yeah! I mean, no! I mean, whatever . . . .

After finding out that I've been turned down a third time for a pre-professional job at Simmons Library (third time's a charm!) I have to post something happy to the blog. So here it is, "Stairway to Heaven" condensed into a 2 min. 40 sec. 1964 Beatles-esque pop song. Enjoy!

my first official "shush"

Oh, glorious day! As of this moment, having just finished reading an article for Wednesday's Ya lit class, I am done with the semester. It certainly was a more intense semester than I had expected but well worth the hard work and effort. Not to mention the blood, sweat and tears. Man, what a great band.

All my crowing aside, I'm happy to have found the light at the end of the tunnel. I'll be using the time wisely, to finalize some wedding preparations, begin the process of looking for a job, visit family and friends in Indiana, and read a few good books. That doesn't mean I'm not hard at work, as I'm taking on extra hours to pad the wallet. And therein lies, ladies and gentlemen, the reason behind this post!

I've picked up an extra shift tonight, which is the day before finals for undergrads. The students are, understandably, both anxious and punchy--a regrettable side effect of the pressure they're all under. In this highly emotional state, many of the students have forgotten that two floors of the library are deemed "quiet" floors. You can't talk on your cellphone, you shouldn't be talking to your neighbor. That's all gone out the window now and it's up to me to put an end to it! And so I'll do, with a little humor. I found a couple of good pictures, so there'd be a little variation, and tried to make it as easily understood as possible. Can you tell me who the lady is? First one who gets it right earns a cookie!

Whopsy frobscottle!

I've been reading Sam my favorite bed-time story, The BFG, for the past year and it's done the trick of getting her off to sleep quickly. We're almost to the end now; the Queen's Army and Air Force is off, ready to capture the nine human bean-gulping giants! As a child, I loved Quentin Blake's illustrations (he did a lot of work for Roald Dahl's books) and, during our engagement weekend, Sam and I got to see original art from The BFG when we visited The Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art. Great fun! It even had some of the depictions of what happens when you drink whopsy frobscottle . . . and you get whizpoppers!



So I had mentioned seeing a couple of potential spots for our wedding in New Hampshire this past weekend. Hate to say it but Sam and I had a terrible experience at the Castle in the Clouds, so there's no way we're having it there. It's was such a bummer, because I was so excited about it, but it was a disaster. The events coordinator didn't tell us about the secret rear entrance up the mountain, so we never ended up meeting her. Long story short, when we finally got to the secret meeting spot that she had never told us about, she was already gone. When we got in touch with her over the phone, she was rude and unapologetic . . . overall a nasty character. She stressed that it would take her all of ten minutes to get back to where we were, and had better things to do--this, after we had driven two hours to get there! My mind just boggled. So the next day I wrote a letter to the General Manager. What else can you do in a situation like that?

But with every bad experience, I tend to have a great experience. Don't know if it's how my Irish luck plays out, or if it's karma, or whatever. The next stop was the Bedford Village Inn, which ended up being the "gold standard" we'll be comparing to when looking at our other selections. I've taken video of it all (including the stunning scenery at the Castle in the Clouds), so maybe I'll post it on YouTube.

I got an email last week from a professor of mine, asking if I'd be interested in a cataloging job at a "well-known institution in downtown Boston." I put my name in the hat and ended up with an interview at the Boston Public Library. The job deals with cataloging fore-edge painted books from the Rare Book Department, which will then be digitized and available online. Sounds like interesting work, and the pay is pretty great too! So I'll be going in on Thursday--sounds like it'll be an informal meeting, so it seems like I've already got the job.

Last but not least, it's a new week! And I've got to keep my promise to post music. This week is The Smiths, with "Panic". A great clangy 80's English pop tune with a refrain we can all agree with--hope you enjoy!

hang the blessed DJ
because the music they constantly play
it says nothing to me about my life

the land of cheese steak and brew pubs

Samantha and I are down in New Jersey for the weekend to visit her parents and talk about preparations for the wedding. We've come up with some great ideas so far--we're kicking around the idea of each table having its own "Dewey" theme, with a subject taken from the Dewey Decimal Classification system being the theme of the table.

Being at Sam's parents in New Jersey means that we're about 15 minutes from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Imagine my joy when I found out that it's also the city of brew pubs! We went to one of them on Thursday, when we had dinner with a friend of Sam's. The name was Nodding Head, the name coming from the hundreds of bobblehead dolls they had in their case. I got to try almost all of their beers. The one that stood out was named Grog, their take on an English brown beer. An interesting beer was brewed using hops, engineered by the Sapporo brewery in Japan--can't remember the name for it, and it's not listed on their webpage.

I've also been able to indulge myself in the cheese steak, of which I've had two. I can't stop myself!

Not enough time in the world . . .

Amongst other things, there's not enough time in the world. At least when you're too lazy for your own good and don't get around to blogging for a week . . .

So my mother wrote me an email today saying she was going to catch up on my blog while she and dad drove to Chicago--hence the reason I'm getting off my duff and blogging today, because I'm sure there wasn't enough for her to catch up on.

Big news--my friend, Quinn Walker, was recently signed to the Voodoo-EROS label. He's spent quite a few years playing the part of the struggling artist and, if all goes well, he'll have some time to spend as the road-weary musician who just wants to go home and spend his hard-earned money. As a side note, I decided to play a joke on Quinn and made a Wikipedia entry for him, which is where his linked name will take you. He was very modest about it at first, not wanting to have a thing to do with it, but when I told him the wild lies I had put on there, he decided to get his hands dirty and set the record straight. You can see the wild lies here. Beware--some are inside jokes. Sorry. Here's an article that was written about his signing, with a really wacky picture to go along with it.

I've been enjoying my time back in school, taking some interesting classes: Public Library management, user instruction, and collection development and management. The pub. lib. management course is taught by a great professor who rattles our cages constantly, so that's always fun--especially so because it's Monday morning at 9.30, so it keeps everyone awake. The User Instruction course will be very helpful, as it's a type of crash-course in teaching--something that librarians do all the time. Collection development is kind of dry, but so is the professor's humor--he's British, and he likes to repeat himself. It's great, he spends the first fifteen minutes of class telling us what he's going to teach. I think he's just trying to get himself revved up. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the courses as they take over my life . . .

What else? Oh, Sam and I are going to see Garrison Keillor this weekend. Should be fun--I've been reading Lake Wobegon Days to counteract the effects of reading library texts. Wish I could tell stories like him.

Well, that's all I can come up with in the time I've alloted myself. Now I've got to go make a sandwich for my dinner tonight (I work 12-8 at the Simmons Library) and I want to stop off at the Irish bakery in town to pick up some Irish stew and brown bread for my lunch. Yum!

Nation's Gays Demand Right to Library Cards

The above is from The Onion's most recent release--you can find it here. My favorite line from the article: "For now, gays should just be happy to read their Bibles," Seitz added. Haw haw!

a link to a link to a link . . . .

While I was in Indiana, I found out that the Allen County Public Library was almost finished with the reconstruction of their main library. This place used to be a favorite hangout of mine (I also had a friend who lived across the street from it in the now non-existent "Alamo" building) and I thought my experience going back to it would be something to blog about for a student group I'm in. If you're interested, you can read about it here.

CRM @ the library - students respond

I had to give a presentation for my Reference course yesterday, which the focus was on improving customer service at the reference desk. Before going in, I was wondering if I should go into my idea of CRM @ the library and decided to include it at the end of my presentation. It was my idea that it could generate some feedback, so I could know better what the pros and cons were. My fellow students didn't disappoint me--there were enough people responding to my idea that the professor cut off the discussion, due to time restraints (and she even had some input on it as well).

The response I knew I would get was that some people didn't like the thought of the library knowing about their habits--the privacy issue. After the initial shuddering, someone made a great point--younger people are having trouble understanding privacy issues. Take, for example, the middle and high school students in Massachusetts who have recently been in trouble with the law, because they post pictures and discussions on MySpace about the latest party--where underage drinking was taking place, or a fight broke out. This can be contributed to either one of these cases: that they are ignorant of privacy issues, where information volunteered in a public space can be used against them; or they don't care, thinking it won't be found--an idea known as "security through obscurity." Regardless to say, the point that was made opened up a whole can of worms.

The professor made the point that she didn't like my term "opt-out" but preferred "opt-in"--this was my way of thinking about the program, but I was not using the correct terminology for it. Of course, it would be run as a pilot program that people could opt-in to.

Because of the lack of time available for the responses, I received more criticism than reinforcement--but that was what I expected. You have to get the knee-jerk out of the way before the brain can begin to function--politics speak to that. But the reinforcement I received was very positive, telling me that people are not only open to the idea but enthusiastic about it. So, I will go further into the idea in future posts, such as the technology that can be used to make this idea a reality. (Should I begin to copyright my thoughts?)

CRM @ the library?

This will be more of a reminder to me to blog about this idea later, but I'll give you a taste of things to come. Customer Relationship Management has been in the business world for years--it's becoming so entrenched that people are forgetting what CRM stands for. I've heard it referred to as the "customer really matters" by the VP of area operations when I was working in the hotel industry and, while that definition retains some of the flavor of CRM, it doesn't touch on how customer-intensive CRM can be. One of the ideas I've been kicking around is how CRM could be brought to libraries--government institutions are notorious for not adopting helpful business practices, and libraries are right there with them. There's an argument that's been going on for some time on whether to refer to library users as "customers," as opposed to "patrons" and it's very telling of how libraries view their support base.

One of the reasons I see further reluctance to adopt CRM is because one of the cornerstones of CRM is collecting information on your customers, so you can create personal levels of conversation with them. This is anthema to libraries, who have been railing against the Patriot Act and have maintained that privacy is one of their ultimate concerns. It can go as far as creating guidelines, to not mention a book that a patron might like, because you've noticed them checking out similar ones before. But are people really that concerned anymore about keeping what they've read private from an institution? Is privacy from governmental intrusion the same as institutional privacy? The millions of users of Amazon is an example of this idea chipping away at privacy, in order to obtain personalized service. If libraries were to institute a similar program, one where people could opt-out if they wanted to maintain total privacy, would they see an increase in use? I certainly think so, but a lot of my colleagues and fellow students cringe at the idea.