(Not So) Bad Girl Librarian

It's a legal question day

2008-08-25T12:25:00.001-07:00

This morning I worked with a patron who was either brilliant or a little touched, it's hard to say which. He was looking for old legislation and I'm not sure they connections he drew were accurate. I'm guessing the renewals happened at the same time because it was the end of June and the original acts all expired June 30, but I certainly don't know enough about the specific history to know that for sure. I helped him with the Statutes at Large, showed him our print and fiche volumes and Shepards, gave him my card, and went back to hiding in my cubicle. A couple hours he was back at the ref desk asking for me: someone had gone off with the fiche, his notes, and his copy card while he was in the restroom. They didn't touch his notebook or the two books he had with him. Unfortunately, I was the one to reshelve the fiche when I walked away the first time, meaning that the whole situation was a little weird. Did someone steal his notes and copy card but leave the rest of his stuff? It's a public place and plenty of people are nuts, so it's possible. Nothing was in our nearby trashcans or recycling bins, though. Did he lose them in his own piles? Possible. Did I get really depressed and weirded out looking for something that I'm not sure was really gone in the first place? Definitely.

Old newspapers - still best for fish and chips

2008-08-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

A reference question from yesterday is haunting me. A woman (I'm presuming a faculty member) called our main number and asked for a reference librarian, which is a pity since she had a periodicals question and the person who answered the phone works in that department. The woman asks me if I know "off the top of your head" of New York newspapers from the 1960s and 1970s besides the NY Times. Of course I don't, since I was neither alive nor in New York at the time. So I start looking at a nice list from the New York State Newspaper Project and threw out some titles. Then she wanted indexing information. (Turned out she was looking for an opera review.)

The interesting thing was that I really couldn't find it--the Village Voice went back to 1977 in IIMP or something, but that wasn't far enough back. Most of the titles didn't have any indexing info listed in Ulrich's or in their catalog records at the NYPL. The NYPL didn't seem to have any indexes listed in their catalogs. We don't have the papers at all--we have the NY Times Historical online and it's the paper of record. I referred her to some older, wiser colleagues, but I'm guessing the indexing for the non-NY Times NY papers is going to be spotty. After all, it's pretty spotty for most other local papers. (And if it exists, it was usually done on a typewriter by the local historical society.) Funny how our standards were so much lower in the non-digital age.

MySpace Drama (Revised)

2008-08-19T01:09:00.000-07:00

More thoughtful rewrite of an earlier post... :)

My husband and I have been arguing about MySpace. First, it was that he thought the whole thing was stupid. Then, when he finally acknowledged that it could at least be useful some of the time, he had me help him create an account. But that was over two years ago and he still refuses to add me as a friend. Which of course makes me bananas because I want to display him prominently as my top friend. (I mean, marriage should have some perks, right?) He says it's because we can talk in person. I say the more means of communication, the better--keeps things entertaining.

I sort of get it, but the difference in our perceptions of this service/tool is fascinating, though. Maybe it's generational. Or gender. He's an extrovert and likes to talk (and talk...). I'm an introvert and talking annoys me. A lot.

There's the power aspect, of course: if I have access, I can "check up" on him; if he doesn't have access, he can taunt me with something I can't have. But really, it's not about who has a secret life on the internet as much as it is that we each really see MySpace as a different kind of tool.

For me, MySpace is a central way to keep track of my (collection of) friends and display my interests and whatever's new in my life. Let's face it, it's a vehicle for showing off. So it stands to reason that I'd want my husband right there with all my other friends. To me, "top friends" are top friends--not my favorite bands or whatever--so it stings a little bit that he doesn't want me there, especially if he'd just added me in the first place we both would have long ago forgotten about it.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of a tool MySpace is for him, though since he claims he uses it primarily to talk to bands, I'm presuming it's basically clunky email tool with pictures used for communicating with bands who've given up regular email and web presence.

Maybe it's apt to say that for me MySpace is all about the network and for him it's all about the interaction? Or maybe he has a secret life on MySpace that's way too cool for me. Hard to say... :)

Grumpy

2008-06-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Starting the day with a reference team meeting pretty much ruins every Tuesday for me. I like my coworkers a lot, but there's something about expressing one's opinions about the profession in front of a group early in the morning that exposes everyone's logical flaws and un- or misinformed fears about the wrong direction we're heading in. This morning we had tense discussions about whether a colleague in another branch should work our desk and whether we should start collecting our desk stats using sampling. I respect everyone's opinions, but, honestly, I have trouble believing any of these things matter enough to have opinions about in the first place. I'm not sure if my intellectual curiosity is dead or if it's just been misplaced while I focus on building a better technique for measuring how often I fulfill requests for scissors or a ruler.

Achy Breaky Librarian

2008-05-14T12:32:00.001-07:00

I actually fell asleep at my desk for 5 minutes or so this morning. Starting to think that maybe I'm not as burnt out as I'm feeling, just getting sick. Half the office has been out sick in the last week...

Working on a Sunday

2008-05-11T16:38:00.001-07:00

It's my Sunday to work and what amazing library 2.0 project have I been working on in the downtime between patrons? Um... playing Bookworm on Yahoo! Games. I don't want to be here so I don't want to work. Not the healthiest attitude, but I've been suffering from information burnout as of late. Blog reader? Who cares. Updating links in the library's online link collection? Don't make me click another damn thing. Reading local docs for our group entry in the summer reading contest? Yeah, there's a picture of my apartment in this community plan, but it's still a little... dry.

And so I'm wasting this valuable chunk of time I could be using to create, manipulate, and otherwise interact with amazing information--in other words, I'm embodying the same characteristics that keep us watching tv instead of editing Wikipedia.

I'm not as old as dirt, even if I look it

2008-05-06T15:33:00.001-07:00

I was working with a student today who's writing a paper about hippies in the 60s. I'm not really sure why she chose the topic--she's definitely not a hippie and half way through the term she doesn't know enough about her topic (Was it a reaction to the drugs or to the 50s?) to seem like she's really interested. She asked me a lot of questions (Can one really get to their sophomore year in college in California and not know that Haight-Ashbury is in San Francisco?) and finally I admitted that I wasn't exactly sure what all the Summer of Love entailed, since it wasn't like I'd lived through it. She looked surprised. I'm under 30. The Summer of Love was about 40 years ago. Ouch.

Hmph

2008-05-06T14:10:00.001-07:00

The public library won't renew my books that are due tomorrow a second time. Somehow, that doesn't seem like great customer service to me, but I guess it's been a long time since I worked in a public library, and we didn't bother with fines because it cost more than we were bringing in.

GTD email?

2008-05-06T13:43:00.001-07:00

It feels like all I do all day is process email--read then respond if I can in under 2 minutes, flag for follow up and dump into the deferred folder, hold, or delete. I empty the inbox and start working on the deferred items, then go to the bathroom and it's full when I come back... Today I actually had a follow-up question from a prof who got the ILL materials he needed, but using the microform reader makes him seasick. I didn't know what to say. Pity Google didn't want to embark on digitizing all our microforms.

Green without Green?

2008-04-30T14:00:00.001-07:00

Am I the only one who looks at the green (environmental) and green (frugal) sites that suggest replacing air conditioners, heaters, and hot water heaters with energy efficient models and laughs and laughs at the thought of even having that conversation with my landlord? Renters get screwed by old appliances; landlords have no incentives to upgrade since they're not seeing the lower bills. My landlord won't even replace our garbage disposal or address our ant problem. We got a new thermostat only because the repairman who came out said the old one with burn marks inside it was dangerous (and was so difficult to understand they probably didn't know what he was telling them until they got the invoice).

Info Search Bloopers...

2008-04-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

Still feeling a bit stupid because I totally biffed a search for a manual to our Freecycled Little Green Carpet Machine. It's an older model (I never even knew they used to be little cubes instead of the spheres they are now...) and nothing came up when I Googled. Hubby asked if I'd looked at the Bissell sit--I had, but I'd started my search in the Little Green Machine section, which only gave me the current model. After half an hour, I went to the main Bissell site out of frustration, sure that I'd already been there. What did a find? A search box where I could enter a model number. Typed it in and got a picture of the unit and a pdf of the manual. D'oh.

Faculty

2008-04-24T12:44:00.001-07:00

I wonder a lot about my faculty and what they think of me and the library. (Well, except for the faculty member who sent the library an angry message about the lack of phone number on the front page of the web site. She was pretty explicit about what she thinks.) I keep thinking of surveying them, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go through the IRB process to ask them if they think I'm irrelevant, especially when I'm not sure they'd bother answering.

ILL

2008-04-22T14:42:00.001-07:00

I get a lot of faculty ILL requests, which would be ok if I had anything to do with ILL whatsoever, but as I'm a reference librarian, I have no access to patron service records of any type--which means the patrons themselves actually have more control than I do. We've got a handy all-in-one electronic form that checks for electronic access and print holdings in our collection before linking to the ILL form. However, because we only link directly to it from the ILL page (the links in article databases fill in the fields based on the citation automatically thanks to the magic of SFX), I forget that it does extra things, which means that I forget to warn people about it. Which means they write me back and complain that they couldn't get the online access, when all I wanted was for them to submit a request for the microfilm. Sigh...

Another case of librarians over-complicating things.

Vanpool

2008-04-21T19:19:00.001-07:00

I'd finally resigned myself to the idea that with $4/gallon gas on the immediate horizon, I need to find a better way to work. I finally accepted that maybe I could handle being somewhere at 6:45... And all three vanpools near me are full. (They could start a new one if I could find at least six people interested. But if I could find even one person interested, I could carpool and not worry about vanning it.) So nobody wants to drive to work with me. Not even the perverts on Craigslist. :(

Tweet! Tweet!

2008-04-21T14:21:00.001-07:00

Does anyone else have the urge to Twitter out all their secrets?

CMSing

2008-04-21T12:50:00.001-07:00

I have this dorky rendition of Public Enemy's "911 is a Joke" in my head with "CMS" replacing "911." Stupid, but c'mon. At your library, how many non-web group librarians have access to the web pages for which they are responsible for the content? And how many of those libraries bought very expensive CMSes because of the promise that we'd all be able to edit our pages as soon as it was installed? And how many of us are finding created web 2.0 ways to circumvent the lockdown on our own web servers by hosting our timely and/or experimental content elsewhere where we don't have to run it by our IT departments until it's a success? How absolutely stupid is that?

Fantasy Alternate Career #1

2008-04-20T21:36:00.001-07:00

You know, I bet Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds has an MSLS. Or probably an MSIS. Regardless, I wish I could be like her and cyberstalk anyone to solve crimes. And have hot cateye glasses.

Second Life

2008-04-15T11:43:00.001-07:00

Second Life just inherently annoys me as a potential forum for library services. Sure, it looks pretty entertaining, but I really have a hard time believing that very many of my patrons are actually hanging out there looking for an information mediator. My patrons are primarily either a) college kids who are too busy experimenting with their first life in a county away from their parents or b) the tech un-savvy who are overwhelmed with the use of the term "blog" in a sentence. And perhaps most obnoxious: my work computer and our patron computers are heavily locked down--so no downloading the software except onto my own machine. If SL were web-based, I'd probably sing it's praises. Client software, though? So 2004.

I feel bad

2008-04-08T15:00:00.001-07:00

Had a patron ask me if I could let him make a long distance call to call the state cosmetology board about transferring his license from another state. It took me by surprise so I sent him to our Info desk to see if they could help him. I haven't seen him again, so I hope they did, but I feel like a right c***, especially as it could be construed as a state government information question and that is supposedly my area of expertise. Maybe I should memorize my long distance code (yeah right). I probably would have let him use my free long distance on my cell phone if I had it out at the desk...

Update: He passed by again. I brought out my cell phone and he's making the call. Either I'm doing my good deed for the day or I'm going to have my phone stolen.

Freebies!

2008-03-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

The exhibition hall is basically just the adult version of trick or treat. Bring on the tote bags, water bottles, and pens!!!

Frugality Requires Information Literacy

2008-03-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

As I've started to accept the fact that I'm going to be our sole supporter and I make a really rotten salary for where I live, I've become obsessed with bargain hunting and frugality as of late. One of those practical research projects and all.

I've discovered couponing (or cou-porning as my obsessive poring over weekly circulars makes it seem). Online coupons are disappointing since they require the installation of a coupon printer (the concept of which bothers me in the first place but which is made more obnoxious by my not being able to use it with the printer at work). Turns out that Walmart sells a weekend edition of the local newspaper for a buck, though, and the coupons usually pay for the paper pretty quickly.

The one good thing about living in Southern California is that Ralphs and Vons double coupons up to a dollar, so $1 off is really $2 off, which makes for a pretty good deal when combined with a sale. There's a post at the Simple Dollar that suggests holding the coupons for a month and then everything will be on sale. I find it easier just to hit Hot Coupon World (or, as I've Freudian-slipped a few too many times, Hot Cou-porn World) and check out the forums.

And then there's CVS... CVS has this Extra Bucks program where you get instant rebates on the bottom of your receipts for certain items on sale every week/month. Once you have that initial pile (I usually have $6 to $10 myself), you can flip them over for other items with Extra Bucks in a never-ending loop. (The Money-Saving Mom has a great CVS 101 guide.) If you only buy items with ECB (and preferably the ones that are free after ECB and/or coupons), you can get out of CVS spending under a dollar at a time. Which maybe isn't as good of a thing if you go there several times a week like I do, but it's still very little actual money out of pocket, at least until you actually *need* something you haven't had a chance to find on sale yet. (Then it's straight to Walmart--CVS's regular prices are atrocious, even on their generic brand items, even with their standard $3 off $10 of CVS brand merchandise coupon.) There are whole sites devoted to the deals you can get each week. I love the use of wikis at Slickdeals where users collaborate to match coupons with the sales.

So thanks to my new-found frugal information literacy, I have toothbrushes, mouthwash, shampoo, lipstick, eyeshadow, and razors that I got for free over the last month. My husband wants to ban me from CVS, though he does enjoy his collection of Gillette Fusions. Every day I get a little more middle aged/suburban, but at least I haven't started scrapbooking. (Not only would hubby leave me, I'd leave myself.)

Chuck

2007-11-05T20:30:00.001-08:00

Much to my hubby's, well, I don't know what the right emotion is--disgust? disappointment?--I'm enamored by the new series Chuck.Tonight? Chuck realizes that the secret number he can't remember is a call number in the Stanford library that corresponds to a hiding place his old roommate Bryce Larkin (a late CIA agent) had.

Fires and Floods and....

2007-11-03T19:41:00.001-07:00

Being smoked out of work for a week because of wildfires was oddly reminiscent of being smoked out of work for three months due to the library being set on fire (even down to having left my PDA at work that weekend this time and my print planner at work that weekend the last time), except that when it was over I didn't have to worry about doing reference work with missing collections.

The old place of employment was gearing up to reopen the revamped post-fire basement but has now been set back by a flood--caused by a pipe bursting in the new fire suppression system. In all honesty, I felt like I should have been there to help rescue my government documents collection, even thought it's not mine anymore (and technically, really still belongs to the government, but, ya know). On the other hand, since this is that organization's second flood in, what, three or four years? (the other happened in another library building on campus one Christmas Eve), I'm honestly still waiting to see if the plague of locusts that's obviously coming decides to manifest itself as termites or rabid cicadas. And bugs really aren't something I want to be a part of.

I guess it's a good thing they have plenty of people with experience dealing with these disasters now...

Fire

2007-10-23T21:24:00.001-07:00

Yes, the city is on fire. No, I haven't had to evacuate. Amazing to watch on tv. Hard to breathe. Glad to be alive and, so far, safe and sound.

Wanna Get Hiiigghhh?

2007-10-02T16:39:00.000-07:00

We put up a library display featuring a surfing book that says "check me out." Aside from being a little cheesy in general, the problem with the book is that it looks suspiciously like Towelie, the dope-smoking towel from South Park. So I sort of expect the book to offer me drugs. Hey, whatever appeals to the kids...