed to pull the wool over his eyes because I managed to pass mine (to be fair, as did the person I was replacing so it's not like it's unheard of either.) Of course, in the end, that and a handful of loonies will get you a Starbucks coffee, right?
I remember wondering if it was a conflict of interest to give a hug to the Indian Head trustee who also happens to be a longtime family friend whose son is currently renting our farm land? (I did anyhow.)
More small town stuff...I remember talking to the rep from a town near Indian Head and (of course) he knows my mom because she taught him CPR.
I remember rushing around with the person I was replacing to print out copies of the Branch Awards pamphlet and take some plaques to be engraved in the few short hours before the start and end of the meeting. (I understand why my boss runs this surprisingly politically sensitive decision about branch awards by his Executive at their morning meeting before making it official but it does make for a bit of a crunch during the day!) Today wa
)
) ...increasing the chances that the book will be picked up by a customer. (Ooops, Jason goes too far! 
) 
(As an aside, there is a book called "The Joy of Lex" that was one of my absolute favourites as a kid. If you're a fan of words and language and linguistics, I highly recommend it and it's sequel, "More Joy of Lex")
)
