8-29-03: library as musical inspiration
Now I just go to a library, get records out. Usually just try to find records that I have never heard of before. Maybe from places I have never heard of before. And then you go to the library and look in different sections, take about 10 records home each week, listen to them and take them back and get another batch.
That's Bonnie Prince Billy, on his musical influences. (Seven Days)
Haven't posted in two whole days (yikes! two months at this and already I'm addicted!) due to being sick and not feeling like looking at a computer screen. Actually, being forced to sit on the couch and phase in and out of consciousness every once in a while isn't such a bad thing. I had a chance to catch up on my comics reading (Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things, highly recommended if you like a story about kids and magic that isn't all sugar-coated, Courageous Princess, recommended if you like retooled fairy tales, and Castle Waiting: Curse of the Brambly Hedge, a great retelling of Sleeping Beauty--hey, librarians, these comics ARE for kids!), watch some Italian horror films (Short Night of the Glass Dolls and Tenebre--probably not for the little ones), and find out what goes on in my new neighborhood during the day (not a whole lot).
8-25-03: Distributed Library Project
Unfortunately, the traditional library system doesn't do much to foster community. Patrons come and go, but there is very little opportunity to establish relationships with people or groups of people. In fact, if you try to talk with someone holding a book you like - you'll probably get shushed. The Distributed Library Project works in exactly the opposite way, where the very function of the library depends on interaction.
The Distributed Library Project sounds interesting, but I disagree about library systems not doing much to foster community. Perhaps some don't, but good library systems have book groups, lectures, storytimes, and all kinds of other activities. There are also library workers (from professional librarians to volunteer shelvers) you can talk to about books and get recommendations. Open Stacks agrees and makes the argument more eloquently than I could.
8-25-03: Sandman @ your library
Regardless of what I think of ALA's "@ your library" campaign, I think the Sandman poster is pretty nifty.
How exciting! Punk Rock Librarian reviews books about punk.
8-22-03: make your own safety signs
Whew! After all that work, I needed a break. So I headed on over to Safety Sign Builder 2.0 and made this nifty safety sign.
8-22-03: diy librarian is now syndicated
diy librarian now has an RSS feed.
(After many hours of tinkering, I perservered and did the XML myself. Yay!
I am very grateful for the RSS resources on Library Stuff.)
8-22-03: the demise of independent video stores
"Reality killed the video store" (Christian Science Monitor, 8/22/03) is a sad story about how Hollywood Video and Blockbuster are edging out independent video stores. It seems to be happening in every retail sector, and it is sad indeed. But librariatic readers out there may get a smile out of this quote:
My grandmother was the town librarian - something playground bullies didn't find as cool as I did - and my life was primarily public television and the bookmobile.
Power Corrupts.
PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.
Edward Tufte on PowerPoint, from Wired (11.09).
8-21-03: open source and libraries
Roy Tennant writes about open source library projects in Library Journal (Open Source Goes Mainstream, 8/15/03).
8-21-03: help Alejandro Escovedo
Following a show in Phoenix on April 26, 2003, acclaimed singer-songwriter and playwright Alejandro Escovedo collapsed and was hospitalized due to complications from Hepatitis C. He is currently at home in Canyon Lake, Texas, resting and undergoing treatment to alleviate the effects of his condition. Alejandro's rigorous touring schedule and recording sessions for a new album that had begun the week before are both on hold as he recuperates.
There is no health insurance to cover the mounting medical bills and loss of income as Alejandro continues to pursue treatment. In response to an outpouring of concern from friends, fans, and associates from across the nation, a trust has been established to handle donations on his behalf. If you'd like to contribute, you may make donations directly and securely from this Web site using a Pay Pal account to the fund's administrator.
Lance Storm has a book club on his web site!
The Hurricane has a poster encouraging reading (librarians and teachers can request free copies from WWE)!
An oldie but a goodie (hanging on my home office wall!), the WWF READ poster from ALA.
8-20-03: good movies, for a change
Just to balance yesterday's bad movie entry, I give you: A decade under the influence: The 70's films that changed everything (if only I could get the Independent Film Channel!)
Ed Carroll, executive vice president and general manager at IFC, said, "What got us excited about doing this project was that it talks about a period in American filmmaking which we'll probably never see again. For social reasons and economic reasons, the big studios, for this short window of time, began to act and think like independents." ("An homage to the '70s' galvanizing filmmaking", Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/20/03)
PowerPoint, opiate of the business world:
The problem with PowerPoint, critics maintain, is that it has become so pervasive that every lecture looks the same. At the same time, presenters use the software as a crutch, relying on drab bullet points and charts to convey their message instead of engaging their audience through interaction. ("Entrepreneurs make powerful point", Chicago Tribune, 8/20/03)
The blues archive at the Harold Washington Library Center of the Chicago Public Library:
Chicago has always been a musically-conscious city, especially when it comes to the blues: You can catch good examples of it at clubs, record stores -- and the library. ("Library's blues archive in tune with the music", Chicago Tribune, 8/15/03)
Bad movies: Badmovies.org, Oh, the Humanity! The Worst Movies on Earth, Stomp Tokyo, IMDb bottom 100 films, Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation (The Razzies)
Bad comics: Worst Comics Ever (James Lileks)
Why is bad so much fun? Why does pain not hurt? Why do we laugh when someone gets hit in the groin with a football? Are we just bad people?
8-18-03: Manifesto of Avant-Garde Librarianship
Submitted mostly without comment (it's cool, just go read it): Manifesto of Avant-Garde Librarianship, in the current Library Juice.
Those who know me professionally probably already know of my loathing for PowerPoint. I don't just hate it because it's Microsoft; I mostly hate it because it gets used as a crutch for bad presentations. So I was thrilled to see a new book/DVD by David Byrne using PowerPoint to create art (or, as the New York TimesEnvisioning Emotional Epistemological Information.
8-15-03: hooray for Mick Foley!
I just discovered that Mick Foley has a web site with a "whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it tour diary". He's funny and quirky and writes intelligently about all kinds of things you wouldn't expect him to if you just think of him as a wrestler. Like Tift Merritt and the sad state of country radio, for instance.
8-15-03: hooray for the public domain
You've probably seen Get Your War On by now--I mean, even Rolling Stone reprints the strip these days. It's a wonderful use of the public domain, which I was reminded of by Warren Ellis' review on artbomb.net:
The graphic novel has often flirted with the punk aesthetic of "Anyone can do it." It's what drove the Hernandez brothers to create, and they remain the most successful expressions of that notion, until now. When one guy, armed with a bunch of copyright-free clip-art and some web space, decided he wanted to make a commentary on post-9/11 American politics. And so, with a cheap graphics program and some Seventies-looking clip-art images of office workers, he made a series of comic strips that just blasted the crap out of US foreign policy and the social aspects of the 9/11 aftermath.
The Aussie band Gerling sounds like something I should check out. At first the "disco-punk" moniker made me dubious, but hey, I love Blondie, so why not disco-punk?
We're not using punk in the terms of Offspring and all that shit, which I wouldn't consider punk. It just makes it easier for HMV to file it. We're going more off the ethic of do it yourself - recording it ourselves, doing the artwork ourselves . . . more of an attitude. (Gerling's Burke Reid, quoted in The Age)
8-14-03: intellectual property, part deux
The erosion of fair use continues. Steven Grant writes in his latest Permanent Damage column that, "Maybe night has fallen on 'fair use' in the con sketch..." Very disappointing, if this is the way things are going.
8-14-03: intellectual property
Public Knowledge has issued A Call for Stories in Support of a Robust Public Domain.
And I can't resist the nerdy charm of this Creative Commons Flash about intellectual property, "Get Creative", featuring the White Stripes.
8-14-03: Land Mail Art Objects
This sounds like an interesting project:
These are objects that anybody can make: notebooks, photo albums, boxes, mix tapes, that are sent all over the world, to anyone that signs up for them here, and finally returned to their original owners.
Check it out at Nervousness.org. Apparently one of the projects is to alter library cards from an old library card catalog--there are two such altered cards at BananaFlip. [Found via Library Stuff]
I do a Google search on "diy librarian" every once in a while to see if anyone has linked to me (I'm vain that way, I guess). Today I found this excellent site, 12 frogs. It's not about frogs, but about books and libraries and comics and other fun stuff, and it has a frogs links page. I love frogs! In fact, I used to do a zine (for all of two issues) called emily frog...but that's a long story for another day.
Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock.
(I just love when Google has a new holiday logo. It just makes my whole day. I guess I'm a simple girl, after all.)
8-13-03: redesigning the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
I have mixed feelings about the upcoming redesign of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh ("Renovated Carnegie will blur the borders between library and bookstore", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/13/03). It seems there's a little too much emphasis on cappuccino and comfy chairs and not quite enough on books, computers, and librarians, but this quote encouraged me:
The renovation's overarching goal is to make the library feel comfortable, not confusing or intimidating.
"You would not design this place today if you were going to design a library," Elish said. "Libraries are open, and this has been organized [historically] for the benefit of librarians."
8-13-03: cartoons aren't just for kids, either
Pulp Culture has a column about how well cartoons are doing in the late-night time slot ("Cartoons are the big winners during late night", 7/31/03).
In the case of "Stripperella" on The New TNN or Spike TV or whatever they're calling themselves now, you might say that just proves how juvenile young men really are. But in the case of "Futurama" or "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" it proves that some young men might just have a keen appreciation of humor. Too bad I usually fall asleep before "Adult Swim" comes on...how lame of me!
8-13-03: Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
How many times do you need to say "adult comic book" before someone will believe that comic books aren't just for kids?
I don't care what type of evidence or what type of testimony is out there, use your rationality, use your common sense. Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids. (State prosecutor in the Jesus Castillo case, quoted in "CBLDFNews: Supreme Court Refuses Castillo Case")
If this makes you angry, too, then go make a donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, or buy one of their books.
The last time I was in my local comic book store, a father and daughter were browsing the shelves together. The father bought a few comics for himself and a graphic novel for his daughter (picked out by her and approved by him). The guy who rang them up warned the father that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wasn't PG-13 like the movie. The father said that was okay, he was buying it for himself. (The daughter probably would have lost interest in the book long before the invisible man started getting nasty, anyway.) See? All it takes is a little responsible parenting.
First Ann Coulter went off on librarians. Now she attacks my alma mater ("We'll Let You Know When You're Being Censored", 7/9/03). I can't speak for this particular professor, but I have a feeling that Coulter has a problem with liberal arts colleges in general:
People who have dedicated their lives to exposing lesbian imagery in "Moby-Dick" are more prevalent on the nation's campuses than serious scholars. The nation's colleges and universities have become a Safe Streets program for traitors and lunatics.
I have to say I am proud that my local paper "fired" Ann Coulter:
But, we don't welcome haters, Ann, and that's what you are. (A letter to Coulter, Centre Daily Times, 9/1/02)
I absolutely love browsing FOUND Magazine's web site.
we collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. anything goes...
The find of the week for July 20 is a to-do list where the first item is "Turn in Library Books"--above "Hide Guns", "Get Medication", and "Do Taxes". Good to see people have their priorities straight.
You usually find fun things in library books, too. I once found a note that I had written to someone else in a book I was checking out. It was nice to know that my friend and I had similar reading habits.
8-6-03: "A movie for anyone who's ever loved a book."
Stone Reader looks like an interesting movie: "A critically acclaimed book vanished. Its author forgotten. One reader determined to find out why." I bet it doesn't play anywhere around here, though. [found via librarian.net]
8-6-03: it was a very bad year
The two top (bottom?) movies on the IMDB "bottom 100 movies" list are both 2003 releases--Gigli and From Justin to Kelly have edged out perennial bad movie favorite Manos, the Hands of Fate. Are movies getting worse? Sadly, I will have to watch both Jen & Ben and Justin & Kelly to see if they truly are worse than Glitter (currently #15 on the Bottom 100) and Swept Away (currently not on the Bottom 100 for reasons that are beyond me).
8-6-03: blogging from the future
I wonder if anyone was reading my blog and noticed that I'd been typing "05" instead of "03" in the dates for my past few entries? I fixed them now (hmm, I wonder if it's bad blogging practice to go back and fix my entries?).
8-6-03: Public Library of Science
A Fight for Free Access to Medical Research (Washington Post, 8/5/03): The Public Library of Science is a project that aims to make scientific research articles available to the public, for free.
Well, sort of for free. The public will have free access to the articles, which is only fair, since the tax-paying public's money is funding the research in the first place. But the scientists will pay $1,500 to "publish" the articles in PLoS. And where, pray tell, is that money coming from?
Instead of having readers pay for scientific results through subscriptions or other charges, costs would be borne by the scientists who are having their work published -- or, practically speaking, by the government agencies or other groups that funded the scientists -- through upfront charges of about $1,500 an article.
Did it ever occur to anyone that this was kind of a silly process? Oh, yeah, in the end it will all work out because
government agencies and other science funders are already paying for a huge share of the world's journal subscriptions through "indirect cost" grants to university libraries, which are the biggest subscribers.
But it still seems a little silly to me. Couldn't these government agencies just support the PLoS directly? And does this mean that those "indirect cost" grants to university libraries will disappear? Because I doubt libraries will suddenly cancel all their subscriptions to Elsevier journals as soon as PLoS comes on the scene. Especially if they are paying for access to back issues of journals in electronic format...
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open access to scientific research, even if the logistics of the open access mechanism seem puzzling. The current system certainly needs an overhaul. But PLoS, for all its wonderful intentions, may end up hurting the small, not-for-profit publishers:
That is especially worrisome to the smaller, not-for-profit publishers -- most of them affiliated with scientific societies -- that say they are sympathetic to open-access principles but fear that the system will not work for them, with their tighter margins.
If this is the price we have to pay for more open access to scientific information, fine. Revolution is not painless. But if it ends up putting the more reasonable not-for-profit publishers out of business while doing little damage to the big publishers' sky-high prices and profit margins, then I'm not so sure it's a good thing.
The Unh! Project collects "panels from comic books which contained word balloons expressing discomfort". For some reason, I got a kick out of the description of archiving and cataloging (geez, I'm such a library geek!):
[Q] Where did you get [specific panel] from?
[A] For the most part, I can't remember. The panels come from all over the place, from popular Marvel titles to independent one-shots that have long since vanished. Avid comics readers will no doubt be able to recognize certain artists and series. ... As for the others, the comics they're from are inconveniently crammed in a box in someone else's basement.
I also got a kick out of the first panel in the collection, depicting a nerdy little girl hitting a female supervillain in the butt with an open book. Doesn't she know that will damage the book? OOF!
8-4-03: random link of the day
I can't recall seeing pro football discussed on many library blogs, but I found the Football Salaries Database via ResearchBuzz.
Now, these guys make a lot of money. Lots more than librarians. But while they may make tons of money, get famous, and be set for life with product endorsement deals, they all risk serious physical injury, and many don't have such illustrious NFL careers, so then they have to go find another career. If you want to see the people who are really raking in the cash (and retirement plans), check out the AFL-CIO's Executive Paywatch.
At the same time workers’ retirement savings have suffered through the worst stock market decline since the Great Depression, hundreds of millions of dollars are being doled out in special retirement plan deals to execs, whose pay continues to be out of line with company performance.
At least NFL salaries are clearly linked to performance.
8-4-03: blogging--it's what all the cool library kids are doing
Angry Thoat shares some good tips for bloggers.
Library Stuff writes about why librarians should have blogs.
Ex Libris has an essay about using the web to stake your claim as an expert in the field.
Greg Schwartz (of Open Stacks) wrote another essay, Blogs for Libraries, which includes six reasons why you (or your library) should start a blog.
I also discovered another directory of library weblogs, called, appropriately enough, Library Weblogs. (This site also has some more articles on librarians and blogging.
My department (more specifically, our fabulous webmaster) maintains a blog-like Web Updates Archive which chronicles the development of our web site.
This week's Library Juice has a great reference librarian story, Toman the Seeker. Among Toman's many accomplishments is a comic book collection:
The lure of the place is Toman's collection; its centerpiece is the comic book shelves, where action heroes, space creatures and Little Nemo elbow each other for room in a wild universe. ... What the man doesn't know about comic books isn't worth knowing. I have suggested that this is evidence of wasted youth; his response was that I hadn't seen anything yet. The collection keeps growing as fast as my friend can obtain new titles by purchase or donation. These aren't cheap items and they have a tendency to walk off, but Toman isn't dismayed. He knows that only popular stuff gets stolen and keeps plugging the holes when we have the cash.
I just can't stop blogging today. Maybe it's a natural tendency of librarians? If you just can't get enough library blogging, check out LIS Blogsource, "The library weblog about library weblogs", and the dmoz Library and Information Science Weblogs directory.
Why "Futurama" got cancelled is beyond me. Maybe FOX has a quota on funny, intelligent programming. (They have to make room for things like "101 Things Removed from the Human Body" somehow.)
8-1-03: RIP Sam Phillips, part 2
Yesterday I noted the death of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. Here are some links to longer obituarires and feature stories about Phillips and Sun Studios:
- New York Times obituary
- Memphis Shaken as Rock 'n' Roll Heart Is Stilled (New York Times)
- Rolling Stone obituary
- GoMemphis obituary (and links to other stories)
- Sam Phillips quote/unquote (GoMemphis)
Note the New York Times requires free registration to view articles. If that bugs you, you might take a trip over to librarian.net.
The Easton Public Library has a great ghost story. If you know of any other good library ghost stories, I'd love to hear about them (email me).
diy librarian now has archives! It's Friday, it's the first day of August, and my blog has survived its first month! I think I will have a celebratory drink this evening.
All content on this website, unless otherwise noted, was created by Tara Murray and is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
