A Wandering Eyre

One benefit of working on a college campus, and there are many, is the ability to attend the sort of intellectual gatherings that seem to center around academia. Last night, in a packed auditorium, Cornel West drove his audience into a frenzy, made us laugh out loud, and brought tears to our eyes. He is not a speaker that talks down to his audience. He incorporated a good portion of the English canon, Socrates, Plato, religion, and modern thought into his speech. West talked about race, culture, class, morality, politics, and everything else under the sun. It seemed like he left nothing unexposed to, what he called, Socratic thought.

The part of West’s speech that stopped me and is still lingering with me today was a comment he made about September 11th. He said that after September 11th, the whole of the American people felt fear, felt attacked, and felt hated. For many Americans, this was their first time to experience those feelings. West went on to link those feelings with the feelings of an oppressed people. They are attacked. They feel fear. They are hated by others. It made me stop. For all of my readings in school, I have never considered oppression in quite that light. It is an interesting allegory and definitely one that ruffles feathers.

I liked that West talked about self reflection and criticism. We should be able to point out the injustices around us, but we must always remember to look for injustice in our own lives and in ourselves as well. According to West, examination should be hard and should be unsettling. I think he is right.

–Jane, has been given a lot to think about

I am having one of those days where I have a ton to do, but all I really want to do is read in a corner and drink tea, or coffe, or some other beverage. I think I might be able to fix a reading light under my desk, George Costanza style, and read without anyone knowing.

–Jane, seriously considers it

I finally went through a weeks worth of posts in my aggregator and my last stop held something that made my heart skip many beats at once. I was in serious danger of passing out. The Serenity trailer is now online!! Of course, I am at work, without the benefit of speakers or Quicktime and I will have to content myself with reading reviews of it until I get home. Grr Arg!

Mal: Well look at this. ‘Pears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
Zoë: Big damn heroes, sir.
Mal: Ain’t we just.

(from Firefly: Safe)

–Jane, can’t wait for the BDM

Keef pointed me to this interesting quiz in which you can find out what kind of American English you speak. Here is my breakdown:

Interesting. I liked the questions and besides, it meant I put off working a wee bit. Now, I have to go to the Reference Desk and help people find stuff.

Oh, it is all Coke people. Not soda or Pop. Coke. It really drives Mr. Rochester crazy that I refuse to change my generic word for carbonated beverages.

–Jane, finds stuff

Librarians get some love from Michael Schuab at Bookslut.

I don’t think they know who they’re messing with here. Librarians tend to take the First Amendment pretty seriously - and, like nurses, they’re legendarily intelligent, well-informed and politically active. No offense, Deroy, but I’m putting my money on the good guys.

The National Review article he cites is worth looking at too, but be warned that Murdock is definitely trying to start a fight.

–Jane, one of the good guys

Other than Kansas, which is having its own political issues at the moment over “morals”, Texas seems to be leading the pack in… well many words come to mind but I think lunacy will do the trick. I had a post a couple of weeks ago regarding Texas HJR 6 which seeks to ban same sex marriages. It passed the House yesterday and is on its way to the Senate. Burnt Orange Report has a live blog of the debate posted here, along with links to several other live blogs. You can read the Houston Chronicle’s article on the issue here. I can not say that I am surprised really, just disappointed. What else could I expect from a state that re-elected DeLay? And of course the big W argument goes without saying.

–Jane, almost stopped listening to the news this morning in disgust… almost

I am back from Germany, though I wanted to stay a bit longer. We visited Darmstadt, Bamberg, Bacharach, and Frankfurt. The people were nice, the food was tasty, the beer was excellent, and the sites were beautiful. What more could anyone want when on vacation? I was unhappy with my book choices for the trip since I read my chicklit book rather quickly and was then stuck with the intellectual reading which, it turned out, I found a bit boring. Yes, I know that Elizabeth Bowen is an Irish Austen, but I really tried hard and found myself wanting to poke out my eyeballs out instead of reading the pages in front of me.

*sigh* I spent the day at work wading through email. I tried reading some of my feeds, but my eyes started glazing over. I will start bright and early tomorrow. I am one of those people who always hates missing things, so when I am gone for a week there are so many things to catch up on that I never know where exactly to start. I liked being without my cell phone and tv for a week, but I missed my computer.

–Jane, almost over the jet lag, but already missing the hefeweizen

There are many happenings in my personal life which will prevent me from posting for about a week. Mr. Rochester’s sister is getting married tomorrow so we have all that family hoopla to attend. At least there will be drinks. Bring on the drinks. It has been one of those weeks. Mr. R and I are running away to Germany for a week, so I will be MIA until Monday the 25th. I would ask that nothing terribly exciting happen while I am gone, so I don’t feel bad about missing it, ok? Got that? Nothing Fun At All.

My boss has been asking me to put together some kind of info session on blogs, wikis, and the like for other non-techie librarians. I felt comfortable ignoring that request until it was seconded by her boss and then another even higher up than that. Dang. I sometimes wish I was a bad employee and then I would never get extra jobs. So I have to start thinking about what I want to include. I have some good ideas and I hope to get it rolled out sometime in June. Wouldn’t it be funny if was like the Magic Bullet infomercial, with that crazy British guy and the old lady in a mumu with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth?

–Jane, can I wear the mumu?

Here are my final thoughts on ACRL for those that want to know (Sorry these are late, but does “chicken with its head cut off” hold any meaning to you?):

The theme for the conference seemed to be First Year Experience courses, serving Millennials, and Google - good or bad? The FYE courses are interesting as it seems that each institution has tweaked it for their students, staff, and circumstances. FYE has been growing among institutions and it will be interesting to watch this trend to see if it continues to be developed by universities and if the libraries continue to play a key role in its implementation or structure.

If there was one session that talked about Millennials, there were ten more down the hall. If I got a raise every time the word Millennials was mentioned at conference, I would be making almost as much as a corporate librarian, almost. The habits, needs, and expectations of Millennials is not a new subject, but we, as a profession, are still talking about how this will effect our services. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because we are talking about them and bad because we are still just talking in many cases. They are upon us. They are here already. Is your library serving Millennials’ needs or are you still discussing the need for USB ports and IM reference? We need to stop talking and start acting. I love my job, but I sometimes hate that we must flog an idea to death, literally, before anything is ever done and by then, the customer (that’s right, customer) has moved on and found someone or somewhere else to help them find information.

Of course the Google argument goes on. I really liked what Adam Smith had to say at his presentation. He is a great salesman and he looks like Hugh Grant (that never hurt anybody), but I was already feeling pretty good about the whole Google Print thing anyway. I know there are some technical issues to this project, but I think in the long run, it is a good thing. I am not threatened by this enterprise nor do I think that it spells the end of the printed word. I think those kind of very reactionary opinions fail to take in the big picture. (Just my pennies, people)

Last, but not least, the ACRL “blog”. I agree with some of the thoughts already voiced by some fellow bloggers regarding the nature of the ACRL blog. Is it really a blog if there are no permalinks or feeds available? I stand by my opinion stated earlier that what ACRL really wanted were roving reporters, not writers/bloggers. I would label this more of a discussion board interface in which the official bloggers were the only ones allowed to post. In fact, if you were a member of the Virtual Conference, the blogs were listed amongst the other discussion board topics. There was of course, the pervading feeling that I was (in one of my coworkers words) “blogging for The Man” so I felt compelled to behave and be less harsh than normal. Hey, I just call’em like I see’em.

It was a nice first experience at a national conference. I am looking forward to blogging for LITA at ALA Annual.

–Jane, ready for Chicago

Minneapolis was a wonderful city: clean, nice, mouth-watering food, and great weather while I was there. I have so many things I want to put up here about ACRL, it will be hard to get them all sorted out. At the moment, I am sitting at my desk at work, waiting for the night shift to start, and battling a migraine. Going to conference is exhausting.

I especially want to post my feelings on what conferences mean to us as a profession and on the last session I attended on Google (along with some of my peers comments I heard later).

I would not say a learned a lot, but I did get some views reinforced. It is nice to believe that you are not the only crazy one out in the world.

I did have one rather funny moment in which I considered stalking up to a vendor (of a product my library uses) to tell them how faulty their product is and all the havoc it has wrecked in my department. Alas, gentle readers, I behaved, held my tongue, and sent a pox on them in my head. It was less fulfilling than I would have hoped.

I am off for the night shift on the desk. The semester is winding down and the reference questions have been slow lately. The students mostly need printer paper, staples, and simple catalog help.

–Jane, sloths off to the desk