the.effing.library

Welcome to the effing library.

2010-09-08T17:03:00.001-04:00

Now silence your cell phone and shut the fuck up. This is my fucking library.

The Winner is Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

2010-09-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

"Because the Tuscaloosa."

Congratulations, Tuscaloosa!

Thanks to everyone who played. This drawing concludes the contest as all prizes have been awarded.

And as the rules clearly state, "All entries become the property of the.effing.librarian," so, People of Earth, I now own your cities. I expect you to be moved out by 3:00. I hear Uranus is nice.

Why I would hire you...

2010-09-07T17:46:00.000-04:00

Here is some parting advice on getting hired for a library job based on my [limited] experience, assuming you have applied for a job to work with me:

You will have no fucking idea what I really want when it comes time for the interview.

That job description was written 6 months to 2 years ago by someone who is either not going to be asking the questions or by someone [my supervisor] who has changed her mind about what she's looking for in a new employee. So be prepared for anything. I don't write my own questions so much as I use questions that others have used before me. But since they are really generic, I just change what answers I'd like to hear.

So when I ask you why you applied for this position, the answer I want to hear in 2010 is something like, "I love research. I love to help people and I want to learn all the ways I can do that. And I can work pretty much anywhere because I lost my sense of smell when I hit my head on the side of the hot tub in Hef's lagoon when I was a Playboy Playmate. Miss August, 2005. What? Yes, I can start today."

Those questions I will ask you are mostly bullshit, but they matter.

At my first interview after getting my library degree, I was asked which area of the collection I would build up in a library with a large senior population. I didn't expect to be asked that, and I didn't have an answer ready, so I said "travel." Which is the wrong answer.
I know now that it's WW2 Erotica where all the books are about Lily from the French Underground who mends the young American soldier's wounds and together they share a chocolate bar then hump furiously before plotting to kill Hitler.
But for today's seniors, change the war to Vietnam, Lily to Mai, and then kill Ho Chi Minh.

Don't talk so much.

There is nothing worse than saying too much. Unless you openly drink alcohol during your interview. Which I almost did once. I interviewed for a job where I was taken to lunch and asked if I wanted a beer. Wisely, I declined since I knew that anything you do before or after the interview is still part of the interview. That's why it's best to avoid that trick many interviewers spring on you when they offer you alcohol at lunch. Besides, any booze would just mess with the 20 mg. of Valium you should take before the interview anyway. But really, just answer the questions and then shut up.

Don't tell me about your blog or twitter account.

Don't tell me about your awesome blog or whatever if I can find it online and check it out. Especially if it's MagicBookFairyUnicornSanctuary.wordpress.com.
Because I already have the job of library Book Fairy and there's not enough room for the both of us. And I will kill you.

Know what the fuck you are talking about.

Make a list. Memorize it. If you have a job now, write down all the shit you use and keep it for your next job. Don't bullshit because I will google your ass and find out that you're lying. Because I might ask what version of a software program you used, so don't say "the latest" or "the one with the thing." Details are important. Open every computer program you use now and click Help and About and write down what it says. Write down the model of the copier, the digital camera, the projector, the car, the laptop. Sure, none of this may ever come up, but it takes 10 minutes to do, so do it. Now. Before your library cuts your job and tells you they are so sorry, and security walks your ass out the back door with your cardboard box full of Funko "Lord Of The Rings" bobble heads.

I'm really bad at this stuff. I can't remember anything. But I have a digital camera that holds 4,000 pictures, so I take photos of everything. I also save PDFs of everything. So if you're using Windows, click on the Start menu and All Programs and take a screen shot or picture of all that shit you installed on your computer. You never know what might be important. When asked about computers, begin with the usual, "I use Microsoft Office" the move to "I've played with Drupal" then to "One of my Flickr photos is banned in Dubai."

How are you going to know what to say and what not to say? I don't know. I just know you should be prepared to say it, or not say it, depending on the situation.

Be flexible. Be a a monkey balancing on a log flowing down a river.

Good luck.

But check out Bobbi Newman's guide, So You Want to be a Librarian? Unlike this post here, those tips might actually help you get a job out there in the real world. Because the bad news is, my library ain't hiring.

The recession is over.

2010-09-07T09:39:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not attempting to analyze the Dow which is currently above 10,300. Remember when it first broke 10,000? 1999. And we were all rich and pooping into solid gold toilets.

And to add more perspective, in 1999 gold was $280. Oil dropped under $20, but was normally around $30, and gas was probably $1.20 a gallon.

But we've since learned that the stock market, gold and oil prices, mean nothing for the economy. Rich people don't hire workers when they're making money; they hire workers when it's cheap to hire them. But the cost of health insurance and the threat of the various employee lawsuits from unfair labor practices or sexual harassment or whatever has made running a business very expensive. So there can be no correlation drawn between all the money that rich people are making and the current level of unemployment. Because rich people suck.

So we need another indicator to measure the strength of the economy.

The Laramie County Library System, WY, reports that circulation of print materials for adults is down 3.4%. And one reason for this might be ebooks, the library says. Why they don't count ebooks as part of their circulation statistics is a mystery, but whatever.

Library use is dropping so the economy must be getting better.

Remember how everyone was saying that library use is up because people don't have money to buy books or computers or dvds? So people now have money for ebooks. And ebook readers. Netflix stock has almost doubled this year. Apple is up about 100. What else is everyone wasting their money on? Oh, yeah, lottery tickets. And I still see commercials on tv for boner pills and pills for women who wet themselves when they laugh too hard, so we all seem to be having a good time.

And yet, in America, we don't have good jobs for everyone. And we want to cut taxes to punish our local, state and federal governments, the largest employers in the country. And since the rich aren't hiring, we're gonna be totally screwed after the November elections.

But since adults in one county in Wyoming have been checking out fewer books, we should take that as a a sign of economic recovery. I think library circulation should become the new standard for financial stability. As library use goes up, the economy is failing; as it goes down, our financial strength grows.

You may not like it since it puts a positive spin on lower book circulation. But it will guarantee jobs. Libraries will remain open. Book circulation stats will be shorted like pork bellies as Wall Street bets on whether Friday afternoon check-outs for The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner will be up or down.

Or maybe everyone will just use the stats from Laramie County, WY, and they will get to keep their library jobs, but all the rest of us will be screwed.

The sun will come out.... tomorrow...

2010-09-03T11:58:00.001-04:00

I don't know what to do about libraries. On the one hand, libraries are still doing some amazing things, but on the other, libraries are cutting staff to continue doing it.

Librarians have lost their jobs, but the business of libraries goes on. Is it enough to advocate for libraries while accepting the loss of librarians?

Librarians are professionals. We organize data and materials into useful collections. We archive that data for current and future library users. We attempt to establish some cataloging authority so that person A and person B can find information regardless of how they begin their search.

We don't put all the Education books in the front of the library in August and then move them to the back in October just because more people might want them when school begins. A book store might do this, but libraries don't. The books remain where they belong so that anyone can find them whenever they might choose to look.

But does anyone care that we do this? Some cities have thousands of restaurants, so they require lots of chefs to prepare the cuisine, but some places only have fast food joints, so any kid can drop the fries into hot oil. Maybe librarians need to get away from those places that only want to eat fries. But is all that fast food really good for you?

I believe that conditions will improve. I believe that libraries will become stronger. But I'm not so sure that stronger libraries will guarantee that more librarians will find more of those dream jobs. Or any job that requires their expertise.

The problem with being a librarian is that you can't really do it yourself. You can't open a private library down the street as you would if you were a dentist or an accountant. I don't know any librarian with a business card that reads, "Have Books, Will Travel."

Or maybe the librarian travels from town to town with a laptop performing Internet searches for people in exchange for a night in the barn and a slice of peach pie. And that's how we'll survive, leaving librarian chalk signs for each other about which towns are librarian friendly and which ones google everything and will run you out of town on sight.

My first clue that something could be wrong with the profession came in library school when I learned about the "give 'em what they want" philosophy. My thought was, if all I have to do is give people what they want, then why the hell am I learning all this crap and getting this degree?

The profession seems to be sinking. Maybe not the whole profession, but research and archiving and cataloging and acquisitions parts. There will probably always be a place for Children's librarians. But for everyone else, the conventions are still going where some celebrity tell a heart-warming story about a childhood love of books, and some futurist says that librarians need to evolve to survive and we applaud and cheer without realizing that 99 percent of evolution involves extinction.

It's like we're on the Titanic and we're trying to keep the people left on board, the ones without access to a life boat, entertained while the ship is going down:

I spy with my little eye... something that begins with W.

Is it water?

Yes. But don't just jump in with the answer like that. Ask a question. String it out a little.

Okay, next one. I spy with my little eye... something that begins with I.

Is it iceberg?

I get depressed when so many people seem to associate quality libraries with an extensive book collection, and not so many people mention how important the librarian is to that collection. It's like everyone feels that they can just do it themselves.

So I value my library degree. If libraries continue to hire librarians based on that sheet of paper, then at least that cuts the pool of job applicants down somewhat.

I think most people would agree that librarians have skills, but they probably wouldn't agree on just how important those skills are. Maybe I'm like some awesome cooper. How many barrels does anyone really need?

So to all the librarians still looking, I think things will get better. But since I have a job, I guess I have the luxury of feeling that way. But on the bright side, people are not getting smarter. They fall for the most obvious scams on Facebook and give out their personal information after clicking on those PayPal account verification emails. So they need us. They don't want us for what we've been trained to do, but they need us to help them when they fuck up. Which they will, daily.

But I will keep you in my thoughts and whenever I have to make decisions that could endanger the librarian's future in the profession, like the one I'm making now about hiring some robots to replace our librarians, I will do everything in my power to argue for the human librarian.

But, man, those robots are so awesome and they don't ever take breaks.

What is the point of the public library?

2010-09-01T17:11:00.001-04:00

I'm listening to a BBC Radio broadcast on the history and purpose of the public libraries of Britain. These are some of my thoughts:

So taxes where once levied with a dual purpose: one to pay for the establishment of a public library; and two, to encourage people to use what they have already paid for to better themselves through this communal opportunity for self-education.

Part of this history was that lost requirement of the individual to prove his worthiness to join the community of the library. Now, we just ask for some identification, but originally, there were many more hurdles to overcome before one could qualify for membership in a public library. Residents used to beg to be let in, but now it's the libraries that seem to be begging people to join: what happened?

Modern libraries seem to be in constant motion chasing relevance. "Stay relevant!" is the current mantra. But what is relevant? Is literacy relevant? Are job skills relevant? Are DVDs and streaming video relevant?

Libraries never used to compete with the local book, music and video stores. We bought classics and educational materials. We bought new books, but only after they had been on the bestseller list for a few weeks.

And then we decided to provide popular books and music and movies, but maybe a couple of months after release. But now we have the movies and albums the week of release. And what has happened to the local book and music and movie stores? They are gone. Have libraries contributed to that demise, or can we safely blame Walmart and Amazon?

The public library used to define community behavior by requiring members to have sponsors, etc, but is now, has become the servant of that behavior. Should the public library set a standard that is above societal expectations? Should the library have the role of requiring people to become better versions of themselves? How can we reconcile that traditional role of self-education and social betterment with wanting to be popular? Clearly, telling the public that they should work to better their education or social skills is not going to make libraries popular. Is it more important to be popular today?

But libraries are still playing those ancient games whereby some people qualify for library services and some don't. We have computer labs and teen areas and downloadable stuff and game nights. And if you don't fit in by being the right age or having the right equipment or skills, then you're not really welcome.

So far, I've been listening to the recorded broadcast and using it for inspiration while I'm typing. But at the 17:20 mark, I feel like I have to comment directly on what I'm hearing. The librarian is talking about Silence. I don't know about you, but it takes some effort for me to remain silent. It's not too difficult to be somewhat quiet, but it's really hard for me to be silent. But when it was an exercise in self-discipline for me to attempt to be quiet when I was a kid, it now seems like, according to this librarian, that we are actually torturing young people if we ask them to be quiet. Actual torture. So how can libraries attempt to appear welcoming to young people if we expect them to be quiet while they are here? If we are torturing them with silence?

Libraries have traditionally been a symbol of permanence. A town with its own library could feel confident that its citizens had a reason to stick around and help the town grow, that a source of knowledge was there, that the library added value to the town.

But with all knowledge now online, where is that community sentiment, that feeling of permanence? Do libraries represent anything these days other than free videos? Is anyone proud of their library and boast about it to their friends?

One of my favorite movie (play) quotes is this, from Becket:

King: You never loved me, did you Becket?
Becket: In so far as I was capable of love, yes, my prince, I did.
King: Did you start to love God?
...
Becket: I started to love the honor of God.

I feel this way about the honor of libraries. That, either by design or by nature, they require us to better ourselves. When a library is stocked with classic works, we want to act as if we are worthy of their contents. But when your library is stocked with Rob Schneider movies, well...

I always felt that libraries represented some symbol or goal that we could aspire toward. The public library wasn't a mirror reflecting back on society where people would look to see themselves, but maybe it was a window where they could look through to see... something? If eyes are the windows to the soul, then windows are the windows to the.... And it was definitely not a fun house mirror, where all becomes a freakish mockery of society.

You can say that I have a right-wing view of libraries that believes people can and should better themselves, but that would mean that your left-wing view says that they can't and shouldn't.

There will always be someone who says that there is nothing in the library for them. But maybe those are just horrible people. I mean, nothing? Dante, the history of Hip Hop, the Gossip Girl series, James Patterson, DH Lawrence, Poppy Z. Brite,... nothing???

The only good thing that may come from all the modernization and all the attention to electronics and "giving the people what they want" is that one day, the library will have moved so far away from its original mission that the idea of giving people a quiet place to explore ideas might be viewed as something new. One day. But I'll probably be dead by then.

So I guess my message is that libraries have a purpose and a point. But I, for damn sure, could not begin to tell you what that should be. I just work here.

I give up listening. Again.

2010-09-01T11:01:00.001-04:00

I give up on audiobooks all the time. I listen in my car for 30-40 minutes and if the book isn't instantly compelling, but not so much that I drive into a lake, I eject the disk and go on to something else.

If I feel that the book deserves more time, because of its popularity or reputation, I might give it up to 2 hours before deciding to break off the engagement. It's rare for a book to lose me in that first half hour then get me back an hour later.

Often it's the actor doing the reading. I just don't want to listen to some people talk. Like maybe their performance doesn't match the way the words form in my head. Like I'm trying to listen to the author tell me a story, but this other person just keeps getting in the way with that voice. That often happens if the reader is using an accent.

But David Sedaris is great to listen to. Who'da thunk, with that voice of his? And Stephen Colbert, awesome. Some writers are just destined to perform.

The latest book I've given up on is Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. But in this case, although I'm trying to blame the performer for his somewhat Southern or genteel manner he attributes to some characters, I realize that I just don't care about vampires. I don't care about them so much that even the prospect of a great and bloody war with them can't keep me from ejecting the disk and re-inserting some music. I believe you kids call it rock and roll.

Spoiler Alert.

So when this happens, I have to go online to find out if I'm going to miss anything really good by ejecting the book. And luckily, Wikipedia has pretty thorough summaries of many books and movies. And when I read the plot for Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, I realize I've made the right decision to abandon it. Thank God for libraries and all that free lending.

This is what convinced me:

"Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire - the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his diary his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner - to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires."

And that bothers me. I agree with the first three paragraphs from the Wikipedia summary, so I'm guessing that they got this part right, too.

So in this book, Seth Grahame-Smith decides that slavery is bad because of vampires?

Earlier, a few escaped slaves attempt to steal Lincoln's boat, but he fought them off only to learn that they were trying to flee from their vampire master. And I could sense Lincoln's guilt at keeping them from gaining access to the craft for their escape even if it meant they might have taken his life in the process.

But to write an alternate history to say that the African slave trade expanded and that the Civil War was caused by vampires is kind of dumb, if not offensive.

The lesson we are supposed to learn from slavery and the Civil War is that we are all capable of great evils.

But even when the story attempts to fix this confusion about the causes of the war, the author tells us, "Lincoln decides that the best way to defeat the vampires is to eliminate their food source and starve them out- to that end, he announces the Emancipation Proclamation and encourages the slaves to fight back against slave owners and vampires alike."

Starve them out? Their food supply? The only reason slaves were the preferred food supply is because they could be purchased, eaten and killed without raising any alarms because no one cared what happened to a slave, which was simply a person's property.

Without slaves, there would still be many poor white farmers and laborers, even Native Americans, who could be eaten. And because this part of the story seems so ill-thought-out, I'm tempted to advance to that part of the book to hear what and how that really plays out. (But not so tempted that I'd actually do it.) It just doesn't make sense, so maybe the Wikipedia entry is oversimplifying things. But I guess I'll never know.

Anyway, this is not an actual review since I admit to only listening to a small portion of the book. But it was enough to help me decide to move on to something else. Maybe The Hunger Games. Although I also tried to listen to Gregor the Overlander (the same author), but gave up on that after 20 minutes. I wanted away from that story pretty much as soon as I started it.

But that's the difference for me between audiobooks and print books. With print, I can flip through the pages very quickly and scan ahead to see if maybe there's a part where I can jump back in. I took a speed reading class in school and used a machine that projected words on the wall and I could dial up the speed to 1200 words a minute. And I remember every book I read after I learned to read faster. For example, The Red Badge of Courage begins, "cold earth fogs liquid feet hostile hills." It's a story about a jogger or a marathon runner, or something.

With an audiobook, I can only advance then listen. Advance, then listen. It doesn't help me to find a good spot to get back into the story. So I quit. If only I had speed hearing, but sound travels so slowly.

Surviving in the Land of Negative Negative Consequences.

2010-08-30T17:29:00.001-04:00

The genius that is the New York Times concludes that some library jobs are better left to volunteers. And the money saved from transferring those jobs to volunteers might create additional positions for other essential jobs, like garbage collectors.

In some ways, librarians (and libraries) are garbage collectors, but I won't get into that right now.

Librarians are not teachers. We are not doctors. We are not lawyers. We are not auto mechanics. We are not accountants. We are not politicians. We are not...

So I understand what the NYT is saying. Library workers are not essential workers, so what universally ethical dilemma exists if some are replaced by volunteers? If a volunteer shelves a book in the wrong place, no one dies. Nobody goes to jail. Traffic still moves; ships sail; planes fly. Librarians help people find information, but most people don't really need what they were looking for, anyway. So yes, volunteers can do some library work.

What a volunteer represents to a community is savings. I say, short-term savings. The NYT says, "it would be unfortunate if this upsurge of civic virtue [the volunteer] resulted in only a tiny reduction in some people’s property taxes,.." But that's exactly what happens. Read stories on what libraries actually cost and you'll see just how little money is saved at the expense of forcing some bright people out of their jobs.

What does buying a full-time employee mean to society? For one thing, if that employee fails to show up for work, she doesn't get paid. So at the very least, there's an economic incentive for the paid employee to be there to help you.

What of the volunteer? There is no incentive other than that they like to help and that there might be a party with cake for all the volunteers at the end of the year. But volunteers have no real obligation to show up. What are you going to do? Fire them? Tell them that their voluntary services are no longer required? Then what? You have a hole in your staffing. Some tasks that were too menial for regular staff to do now need to be done by your professional staff. So that job which formerly was performed for $9 an hour that was then taken over by the volunteer is now going to be done by the $18 an hour professional.

The whole point of using volunteers is mutual beneficence: the library gets free labor and the volunteer gets personal satisfaction from trading their time for purposefulness. But when those volunteers cause library employees to lose their jobs, then how welcome will their future help be in the library?

Volunteers still need to be trained. And that training comes from those professional librarians. And that training is provided with no promise or obligation from the volunteer for any specific length of service. If the library hires a new employee, there is also no promise of service, but the paycheck is the carrot and the incentive to come back for more.

So no, librarians are not brain surgeons and yes, there are some jobs that could be done by your uncle Lester who got kicked in the head by a mule when he was nine. So there are no real consequences to the library for using a few volunteers. Until they all get spooked by the behavior they witness and you need to train a whole new batch.

But I wonder about your community when you lose your librarians because you had the bright idea to replace some jobs with volunteers. I like to think that librarians make good neighbors. They're relatively clean; they vote; they give to charity; shop locally; they're open-minded, mostly; they plant things and nurture their growth.

When I look around my library at the perverts we report to the cops, the loud and possibly dangerous people we wish would find some other place to go, and all the new books, CDs and DVDs that arrive each day, frankly, I would be suspicious of anyone who wanted to volunteer here.

The winner is Huntsville, Alabama!

2010-08-30T12:15:00.001-04:00

John Hunt first settled there in 1805 and the city is named for him. As Huntsville was not named for Michael Hunt, I really have no jokes.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Huntsville to its "America's Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2010" list.

Congratulations, Huntsville. And double congratulations for the near-miss on the name of your founder. Now, if only Hurtsville can come up as the winner one day... because I know for certain that Hurtsville was founded by Richard Hurts.

Oh, will the hilarity never cease?

The Internet is CLOSED.

2010-08-29T22:21:00.001-04:00

So some Internet lawsuits were filed that seem to prove again that the USPTO should never have changed their patent application rules to include software processes.

What do you think when you think of the World Wide Web? You think of images and text and sound and video files? Well, too bad. Because you just trampled all over somebody's private property.

Whenever I read about some Internet patent, I think about how that patent would work in the real world. If I read something that says, "Method for transfer of data utilizing electronic media," I can't help but wonder WTF the Patent Office registrar was thinking when the patent application was approved. I've been transferring data since I was born. And I've been doing it electronically since I was stung by a radioactive lightning bug and became the superhero known to you as "Firefly Man."

It's like companies apply for patents for everything that didn't already happen to have a patent number. Like someone just searches some keywords and if they don't see a patent, they file one.... "Let's see 'process for third-party temporary remote data storage'.. Awesome! There's no patent listed for that! Quick! File for it!"

So what do you think I thought when I saw these next actual patents?

"Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest."

"Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device."

"Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data."

I think of patents as things. And improvements on things. I don't think of patents as things we already have but are now available online so that makes them unique. To me, "building a better mousetrap" does not mean describing a method for building a better mousetrap unless the mousetrap is behind the couch catching mice. And the mousetrap isn't a cat.

But all these patents make me think of cats. They are things that exist or are necessary components of other things that exist. It's like you patented the steps on a ladder. Some other company makes the ladder, but you own the patent for the "Laterally installed devices in a ladder which allow for a human to achieve vertical movement."

But since most people don't understand the components of a software program, if someone claims that their software does something unique, we often believe them. It doesn't matter if it's a bullshit claim.

And it these cases, the companies accused of the violation are virtually a Who's Who of every huge internet company. So that in itself should be clue.

If you claim that so many others are violating your patent, then that supports the argument that your patent is for something that's so naturally a part of the function of the whole that it's absurd and should never have been allowed to become patented.

So I wonder how the Internet is able to function at all. I guess it can't if everyone keeps running around yelling, "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

Here is my patent application for which I expect approval: "Method for applying or 'spreading' butter or margarine to toast to increase its deliciousness." That's mine. I own it. And that includes croissants. So all you bastards owe me money.

If patents like these survive challenges, the we should all file class action suits against the owners:

Complaint: That the product, "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device" has wasted everyone's TIME.
That individual and corporate productivity has decreased 30-55% due to the direct interference of this invention at a collective cost to individuals and corporations of $465 billion over the last 19 years. Our complaint accuses the inventor and/or patent holder of wasting our precious time by "occupying our peripheral attention" when we had important shit to do.
So we are asking for the full $465 billion in lost productivity plus punitive damages of $2 trillion.

Win me some crap.

2010-08-27T16:53:00.001-04:00

You probably already do, but if not, subscribe to Unshelved so I can get some free crap.

"From today through the end of September, if you can get seven (7) new people to subscribe to Unshelved we'll send you a thank-you postcard with a character of your choice drawn by Bill, and signed by Bill and Gene, suitable for hanging in your workplace..."

So if you subscribe through email, Facebook or RSS, I can email them and win free crap. Or I can email them anyway and say that you subscribed. But then you would make me into a liar, some dirty, stinking liar. Shame on you.

So don't make me lie to Bill and Gene because Gene might cry. But Bill would hunt you down and kick your ass. So hurry up and do it because I've already given them your email address and told them that you did it already... yes, I know your email address. All of them. And your phone number. And what color underpants you're wearing... it's Friday, so that would be "none color."

The essential third.

2010-08-27T11:45:00.001-04:00

So the news is that the majority of people don't use libraries.

"Almost two third of Britons have not set foot in a library in the last year, new figures have disclosed."

And "Studies suggest that fewer than a third of Americans visit their local library at least once a month, and fewer than half went in the last year."

So between the U.S. and the UK, only about one-third of the (adult) residents use libraries. But is this a reason to reduce public funding for libraries? Really? You said, Yes?

We just held some primary elections where voter turnout is typically around 30%. But yet we continue to hold these elections. Why not just let everyone run during one election that decides the winners? Why eliminate some losers early? So the big political parties can spend all their money pushing one candidate? So in place of a full smorgasbord of candidates, we get stuck with chicken or fish? What if I want the kosher, vegan, halal or bacon lover's meal?

So some people conclude that it's not worth paying for libraries because most people don't use them or because they themselves don't use them.

Well, here are some things that I haven't been using lately that I don't think I should have to pay for:

I haven't eaten an egg, so I don't care if the rest of you all die from the bad ones. I haven't requested the services of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force or Coast Guard. I haven't been swimming, so I don't need lifeguards. I'm pretty much going to die some day anyway, so I don't need universal health care. I haven't used the airport, the police or fire department all year. I don't use the schools or day care. I haven't been to a National Park or monument. We haven't had a tornado or hurricane, so I don't need the National Weather Service. I don't need the EPA, the FDA, the FTC or the FCC because I can't think of one thing any of them have done for me lately. And the Supreme Court still won't let me marry who I want.

I could argue why libraries are necessary, but you won't listen. So let's all just decide to pay for nothing because that's what you want. But just know that when you do need help, that's when you'll really pay.

The art of ebook seduction.

2010-08-25T14:45:00.001-04:00

Gone are the days of literary seduction.

You've seen the films where the older professor attempts to seduce the naive student by removing a weathered tome of poetry from the bookshelf and says, "this was my copy of Rimbaud when I was in college. I hope you find the beauty in the words as I once did." And with a flourish, the professor inscribes, "Find the beauty" and hands it off. Thus, the game of seduction has begun.

So the professor could have a box full of poetry books and each term could put one out the window to age it and then scribble some notations in the margins like "Yes!" and "Love!" and "Professors make better lovers!"

But what about today? How does that dance of love begin with our new ereaders?

The professor says, "Let me see your iPad so I can send you a copy of my favorite book of poetry."

But that's where the similarity ends:

"Let me just open that app. And now I'll access the online store. I'm finding the book. Let me just sign into my account through PayPal. And I'm downloading the book. Now, let's open the app to transfer the book to your iPad and I'll agree to the terms of service stating that this is a gift since your iPad isn't registered to me and there can only be one copy on any device at a time. And I'm installing the security patch. And the transfer application. Now you need to agree on your iPad to allow me to access it to transfer the file. And now you agree to the terms and uncheck the security to receive the file. And I'm sending the file. And you have it. And now I'll delete the copy from my iPad. And there you are. I hope this helps you to find the beauty in your life."

Not so sexy now.

Everything you've ever read is wrong.

2010-08-23T14:07:00.001-04:00

If you read a book published before 2010, then you'd best forget about it. That book was written for someone less enlightened than you, with your social networking and facebooking and tweeting.

In case you haven't heard, reading has changed. It is no longer the solitary pursuit once prized by eggheads. Readers used to sit quietly with their books, read the words, then have deep thoughts about them. The words were fixed on the page allowing for our thoughts to coalesce around them. The words became part of us as we found ourselves experiencing the same emotions and ideas that the author intended for us to share. And these emotions and ideas could span generations and give us a link back through time as we formed empathetic bonds through those printed words.

But reading has evolved. We no longer read for ourselves, but for others. We read to share. We highlight words in our ereaders and share those words with others. We tweet our favorite passages to others so they can witness our intellectual transformations. I read to better myself through your eyes, not my own. I don't exist without your retweets.

So these are the ebook and ereader questions: is the act of reading changing because the medium has changed? Do people still read for the same reasons that they did when the medium was paper? Is reading evolving into a social activity?

You could argue that it's always been a social activity: books communicate between the author and the reader; plays communicate to the audience; picture books are read aloud to children; book clubs discuss the work among the group; poetry communicates to, um, no one since 1967, and on and on.

But the act of reading has always been a solitary act. I seek a quiet place to read free from distractions, then I open the book and read. I am alone with the words.

But what about ebooks? These are designed for devices that perform a multitude of other tasks. They allow for annotating, highlighting, saving, possibly forwarding to other devices. The device makes for easy sharing.

So if ereaders change the way we read by giving us all these methods for sharing what we read and how we think about what we read, then will the books change? Will books become more social?

Are there books with spots at the end of the chapter that say, "Twitter break" or "tweet this!" What about embedded tweet functionality? As soon as you highlight something, tiny box opens to ask "What do you want to do with this? T(witter)? F(acebook)? A(mazon) B(uzz) L(ibraryThing)?"

What about the length of the chapters? Are they written shorter to be read during those few minutes when we can devote attention to the book? Like are new books written with 2 page chapters?

Seriously, is the act of reading changing? I mean, there really is book called How to Read a Book. It was published in 1940. It is outdated? One of the most important rules for reading is to read actively, to analyze what you are reading, its purpose and the author's goals in writing it. Is this rule obsolete today with so much hogging our attention?

Does this new medium negate serious reading (see the Annoyed Librarian for her definition of a serious reader)? You can spin molecules on you iPad screen and you can hold your screen up to the world and have your iPad tell you more about your place in it. So no, the technology doesn't destroy the reading experience, but it provides enough distractions that the serious reader can't be blamed for succumbing to its many charms.

Reading shouldn't be the same as simply looking at words. It should also be more than just knowing the difference between dog and frog. But, again, is the act of reading changing?

Anyway, if there is any point to this, it's that the solitary act of reading is dead and interactive technology done it.

And then, when serious reading is dead, would it be wrong to read Walden on your ereader?

For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
[project gutenberg]

Will anyone ever read Walden on an iPad? Will the iPad explode from the irony? Check your warranty and tos; it's probably in there somewhere.

Leave me alone.

2010-08-22T17:06:00.001-04:00

Here is an interesting piece from the NYT, "E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated," AUSTIN CONSIDINE, August 20, 2010.

That's interesting for me because I'm not sure how he means the word, Make:
Make as in a state of being? or Make as in force? Because I may not be a Luddite, but I'm absolutely convinced that almost all convenience technology (pretty much everything developed after 1989) is just a huge pain in my ass.

And this statement from the article makes absolutely no sense at all to me:

“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. [Paul] Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.”

The "not-untrue notion"? So, is he saying that when one is reading, one is not socializing? If he is, then his second statement seems to say that ereaders fail as a reading device when they remain connected to bigger systems. Because is it not untrue that reading quietly to yourself is the antithesis to socializing? Yes, that's what he just said. Aren't you paying attention?

[Not from the article, made up by me]

What'cha reading?

Well, I'm not reading anything now because I'm talking to you. I was reading, 50 Ways to Kill Someone with Your iPad, and I was just finishing the part where it says I can fling my iPad and hit the person in the throat. In fact, all 50 ways in this book seem to involve hitting the offending person in the throat.

And what about this connection to bigger systems as an excuse to interfere with one's quiet time? Is Levinson saying that in addition to the usual nosy people, our ereaders will never let us be? It's bad enough when other people interfere, but now my ereader itself is going to keep me from enjoying my book:

As I'm reading my Chelsea Handler book, my ereader sends these pop-up messages:

"R. Jones of Austin, TX started this book on 8/14 and has already finished it. But you are still on page 161. Don't you like this book? Do you need help with the big words?"

"A. Smith of Cleveland, OH sent this comment about this book: 'Diiiiirtygirl! I'm laughing my ass off!' Like A. Smith, are you laughing your ass off? Tell me how much."

And (getting back the article) what the hell is this supposed to mean?

Debra Jaliman, a dermatologist in Manhattan, said, “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.”

What? Books are ugly? I'm looking at a book right now that is both sleek and portable. Look, it's in my hand or in my briefcase or tucked under my arm. How much more portable can you get? And the cover design is beautiful. Or are you that insecure that you need a $700 hunk of plastic to be able to leave your house? It's like saying that your Hermès bag or your Panerai wristwatch help you to get out of bed in the morning.

If all reading becomes a social event and we can never think deep thoughts about the ideas contained in these books because we are continually sharing our immediate thoughts with others, then what will happen in the future? How will learning evolve when we need each other's comments to form opinions?

Will we even have "True or False" questions on tests in the future? Because of the social nature of learning and the popularity of Facebook, teachers might only feel safe enough to ask whether students Like something:

Fifty million Africans were transported to the Americas during the slave trade and many were tortured by their captors.
12 students like this.

Millions of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were sent to concentrations camps during the Nazi regime and many of them were murdered in huge ovens.
8 students like this.

And then society will have to wonder whether these students meant Like as in agree with the statement or Like as in approve of the actions. And we will never have a restful night's sleep again with our handguns forming uncomfortable lumps under our pillows.

There is no stigma associated with reading a book quietly to yourself. Unless you read something the rest of us find idiotic. If you want people to approach you, get a baby or a dog.

“Strangers constantly ask about it,” Michael Hughes, ... said of his iPad, which he uses to read a mix of novels and nonfiction. “It’s almost like having a new baby.”

Oh, the iPad is like a baby. But it's not a baby, right? Right? Because you would never leave your iPad in the car on a hot day..., but your baby? Well, just read the news for the ruling on that one.

There can only be one reason for the current orgiastic response to the iPad, and that is, to destroy the medium of paper.

I can find no other logic for choosing to read from an ereader based on these comments about sharing or convenience. Except maybe that you read crap. And that some snob laughed at you one day on the subway.

But about feeling less isolated? Aren't you going to listen to music when you read that book on your iPad? So your hands are occupied with you iPad, your eyes are occupied with your book (or shopping), your ears are filled with Belle and Sebastian, your mouth is filled with organic dark chocolate and currants, and your nose... well, I guess that leaves your nose to interact with those strangers.

And depending on which big city you're in, with the smoke, the sweat and the stink, you probably wish your nose had something else to fill it. Give it time and I'm sure Steve Jobs will come up with something.

You cheered for garbage.

2010-08-21T20:59:00.001-04:00

So I saw this new clip from a deleted scene from a Star Wars movie (okay, it's Return of the Jedi; I'm just trying to seem too cool for Star Wars) where we see Luke ("Luuuuuke") use a sonic screwdriver to tighten the thingies on his lightsaber, like it needed new D batteries or something. (I would have linkyed to the clip, but it done been taken down already.)

And the audience is cheering, "Oh, Yeah!" "Woo!" as they watch the hooded figure appear to jiggle this and twist on that.

They're cheering over a deleted scene. Deleted. Cut. Unfit to be in the initial release of the film. Garbage.

Directors cut scenes from movies for different reasons, for time, for pacing, because they don't reveal any new information, whatever. But it was cut and thrown away. When they were editing this in 1982 nobody thought, "Hey, I'll save this for the Laserdisc."

Remember, Return of the Jedi is the movie with Ewoks.

So if Ewoks are considered Good for the final cut of Return of the Jedi, then this deleted scene must really be crap.

But it just goes to show the hold that "new" has over people. We want everything first, before anyone else. So we celebrate crap because we got it first. It doesn't matter that the creator thought it wasn't worthy of the final product and threw it away.

MY GENERATION: You know, I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater during its original run.

THIS GENERATION: But we saw the scene that Lucas held back because he thought you sucked too much to deserve seeing it. He gave you Ewoks, but he saved this for us.

MY GENERATION: Touché. He gave us Princess Leia in a metal bikini, but Ewoks, yeah, George Lucas really must have hated us.

if only you could see through my eyes.

2010-08-20T08:19:00.001-04:00

I've told you many times that I compile my blog into printed-on-paper books. There are currently 4 of them. Three are outrageously overpriced, but one is priced so low that when I see that not one of you has bought one, it makes me want to tell you all to go fuck off.

But then I remember that none of this is real, that I'm just a brain in a jar and some creature is running experiments on me and poking at me with bits of his lunch.

But for my latest book, I paid an extra $39 for a professional account to get Createspace/Amazon to open my book up to other sellers. Some POD books are only available in limited places, but I thought it would be worth the extra money to see what this would do.

So my book is available through other channels and I did a Google search for "Perfunctorily, Me" to see what I'd find. Which is the title of my book that you haven't bought.

The first surprise is that Jessamyn West mentioned my book on her blog and didn't say that it sucked. But maybe she'd been drinking. After all, she says she read it on the way home, probably in a plane and probably after 3 vodka tonics.

After 3 vodka tonics is how I recommend that everyone read my books. Because that's how I write them, and it helps if we speak the same language.

But then I found my book on Amazon UK and Amazon FR, listed in Pounds and Euros, £4.05 and EUR 6,90 which looks pretty damn cool to someone who never leaves the USA. And even Yen, ￥811.

I just don't understand why more people don't publish as print. I guess you're convinced that online publishing is just as good as print? Where does the Library of Congress store that electronic copy of your blog? Oh, it doesn't. But it would take your paper book and stick it in some box in the corner for future humans to discover and burn for heat.

I'm only bringing this up, AGAIN, because I see that Book Blogger Appreciate Week is coming up. And it made wonder why there isn't a Blog Booker Appreciate Week. And the answer is that there aren't very many blog bookers, or people who (re)publish their blogs as print books. Or even ebooks. Dennie Heye turned some of his blog posts into a book (my book is cheaper), but I don't know of anyone else.

If fact, that reminds me that I need to upload my stuff to feedbooks and have it kindleized.

So how can I convince you to make books? I've told you how cheap it is ...seriously cheap when all you need to buy is the proof copy and pay for shipping, for me, less than $10 total.

I'm not crazy. I know I'm not going to get rich from these books, as evidenced by all of you cheap bastards. Don't any millionaires read this blog?

It's like my CafePress ("buy some effing crap") store. I don't make a penny from those shirts, but it's just awesome when someone thinks they are cool enough to buy.

So, buy my book or don't buy my book. I just can't understand why you all don't want to save all your work in print to put on your shelf and flip through every once in a while and wonder, "What the fuck was I thinking?!!"

The Winner is Chicago.

2010-08-19T17:50:00.001-04:00

Congratulations, Chicago, Illinois, on being the most recent winner!

Chi-town, the Windy City, the City of Big Asses, the city about which I wrote that when the northern ice melts, polar bears will hunt for food there because they can smell pepperoni-stuffed Chicagoans from 30 miles away.

But Chicago is a famous city with a proud history. It has many somethings and its people are something or something. And there are some sports teams.

And on December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. Who isn't proud of that?

Did I say, proud? I meant terrified.

Beloit College Mindset Insult

2010-08-19T13:56:00.001-04:00

I still don't understand this annual Beloit College Mindset List. It's a list compiled by some college guys and distributed to faculty so they can understand the mindset of incoming college freshmen and avoid dating themselves by mentioning Theda Bara whenever some kids talk about the Twilight movies.

This year, it says stuff like:

22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
Don't say that burning a cross in a black man's yard is wrong.. unless it violates some fire code, but it's not a hate crime because your students are too young and vacuous to know why it's a vile act.

Don't mention the African slave trade because that was so long ago and these kids only know about trading Pogs. And don't even mention the television series Roots. These students don't know Kunta Kinte unless they heard Kanye West compare himself to him.

And don't talk about the Holocaust or WWII because as far as these students know, those things never happened. To them, the Holocaust is just the subject of some movie where Ralph Fiennes was really mean that won the Academy Award.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
Czechoslovakia was a founding member of the United Nations. That's not important at all.

I appreciate the assumption that incoming freshmen are completely stupid. But it's like this list is some in joke among faculty that kids don't know anything but their immediate world around them.

Every student should feel insulted by this list. As if nothing that happened before your lifetime even exists for you. Especially this,

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
Really? Not as a ninja turtle? All you kids should be pissed at that wrong assumption.

Me, I'm insulted by this next one,

57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.
Barney Google? Barney Google? I'm old, but I don't think Barney Google has ever been in any newspaper I've ever read in my lifetime. I'm sure it was published somewhere, but not where I was. How old are these guys who make this list?

So the Beloit message seems to be, Don't bring up anything your students didn't live through because, clearly, the world revolves around them.

I thought college was supposed to teach kids stuff they didn't already know, silly me.

Why we (probably) won't have a Semantic Web.

2010-08-17T07:59:00.004-04:00

Librarians make the assumption that because we are smart and know how to categorize and organize information that others will follow our recommendations.

But we see that book stores don't when they group their products under large, nebulous categories.

And Google doesn't, when it returns results based on algorithms optimized for displaying ads.

Librarians think that all metadata are equal. That "sex" is equal to "love" because they are just terms to classify content. But no two terms are ever equal. Metadata have meanings that are timely or momentarily popular or specific.

So librarians ask questions to establish intent.

INTENT.

"The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles' 'We Can Work It Out' when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control."

[The Semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila]

Why did Pete's phone send a message to turn down the volume? What if it were Pete's boss calling to tell him to work Saturday? Would the phone understand to send a message to play the "Ferris Bueller" sneezing and coughing audio files?

My point is that our understanding of the purpose of the Web is wrong. And our understanding of machines is wrong. Just as our understanding of other people is wrong.

We can't possibly know the purpose of the Internet. First, we didn't make it. Second, it was designed with only one purpose, to make access to data easier.

But now we want to control that data flow. We want to tell the internet that different data have different values to us through metadata. And the only way we can do that, from my understanding of the internet, would be to insert such massive amounts of metadata into the web that we would end up creating a second internet. One made up entirely of metadata.

This second internet would act as checksum data to compare to the internet to calculate and verify the user's intent. To understand.

This second internet would contain all the metadata needed for machines to understand humans. Yes, I said it would be huge.

But I don't see that. Of course, I wouldn't see it if it existed. I would be invisible. So what I see is an internet evolving into something that looks like a semantic web, but is only a more accurately fine-tuned commercial web. The web is getting better at selling me things. It doesn't really know what I want, so it gives me what others seem to have wanted.

I can see that the internet is trying. I can see that we are trying. There are frameworks for attempting to have the internet understand us. And to have machines understand us.

In fact, there might even need to be a third internet made up purely of rules, policies and vocabularies which massage the metadata into accuracy of intent.

But to build this, one must understand what humans think. But since humans communicate with machines so much differently than how they communicate with each other, what humans think when they interact with other humans or machines changes.

In the example at the top, Pete might think that he wants to talk to the person on the phone, so the phone communicates his intent to the stereo. But if Pete doesn't want to talk to the person on the phone, the phone communicates a different message to different machines. How is the phone to know? Without asking questions? Oh, it listens in on our conversations. Did we say it could?

I have run out of fucks.

2010-08-15T17:26:00.001-04:00

I thought I might still be able to give a fuck about stuff and write about it, but I have no fucks left to give.

Living the online world seems to age us in dog years, or even faster. Bloggers come on the scene and streak across the sky to burn up in the atmosphere all too soon. Well, it really isn't "too soon" because our attention spans are so short and as soon as too large a crowd gathers, we lose interest anyway.

I'm just saying this because I came pretty close to deleting this blog and my twitter this weekend when realized I was out of fucks. I didn't see any in the freezer to thaw. And I looked for a box of instant fucks, but the only one I have needs for me to give a shit and I'm out of shits, too.

As usual, I went looking to pick up some fucks online, from other librarian blogs or just from reading the news. But, still nothing. You all have lots of fucks available, but nothing seems to fit me.

So I'm just saying. If you find that this thing is gone, you shouldn't wonder why.

But don't worry about me, I'm starring a new reality show called, "I Would Put Pants on That" on the Travel Channel where we visit places and things that look like human genitalia and discuss whether we should put pants on it. Our first episode we visit an orchid garden and the Florida State Capitol building in Tallahassee (yes, view it from that angle).

for Pussy lovers.

2010-08-12T16:45:00.002-04:00

QuoteHunt. And a surprise: women.

2010-08-12T13:06:00.002-04:00

I was reading this story, "Libraries vital to our community," when I read this quote attributed to Andrew Carnegie:

"Andrew Carnegie instituted a free library system throughout the country because he believed in giving to the 'industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others.'"

And I thought, wow, I don't remember hearing that "not those who need everything done for them" part before. And so I wanted to find the source for the quote.

I googled the quote and found a Wikipedia page with a link to the original essay, "The Best Fields for Philanthropy" from The North American Review Volume 0149 Issue 397 (December 1889).

Andrew Carnegie, pp. 682-699:

The individual administrator of surplus wealth has as his charge the industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others and the extension of their opportunities at the hands of the philanthropic rich. It is ever to be remembered that one of the chief obstacles which the philanthropist meets in his efforts to do real and permanent good in this world is the practice of indiscriminate giving; and the duty of the millionaire is to resolve to cease giving to objects that are not proved clearly to his satisfaction to be deserving.

So if this essay can be applied to public libraries as the author of the above article concludes (with the help of Wikipedia), then librarians are meant to use their wealth to assist the deserving, which is something with which I'm not sure I entirely agree... Oh, I'm just pulling your leg. I agree completely.

To every lazy person who has every approached and said, "do it for me," and especially the ones who snap their fingers and say, "come here and do it for me," and especially, especially the ones who say, "come here, snap my fingers for me and then do it for me," I say... oh, crap, I forgot what I was going to say with all this typing... but I'm sure it was cutting.

So I read a little from Carnegie, I check the Table of Contents for that issue of The North American Review and see this, "The Incapacity of Business Women" by Marion Harland. It's not related to anything, but I thought it might cheer you up.

Here lies the defective spot in the claim for equitable wages for working women. Physical disability apart, they do not work as men do. A man grasps his business with both hands. If his hands are not strong enough, he clamps it with his feet, and, rather than let it go, seizes it with his jaws. It is his life himself!
A woman, even when the daily bread of herself and her children depends upon a clerkship, or employment in a factory, or the teachers place in a public school, regards her labor as the means to an end. It is the ladder reared against the height she would win. A mans chosen craft or profession is the central stone staircase, built into the solid structure. Men work by the job, concentrating every energy upon the task of perfecting that which must pass or be rejected upon its own merit. Women go out by the day and watch the clock! Men have ambitions; women have hopes. The reasons assigned for these radical differences are led off in most essays on the subject, and pertinently, by the fact that women look forward to marriage as a definite means of support, and hold but loosely that which they may be called upon at any moment to give up.

Wow. I didn't know women were such poor employees. 100 years ago. And yes, Marion is (was) a woman. Google her.

The winner is Colorado Springs.

2010-08-11T08:13:00.002-04:00

Our winner is, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Congratulations! From the photos on the internets, Colorado Springs looks like a beautiful place, nestled at the base of Pikes Peak.

Colorado Springs is somewhat unimaginatively named, being in Colorado, and near a spring or river, I guess... And it's the home of the unfortunately necessary, Everybody Welcome Festival: A Celebration of Culture and Diversity.

The Everybody Welcome Festival is a new award-winning event which replaces the previous festival of "No _____ Allowed," whereby one entire ethnic, gender, religious or racial group was barred from attending the festival. The excluded group was selected entirely at random, from names entered into a hat. But after three years of a "No White People Allowed" festival, the organizers in this mostly white city lost so much money and were left with so much light beer and potato salad that they voted to eliminate exclusions and welcome everyone, especially white people. Yes, that's a joke, but the Everybody Welcome Festival is real.

As a result of budget crisis, "More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday [Feb. 2010]. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled... Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces," like public parks. ... but residents are reminded to please not reshelve the books in the public library because, no, that's non-fiction, that doesn't go there.

The Everybody Welcome Festival runs through Sunday, so go and buy some stuff and help get those street lights turned back on.

A side note: have you noticed the trend to brand everything with a 3-idea progression on an theme? Like the group that sponsors the Everybody Welcome thing, the Colorado Springs Diversity Forum, uses, connect, include, engage. And the Pikes Peak Library District has, seek, engage, transform.

And even the New York Public Library has, discover, connect, get inspired.

Our library uses, confront, attack, subdue. Look, it's on my business card. Okay, I wrote it there in ink just now, but it's there.

Love your librarian: Me.

2010-08-10T15:48:00.002-04:00

This will be the third year that I will nominate myself for the "I Love My Librarian" award. And this time I expect to win.

I think my problem with my previous applications began with the severe limitations within the very first box:

1. Please tell us in 2-3 sentences why your nominee should win this award. What sets him/her apart? (Response limited to 100 words)

100 words? Is this the, I Love My Twitter Librarian Award?

How can I lie about my accomplishments using only 100 words? Maybe if they were really big words. But how do I work in "antidisestablishmentarianism" to answer that question? And what the hell does that word have to do with librarians anyway? Unless I can redefine it to mean the opposition to the disestablishment of public libraries. That could work. Paste that baby in 40 or 50 times and I'm sure to win.

But now that I read the guidelines for nominations, I'm not so sure I'll nominate myself after all. Because I don't understand this part:

I am a librarian/work in a library. Can I nominate my colleague?
In the spirit of this unique award and in honoring the relationship between library users and librarians, only library users should submit nominations.

I never realized that librarians could not be library users. There is a discussion going on at LISNews as to whether convicted sex offenders should be allowed to use public libraries, but I never considered whether librarians should be allowed to use public libraries.

As a librarian, I wonder if I need to tell someone that I've been using the library. If only I'd paid attention in library school, I bet they covered that part in class.

Conservatives, fearing Socialism, embrace Communism.

2010-08-09T09:02:00.002-04:00

Phil Fretz on August 8, 2010, Florida Times-Union:
Phil says,

"Now for a firm grasp of the obvious: The library system wastes money,but it's almost parsimonious compared to City Hall.

Maybe our leaders in Washington could learn something from the president of Cuba.

Raul Castro recently said he wanted to lay off 20 percent of the workers in his 'considerably bloated ... state sector.'"

I think Phil is joking about finding a solution from the Cuban government. From their cigar manufacturers, maybe, since they don't outsource their cigar industry to other countries. (Yes, you can buy "Cubans" made in El Salvador and Honduras, but everyone knows they're not real Cubans, you dumb tourist.)

I hate when everyone says that public libraries waste money because they are part of government. We have to buy things and we need to pay salaries. And some employees have been around for 20-plus years: is your solution to fire them and hire new people for much less? Who are you going to hire if everyone knows there is no future in your library? The crappiest people? The ones who won't give a shit about building a community library because they know that their part in the community will be short?

I know you're mad about something, Phil, but don't take it out on libraries. And if you're so mad that you think we'd be better off to emulate Cuba, then maybe you need a little more help than this effing librarian can give you.

"You mind if I show this to everyone in the world?"

2010-08-08T08:13:00.002-04:00

I went to a friend's party a while back and took some video and photos. When I got home, I wanted to email him the video, but it was 400mb. I thought about putting it on YouTube, but there were lots of people at that party and lots of children and I don't think everyone wants images of their kids splashed all over the internets.

But that's me. Lots of assholes post everything. That's how we get into trouble. Some other dick tells everyone. Who said, "Hell is other people"? Oh, yeah, that guy.

So I burned a DVD of the party video but I haven't mailed it to him yet. Because I suck.

But that had me thinking about what we share. Voluntarily or involuntarily. What we give and what is taken from us. And right now we're concerned with what we give, our privacy choices. But I'm thinking about what is taken away.

I might want to have a whole batch of little effings one day. And what will I have left to leave to them when I go? 13,000 blogs posts? 22,000 Twitter followers? The internet provides the opportunity for us to redefine our legacy to our children: can your kid inherit your Facebook friends or Twitter followers? What is a list of followers worth? Can Twitter sell the list to companies for targeted advertising? (uh, oh, don't get sidetracked...)

And we've learned recently that all these little fuckers on the web steal whatever they want because copy/paste delivers no consequences. Why should they behave any differently than they do in the real world. When our library is filled with kids, it's inevitable that someone will "lose" a phone.

So how do we protect our internet property?

I know I hate this latest trend, but I don't see any way around it. I hate when I copy something from a site and it carries all this hidden text along with it that I need to delete. Because the web site runs a trackback or automatic attribution script that automatically adds the site info when you copy it. And when I want a small snippet for a blog post, I need to delete that crap because it gets in my way and it breaks my train of thought on what I was trying to say. So it pisses me off.

But I thinking that an automatic attribution script is the way to go from now on. Because if I don't claim my property now, how will I be able to claim a violation later?

I know that people use Creative Commons, but I don't understand what that's supposed to do for me. It doesn't seem like it offers any real protections.

So I just did a search for "automatic attribution script" and found this article explaining Tynt.

Tynt does this for lots of news sites. It adds that script that I hate to remove each time I copy something from a site using it.

So I'm gonna submit this post before I decide to add this script to my blog. I don't know if I really give a fuck. I have so few fucks left to give.

I'm working so fucking hard at the library and just seem to keep falling farther and farther behind. There's the work I need to do, the work I'm asked to do and the work I'd like to do, and the work I'm asked to do almost always takes the top. Then when I really need to do what I need to do, and someone asks me to do something, and I tell them to fuck off, I feel terrible.

I have no fucking time.

Clearly, I have the same amount of time as everyone else, but I can't seem to make it all work like it used to.

I should also mention that Flickr attributes copyright info to photos that are copied, or something, but I didn't really read up on that for this post.

Another mention is that we continue to give our content away (our FB, blog, Twitter posts, photos, videos) just when corporations are moving towards a tiered internet, with pay and free content. Maybe we should begin protecting our content a little better.

How to be a Winner.

2010-08-05T18:02:00.002-04:00

If you've been following along recently, you've seen some "winners" listed on this blog. Since the beginning of this contest, nine locations have been selected:

Seattle Public Library
Washington, D. C.
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Exeter, New Hampshire
Elon, North Carolina
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Meadville, Pennsylvania
Dublin, Ireland
Manukau City, New Zealand

As you see from the list, all winners are cities or towns, etc., except for the first winner. After that first one I made a rule that I would name cities as winners and not schools or companies. Other than that, there are no rules for winning. It is entirely mostly random.

The winner is selected by letting a random number generator choose a number from 1-100, and than I compare that number against the most recent logged locations in my visitor stats. A winner is selected when the corresponding location looks like a place that deserves to win. If you are a place and you've won once already, you are most likely not going to win again. If you are a place that is the place where I live, you are probably also not going to win. So if I keep this contest going long enough so that enough places are winners, you should be able to guess where the.effing.librarian lives by spotting the single loser place on the map.

And so far, there has been no prize for winning other than shouting that you won and snapping the loser cities on their butts with the frayed end of a rolled up wet towel when you see them in the locker room at the United Nations. But today that changes. Winners now have a prize to show off. It is this cool badge:
So if you are a past or present winner and would like to brag to the world by posting this badge on your web page, this prize is now yours.

Cities of the world, I know you want this badge, but don't succumb to temptation and post it before you win. Because the whole world will know that you are a dirty cheater. Even if you already are a dirty cheater in other world affairs, this is much worse. So I don't want to see this badge on your pages until I pick you. And it's easy to check because I can just click on the "winner" tag at the bottom of the post to see the list and if you're not on it... well, you're just going to embarrass yourselves. And then America will have to send in troops.

The Winner is Manukau City, New Zealand.

2010-08-04T13:35:00.002-04:00

Congratulations, Manukau!

According to Wikipedia, Manukau is "ethnically diverse, and is home to many cultures, especially Māori and members of Polynesian ethnicities," but the diversity inexplicably excludes any New Yorkers. I don't get it because New Yorkers seem to be everywhere here in the United States. How does New Zealand keep them out? Share your secret, please!

Wikipedia also says that Utsunomiya, Tochigi, Japan is Manukau City's "Sister" city. But don't think you get to share this award, Utsunomiya, Tochigi. You have to win your own. Now if you were "BFF" cities, it would be different because I share everything with my BFF, Hector Elizondo.

(Ha! Maybe you noticed that Hector is a New Yorker. So clearly, I'm just joking with New York. We love New Yorkers because they complain so little and drive so well.)

And all you other places in the world, Manukau has a link to their libraries right at the top of their web page, so take a lesson because all you places that don't value your libraries enough to put them right up front are really pissing me off.

Burning down the house.

2010-08-03T07:42:00.002-04:00

Imagine telling your library patrons, "I'm going to take 20 books based on some decision where you had no input and that's all you get to read."

No, this isn't Cuba. This is a library-loaned ebook reader. And yes, before you get all nitpicky on me because Comic-Con is over and you didn't get to ask if The Avengers or Tron or blah blah blah will blah blah, I know that some libraries allow patrons to download new titles to the Kindle and that some libraries use ebooks to satisfy some ILL requests. I'm not an idiot; I just don't care. And you haven't figured that out yet.

I keep falling back on how much technology fucks with us. And I don't see any real benefit from what's new this month compared to last year. So we have ebook readers. But that proves my point. What does it do that's new? It has a screen which is guess is newish. But I still need to type and tap and click stuff. So now I need to learn a whole different way to read.

It doesn't zap the book directly into my brain, so what's the point? It's one step forward, three steps back.

Each time we need to learn a new interface, it's three steps backward.

Don't try to convince me that you are the progressive librarian because you are not. Ebooks have more limitations than printed books. At least, for libraries.

Oh, the.effing.librarian, you are just stuck in the past. You don't want to empower your users.

Ok, I'm reading a book. How many ways do I need to know to read a fucking book? How is making people feel stupid going to empower them.

Librarian:
Yes, sir, click that and move that and slide that and shake that, and, Look! you're reading the first page of an ebook! Welcome to the new world! Now do that 461 more times to read the whole thing!

Library Patron:
Go fuck yourself.

I don't have anything against the Amazon Kindle if you want to buy one for your library to educate your users to what an ebook reader is, to have some fun playing with it, but don't try to convince me that 10 or 20 of those hunks of plastic are going to solve any real library issues. Not with DRM and Amazon's ability to delete books, and the possible privacy issues with Amazon tracking what people highlight on their readers, and even with just keeping a running log of all the books that have been downloaded, or not offering any real library-friendly or open source business model, I don't see any of this being in the library's interest.

We loan DVDs, but we don't loan DVD players. We loan books about using software, but we don't loan the software so you can read the book to learn how to use it.

There are lots of decisions we make already that limit your fun in our library. I like to think that our library is mostly fun and we express that each time we answer, "F. U." when you make some stupid demand.

Every time you embrace a new and different technology, you are only adding convenience to an increasingly limited supply of materials for an increasingly limited borrower population. So you are reducing your patron's freedom of access to information. So don't brag about intellectual freedom while you reduce the overall volume of materials available.

And don't brag about digital access when providing it requires the user to leap all new hurdles in our technological bureaucracy:

Do you have a wireless enabled device? Wifi? 3G? 4G? Do you have desktop or laptop computer? Windows? Linux? Macintosh? Have you installed the software from the link provided on our website? Do you run the security update? Did you connect the wireless device via the USB cable connector? Did you sync the device
and enter its unique ID? Did you choose a password? Did you interrupt the download process by scratching your ass and creating an electrostatic charge? Because that voids the warranty.

This is just as bad or worse than storing all of your print collection in a distant building "in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'."

I had two patrons in the last week who called about their recently purchased Nook ebook readers. One guy just followed along with me until I heard, "Got it. I'm downloading it. Yeah, got it. Thanks. If I need anything else I'll call you."

And during the other call, all I heard in the background was, "Tell him it's a NOOK. Did you tell him it's a NOOK?" while the guy didn't seem to understand anything I said. So tell me how "library 2.0" or mobile or chat reference or digital or progressive is going to help that second guy because the only way he's not going to shove that Nook back in the box and never look at it again is if I tell him to bring it into the library (with his laptop) to show him how to download and transfer ebooks... well, not show him, but do it for him... two or three times...

Screencast? Stop. I'll need to make a screencast just to show him how to watch the screencast.

I can't force you to buy my book...

2010-08-02T06:00:00.002-04:00

but hypnokitteh can.

Check the image of the cover over there on the right. But don't read the message under it because that's meant for the cheap bastards, not you. You are thoughtful and generous and not at all cheap.

The bastard part I'm not sure about because I've heard some stuff. On Twitter. But I'm sure it's all lies.

I need to check with Dennie Heye and Walt Crawford to find if any of their books sell.

(you have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to make the eyes do that... 5 years.)

The Winner is Dublin, Ireland!

2010-07-29T13:49:00.002-04:00

Congratulations, Dublin (or Baile Átha Cliath).

Dublin's motto can be adapted to libraries as, Obedientia Civium Bibliothecae Felicitas, or, "Happy the library where citizens obey."

I'm glad Dublin won, as I am part Irish on my father's side. Now I'm going to listen to "The Rocky Road to Dublin" by the Dubliners. Even though it's in black/white and looks like a crappy taped copy, I like this version.. not so much the Oompa-Loompa looking guy at the 2:12 mark, but still:

How a San Francisco parking meter can benefit libraries

2010-07-28T22:34:00.002-04:00

The [new parking] system will use electronic sensors to measure real-time demand for parking spaces, and adjust prices accordingly. When there are lots of empty spaces, it will be cheap to park. When spaces are hard to find, rates will be higher.

The range in prices will be huge: from 25 cents an hour to a maximum of $6 an hour...

So how can this idea work for libraries? It can work by adjusting borrowing periods and fines based on demand.

Say, I want the DVD for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which will be popular and have a long reserve list; with a system like this, I could "bid" for a higher position on the wait list by choosing to borrow the movie for just 1 day.

Which means that I need to be ready to pick up the DVD the day I get notified and bring it back the next day. And if not, my fine might be 24X the normal fine (to use the above parking meter math).

I could also just put my name in for the regular borrowing period and wait the 3-6-12 weeks it might normally take to get a popular item.

In the original story, the supply and demand pricing is the only option. In my version, it's voluntary.

But I think this is a cool idea. If you can afford better service, you pay for it.

I want to see two lines at every desk in the library. If you want the librarian first, put your money where your mouth is and pay for my time. If you're not in a rush, then wait patiently until I finish milking this rich idiot for all he's worth. But since he can't figure out how to save to his flash drive, this could take a while: cha ching!

added note on how this is supposed to work:

PATRON A wants a popular item for a shorter loan period, so instead of going at the bottom of the list, she goes to the top:

present system	*	new "bid" system
NAME	*	NAME / loan period
Patron x	*	Patron A / 1 day
Patron x	*	Patron x / normal
Patron A	*	Patron x / normal

Now, Patron A needs to comply with new requirements and get to the library that day, in fact, we would need to split the day into 2 halves, MORNING and EVENING, to make these high demand items move faster. So patrons who wish to participate would need the ability to receive text messages and the library would need the ability to send them.

In this scenario, the daily FINE would increase to $2.40 a day at our library. If your library charges $1.00 a day for DVDs fines, then you might only be able to increase your find to $5 or $6 per day.

But I could see this working. A library could either keep a few items separate for these 1-day borrowers or if your software allowed for it, keep everyone in the same queue and let the system keep track of each borrower. But patrons would need the ability to choose whether they want the "express" (1 day) borrowing or the regular borrowing. And I would expect that a library who uses this would never have an "amnesty day" for forgiving fines. You could also let the patron keep the item once a $30 maximum was reached for that item... anyway...

Yes, it's complicated, but I could see it work if you wanted to do it.

WWLR (What Would Lindsay Read).

2010-07-28T09:20:00.002-04:00

Here are a former prison librarian's suggestions for what Lindsay Lohan should read while she serves her sentence.

Lindsay Lohan is supposed to do some jail time. But with celebrities, jail "time" is relative to their money and fame and gender and race. So do the math, and Lindsay will get very little "jail" with her time. She'll do about 14 of her 90 days and be away from the general population, so any "Caged Heat" fantasies I imagine are purely my own invention, as usual.

Hmmmm....

[begin fantasy]

Lindsay Lohan sits cross-legged on her D. Porthault voile linen sheets she had smuggled into jail when she requested the kosher meal. A single strap of her Guia La Bruna silk chemise dangles from her creamy shoulder and rests just above her perfect breast as she reads aloud from Don Juan in the Village to her secret fellow inmates she cannot see beyond the walls that guarantee her solitude.

But moments later, after Lindsay runs into a word she doesn't understand, she stops reading, and an autographed photo from Mean Girls and a pack of Marlboro 100's work to bribe the guard to unlock her cage and set her free. Silently, catlike, she steps out to meet the other prison girls. One is from Trinidad and Lindsay loves her accent. One is Japanese and Lindsay loves her silky black hair. And one is kinda dim and says her favorite movie is Herbie Fully Loaded, but Lindsay says it's her favorite, too. And later, they vajazzle each other.

[end fantasy]

So yeah, I don't give a crap what Lindsay reads during her 14-day, taxpayer funded vacation. Because with her fame and money, she's still going to be living better than me.

Oh crap, my generic, no-name brand Spaghetti-O-like pasta product is burning on the fire I made from discarded library romance paperbacks to cook my food. Again!

did I mention, EFFING UNNECESSARY?

2010-07-27T18:53:00.002-04:00

the.effing.librarian has published a FOURTH book.

Holy crap.

Here it is. An effing intimate, effing special, effing unique, effing personal and effing affordable collection.

And it can be all yours for $8.99.

$8.99.

I will be truly offended if you don't buy...mmm... five copies.

Perfunctorily, Me, by the.effing.librarian.
ISBN 978-1453698143

I wouldn't have mentioned it, but it just popped up on Amazon. Did I say it's only $8.99? It's sort of a greatest hits collection.

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 4

2010-07-27T17:11:00.002-04:00

I gots nuthin. And I don't have any plans to write anything anytime soon. So here is a link to 85 Reasons to be Thankful for Librarians.

And Ian Dury and the Blockheads performed "Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3" in case you are so unhip you didn't know.

I don't know who this is...

2010-07-24T23:47:00.002-04:00

that's gotta win me some kind of prize, right?

E!Online says this is Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and that he is famous for something, so he just got a book deal. To write one, not to read one. Even though the story says he's holding a copy of Walden on purpose, and not at all thinking, "Wow, the Cheesecake Factory menus keep getting bigger, let's see what I want for lunch... 'that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them...' what the hell kind of menu is this???"

But what's really good is the E! asks what The Situation would call his book, maybe The Old Man and the Situation? And then lots of comments add to this: The Situation in the Rye, etc.

But since we just suffered that recent trend where it seemed everyone was turning public domain works into horror novels, it seems like it would be a "good" idea to just take an old book and add in The Situation as a character and not create a whole bunch of new sentences.

Someone just get their butt over to Project Gutenberg and start editing, assuming The Situation got that trademark thing settled:
The Situation and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Situation
Adventures of Huckleberry the Situation by Mark Twain with The Situation
The Dracula Situation by Bram Stoker with The Situation
The Situation and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and The Situation
Metamorphosis of The Situation by Franz Kafka and The Situation
The Situation, Old and New Testaments, by God and The Situation
Les Situàtionables by Victor Hugo and Le Situation

Phil, Phil, Phil... PHIL!

2010-07-23T19:26:00.002-04:00

I know you mean well, but come on... You have got to kidding.

Phil Shapiro must be the.effing.librarian's nemesis. This is the second time I've had to comment publicly on his ideas for libraries. The last time Phil suggested that library users produce art, literature and music to sell to supplement (actually, I think he said, "start selling those creative things to fund the library's operations") library budgets. But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and just credit his contributions as "thinking outside the box."

But this time around Phil suggests that libraries should provide public kitchens.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.... Did you let that sink in?

Phil says, "So public libraries ought to have some kind of cafeteria with a selection of healthy, affordable, nourishing foods... That cafeteria should have attached to it a public kitchen..."

What do you think about having a public kitchen in the library? When the McDonald's parking lot is covered with partially-eaten burger remains, stale mcnugget mini-pucks, solidified shake residue, and this is just the place where people eat, what would a public kitchen look like? Hell, our staff microwave oozes the same funk you might get from engineering a Brundlefly.

I would love to see an architectural design with the library here and then a nice open courtyard here with a xeriscape garden and the cafeteria over there, but I don't see it happening. And I can't imagine a public kitchen where "[y]ou do not need to leave the library unless you can think of a better use of your time."

If the library wasn't a homeless shelter before, it would absolutely become one after this. And then librarians can spend the day cleaning the tables and washing the utensils and texting people when their frittata is done.

The Winner is: Meadville, Pennsylvania!

2010-07-22T08:16:00.002-04:00

Congratulations, Meadville!

Oh, why Meadville? you ask. Why not Meadville? As one of the disputed homes of the origin of the zipper, Meadville might be responsible for keeping that dress from sliding right off your back.

And Meadville is the formerly proud home of Sharon Stone, whose leg-spreading antics have cast a dark shadow on Meadville's good zipper-influenced reputation.

Hey, the City of Meadville web site doesn't seem to have a link to the Meadville Public Library... aren't you proud of your library, Meadville? Not proud enough to give it a link? I don't care if they are part of the CCFLS. Fuck you, Meadville. Yeah, my loyalties turn on a dime. And fuck you, zipper!

But not you, Sharon Stone. You may forever be known as "beaver woman" to the rest of the world, but to me, you will always be the bad ass bitch in Total Recall.

And for the rest of you: don't try to anticipate when I will select a winner. Just let is surprise you.

And, Oh, what a pleasant surprise it is to win. Just ask all the other winners how this award has altered their fortunes. Who'd ever heard of Seattle before I bestowed that glorious crown upon its head? I hadn't. How do you even pronounce that? Seetle? See-a-turtle? Whatever.

Are Librarians Too Sexy?

2010-07-21T09:22:00.002-04:00

From many of the comments on the previous post, you think they are. Some of you either see yourselves as too sexy or find your coworkers to be too sexy.

I was hoping someone would declare a Sexy Librarian Day. I don't know what day. Maybe you could pick the birthday of an actor or actress who played a sexy librarian in a movie, like Rene Russo, Rachel Weisz or Noah Wyle, or use Dewey number for sex, so 3-06? And then tweet it or Facebook it or something. It's not like you have jobs.

But clearly, many of you got sex on the noggin. Is this what you think all day?

She holds that No. 2 pencil gingerly between her slender fingers. The eraser enters her mouth past her full lips while she absentmindedly nibbles on the soft pink tip. She glances up from her retro tortoise shell eyeglasses, her green eyes gaze cat-like as if she looks right through me. I feel a stiffening in my body as she draws in that deep breath which raises the swelling of her chest past the top of her open blouse. She slides the pencil out of her mouth very slowly, as if it aches to remove it. "I'm so sorry, that's out, but.." and she smiles as she says this, "I can hold it for you. I can hold it wherever you want to get it."

I can't believe that's what you think about all day. You people are sick. Get your mind out of the gutter and go weed the 005s.

Are Librarians Too Ugly?

2010-07-19T20:33:00.002-04:00

Above: the portrait of a librarian.

Newsweek is running a story, "The Beauty Advantage" and Bitch Magazine had a story "from the library" about images of librarians in movies, and that had me wonder if librarians are just too damn ugly.

Below: the portrait of every woman who is not a librarian.

Now, notice that I don't ask if librarians are ugly. Because we might be. I form that conclusion because of the cats. If you have more feline companions than you have human companions, then maybe I'm talking about you.

But I'm wondering if we're too ugly. I wonder why people don't seem to respect our profession -- why not? because of how we look? Beautiful people seem to get everything, the best jobs, the best lovers, the best treatment. Television is filled with both naturally and artificially created beauties.

Librarians are always told to look good on paper, that it's what's inside that matters, but Newsweek tells us we should just have big tits.

So let's assume that we're not hot. When budgets get cut, librarians lose jobs. But the hot firemen and hot cops keep their jobs. Yeah, you convince yourself it's about public safety, but maybe it's really because we have asses like Pilates balls.

So assuming I make even the tiniest of valid arguments, what should librarians do? Do we need better health benefits that pay for chin lifts and tummy tucks? Do we need to start a "Ban the Bun" movement?

What if this is true? What if the world sees us as George Bailey finds Mary in his alternate reality, a dried up spinster and library caretaker?

But look at those Before (below) and After (above) pictures; that's still the same actress, Donna Reed playing Mary.

Sure, she's an eyesore in the Above picture, but look what a little hair brushing and lipstick can do in the Below picture.

So maybe we should have a Hot Librarian Day... where we make a little more effort to look good. Guys can trim that chin fuzz they call a beard, get a hair cut and wear a tie. And women can hit the Aveda for some make-up and maybe wear heels. And maybe, just for once, we can collectively look good, not totally hot, but on average, decent.

And if that isn't possible, maybe we can just call in sick to keep the average up.

The UnPublic Library

2010-07-17T07:09:00.002-04:00

Fifty years ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was a college student who wanted to use a public library.

[O]n July 16, 1960, Jackson staged a sit-in at the whites-only central library with seven other students: Margaree Seawright Crosby, Joan Mattison Daniel, Benjamin Downs, Elaine Means, Deedee Dorris Wright, Hattie Smith Wright and Willie Joe Wright.

They went to the library, picked up books, took seats and started to read. Police arrived in less than 20 minutes and arrested them.

Two months after the Greenville Eight were arrested, the Greenville library system was opened to all races.

...and I'm here on this blog making ass jokes.

The Greenville Eight, Chicago Tribune, July 16, 2010.

The Future of Libraries, The Movie!

2010-07-16T22:26:00.002-04:00

Early in this blog, I wrote about the future of libraries where librarians use a rectal, temperature-based search tool called The Gerbil to assist library patrons with their catalog searching. I thought, and continue to think, that it's one of my greatest contributions to the world of library research.

I begged anyone out there in any of the internets to produce some live action dramatization of my one-scene mini play. But there have been no takers.

But today I found that I can make an animated movie simply by pasting some text into little boxes at xtranormal.com.

I first made the video with characters that looked more like I imagined them, but when I found out that it would cost me as much as $5.00 to use them, I changed back to the default, free characters.

So, here is my own production of "The Future of Libraries, a pain in the..."

If you see nothing, just click somewhere down there anyway and it should play... or click here for the link to the xtranormal page...

Announcing the new Kindle 3D.

2010-07-15T20:58:00.002-04:00

The new 3D Kindle is slim and lightweight and a new 3D display makes reading a completely new experience.

Combined with the Kindle Glasses, the new 3D display will bring your reading to life!

The Kindle E-Ink technology gets an upgrade and the look of real paper now looks like real paper but really, really, really close. And really, really, really far away -- all at the same time!

And the Amazon Kindle 3D includes 3G networking.

3D! 3G! 3D! 3G! 3D! 3G! 3D! 3G!

Okay, I'm kidding. I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't sell this.

NERD ALERT.

2010-07-15T12:44:00.002-04:00

I guess you've seen this, "Improv Everywhere Brings “Star Wars” to NYC Subway."

Isn't it cool that Princess Leia is reading a book! An actual book. I mean, R2-D2 had a built-in ereader device, I guess, since she stored plans in him. Maybe she had a whole series of Pirate Meets Princess ebooks stored there...

But here is an honest to goodness print book, Galactic Rebellion for DUMMIES.

FYI: GalaxyCat.org shows 5 copies of Galactic Rebellion for DUMMIES in the Alderaan Library System, but 3 of those have been marked MISSING/VAPORIZED and the remaining 2 copies on Delaya are checked out.

****

This has been a TEST of the Emergency NERD Broadcast System. The NERDS of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep NERDS informed in the event of a NERDmergency.

***

Star Wars events are coded RED on the NERD Advisory System.

Smithsonian Catalogue System (1850)

2010-07-14T20:02:00.002-04:00

Cool. The Internet Archive has a copy. For all you library scholars who want to read some early liberry history, for whatever good that would do, check it out; and it comes in Kindle!

I think it's cool that libraries had so few books that keeping an alphabetical catalog was actually desirable. At least according to this author. Remember, this is before Dewey and LC.

I wish I could remember if there was a publishing boom after the American Civil War...

from p. 14 of the Smithsonian Catalogue System (1850), with my thanks to Cornell University Library for keeping it safe this many years,

"If, however, it were possible to agree upon a system of classification, the attempt to carry it out would, in a work like that proposed, be fatal to uniformity. Where different men were applying the same system, their opinions would vary, with their varying intelligence and skill. This would lead to titter and irremediable confusion, and would eventually defeat all our plans.

Even were these objections obviated, the occurrence of fewer difficulties in constructing an alphabetical catalogue would still present a decisive argument in its favor. Even these are great. If increased, by an attempt at classification, they would soon lead to an abandonment of the work.

Another consideration of great weight is, that, in reprinting classified catalogues, and inserting additions, if the titles were kept in systematic order, the work of selecting those to be used, and of distributing them to their places, would have to be done by a person, who, besides being a practical printer, should be familiar with the bibliographical system adopted. This would be very expensive. Whereas, on the alphabetical plan, any printer could do the whole."

Wiener Wednesday: Montreal!

2010-07-14T17:55:00.002-04:00

Today's Winner is Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

I would like to confirm my ignorance of everything French by announcing the winner using my phony French accent:

Le weeneer eez Monetrayahl, Kebek, Canadah.

Wow. I don't think I fooled anyone. That is a terrible accent. Zut alors!

Marilyn Johnson: Ditto.

2010-07-13T22:58:00.002-04:00

"I hope you'll take a few minutes to read through this chatty Q&A with Marilyn Johnson, champion to librarians everywhere and super-author of This Book is Overdue!"

A Champion to Librarians Everywhere.

I totally agree.

The Quiet Librarian.

2010-07-13T18:35:00.002-04:00

I wanted to find the earliest reference I could find (with an easy search) about librarian stereotypes, like quiet, bookish, shushing, etc. and ended up finding some other stuff that made me glad I looked:

For example, there was a National Conference of Librarians. From the NYT, September 16, 1853.

"The tastes of Librarians were of too quiet a turn to enter upon long addresses and he [Professor C.C. Jewett, the Smithsonian Institution] hoped they would have a quiet, dignified, informal, social, genial conference together."

But in the same story, there's also some freaky crap about, "Too many bad books make their stealthy advances that need to tracked to their dens even as the pestilence that walketh in darkness needs to be hunted to its hiding place."

Yeah, hunting pestilence is pretty genial stuff.

And what's pretty cool is that this was before any standardized anything. Most libraries with smaller collections just arranged the book on the shelves in alphabetical order.

The President presented the members with some copies of the "Smithsonian Calalogue System," printed under his direction, requesting that they look it over, as he intended to make the system the subject of some remarks. The system embraces two plans:
1. A plan for stereotyping catalogues of libraries by separate titles, in uniform style,
2. A set of general rules, to be recommended for adoption by the different libraries of the United States, in the preparation of their catalogues.

I'd never even heard of the Smithsonian Catalogue System. Did it lose a fight with the Dewey Decimal Classification system?

Another goal of the convention was to create a

Library Manual, which shall embody the most important information:
1. The best organization of a Library Society, in regard to its officers, laws, funds, and general regulations
2. The best plans for Library edifices...
3. The most approved method for making out and printing library catalogues
4. The most desirable principle to be followed in the selection and purchase of books

And the most interesting find was that the Librarians at the Convention had their lunch choice of either baked chicken or vegetarian lasagna. Wow. That never changes.

From the Reading Eagle, Oct. 15, 1941, I learned that libraries have been, at times, loud:

You know how libraries are. About like church. Whisper loud and you get shushed by ten old gents reading movie fan magazines. Small wonder I started to call the cops when I heard fox trot music coming from our great main library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street a few nights back! Sacrilege! But when I poked in I found a dance going on in the sacred main hall-- a merry-making farewell to four library veterans, including Miss Anne Carroll Moore, long head of the library's work with children. It was a very nice party indeed. Next morning the big place was all dignity again.

And from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Sep 16, 1948, Librarians Must Know More Than How to Say "Shhh"

If most people were asked what qualifications are necessary for a librarian, probably most of them would say a soft voice with which to say "Shhh."

This story is about the Carnegie Library School with 24 students where the associate director said, "we could place five times that many" every year. Some of the students are men attracted by the new courses in science and technology. I don't have any idea what 1948 library technology might be. And I don't even have a joke.

From the San Jose News - Oct 26, 1943, I find that the librarian was already tired of shushing:

"We simply refuse to shush [the children] all the time, [Mrs. Gertrude Jansens, children's librarian] adds."

"Librarians today are utterly different from yesterday's bookworm."

Yesterday's?? So librarians have been fighting the stereotypical librarian image for over 60 years? So I'm guessing that people will always have that image regardless of my many eyebrow, lip and nipple piercings.

So how do these stereotypes persist? Are librarians, themselves, perpetuating this image? Is the uncool, unhip image something we maintain, by desire? If so, what is the goal?

Maybe we appreciate the stereotype because any advance we make in fashion will seem huge. Or maybe the pendulum swings regularly from librarian unhipness to hipness and it's an ongoing cycle, like caterpillar to butterfly.

Maybe it keeps us interesting. It keeps everyone guessing about us. If so, that's kinda cool.

Library Makes $0 on Ebook Sale.

2010-07-12T20:19:00.002-04:00

I really have nothing to add to that. I just wondered about book sales in the future when all the print books are gone. And since we can't resell ebooks, well... that was it... go back to what you were doing.

don't get me started with the cutesy headlines...

2010-07-12T11:01:00.002-04:00

So my news reader shows me this: "Check it out - or click it out - from New York Public Library"
by Christopher Schuetze, Sunday, July 11th 2010
...
but let me first say this: all you news sites that have started embedding hidden code when I copy/paste are really pissing me off.

I don't know if you visitors blog news, but these news sites now tack on all this extra code when you copy, like this,
Read more: htp://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2010/07/11/2010-07-11_check_it_out_or_click_it_out_from_library.html#icze0tQivHaeG

I understand that the aggregator link whores have driven you to this, but I'm just an honest, hard-working blogger; I'm not one of the thousands of blogger sites out there stealing your crap so they can sell ads. Look, I don't even have ads. Except for my contract with British Petroleum ("Our product is so awesome, we're giving it back to the ocean.").

It's bad enough that you hotlink to everything, so I can't even move my mouse three millimeters without activating some scripted popup. The particular NY Daily News story has 13 links including one for America. So I can click on that to see every story the paper has done on America???!!! That's super useful for my research.

But let me get back to the cutesy little headline, "Check it out - or click it out."

What the hell is that? Did the library come up with that gem?

Why "click it out"? Because you click the mouse to download the ebook? It hurts my brain to read that. What are you going to call it when the download goes to an iPhone? Tap it out? Pinch it out? Pinch it and spread it? Because I swear to God, if I hear some guy in the library just sitting there saying, "pinch it and spread it" over and over, I'm calling the cops. I don't care what he's downloading.

And here is a comment I don't understand:

"I would not have thought, 10 years ago, that I would be comfortable with reading digital books," said [Anne] Thornton [director of reference].

Aren't librarians supposed to be nerds? Well, it seems Anne is not nerd enuf.

Really? Not comfortable reading digital. I played over a dozen Infocom and other text adventures on my computer in 1980s, with my eyes swollen and red from not blinking for three hours straight and I traveled w or se or wandered through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Don't tell me that wasn't reading.

In a 1983 Washington Post article, employee Michael Dornbrook expressed a similar sentiment: “Dornbrook believes Infocom's games are ‘the beginning of a new art form,’ one that ‘could be a significant percentage of book reading 20 years from now'”
(Suplee, Curt. “Through the Zorking Glass.” Washington Post, December 22 1983, http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/post83.html)
source, http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/if-4.htm

So it's been more than 20 years. Who ever said that computer nerds were good at math.

the tortoise... and the tortoise

2010-07-11T23:31:00.002-04:00

I bought some of those animal-shaped silicone rubber band things that the kids are wearing. I have a rabbit and a turtle and I wear them at work for time-allocation and decision-making.

When someone wants me to do something, I put my hands behind my back and ask the person to pick an arm. And their selection decides how quickly the job gets done:

BUNNY: "Okay, I'll get right on it."

TURTLE: "Yeah, that's gonna take a while."

What they don't know is that I actually have 1 bunny and 2 turtles. And while my hands are behind my back, I slip off the bunny and replace it with the second turtle.

I just can't believe that they keep falling for it. "Oh, darn, you got the turtle. Again. See you in two months."

The Oldest What? in the Book.

2010-07-10T07:33:00.002-04:00

from "Libraries: the oldest trick in the book" by Amanda Simmons
for The Star-Ledger, NJ.com. Friday, July 09, 2010

Amanda writes, "Remember Napster, the ingenious file-sharing website that allowed users to freely access 'collections' of media? Today, online download sites like the re-envisioned Napster mostly function on a 'pay-to-play' basis, besides one bastion that preceded and outlasted Napster: your local library."

You can tell she's young. She doesn't seem to remember that Napster was a peer-to-peer file-sharing program that allowed users to make content available on the network for others to download.

Libraries don't use our members' content. Librarians are trained to select and purchase content and then make it available to almost anyone.

Also, Napster was ordered to stop sharing copyrighted material (thanks, Metallica), and got shut down.

You hear a phrase and it sounds like something that makes sense, yet it's completely wrong. But if you use it wrongly enough, then the meaning will change. And then anyone not familiar with the new meaning will just appear confused when they hear someone use it with the evolved meaning. But those people don't matter because they are old and will probably die soon anyway.

So in her mind, "the oldest trick in the book" is a good thing.

But a "Trick" is a distraction. Is a misdirection. Is a deception. A trick is a lie.

Does that apply to libraries?

My favorite "oldest trick in the book" is to point in a direction behind someone I wish to distract and say, "Look, the Hindenburg!" And if you know why that would distract someone, you are too old.

Ah, maybe Amanda isn't so young, as she adds, "In my book, the local library has become the one-stop shop for all things media: beach reads, pop songs and chick flicks alike. Best of all, it's both free and legal, unlike nearly all file-sharing websites that essentially offer the same goods."

So maybe she'll agree that the library isn't really the oldest "trick"?

In fact, the Uncyclopedia ("We dare you to cite us in your paper!") says that the oldest tricks are:

The Shoulder Tap; There's Something on Your Tunic; The Cheque is in the Mail; Pull My Finger; He Went That-A-Way and Ahomosezwut.

Ah, Pull My Finger, the real reason Cain beat the crap out of Abel; Abel would not give up on that trick and Cain was too stupid to keep from falling for it. I wish they would put that part back into The Bible. There just aren't enough fart jokes.

Hilary Duff is NOT a librarian...

2010-07-09T17:52:00.002-04:00

...or at least not like any librarian I've ever seen that wasn't portrayed on the screen by multi-talented actress, Jenna Jameson.

Starpulse says, Hilary Duff Is Hot In A Librarian Kind Of Way.

Is it the glasses? The bun? Because it for damn sure isn't the flip flops. That's an incident report just waiting to happen. Open-toed shoes on a librarian? What that hell are they thinking? There's big heavy books on them shelves!!

And the winner is: Elon, North Carolina.

2010-07-07T22:00:00.002-04:00

Oh, let the winner be Paris. Let it be Paris. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

I don't know about you, but when I see visits to my blog from certain cities, I get a little excited. Being stuck here at work and then finding that I got a visit from someone in Prague or Paris or Rome makes everything seem a little bit cooler. I can't explain why.

It's like playing the license plate game, but with IP addresses. I see Brooklyn, New York. I see Cincinnati, Ohio. I see Topeka, Kansas. I see Ann Arbor, Michigan. I see Elon, North Carolina.

Elon is today's winner. Elon, North Carolina.

Elon suffers the unfortunate aspect of being a town: their website says, "Welcome to the Town of Elon's official website."

Wait, did that say, "Welcome to the Town o' Felons official website"? Town O' Felons?

I'm sorry. I'm sure you're a great town and all, but that name... gets me giggly.

Minus the "E"

2010-07-06T16:46:00.002-04:00

Consider these questions:

What is the correct procedure for borrowing and reading a book from the library? Do I need a library card to get one?
I did it once a while ago, but I can't remember how. How are the books organized? Can I find them by author?
And what do I do after I have the book? How do I open it? Is it intuitive? How do I advance through it?
I'm also interested in bookmarking in case I stop reading for a while: will the book remember where I left off or is there something else I need to do?
And when I've finished with it, what do I do? Does it get returned immediately, or do I need to do something? Does the book just disappear when my time is up?

These all seem like legitimate questions with the "E" added. Remove it and you sound like an idiot.

So why does adding the "E" to the word "Book" suddenly make all these questions seem normal? E-book, normal questions. Regular book, crazy questions.

Really? 3, 4 and 5 seem normal to you with the word "book"? Where the hell do you work?

Want = Need.

2010-07-05T20:34:00.002-04:00

from "Libraries embrace new technology," by Jason Lea and Cassandra Shofar, News-Herald, Ohio.

Underlying these changes are two questions: What do people want from libraries and how should libraries remain relevant?

Libraries are trying to use technology to accommodate as many of their patrons' wants as possible, which is as it should be, [library director, Lynn] Hawkins said.

"Shame on us if we don't anticipate our patrons' needs," she said.

It's an interesting observation for how "wants" evolve into "needs." I want a mobile phone becomes I need a mobile phone. I want an iPad. I need an iPad. I want you to shut up. I need you to shut up.

In a society where practically every want is satisfied, everything becomes a need.

What does anyone really need? We used to answer that with "food and shelter and companionship." Now we need so much more. So I see this as a sign that society is on the edge of collapse.

Supplying for our patrons' needs is always a challenge. When we satisfy their wants only to create new needs, are we fulfilling the library's mission?

This is what happens in tight budget years. We look at all these needs and can't cut anything. We need those Nooks. We absolutely need that online conferencing. So we cut the Children's department staff. Or we shut down a branch.

I don't really have a point. I'm just thinking. Making a point would take too much time, and I'm doing laundry. I need to do laundry.

The "$10,000 book" got marked down.

2010-07-05T20:02:00.002-04:00

The "$10,000 book" is out. But for circumstances beyond my control, I had to price it at $2,999.99.

And again, this is my reasoning: since no one would buy my books for fifteen dollars, they might as well not buy them for then thousand dollars.

I really wanted to have a book published that would cost $10,000. I wanted to go to Amazon and find my ten thousand dollar book and shout, "Woo-hoo!" Because ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. Or so I thought.

But not so for a book on Amazon. I just did a search and found:

The case of the irate witness: A Perry Mason mystery, and other stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (Hardcover - 1973)
1 used from $55,364,960.99
Seller: Mr. Affordable

And then I see that there are hundreds of other books that are listed for millions of dollars. So pretty much everyone has one goof book on Amazon listed for thousands of dollars or more. And my dream of having one of the most expensive published books faded away.

So my third book, Librarianship: "THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL": a $2,999.99 book is listed for $2,999.99 and not $10,000. Because then it would have a different title, dummy.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. But as soon as I order a few copies for myself, I will hold a raffle and give a couple away.

But I am working on a fourth book, one that will be priced under $20. Because it seems unfair to anyone who doesn't want to buy any of my books, to not buy them simply because of price. To say, "Oh, the effing librarian isn't worth $2,999.99" isn't much of an argument. I want to give everyone the opportunity to not buy my books, not because they are cheap bastards, but because they think I suck.

The Time Traveling Comedian.

2010-07-04T00:40:00.002-04:00

I was listening to a CD by Pasquale Caputo, or Pat Cooper, a while ago. And since he recorded his albums in the 1960's, he was telling jokes about President Kennedy.

And it seemed so alien that someone could be riffing on such old topics. And then I thought how cool it would be if your comedy act was that you were a time-traveling comic and you would come out several times and do bits as if it was then and the jokes were still topical. It seems like it would be a great idea because the jokes would never seem old; you could write jokes about any subject and then just fit it into your period. Old jokes about computers, the Civil War, whatever, would become fresh again because you're just traveling through time, without any control over where or when you go. You quick-change your clothes, or better, like that naked guy in The Time Traveler's Wife, you show up on stage naked and then pretend to borrow some clothes. But then you tell jokes as if you just popped in from a different time.

Did anyone ever do this?

AS the 1970's hippie comic:
Nixon just got back from China, man. Far out. China, man. When you say "far out," this dude could dig it. You can't get farther out than China, man.

AS the late 1890's comic:
Our good President, Mr. Grover Cleveland, has set forth a plan of assimilation for the Chinese. When it was explained to the President what 'assimilation' meant, he remarked, "You mean that they won't come with a double-helping of potatoes and bread and butter?"

AS the 1980's comic:
Reagan. Cocaine. Reagan. Cocaine. Reagan. Cocaine. Disco Sucks.

AS the 2000's comic:
When Colin Powell first discussed Iraq with George W. Bush, that genius "Dubya" said, "I rack? You break!" And then he snorted a line of blue pool cue chalk.

I don't know. This sounds like it writes itself. I like the 1970's comic where you just say, "Right on" and "Far out" and everyone cracks up because they are stoned.

Duuuuude, I gott stop drinking and blogging.

Zombies: 15. Unicorns: 6.

2010-07-02T00:38:00.002-04:00

There's a book coming out in September called Zombies vs. Unicorns and I can't express my joy enough using the simple tools of this earthly body.

The closest I can come up with is to dance on my tippy-toes while cooking bacon and waffles and singing, "Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala."

This book asks the immortal question, "Which is better, the Zombie or the Unicorn?"

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

My heart says Unicorn, but my brain says Zombie.

All I can do to choose is to look at my life and count the number of blog posts where I've mentioned Zombies or Unicorns. And that score is:

Unicorns: 6.
Zombies: 15.

Damn. I wanted Unicorns to win.

Well, I can only hope that we get some help from Patience, the Fourth Unicorn of the Apocalypse to kick some zombie ass. Look, he's got flames coming out of his eyes!

Did you know that there were Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse? I didn't. The other three, according to Wikipedia, are Plenty, Peace and Love. I hear Dean Koontz keeps Peace in his basement.

And the Winner is: Exeter, New Hampshire. That's "Random."

2010-07-01T18:01:00.002-04:00

I don't know where the hell this came from, but some people keep using "random" to mean [fill in the blank].

I hear, "That's so random!" And I don't know if it's good or bad. It's like "sick," is it good or bad? "Dude, that's sick!"

From what I can tell, either just means, "I want to express some excitement or even disgust, but I grew up in front of a computer, so I don't comprehend social norms, so to avoid the faux pas of choosing wrongly, I will say something that I do not, nor anyone else, truly understand, but we will pretend we do to avoid disappointing our ancestors and the whole of humankind with our ignorance." At least, that's what I hear, anyway.

So to choose my random number number (number number?) I use Random.org where I can find the socially acceptable, although entirely unsatisfactory, definition of randomness. They use alien communications from space to generate randomness without realizing that those space fuckers are addicted to roulette and most of their "random" numbers have been falling between 1 and 36. Test it, I dare you.

Random.org promotes, "true randomness." Bullshit. If I input a range from 1-100 and click the randomizer button, my answer is always a number between 1-100, inclusive. I never get back a "P" or "kumquat" or "a portrait of Lyndon Baines Johnson" or "212." So, no, not random enough for me, Random dot org.

So I just got a "57" and not a "bowling ball", which makes today's winner Exeter, New Hampshire.

Congratulations, Exeter!

"Exeter." That sounds pretty snobbish. Is that one of those WASPy places filled with Buffys and Tads? Damn you, Exeter, and your manicured lawns and tennis pros. I bet you boast many Congressmen and judges from your fine city. But what evil lurks beneath, Exeter? Is your lacrosse team playing on the "up and up"? What? Oh, President Lincoln once traveled there to visit his son at school? Oh, that's different. I'm sure you're a fine place to live.

But wait, Dan Brown lives in Exeter? Author of The Da Vinci Code? The Da Vinci Code!!!!!!! Damn you to hell, Exeter!!!

Oh, well, we can't all be perfect.

Happy Canada Day! Yikes!

2010-07-01T09:50:00.002-04:00

I never knew it costs so much to be Canadian. I know about (aboot) books where the publisher might print "USA $24.99" and then "Canada $165.27" for that erroneous belief that Canadian money is made from ice.

But I just saw a story about all the taxes Canadians pay: HST, PST, GST, which I don't know what any of that is.

But they pay 13% tax on Internet access. How will Canada compete in the global race to grow fake fruits and vegetables if they can't afford Facebook?

And 13% on Cigarettes. Okay, I understand that. But they also pay 13% on Nicotine replacement products. So there's no tax advantage for quitting smoking?

13% to keep warm, to remove snow, to fix your home, to stay in a hotel, to ride in a cab, to camp, to join a gym, to learn to fight, the get pedicures, massages and haircuts...

The way that Canada is taxing its people, you might expect all Canadians to emigrate to America. Well, if you do, our national day of celebration for colony unification is only 3 days away from yours, so if you start celebrating early, nobody here will notice.

Happy Canada Day. And sorry.

The Rules of the Game.

2010-06-30T23:10:00.002-04:00

I've given up on ever becoming a writer. I wanted to be one all my life until I learned that it took work to be good at it. But with the help of the Internet, I have become one.

It used to be that one needed an agent to get noticed, a publisher to get distributed and a reviewer to become known. But the internet is the great equalizer.

I mean, how do you recognize a great book? Sure, you know now because someone taught you. But how would you recognize a great book if you'd never read one? What if you grew up reading crap? And that was all you knew? There would be no way to convince you that a great book was great.

I've seen this happen already with movies. You ask someone who's been raised on Saw or The Fast and the Furious or Pirates of the Caribbean to watch something like The Philadelphia Story or The Battleship Potemkin or Sunset Boulevard and see how bored they get. Like I can't get my girlfriend to watch 10 minutes of La Cage Aux Folles, but she watches The Birdcage every time it's on TV.

I don't mean that these movies are crap, but it's an impossible task to convince someone of something when there is no reason to believe. There is no longer a good reason to be a film snob. When I can put Armageddon in my Netflix queue right next to La Règle du Jeu, then how much of a snob can I be?

So what about reading? How many generations do we have left before no one has the desire to read a great book?

And worse, what happens when someone Googles for books and finds something written by the.effing.librarian? And then doesn't know enough to not read it? And then reads it first. And I become their writer of choice, their Armageddon?

There will come a time when no one knows what's good because the internet doesn't have any reason to tell them. The internet doesn't care. We will watch clips of babies dancing and think they are great. We will read some downloaded book because it had good comments on Amazon.

And you might think that's sad, but you will be gone. I don't think this will happen in your lifetime, but soon after, when no one remembers. I guess people will still read the great religious books, including the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an, but only after someone add vampires. Sparkly, sexy vampires.

Embarrassment Wednesday.

2010-06-30T19:03:00.002-04:00

On "Embarrassment Wednesdays," I will post something for which I truly feel embarrassment. Today it's my library school at FSU.

In a ceremony attended by the avatars of six students, the first virtual graduation of The Florida State University took place online on Saturday, May 1, in Second Life.

"'It really brought forth the reality of graduation for me since I was not able to attend in person,' Linda Vosburgh said."

You mean "the virtual reality of graduation," don't you [pig snort laughter]. Because real reality is, aw, crap, I don't even know anymore.

But here, for your (and my) Wednesday Embarrassment, is the video:

check out these time markers,
mark 0:20: is this Hogwarts? Up, broom. UP BROOM! Harry looks like he's hopping instead of flying.

mark 0:27: is that Patrick Henry or some other historic American sporting that tricorne hat?

mark 6:21: "Will the candidates ... please put your pants on. Just because your avatar is clothed, that doesn't mean you can sit there at home jiggling your mouse, au naturel."

mark 6:47: wtf? was that Superman?

mark 8:30: surface to air missiles? you can't hurt Superman with those. (except for those green kryptonite ones.)

Okay. I'm kidding about the embarrassment. Congratulations, MLIS graduates. You can file a claim for unemployment benefits at, https://www2.myflorida.com/fluid/. Hurry up, I just put some political science graduates on the computers ahead of you.

Carry One.

2010-06-29T17:37:00.002-04:00

So I saw this on LISNews today,

and that inspired me to make this... okay? not okay?

Thanks, Fox News! ...Not.

2010-06-29T11:37:00.002-04:00

Here is what I wake to in my newsthingie today:

Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?
By Anna Davlantes, FOX Chicago News
Libraries: Luxury Or Lifeline?
MYFOXNY.COM
Cities and towns toy with removing libraries to save money
FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com

Did all the "reporters" at Fox News just all text each other and say, Hey, let's write some crap about libraries today. Really? Like what? I don't know; just Google 'library' and we'll write about that.

Fox Boston says, "We took to Twitter and Facebook to get your opinion." Yeah, thanks, Fox. Nothing like a 140-character tweet to fulfill your research requirements.

Here is a recent twitter looky for "libraries":
@jimbrayfan: Well we we need 16 million.. sooo I'm thinking layoffs. But if Libraries are open 5 days, who the hell will be left to staff them?
@MLA_gov: BBC Today programme: Modern libraries not just about books. http://bit.ly/djZuV1

There's all your research, Fox. Libraries are broke are are learning to deal with no money while providing access and support for the latest gadgets.

There. I have just done your job for you. You're not welcome.

Great. Another Day with my Glock in my Crotch.

2010-06-29T07:42:00.002-04:00

Some assholes in Hawaii are going to get me killed. Well, not me, but probably you.

Check this headline: "Library book sale brings in an estimated $200,000."

More than 20,000 people made their way through the doors of the McKinley High School cafeteria during the Friends of the Library of Hawaii's 63rd annual book sale, which ended its 10-day run on Sunday.

Listen Hawaii: WE DO NOT NEED YOU TELLING EVERY SCUMBAG IN THE WORLD THAT LIBRARIES KEEP STACKS OF MONEY BEHIND THE COUNTER.

And REALLY? The McKinley High School cafeteria? Who was guarding all this money, "lunch lady Doris"? Or Sherman the Cafeteria Monitor? Did you cleverly hide the money under a rapidly thawing sack of tater tots?

The book sale -- a fundraiser to support public libraries and literacy programs across the state -- brought in an estimated $200,000 from the sale of nearly 150,000 books collected by the Friends over the past year.

The "Friends"? You're telling everyone the Friends have $200,000??! Have you seen the library Friends? They're the oldest people in town. They're ancient. They're one hot day away from becoming dust. (thank you. joke copyright 2010, the.effing.librarian, and every other comic you've ever heard at an open mike night.)

This is not the news you want to spread. This is BAD publicity.

It's bad enough when someone has to watch my back when I clear a "quarter jam" in the copier and all can see that there's a wad of singles stuffed in the bill changer. Now I have to watch out for Alan Rickman and his criminal ballet troupe in case their latest heist targets the collection box full of Canadian pennies over by the used book shelf. Sorry, Snape, no bearer bonds here.

So, please, news sources of the world, do not tell people that libraries have money. We have books and story time finger plays and free internet. That's all you're allowed to say.

Everybody sucks. But Walter Hunt sucks most.

2010-06-28T07:13:00.002-04:00

From, "‘School Sucks Project' inserts message in libraries' books" by Dave Choate, June 24, 2010 4:25 PM.

Cathleen Beaudoin, director of The Dover Public Library reported that "over 5,000 bookmarks” from the School Sucks Project and Freedomain Radio were inserted into the books in her library and that it took over 30 hours of staff time to remove them all.

In the United States of America, anyone can become part of the government so long as they meet the requirements of the office. So when I hear that there are groups in America where the members are opposed to government of any form (School Sucks pushes for an end to "public, government-funded education"), where government sucks, then I have to wonder who their members are. Because if government sucks, and most anyone can be elected to government, then I would have to guess these groups believe that we all suck already.

Unless there's some demarcation line where the sucking starts. If government sucks, then do I suck when I decide to run for office or am I cool until I win the seat? If the voting is happening and it's 6:00 and and I'm slightly ahead of my opponent, yet there's still a chance she could win, have I crossed over into sucking? Or do I have to win? Or do I have to be sworn in?

In some jurisdictions it's only convicted felons who can't become part of government by holding a seat in public office, so are felons the only Americans who don't suck?

So I'm still not sure who these groups are against. Literally, we have a government of, for, and by "the people." So we must all suck all the time.

But about the bookmarks:

“It's not that we object to the content of the bookmark. Everybody has a right to believe in whatever they want to believe in,” Beaudoin said. “We do have a specific policy that prohibits [leaving bookmarks in library books].”

The policy is that you can express your beliefs in the library, so long as it's not expressed through bookmarks:

Beaudoin said the issue is not what was written on the bookmarks, and she added had the groups approached the library to put up a poster or pamphlets promoting meetings and the like, the library likely would have granted approval. The manner in which it was done, and the possibility that the philosophies espoused would be linked to the library itself, is what forced the removal of the thousands and hundreds in Portsmouth, Beaudoin and List said.

So you can put a sign in the library espousing beliefs the library does not support, but once that opinion gets inserted into a book, the library users, um, get confused? Like they believe now that the library supports all the ideas found in all the library books? Are my library patrons going to attack me with, "Hey, in the book, the killer murdered a child, why do you want to murder children, librarian?" And I'll have to tell him that we don't want to murder children, unless he reads it on a bookmark.

Why not just say that the bookmarks could damage the books? If every guy with a car wash business and every lawyer and tax preparer and tarot reader and strip-o-grammer and wedding planner and auto salvager and gator trapper all left bookmarks in the books, then that could damage the binding.

That's what's so crazy about creating policy; you have to target behavior without hurting anyone's feelings. You can't have a policy that says, "No Drunks Allowed." Because then you label someone as a Drunk and that could hurt his feelings. You have to say, "No Public Intoxication" which is the same thing, but then the Drunks can't sue you. Because targeting the good people from the fine nation of Drunkylvania is just racist.

So remember, crazy people of America, you can use the library as your own personal thumping tub if you:

a) ask the librarian if you can hang your sign in the designated place of kookiness with all the other kooks,
b) don't try to stuff 5,000 bookmarks in the library books unless you print your message on something that the librarian will find amusing, like a fake wedding photo or fake $10,000 check or a real slice of liverwurst,
c) wear your political opinions on your clothing. If you ask the librarian to post your sign, but she refuses, then remember to ask her for a safety pin. When she gives you one, just pin your sign to your shirt. Now it becomes a free speech issue. Remember, attaching your message to library property and it's a policy issue; attach the message to yourself and it's Free Speech issue which the library can't fight.

There is no sight more devastating to the librarian than the sight of a safety pin being brought out to pin the poster or pamphlet which has been denied library space to the supporter's clothing.

Damn you, Walter Hunt, inventor of the safety pin! the library would say because she looked it up. ...Yeah, I know you've been wondering all through this post who that guy is...

Teen blogger raises library shit storm on LGBT books

2010-06-27T09:06:00.002-04:00

When I first read this story, I said, Gay Teen, Shmay-Teen. I was pissed that this kid was whining about his school librarian and that he did nothing to fix the problem. Except complain. And anyone who complains without contributing to a solution is a waste of my time.

So as a complainer, I don't give a crap about the "gay teen" because he couldn't find any book with LGBT characters in his school library. But I care that the librarian told him those books were "inappropriate" because it was a stupid thing to say, especially today, when anyone can make a Facebook page to harass your ass back into the stone age.

The librarian didn't handle it right, and I have my own solution down at the bottom.

I am not a librarian in a Middle School. And I don't even know what middle school is, but Brent, the former middle school student, who, and get this, has been labeled "Gay Teen" in pretty much every news story, even though he does have an actual name, is a gay teen. It makes me think that the next headline about President Obama will read, Black Man Angry at Big Oil.

But I remember being an 8th-grader and wondering if I might be gay. Seriously. No girls liked me and I wondered if any ever would. And so I thought, What if I'm gay? And I looked around at my classmates and got really sad because all the guys in my class were UGLY. Which meant I wasn't attracted to any of them, so problem solved.

So I don't know what a typical middle school library buying policy is or what their budget might be.

But I am a librarian in a public library. So I know a little about that. Now HERE IS THE BIG QUESTION YOU HAVE GOT TO ASK YOURSELF:

What is the role of MY library? And this has nothing to do with LGBT books. Although this was the case for Brent.

Is there demand for these books? How can I anticipate demand when all I have is one kid who requested some genre books? I don't even know about this subject, so where I do start?

One answer is, "It's the librarian's job to find out which books the library should get." Okay, but if someone came into my library and asked for Mexican Romance Novels, I would answer truthfully and say, "I don't know what this." Are they romances set in Mexico, or with Mexican characters or in Spanish or in English or American romance novels translated into Spanish or novelizations of Latin "telenovelas" or what? And if a computer search didn't help, I would ask the patron for some authors so I could search better. Because at that point, I need an expert, and it ain't me.

Getting back to Brent, his librarian didn't do that with him. She may have done it a half hour later when she asked another adult about it, but Brent left the library a little pissed off. And again, I am not a middle school librarian and I don't know any middle school aged kids, so I don't know just how likely it is that 14-year-olds already know they are gay and that it would be in the school library's interest to carry books on that subject.

If a school carries, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret., they could probably carry, Are You There, Rock Hudson? It's Me, Brent. (sorry, is that in bad taste? fuck you.)

But if the answer is "very likely" or even "pretty likely" that there is demand, then middle school libraries need to rethink what is "inappropriate" for their students to read.

I'd like to imagine that this would be how I would have responded to Brent.

BRENT: "I'm looking for some books with lesbian or gay characters."

ME: "Dude, you got me. Which books are you looking for? You think I read this crap? I just shelve what they send me. I wouldn't know if there was a gay character in any of these books. What about that guy who wears all that black leather? No, that's Batman. Name some authors and let me see what I can find."

[after a fruitless search - I won't even acknowledge whether there might be a pun there]

ME: Look, kid. This is a school library, in middle school. It's hard enough for adults to accept that there are gay kids in high school, do you think the school board really wants to piss off the parents by having gay-themed books in the 6th and 7th grade collection? But if you can prove to me that there's a need, that there are other kids who would read these books and check them out from here, then I will order them and if anyone wants to know why, I will tell them that there's a need. Okay?

Now, in a different article, Brent says, "A librarian isn't going to buy a book for a small group of students. They want books that'll appeal to a lot of people."

So he understands our situation. So don't be so hard on the librarian who denied his request because the books were "inappropriate." You've seen the stories about school libraries and parents. We don't know how much shit this librarian may have dealt with already regarding what's appropriate for kids in her school.

But yeah, if your middle school library carries books about gangs and drugs, but you tell a kid that his request for a gay character book is inappropriate, then maybe the appropriate thing to do is to call for the National Guard because that school is totally fucked up.

Silent Library: Why hadn't any of you told me about this?

2010-06-25T20:21:00.002-04:00

I didn't know there was a Japanese then American game show where people had to perform idiotic stunts in a library while keeping quiet. Holy crap, this is awesome.

Except that the "librarian" judge looks like a schmuck.

Silent Library - MTV Shows

truth.

2010-06-24T00:55:00.002-04:00

I couldn't make up my mind between "in" and "of"...

30. Set. Match.

2010-06-23T20:43:00.002-04:00

And this is 30!

I was supposed to write 30 posts in 30 days during June... and this is it... I am done.

Okay, this isn't really it, but I should get a break for finishing early. Or maybe I should just pick another winning city?

I know that some of you will argue (rightly) that a blog post referencing the completion of a goal is not to be counted in the goal itself. It's the old, "should a reference book indexing all the reference books in the world also index itself?" argument.

And the answer is No. The index (and this blog post) are not part of the set. But many of you will argue that the book should include itself in its index otherwise it is incomplete. And it's you people I'm counting on to let is slide and include this post as one of the 30.

And, no, I don't understand "set theory." I'm beautiful, not smart. And yes, you can be both, but I didn't know that when I just a tiny baby in Heaven and God asked. I said, "Beuful" because I was just a tiny baby and I couldn't speak yet. And besides, it sounded adorable when I said it. But this is number 30. And I am on break.

And since you're making me do it, today's random winner is Salisbury, Maryland. Congratulations, Salisbury. I love your steak.

The Americans with Digital Disabilities Act.

2010-06-23T17:50:00.002-04:00

I don't have a superfast internet connection. I don't even have a "kinda fast" connection. Unless this is still 1997.

So I hate visiting web sites with splashy Flash-y front pages. Often, as they load, I move my mouse around to find the link I need to click on, or else I go into the bathroom and get ready for work and come back once everything loads. Or I just do it later at work.

I should probably start putting an "m-" in the address bar to try to access the mobile pages.

But Online is now becoming a requirement for being a world citizen.

We have people come into the library every day after being told on the phone to do what they need online. And often by a live person. So this patron manages to circumvent all the usual telephony hurdles, the pressing of 1 or 0, until he actually gets to a live human being, and then he is told to go and do it online.

"But you're a person; can't you help me?" the man pleads.

And the person agrees, "Yes, I am only a person. But you need the help of a computer."

So he makes his way to the library. And not just him, but hordes of others make the monthly pilgrimage to queue up for a library computer so they can pay their bills or make appointments or request some financial assistance from the State.

But luckily we have, I think, a T3 and a couple T1 connections. But I'm not sure. I just know that I can download a 100 MB file in about 6 minutes. But that's just our side.

But many of these people are attempting to apply for benefits and all at the same time, so the host serving the application forms suffers greatly and some of them go away blaming the library for their inability to get some free shit. Some of them probably don't deserve free shit, but that's another story.

But the point is that many Americans suffer from a Digital Disability. For whatever reason, we are unable to move about freely online. We don't like to use the word, but we have a handicap.

So what is the government going to do for us? Sure, we're otherwise healthy and we can move around fairly effortlessly in the real world, but online, we need special accommodations.

Sure, you think this is an absurd subject when there are real people just trying to get from the bed to the wheelchair, or trying to get in and out of the grocery store without having to go hundreds of feet out of their way to find an access ramp or a decent parking place.

But I look towards the future. Twenty years ago, we would have called the cops on someone who had a handicapped parking decal and wasn't in a wheelchair. But now we get parking perks because we tire easily when we walk. Everything has become a disablity, why not my insane proposition?

You come back here in twenty years and see if I was right.

I'm "viewing content." Right.

2010-06-23T05:51:00.002-04:00

So again, thanks to links on Twitter, I have been wasting my life looking at crap. Oh, wait, "viewing content." Because thanks to this handy graphic, I can see that all the time we humans waste online can be divided into one of three broad life-wasting categories: Social Networking, Viewing Content, and Other.

But thank you, all you people who give me more crap to look at. Yes, much of it is pretty darn useful, but hell, I got work to do and English muffins to butter and socks to put on then take off again and put on the other foot when I see that the hole is right over my big toe.

But if these researchers can sum up our entire online existence and park it under three vaguely differing categories, then I might as well come up with my own. And since I can do it better than some researchers, I've broken all the time spent online into two categories (mine is on the left):

Chicks dig guys who sell comics.

2010-06-22T22:01:00.002-04:00

Jennifer de Guzman has a problem. And it's not what she thinks it is. Jennifer's problem is that she's from another planet.

She wonders why women and girls feel "uncomfortable in comic stores. They were stared at, talked down to, and generally treated without respect."

Um, because comic books stores are run by comic book guys. These are aging boys and social outcasts. Yes, that's a stereotype, but even I've been in enough comic book stores to have met my share of surly fanboys who denigrate all forms of intellectual pursuits that do not include a superchick or superdude with heat-vision or adamantium incisors and wrapped in colorful spandex.

This is their world. They are the kings. And we, even though we are there to spend money and keep them in business, are nothing. Less than nothing.

Jennifer asks, "Why are so many direct market comics shops still female unfriendly?" Seriously? Because they are run by dorks. You enter the misfit überden and you expect the Algonquin Round Table?

And don't get me started on your female run comic shop world, "I doubt that my comics shop horror story would have happened in a store where women work or a store that a woman owns, and where it's expected that all customers be treated respectfully."

Yeah, until a man walks in the front door. Try being the lone dude in a store run by two women. I've had college "women" come down on me like a sack of bricks because I approached her for help. Her eyes narrowed and I could almost hear her brainwork something like, "Oh, you think you can have me because you're Gaia's gift to womyn? Well you can't have me because I am strength and power and I make the earth tremble, and you and your phallofascist world will just need to deal with me."

And I said, "Did you just think something really hard because this vein just popped out of your forehead. Do you need a doctor? I was just wondering where you keep Strangers in Paradise."

And yes, of course I'm kidding. Women love me. To death.

So look, if some loser finally saves up enough dough to realize his dream of running a comic book store, why crap all over him if he gets a little excited with a chick wanders in once a month for new comics? He'll argue with his best friend for the next 29 days about that hot chick who came in that one Tuesday and asked for the first Scott Pilgrim and maybe she'll be in again because it's been almost a month. And his friend will say, "Remember what you said when she came in? 'Sure, you can start with volume one, but volume four is when the story really breaks out.' And remember what she said? She said she read them all but she loaned volume one to a friend who lost it. And then you said, 'Only losers lose borrowed books.' And she nodded. She nodded like you were having a conversation. Man, she was hot. She was Barbara Gordon hot. She was Mary Jane Watson hot."

Oh, sorry, what the hell was I saying? That scene hit a little too close to home.

And speaking of Strangers in Paradise, I should get one of these shirts or maybe the coffee mug. God bless Terry Moore.

Today's winner is Mississauga, Ontario, Canada!

2010-06-22T17:35:00.002-04:00

Mississauga is the winner. Other cities of the world, you did not win. There's no reason to suspect fraud other than my bringing it up. Why would I say there was no fraud involved in the selection unless something was wrong? Okay, there was fraud. The United States was disqualified. Pennsylvania drew a red card on that last play. It was a bad call and we admit it, but what can you do? (We're FIFA.)

So please join us in congratulating Mississauga on being the winner in this totally fair selection.

And join Mississauga in celebrating Canada Day on July 1. Eva Avila will perform live, and there will be entertainment from the Slam Jam Air and Extreme Trampoline Show. Don't miss it!

I fear the "unconscious" internet.

2010-06-22T11:34:00.002-04:00

So I'm reading this article in The Observer (which is a supplement to The Guardian, I guess) by John Naughton, "The internet: Everything you ever need to know" where he asks us to,

"imagine what it would be like if, one day, you suddenly found yourself unable to book flights, transfer funds from your bank account, check bus timetables, send email, search Google, call your family using Skype, buy music from Apple or books from Amazon, buy or sell stuff on eBay, watch clips on YouTube or BBC programmes on the iPlayer – or do the 1,001 other things that have become as natural as breathing."

Ah, breathing.

Every other activity he mentions if a conscious one, but breathing is not. Breathing happens whether we want to or not. Hold your breath, pass out, resume breathing. You can't help it. Our bodies need air.

But immediately I start thinking of the "unconscious internet" where common tasks, like making a phone call are dependent on the internet for the connection. And the computer in my car, what if the computer can't perform some required update from the satellite and refuses to start, or worse, shuts off on a busy highway?

Are more essential tasks being transferred to the internet? Is my surgery paperwork that's flying through the hospital wireless network going to get to the operating room in time to keep the surgeon from giving me that appendectomy when all I wanted was a nice pair of D-cups? Not if you could see me now, it didn't. I'm in love with these puppies.

But is the electrical grid totally dependent on an internet connection? Our fuel supply? Our food and water supply? If the internet went down for 2 days, would it become complete chaos?

In that Die Hard 4 movie, the hacker kid talked about how some essential systems still require local access to disrupt them: but for how much longer? With bandwidth becoming more widespread, what is the temptation to move these local systems controls online for remote access and control?

I think some of this may have been discussed in Daniel Suarez's "Bot-Mediated Reality" presentation where the bots we create beget new bots which may not follow the programmed intent of the original bots.

There is the conscious internet where Facebook users protest, hackers control hordes of zombie computers, and your mom downloads Eminem's latest, but what about the unconscious one? Is it real? And if it's real, should I be worried?

Or am I just imaging this? Please tell me I am and that I shouldn't worry. But tell me by looking into my eyes... Hey, hey, up here fella. Quit staring at those.

The card catalog: "I'm back. baby!"

2010-06-22T01:11:00.002-04:00

I half-assed read something the other day that had me wondering. It was just a simple tweet by some twittererer about teaching kids intelligent tagging, and that's all it was, just a mention of some teacher attempting to get kids to think. But the twittererer included some additional observation, although with only 140 characters to play with, I now can't remember what it was.

But (yes, I'm still looking as I type this for the tweet) it was something about teaching kids to write for the internet and how tagging will become more and more important.

And it made me think that the future of the internet was moving away from keyword and full text toward an index of useful (and standardized) terms. And that these kids would need to learn these terms if they wanted to succeed in the online world, to have their data found through their mastery of metadata.

And my first thought was, Holy Shit, this is some librarian plot to bring back the card(less) catalog.

And that's exactly what it is.

Okay, a little librarian magic and I just found the original article, "teaching students how to create meaningful tags" (Written on May 13th, 2009), but not the original tweet.

What this teacher did was have his students write something then put it into Wordle to find the terms with the highest frequency of use then pull them out and add them to the main subjects and use those for tags. The Wordle generated image worked for him as both a visual tool and as something fun for the kids to do. Pretty simple.

But then I wondered if kids begin to learn which tags are used most often, will they begin to rely on them so much that their actual vocabularies decrease to just the 4,200 words they only really need to communicate?

And that was the seed for this post. "Will tagging make kids dumb?" I don't know. I assume everything makes kids dumb: video games, SpongeBob, lithium batteries, hand puppets, random number generators, novelty wristbands, safety scissors, 100 percent cotton t-shirts and spoons, all contribute to making kids dumb, in my opinion. Rock 'n Roll music and drugs make them happy, not dumb....................... anyway....

But getting back to the card catalog. Isn't one of the goals of the, and no, I'm not going to say "semantic web" and you can't make me. Isn't one of the goals of that to create a card catalog without the cards?

In fact, speaking of the smmnttwb (which I am not saying because I am not a library nerd), I think that there is an intelligent web out there already but we can't see it. It's been built for all the scientists, but they're not telling us about it. You want proof? Who is the smartest person on Twitter? Come on, think. The answer is nobody. There are no smart people on Twitter.

But those scientists over at CERN have the LHC cranked up full blast to run holographic web browsers with email and chat in 3-dimensional real time where each message has particle mass that alters the physical environment. Think, "good sandwich" and everyone gets a taste. Oh, yeah, these nerds just "think" stuff and that collider makes it happen.

But still, I think the card catalog will make its comeback one day. When keyword searching merges with an authority index so the more useful tags automatically replace weaker ones, then we will evolve from the chaotic tagging of LibraryThing.

Here is our friend Benjamin Franklin (see above image) tagged on LibraryThing:

18th century (98) america (43) american (62) american history (198)
american literature (49) American Revolution (51) autobiography (510) Benjamin
Franklin (141) biography (515) classic (41) classics (52) colonial (29) colonial
america (16) easton press (21) essays (23) founding fathers (49) Franklin (56)
history (356) literature (44) memoir (105) non-fiction (274) paperback (18)
philadelphia (20) philosophy (18) politics (43) read (47) tbr (20) unread (44)
US History (50) usa (42)

Take the most used tags and you get, history, autobiography, biography, non-fiction, American history, Benjamin Franklin, memoir.

Refine those "like" terms and you end up with Benjamin Franklin, American history, biography.
And what does that beaten, maligned, obsolete catalog card say?

Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790.
Statesmen --United States --Biography.

So don't be surprised if the card catalog comes back some day. Although, if we try to catalog the internet, those cabinets are gonna be freaking huge.

(oh, and the card generator is at http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/ )

The Ballad of the Ten Thousand Dollar Book.

2010-06-20T05:46:00.002-04:00

As some of you who know me know, I love pedicures. I love have strangers touch my (size 11) feet. And I'm not above touching strange feet in the library if I'm sure that the kindness will be reciprocated and that my little piggies will get some attention.

Yeah, sorry. I don't know what the hell that was about. I would never think of touching anyone's feet in the library. But ask why I'm not allowed into the Home Depot, and that's a different story entirely.

But anyway, I wanted to tell you about my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK. So far, I've compiled two books from posts on this blog and they are for sale on Amazon for $1,000 each. I don't think many people believe that they are real books, but they are. I have copies right here. But since you are cheap bastards, you'll just have to take my word for it.

I publish with CreatSpace, which is an Amazon company. Just like with this Blogger site, I like to keep things under larger companies. I seem to get some perks from posting this crap with a Google company, as my stuff gets crawled pretty frequently and I'm easy to find with a quick search. I see that "the.effing.librarian" returns "About 93,900 results" with Google. But on Bing, I only get "1,050 results." I'm sure the Bing number is more realistic, but which one do you think I'll invite to my parties? Oh, Google, you flatterer. I don't believe a word you say about 93,000 hits. Tee-hee-hee. Now, let's get comfy so you can rub my feet.

So Amazon also offers perks. When I publish on CreateSpace, (after a few days) my book appears on Amazon for sale. And then millions of potential buyers can ignore it and buy something from Thomas Pynchon or Brett Michaels.

I also publish painlessly. Here is the process for the latest, my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK:

I copy and paste blog posts into Word and add some additional commentary and footnotes.
I have the HILARIOUS IDEA to charge TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for the book. I know from experience that you won't buy copies at even twenty dollars, so I figure if you won't buy for twenty, then why not charge ten thousand, or a million? It doesn't matter to me; it's print on demand and it costs me virtually nothing to do it. And if it seems too stupid for even me, I can change the price anytime I want.
I save the book as a PDF.
I fill in the form with the information for the book. I can't make up my mind on the title, but I know I want "$10,000" somewhere in it.
I upload the PDF.
I open the CreateSpace book cover maker (beta) and begin making the cover. I designed the covers for the first two blog books ("blobogoks") and it was such a pain in the ass, that I don't want to do it anymore. I go through the steps: select template design, check. Upload image, fuck.
It seems that there's some problem between my local image editing program and CreateSpace. My software says my images are the required 300 dpi, but when I upload, CreateSpace says they are some odd configuration that I don't understand. So I try again, 8 times until I get it right. I scale the image, check the settings, save then upload and wait for the "green circle" to tell me the image has been accepted into the cover creator. I have the HILARIOUS idea to place an image of a TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BILL on the cover... because this is a TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK.
The image is accepted, but now I want to see how it looks on different cover designs, so I go through most of them until I find one that looks somewhat stupidish, but not unbelievably stupid, just stupid enough.
I enter the text for the back cover. It's not funny. So I try again. The last two books were easy because creating the covers from scratch took so damn long, I had time to think about what to write. This time is so fast, I hadn't prepared anything. So I enter something. Then I panic at the thought of typos. This text box doesn't look like it has a spell-check and copy the text into Word to see if I have mistakes. When it looks okay, I copy it back.
Now I can choose colors for the cover. And this is where I fail. I can't find any colors I like. So I try to find colors I don't like. And I'm successful. The cover is hot purple and lime green. Okay, I lied. I love those colors.
I go to the page where I enter the proposed book price and I enter "$10,000." And huge red letters appear to inform me that my number has exceeded the maximum price of "$2,999.99." I can't set whatever price I want? FUCK. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.
So I go back and start again. Which is good because I notice that I left a "," (comma) in the title that shouldn't be there (or should be there, but doesn't look right within the cover design), so I change it. I also change my name because I had "the.effing" as my first name and "librarian" as my last, and that looked wrong with the missing ".", so I enter "the.effing.librarian" as the last name with no first name. I think the other two books have some odd separation of first and last name, so I don't know how Amazon will group these after I submit, but I don't really care that much.
And I need to edit my image. So I take the "$10,000" bill and cover the numbers with the new "2,999.99" number. Which doesn't look like crap. I was going to leave it all alone and just never explain why a ten thousand dollar book costs two-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine dollars. I'd just leave that to you to ponder.
Oh, and I need to got back and change all references to "$10,000" in the book also. And resave and reupload the PDF.
So then I had a manuscript, a cover and a price. And I clicked "submit" to have CreateSpace check the book for printing errors and then tell me if it's okay for publishing. The book has lots of images from posters and things from the blog and I think I saved them to the correct dpi, but since I don't really know how this shit works, I might have to do them again and resubmit the PDF several more times before it's accepted. But then my book will be finished.
Apart from the actual typing, about 3 hours for all this other crap. Not too bad for a finished book. I imagine that an intelligent person would bang this out in about 45 minutes.

So my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK is now a TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLAR BOOK. And this was its story.

And if you buy one, I will be very very embarrassed for you.

But if you win one, you will be awesome! Yes, when I get a few copies printed, I will give away two copies because that is all I can afford in postage. And it's only for winners with mailing addresses in the United States. So if you non-Americans want to play, begin looking for a friend here in the States who will let you use his address and then you can get the book sometime later when you go to Disneyland or something.

Information Informant.

2010-06-18T08:15:00.002-04:00

I want to start going to work dressed as Huggy Bear. When anyone wanted help, he would have to say,

"Hey, Huggy Bear, what can you tell me about _____ ?"

And I'd rub the tip of my nose with my thumb and look around to make sure no one was snooping in and say, "The word on the street is.... "

And when I told him what he wanted, I'd get twenty bucks.

Competition as a Motivator.

2010-06-17T11:43:00.002-04:00

Competition is natural. It is the most natural thing in this universe. I wasn't paying attention when it was taught in school, but I think all physical objects compete for physical space.

I suspect that librarians won't admit to enjoying competition. Or maybe they only admit to promoting friendly competition during "game night" at the library. And they smile to themselves because they are unaware that the little group of old ladies who come every week have a $500 pot going on who can hit the most bullseyes on Wii Darts. Friendly competition still pits one against the other; it just sounds friendlier.

I wrote a fake story about game night competition here.

That's probably why kids don't participate in the awards program for the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Because it's a competition. And parents don't like when their kids lose. Although I'd read somewhere that it was because President Ford tried to submit an award requirement for "Tripping." But when I was in elementary school, we used to win badges we could sew onto our school sweaters. I felt like crap because I never got one. Our coach made us do 1,000 sit-ups (yes, that's 991 more than I can do right now) one day and I'm hoping that was for a badge an not because he was a former Nazi.

But we promote competition every day. We loan books and we give them due dates. This means that we force slower readers to learn to read faster. We force them to compete against a time limit to finish that book.

Yes, we try to be fair: we extended the normal borrowing period for those last two Harry Potter's because it didn't seem fair to give a kid only two weeks to get through 750 pages. Otherwise when asked about the events from Book 7, a kid might say, "I'm not sure. It was something about, VoldemortMinistryofMagicSnape Death Eatersdestruction Harry RonHermionequestVoldemort'sfourHorcruxes… but I can't remember because I had to read it so fast."

We have Summer Reading programs where our patrons compete for our limited supply of prizes. They read a few books and win a BOGO coupon for Rudy's Hoagie Palace. But every year those run out first. Because Rudy makes a damn good Hoagie.

We compete against ourselves, against past performance. I may run to beat a set time. Okay, not me because I wouldn't be caught dead running, but imagine a different person who runs. I (yes, imagine again a different person) may strive for better grades. I (different person) practice to get better at lots of things.

And getting "better" is just competition against one's self. There is nothing inherently wrong with competition. Without competition, the smarter, yet arguably less athletic sperm that tricked the quicker, stupider sperm by shouting, "Go back! It's just a Victoria's Secret catalog," could not have produced us, the librarians.

Yet, we look on competition negatively. Our library departments compete for funds against the police or fire departments. We compete for money from the book and supply budgets. We compete for meeting room space. Competition sucks when resources are slim. Competition is only fun when there's an open bar.

But think about how different things compete for your time. I continually ask, "Is this worth my time?"

Or think about how you promote library programs when you begin to make that flyer and wonder, "How do I convince them that it's worth their time? I'll add more clip art!"

So let's just pretend that Competition is a natural motivator in that we compete for space, time and money. It is not artificial. So how can we use this to our benefit. And remember, we've already done this in the library by offering shorter loan periods for high-demand materials or by awarding a prize to a "winner." This is competition.

The example from the "motivation video" in the last post says that organizations need to provide more purposeful autonomy. We need to give the freedom to create without (too many) conditions.

The video dude calls this freedom, but I say it's still competition. We compete against our reputations and against our abilities. When we have this freedom, we ask the question, "How is the best way to use my skills during this free time?"

And because what you produce will be seen by everyone, you're not going to use that time updating your Twitter background.

So what would you do in your library? What could you bring to your boss to convince her that giving you more freedom is a good thing? What ideas for change do you have?

Now, again, I think this is an awesome idea. As the boss, I will give you complete freedom to do whatever you want during one work day. And whatever you do will remain in play for one month. And next month, we'll do it again. And the only form of competition you need to overcome is your own satisfaction that you did a good job.

Here is the example: You do what you want on Friday. You can change a display or put all the science fiction in the front of the library. But you can't leave a mess. You need to get this thing done during the one day. Or you can put up a poster or find a place for the new library cat litter box or whatever. You can wrap all the mysteries in brown paper and put them on a shelf called "Mystery Mysteries."

But if it doesn't work; if people say it sucks, you need to be open enough to acknowledge that and slink away with your tail between your legs. But if people like it, you get the satisfaction of knowing that your idea worked.

Now should we credit these ideas? Like in the store where you see a shelf that says, "Staff Picks" and each associate has a book or movie next to his name? If you suck, everyone will know.

I believe this is competition. It's competition for your time. It's competition between what you do every day and what you feel you should be doing. It's competition against perceived (or real) limitations.

Because (hopefully) you will do a good job. And all your coworkers will also do good jobs. Because this is for as many people as I can get involved.

There is no money for your idea and you need to do the work to put your idea into practice. And your creation will live for the rest of the month, or until our library patrons band together with torches and pitchforks and tear it down.

This is just one idea. I already have lots of freedom here at work. And I think I give my staff lots of freedom. Because they know that I expect their best, within reason. Hell, I hired them; how good can they be?

Cake and booze and a swift kick in the ass.

2010-06-15T08:14:00.002-04:00

Don't tell me there is no cake.

This video tells us that we should be surprised that having the freedom to create and to play is a primary motivator for people, and in certain situations more powerful than money.

But didn't James Kirk reveal this tidbit during "Shore Leave" when he said, "The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play"?

Oh, how much time these researchers could save if they just watched more Star Trek. Or maybe they are all Star Trek nerds and they use their current positions to conduct studies to support What They Learned From Star Trek... Is all modern research just a bunch of Star Trek nerd experiments? Oh, let's see if green skin is an aphrodisiac; we'll modify the coloration of this fish and see if more fish want to breed with it... Yes, I see it all now.

Money is only a satisfactory motivator up until the worker has his needs met by it. At that point money fails and freedom becomes the primary carrot.

This study tells us that "autonomy" is the number one motivator for creative thinkers and that the expectation of "more money" ceases to motivate beyond a certain level of production. And they give Wikipedia as an example of a "no money-high freedom" reward site that has been successful.

But I don't think that's the entire picture. I think they omit the element of Competition.

When some important event occurs, the activity on Wikipedia skyrockets. And that's not from any sense of benevolence or charity. Sure, these volunteers are helping to create an online intelligence community and I don't argue the quality or usefulness of the content because much of it is highly useful. But I think it's from competition to see who does it first, does it the most and to see whose content survives the longest. These are the same goals as reproduction.

I think our inherent genetic need to reproduce drives how competition motivates us. If only I could remember which episode of Star Trek that was, I could get some nerds to do a study for me...

I know that I want to compete in a fair environment. I know I do well there. But I don't like being in a competitive environment because it brings out my worst. Inside, where I store the energy I release when I need to compete, that's where monsters dwell. I play well, until I sense there's some competition, some ultimate goal, and then I throw elbows and gouge eyes and bite. That's why I never play for money. No one wants to start playing a friendly game of a buck-a-hole Wii Golf and end up losing an ear.

I think what drives all this free internet is competition. People say it's play, but play without winning is meaningless. Even a lone child is in competition with herself. She wants to have the best teddy bear party or draw the best picture. Yes, that seems trivial on the surface, but children want their artwork displayed in public or they might even carry a childhood fantasy all the way through adulthood and attempt to compete with that memory to recreate those feelings. And yes, that's why you're still in therapy.

...I have more thoughts on competition as a motivator, but I've fallen behind in my 30 posts for June goal, so I'll continue this in another post... besides, I don't think anyone reads anything I write that's longer than three paragraphs anyway... did you ever do that in school? write a paper and then put, "I bet you're not even reading this" somewhere in the middle? I did once and I got the note, "Yes, I am" and a "C" for a grade.

oh, and CWCID (credit where credit is due, or "cowkid") to Marianne Lenox and Bobbi Newman for leading me to the vid.

the HAVES ignore the HAVE-NOTS and always will.

2010-06-13T23:37:00.002-04:00

We enable tools that only we understand, but are potentially very dangerous in the hands of novices.

This is still a digital have and have-not situation. But the balance has shifted to include almost all educators and many others on the side of the haves, so we've become extremely conservative in our feelings toward the have-nots:

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," seems to be our collective message. "If I can learn to do this, so can you."

"We're going to put all your lives out on the web whether you understand how to protect yourself or not."

But many people seem to be functionally illiterate in the digital world. They can use devices, but rarely understand them. So when something goes wrong, they are lost.

[Real life interruption.]
HE has clicked on a mailto: link which opened Outlook, which is not configured to send mail from the library. Don't ask why it's installed and all ready to confuse patrons because I don't know all that stuff.

So HE has a Compose Mail window all filled out with a job application that he can't send:

HE: I need to send this job application, but my phone isn't working so I came to the library to use your computers.

I look at the message and I can see that it's a mess. So I copied it into Word and cleaned it up a little first, plus that gave me a backup in case something I did loses his original.

ME: Okay, you can log into your email here to send it.

HE types his full email address into the Address bar in the browser.

ME: No, where is your email account? Yahoo, Hotmail?

Eventually, he understands. But people use all sorts of technology without understanding what it's doing. Do you just press some button or shortcut that takes your right into your mail? Is your Bluetooth broadcasting to everyone? Is your router secure? No, "bieberfan" is NOT a good password. Do you even know what a password is?

See, this is my point. People are leaping straight into new technology with little or no understanding of what's going on. There is so much shit to divert our attention that we can overlook the most basic stuff. We get so caught up with the new that we forget to keep up with the old.

I expect that sometime in the next two years, people with ask to use one of our computers and then wonder why they can't download any apps to it. And I'll say, "This is computer, not a phone or an iAmaputz or whatever you've been using where you download each application as needed. This is an old school computer: you get what you get."

And what's going to be worse is if and when we abandon Windows for Open Source. That means that no computer in any library will (could) ever be the same. Each patron will need to know how to use our computers and the ones at the library in the next town and the one at Unemployment and the ones at Walmart...

I'm already trying to teach old school computer theory about how files are stored just in case the interface suffers some radical change in the next few years. But even then, I only know DOS-based file storage. Or maybe none of that matters so long as the front-end is user-friendly.

For years, we've had a two-party system, Microsoft and Apple. But when everyone has their own device, with wildly differing applications and operating systems, are we going to have a fragmented digital society?

In pre-WWII, most countries has two groups of individuals, US and THEM, or Everyone Who Was Born Here versus the Immigrants. But there were basically two groups because the core group, US, was so large. But now we have much smaller Tribal Systems, and the core group has been whittled away to almost nothing. You can say there is a new strength in that, but specialization can lead to inbreeding and even self-destruction when habitats suffer radical changes.

The point being, when we can no longer communicate via our devices, when we have no common language between our devices, how will we be able to communicate between ourselves?

DEBORAH AMOS of NPR calls me a "hand-wringer."

AMOS: There's always a list of losses...

Prof. SHIRKY: Yes.
AMOS: ...that accompanies any new technology. And there is a cottage industry of hand-wringers...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. SHIRKY: More than a cottage industry. Let me tell you.

AMOS: And let me give them their voice - one is vanishing attention span, deep reading is gone, social polarization.

Literally, EVERYONE would like to dismantle the two party system. We want greater freedom to choose. But we are not artists, when we strike the block of stone, we may only get a floor littered with rocks and never reveal a figure of beauty. But we desire to do it anyway.

There is always some good in fragmentation, many individuals create environments where they create and excel, but it makes life difficult for those without basic skills. They get lost in a jungle of information and devices without an understanding for what is crap. These are the same people who shop during infomercials.

Alarmist me says that we are living in a digital apartheid where an extreme minority decides what should benefit the majority. People worry about large corporations running the world, but I would say that this is far worse. Because the internet has become much more important to our lives. And we have already decided that there is an acceptable level of collateral damage or civilian causalities we are willing to accept.

These people who can't use the internet are never going to survive in it. They won't get good jobs or live in better neighborhoods or receive proper medical care without an advanced (or even moderate) understanding for the basic tools of the internet. There is no internet GED; or if so, it's online, so they won't find it anyway. There is a basic literacy required to use the internet, but the basics will never get one anywhere.

The NPR story above asks, "What Happens When People Migrate To The Internet?" Well, that's the essential point: how will the indigenous peoples, US, deal with the immigrants, THEM? The digital natives are using the internet just fine. They say, "Use Google and Twitter and Facebook to search and meet and follow those whose ideas you value. Seek and you shall Find."

The digital natives are telling the digital immigrants that everything on the internet is A-OK.

Society had the idea that inexpensive books would educate us, but they only did for some. And then we had the idea that TV would enlighten us, but again, it did for just a few. And now, we have the internet to connect us, and from what I can see, we really don't want to connect EVERYONE, we just want to connect with others like US. We still have the same US and THEM prejudices, but we disguise them within the new technologies.

All these things are tools. But no one should just throw the tools on the floor and walk away.

And this again, do I have to say it, is the essential role of the public library. No, of the fucking public library. We fill that gap between mandated public education and expensive post-education and then on and on until you or I die. (Yes, I hope I die first, too.)

The problem with all the people who are using the internet successfully is that they have no time left for those who can't. The digital world isn't like giving your spare change to a guy on the corner. Training someone to be an educated digital citizen takes real time. You can't solve it with a slide show or a widget.

I can't even guess which skills we'll need for tomorrow's internet. But as long as someone pays for me to be a librarian, I'll continue to care and to teach it to whomever needs to know. And if no one wants to pay me, I won't teach it, but I'll still care.

(Alright, maybe I'll teach a little. For spare change.)

You BASTARD!

2010-06-11T22:53:00.002-04:00

from Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Used without any permission at all. If your dad tore up that library book, you get nothing, Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum! Your father destroyed public property entrusted into the care of the library, so he is little more than a bibliomurderer. Good day, sir!

TV 2.0

2010-06-11T11:20:00.002-04:00

So your Blu-ray player lets you watch live somethings and interact with something. I don't care.

Here is what bothers me about people under the age of 30, other than they are under 30, which is bad enough. But their depth of knowledge is extremely shallow. They grew up with the Internet and mmmmorpg (massively massive multi multiplayer), cable and satellite TV and mobile devices, so they think that anything that existed before these things just sucks.

But since this stuff has always existed for you, your life has seen almost no changes. Sure, you have better graphics and HD and faster data transfer, but it's basically the same shit.

But when I grew up and anyone who was born before me, there was nothing even close to the world we have now. So we have a view of the transition from before to now. We can see now from a place outside, from before and inside from now. So our perspective is actually closer to a multidimensional one than yours, having lived inside your whole life. It's okay if you want to draw the obvious similarities with The Matrix, I won't laugh; I did it myself. The Wachowski Brothers, having been born in the 1960's are members of the before group.

So here is a story about something that happened in the 1950's that seems so normal to us today: Interactive Media.

There was a children’s television program, “Winky Dink and You” (and probably others like it, too), that did something pretty cool:

"'Winky Dink' consisted of a colorful folder containing a piece of heavy plastic placed on the television screen and kept there by static electricity.

At the beginning of the corresponding half-hour television show, children were instructed to put the plastic on the screen and trace a pattern on the screen with markers provided in the game. Then the plastic was removed until the end of the show when it was reapplied and the remainder of the message was displayed. The two parts put together formed a known object that usually was described as a way to help Winky Dink escape from danger."

"Praised by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates as 'the first interactive TV show,' the show's central gimmick was the use of a 'magic drawing screen.'" Here was a multi-player interactive electronic experience. There wasn't online participation, but there was a quest and a puzzle and a prize in the solving.

I think it's cool that the theory behind online learning and gaming existed before the Internet, and that people saw the possibilities for social interaction and participation way before Web 2.0.

So the next time you play some online crap on Facebook or enter your location in Foursquare, just remember that some guy in his seventies probably had that idea first. Kinda sucks, huh? Yes, it does.

Click this link to view a clip from a latter incarnation of Winkie Dink interactive television.

Who wrote this story for you?

2010-06-10T12:37:00.005-04:00

I have trouble with lots of fiction. I find flaws everywhere. I find flaws in logic, in time, in language. I get irritated so easily whenever I read.

So I was looking at another novel yesterday, not for myself, but for a library patron, told in the first-person by an (formerly) illiterate character. The narrator made grammar and spelling mistakes that could be consistent with an illiterate person.

But the character is supposed to be illiterate. If you, the character, are telling this story after you learned to read and write, then why insert those misspellings and errors? Are you trying to recreate the atmosphere which surrounded that past you? But you are no longer that you, so why do it? For sympathy?

Unless you, the character, are speaking and recording this now somehow? Recording it into a microphone? Your cell phone? So, that's why I asked, Who wrote this for you?

These are small things, but they force me to think about them. Why are you using parentheses and apostrophes but misspelling those other simple words? It starts to make me wonder if there is another person involved.. a writer, and not you.

So suddenly, this whole literary world seems artificial to me. I can't picture someone else writing this. And I can't see the character finding this tape a year later and transcribing it. Well, I guess I could, but it seems unrealistic.

There are many things that bother me in storytelling. When characters seem to be aware of events they could never have witnessed, or when I have no sense of time in the story.

That's what's fun about movies and TV. Characters usually keep the same hairstyles throughout the story arc: I laughed when the TV character Dr. House told someone that he shaved once a week. Because he always looks like he shaved a couple days ago, never just this morning.

But my problem with reading is that it takes so long and I have too much time to think about what I'm reading and I start to pick it apart. Mostly undeservedly. I mean that the stories are good enough, but I guess that since a novel is just the responsibility of one person, I tend to give them almost no room to make mistakes. But movies take the efforts of many, so I figure I need to be more forgiving.

But literature bothers me. I read and I think too much and I withdraw. Sometimes I wonder how I became so hypercritical. Like what did I once read that made me this way. And then sometimes I wonder if I ever really learned to read at all. Because "how to read a novel" is something we're supposed to learn, isn't it?

...So damn you, Batman, Richie Rich, Thor. Your perfect 12¢ comic worlds spoiled reading for me, forever.

jus' wonderin'

2010-06-09T19:53:00.002-04:00

I wonder how many people hear this is a cool site but then are disappointed when they get here.

I know I am.

Our Summer Reading Program: BOOKS WITH BENEFITS.

2010-06-09T08:42:00.002-04:00

Summer reading at the Effing Library has just started off with a bang. Many libraries have summer themes like "Dive Into a Book," "Summer Reading Frenzy," "School's Out. Reading's In" or "Read. White and Blue."

But this year's theme at the Effing Library is, "It Happens Between the Covers."

"We took the theme of 'reading in bed' and created these six foot by six foot book beds," says the Director. "They are all designed to reproduce covers from classic books."

He pointed to the large foam beds with cover reproductions from Tropic of Cancer, Portnoy's Complaint, Fanny Hill, A View from Above by Wilt Chamberlain, and My Life by Bill Clinton.

And we let our patrons get in between the covers. "See," he said as he demonstrated with the Cleland book, "these are very roomy. I can get one or two other people in here. Three if they were children."

"We converted our public meeting room into this large bedroom. We've put down cushions and pillows and dimmed the lights to give our patrons a comfortable place to spread open a good book. It's extremely popular with the high school students. And these middle-aged men."

"Hi," the Director calls out to a man squeezing into a Portnoy's Complaint with a teen, "did you guys meet on MySpace?"

"We want it to have the exact same atmosphere as a bedroom. And what's better to do in the bedroom than read a good book?" the Director added.

"It's so good to see kids getting into the classics. We only ask that they write about their books on the social networky thingies. And they can do that through their phones," the Director said. "One girl asked me, 'Is sexting okay?' And I just laughed and said, Of course, 16, 17, all ages are welcome. Kids think they need permission for everything. But I say, go wild."

Starting June 6, the program runs throughout the summer and climaxes with a group booktalk on July 20.

sorry, but this post was inspired by this actual headline:
"Books with Benefits" by COLIN MERRY
...come on, "books with benefits"? it's like "friends with benefits" which is SEX. gawd, do I have to explain all my dirty jokes to you? you're like my mom...

for the children...

2010-06-07T08:13:00.002-04:00

I just want to take this moment, given that I've had really good traffic on this site today, to mention the people who read for library story times and who perform puppet shows and do all that other stuff with those kids that I personally do not want to be near... My understanding of the benefits of what you do is a little simplistic, but...

I do tech stuff. I teach; I put crap online; I make all kinds of thingies using my compooter. But I could never read to kids. Not that I don't like kids because yes, I don't like them, but that's not the reason I can't read to them. Frankly, they terrify me. They leak, they smell, and they seem to do whatever the hell they want without consequence. And regardless of whatever amount of piss and snot they leave behind, most adults just laugh and think they're wonderful. But not me. I don't know where they've been, so I don't want them anywhere near me or my stuff.

But my girlfriend does this. I have a great appreciation for the job my girlfriend does. She reads books to kids because their parents don't have the time to do it. Or maybe because they don't know that they should do it. But whatever the reason, she does it because the kids need it.

And don't try to tell me they don't. They want someone to pay attention to them, even if it's just to tell them to shake an egg or bang two sticks together. Or to just smile at them and not yell about anything.

From what I understand about kids and their mushy little brains is that they need to be shown how the world functions. They need examples to follow. So reading to a kid shows him that this event he's watching is related to what he's hearing. That the pictures and the sounds and the symbols on the pages and the reactions from the person reading and all the other people around him are all related, that they mean something. Pictures. Sounds. People. Symbols. And that helps that mushy brain develop.

I just want to let you know that the people who read to kids and cut out hundreds of butterfly wings and cat ears and who clean up the glitter and glue are not forgotten whenever I write about library issues. They probably don't teach kids how to use iPads or use Twitter, but they teach literacy and they start kids on the road to reading and the love of books.

And without them, we might not have the library-loving adults who pay my salary today. And for that I thank you.

Librarianship is PEOPLE!

2010-06-07T06:42:00.002-04:00

"Soylent Green is people." Oh, Chuck Heston, is there nothing we can't learn about libraries from you?

There are many people who have predicted, and continue to predict, the end of libraries. They have their reasons, from the Internet to the Internet, to the Internet. There is always some new thing happening on the Internet that will kill all the libraries. Google does this. Apple does that. Facebook is doing something and Twitter is doing something else.

But as our friend Chuck says, "it's People." (The Soylent Green stuff was just to get your attention.)

People. People. People. People. People.People. PeoplePeoplePeople. People.People. PeoplePeoplePeople. People.People. P e o p l e. PeoplePeoplePeople. People.People. PeoplePeoplePeople. PeoplePeoplePeople. PeoplePeoplePeople. People. People. People. People. People. People. People. People. People. People. P e o p l e.

Until some technology arrives that eliminates the need for people, there will still be a place for librarians. As long as there are people, there will be those who are helpless or frustrated or stupid or lonely or needy or curious or lazy or bored or eager or unwilling or mad. And librarians serve them.

Librarianship is a service. We take all the shit that's too new or complicated for you to figure out and we figure it for you. When people say that this or that thing will be the death of libraries, maybe those people don't understand what the fuck it is we do. Or maybe they have a different view of people, that people will jack into their brainboxes and never leave their homes, which is always possibility, I guess.

But I don't see anything that currently exists or that will exist in the next ten years to make libraries go away. If the public libraries fail because we stop funding them, then some other company will buy the properties and the equipment and set up private libraries. Yes, that would be terrible, but libraries would still exist and librarians could still perform their jobs. Although when you pay me less money, I'm a lot less helpful.

But when people are replaced by robots, then we're screwed.

Trouble in Riverdale

2010-06-05T00:01:00.002-04:00

Terrible news for Archie & Pals:

How budget cuts might affect the Riverdale Public Library
Wednesday, June 2,2010
BY RICHARD GAWEL
Suburban Trends

RIVERDALE — The state of New Jersey is broke. Governor Chris Christie's next budget includes billions of dollars in cuts affecting every level of public services. And while the debate over school funding has ignited passionate debate and captured the most headlines, a quieter dispute is emerging over state aid to New Jersey's libraries, which will be cut by 74 percent starting June 30 if the planned budget passes. The reduction in aid will drastically affect many of the libraries in Suburban Trends' area, including the Riverdale Public Library.

[no longer RICHARD GAWEL, but me]

One of those affected most by the closings will be "Moose" Mason, Riverdale's star football playing idiot. "D-uh, that's not nice," Moose said when someone read this story to him.

Although Moose's catchphrase, "D-uh", works to his advantage at the Riverdale Public Library. When Moose requests a book by starting, "I need D-uh..", the admittedly smartass librarian interrupts with, "Dubliners?" or "Double Indemnity?" Ironically, Moose is the most well-read resident in Riverdale, for all the good it does him.

Today's WINNER is Washington, D. C.

2010-06-04T12:28:00.002-04:00

Congratulations, Washington, District of Columbia, for being this drawing's winner.

Everyone else: you did not win. There is only one winner, one king of the hill, one big cheese, but it is not you.

But if you are someone who visited this blog today from the winning city, then by association, you can also feel like a winner, although you are not. But feeling like a winner is pretty good, huh? But you didn't win, so don't get cocky.

Okay, I'll tell you what this is about since I've done it twice. I take the last 100 locations to visit this site and pick a random number and declare that city the winner. If the IP logs no city because you have cleverly hidden part of your address, I go on until I get a winning city. That is all. The more times you visit, the more chances your city has to win, if you could predict exactly when I would hold this drawing and visit many times that day... which no one can predict. You don't feel so clever, now, you IP address-maskers, huh?

Who Gains When Libraries Close?

2010-06-03T17:53:00.002-04:00

If this were the 1970s and I were Robert Redford, I would find the conspiracy in the closing of libraries. I would follow the money to find who benefits from a nation of no libraries.

After all, it's the elected officials who want to cut library budgets: governors, mayors, city council members. And these people accept thousands of dollars from individuals and groups for their election campaigns. If I were a conspiracy nut, I would look into just who is giving these politicians their money to see if any of it comes from anti-library groups.

So what do libraries do that might threaten a greedy, Mr. Big?

Here is a good article which summarizes many of the great things that libraries do:

"If you're looking for something that your local library doesn't have—a hot new bestseller, that DVD box set of your favorite TV show, a classic picture book from your own childhood, or anything at all—you can go to the MAIN website and see if it's available in any of Morris County's libraries. If any of them have what you're looking for, they will send it to your library, where you can pick it up, in a matter of days. Your library will even call you when it gets there. It's easy, convenient, and absolutely free..."

So libraries loan DVDs and will send them to a branch conveniently closer to you. So this could threaten Best Buy, Netflix, Blockbuster... any company that sells or rents DVDs. And books. Barnes & Noble and Amazon are also prime suspects.

The same with the free Internet libraries provide. This could threaten any Internet Service Provider. $30 a month for each of you without us.

And CDs: could the Recording Industry Association of America be the evil agency out to seal our doom? Without libraries, you'd need to spend 99 cents for that downloaded GaGa fix or $10-$18 for that CD.

And News and Research. Libraries provide magazines and newspapers and online databases loaded with information that would be too expensive for you to purchase on your own. But we buy much of it in bulk at a discount. Could our villain be Rupert Murdoch?

In a country of no libraries, people would need to purchase all this information and entertainment for themselves with none of the benefits from the collective bargaining that libraries manage when they purchase through systems and consortia.

If I were Robert Redford in a 1970's movie or a crazy person who thinks he's Robert Redford, I'd be all over those governors and mayors until I found the truth. I'd find the evidence of the corruption that went all the way to the top. I'd find the conspirators and expose them and make them pay. But only after I had sex with Faye Dunaway.

Tips? I got yer tip, right here.

2010-06-03T06:13:00.002-04:00

Meredith Farkas has some tips for library job seekers, and I'm not going to tread on her turf. But I have my own tips that are WAY MORE HELPFUL. You just compare and see.

Meredith says, "Highlight things that you’ve done or skills that you have that are on the list of required’s and preferred’s for that job."

If you couldn't come up with this on your own, you need to punch yourself in the throat. I have seen this often where an applicant doesn't seem to even have read the job description and just posts random facts about their skills and experience.

Before your application even makes it to me, some bean counter has scanned it for keywords to see how closely it matches the ad we placed. So yes, write that shit down just as you see it in our description. If we say, "computer experience," then you don't say, "that thingy what beeps and shows nekkid ladees."

It's 2010: everyone has some computer experience. Here is my BIG DAMN TIP: if you are using a computer right now, open every program you have ever used and (this is in Windows) go up to the menu bar and click on About or on Help then on About the program. And write down the name of the program and the version. We have lots of computers in our library and much of your job will be to help people use them, either by teaching a class or just troubleshooting. So when you say you have word processing experience and I ask, "Which programs?" you should not just sit there and drum your fingers and ask, "Word...tastic?" No Job For You!

Meredith says, "Tell me why you want to work here and why you want this job."

Yes, oh, God, yes! All you have to do is avoid saying something stupid, like you want to read quietly or have job security. Look, all you have to do is quote the library "mission" statement. Here, read the mission of the NYPL: "We inspire lifelong learning...We advance knowledge by providing free and open access to materials..." SERIOUSLY, mumble anything just so long as I hear the words, "advance" and "access" and "learning" and you will fucking get hired. (Getting hired is not a guarantee. Maybe you look funny.)

Here is another thing: visit our website. Look at what we offer. Write it down. I am going to ask you about the DATABASES: name some. We pay a shitload of money for these things and SOMEBODY is going to look at them.

If possible, get to the library 20 minutes early and look around. During the interview portion where I ask if you have any questions, make a comment like, "Oh, your carpet is so clean. How do you get up the blood/poo/gum?" (Hey, if you use Blood Poogum as a character in your next novel, I get credit.)

Okay, I stopped looking at what Meredith has to say...

Don't bring up stuff that makes you look bad. Like don't say you make podcasts or vodcasts or screencasts and then have them be shitty. Show off your good stuff only. Say you know the other stuff, but don't push it if it isn't almost perfect.

Here is my last tip: Lying is good. I am going to ask you about some event from the past, about your previous job, about situations where you had to make decisions: HAVE SOMETHING PREPARED. Answer the question with an appropriate answer. If I ask, "Tell me about a time when you had to kill a library hobo..." Don't say, "My last job, there was a girl, and she didn't like me, and maybe she said stuff about me behind my back, but I didn't care because I always say 'live and let live' and then she quit and everything was okay." Because I will have to kill two library hobos to pay for your offense.

The computer and I.

2010-06-02T20:29:00.002-04:00

I've never really liked using computers. I'm not a good typist despite my having typed at least 1,500,000 individual characters over the years, backspacing over many of them, and retyping the correct ones.

When I think about how I might enjoy learning to play the piano one day, in my advancing years, I remember how much my typing sucks and conclude that the sound my fingers might make on a piano keyboard would only mimic the sound of a thousand dollars in change being hurled down the stairs.

I have beautiful hands, but like most beautiful people, my hands are otherwise talentless.

#7 in a series of 30. Collect them all!

What to cut?

2010-06-02T09:31:00.002-04:00

I see so many stories like this, "What would you cut? Cops or books?" where someone wonders about what's more important, the fire department, the police or libraries. And it's a no-win situation for libraries. Do librarians stop crime? Do they save your kitty from up a tree?

Everyone always has that same opinion that libraries should be cut because everything is online. There is nothing you can't get from the library that you can't get on the internet. Mostly true, but doesn't your house have running water? Doesn't every house in the city have water? So why don't we cut the fire department and put out our own fires? Has firefighting evolved in the last 100 years? Not if you count "making that hot red shit that burns everything go away" as their main purpose.

And don't even get me started on the police and my Batman or The Punisher fantasies. I'm convinced that the only reason I don't lose weight is because I fear that I might patrol the city's rooftops looking for criminals if I were in better shape.

Both fire fighting and policing the streets are things the average citizen could do, and has done in the past. But we want a safe, orderly society, so we pay professionals to do this stuff. And if we want to continue to have an educated society, we should also pay for libraries.

Now we have the internet and people just want to put a kid in front of the computer and tell him, "There's the whole world. Go get it." And this is supposed to replace the library?

Why don't we give each person a bucket of water and tell him to watch for fires? Or give out guns and some WANTED posters?

I would continue with this thought, but I need to post 30 times this month, so I'll pick this up later. No, this isn't cheating.

Spreadsheetard needs help.

2010-06-02T08:58:00.002-04:00

Is there a better way to total the contents from a bunch of cells in Excel?

Look at this:

=SUM(E20,G20,I20,K20,M20,O20,Q20,S20,U20,W20,Y20,AA20,AC20,AE20,AG20,AI20,AK20,AM20,AO20,AQ20,AS20,AU20,AW20,AY20,BA20,BC20,BE20,BG20)

This spreadsheet does what it's designed to do, but really? WTF? Is this the way it's supposed to look? I've been using this for 2 years and it's in Excel 2003, but maybe upgrading to 2007 will give me more powers?

I know you all think I'm a super genius and all, but really, I can't even pull my socks on without bumping my head.

I am not Australian...

2010-06-01T17:10:00.002-04:00

I just saw that some Australian bloggers are participating in an informal challenge: "30 blog posts in 30 days."

Which isn't a big deal depending on the rules. The meme says 30 posts in 30 days, which could mean all 30 in one day for all I know. That's what Paul Hogan would do.

But one blogger spells out "am going to try to blog everyday for the month of June. any bloggers care to take up the challenge?"

So I don't know. I don't have the willpower to follow any daily schedule. So I'm going with the overall total. I think I can handle that. Any other non-Australians interested?

(Yikes! I just noticed that I haven't published 30 posts in one month since October 2008.)

Hooray! I Lost!

2010-06-01T15:43:00.002-04:00

from

Peter W Tobey
Director, Sales & Marketing, Salem Press
ptobey@salempress.com

Greetings.

Salem Press has announced its Library Blog Awards. Awards were given in five categories: General Interest, Academic, Public, School and "Quirky" library blogs. First prize in each category is awarded $500, second prize is $250 and third is $100.

In addition, the judges qualified approximately 80 blogs (out of a field of 400) as "notable." All 400 blogs are included in Salem's blog directories at www.SalemPress.com/blogs. You'll also find discussions of judging criteria there (see Blog Thoughts) and short biographies of the judges.

This is a contest I was not aware of until I was told I might win. There was some mention of a prize, but if I'd known it would be in actual money, I might have cared more. Maybe produce some quality writing, at least temporarily as the judges clicked over to here. But I didn't, in my wildest imagination think that I could win as much as $500 for doing nothing. So now I'm pissed that I didn't win a prize that I didn't know or care about until not winning suddenly convinced me otherwise. I thought I'd get a pen, or a box of remaindered books. But money? Who'da thunk it?

It turns out that this blog is considered a public library blog. And the winners in this category are (remember, not me):

Public Library Blogs

First place: Agnostic, Maybe
Second place: Blogging for a Good Book
Third place: Library Garden

I would congratulate these winners, but I'm petty. Oh, what the hell... Congratulations, Winners of actual American money and not a pen!

But anyway, you can see that there are many blogs that also lost. But this blog received a gold star, which is a way of saying that I'm good enough for any amount of praise that excludes prizes.
Here is the description I sent Salem Press for this blog:

the.effing.librarian is an extremely important library blog. If you don't already know about it, you don't deserve to know. No, you can't go there now, it's too late for you. Don't beg.

That bundle of words alone deserves something. Even a pen would be nice. But I'm going to explore the other losers' blogs and maybe some of them will check out mine.

Okay, I'm going back to library school.

2010-06-01T11:34:00.002-04:00

I wonder if these women don't mind a really really old dude. But not any dude, me! That makes a big difference, huh. When I first saw the link to this video, I thought, This is going to be crap. But no, not crap at all.

"Students and faculty from the University of Washington's Information School get their groove on." (Not my description. Right off the video.)

Hello, ladies, I'm the.effing.librarian. Can I buy you some correction fluid? An eyeglass repair kit? Dr. Scholl's insoles? Oh, my.