mmm…Book Check!
Monday Morning Mid-Month Book Check is a way for us to share what we are reading at the moment, no matter how brilliant, menial, or embarrassing.
Adriana:
What with the high demands of information school, I haven’t had much time lately to read anything of my own choosing. I set out this weekend with that singular goal: read something I already own, have not read, and will not be citing for any schoolwork. I’ve reached five pages of that goal, but the book itself is looking promising. I’ve had War of Words by Simon Read sitting on my shelf for months, just waiting for a chance to be savored. With a subtitle like A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder, and the riveting combination of the Old West, pistol duels, and newspaper editors trying to make a buck and tell the truth, I am sold. The prologue (the extent of my reading so far) depicts a man, James King of William, making a living in the mean world of San Francisco newspapers in the 1850s. The foreshadowing does not look good for Mr. King. This seems like a guilty pleasure I won’t have to be ashamed of, and corrects the distinct lack of exciting non-fiction in my life of late (no offense Derrida).
Anne
I’m just starting Changes by Mercedes Lackey. The novel is the third book of The Collegium Chronicles, which follows the establishment of the Heralds’ Collegium, part of Lackey’s extensively developed world of Valdemar. What I have read so far has been thoroughly enjoyable, as were the first two books, and has focused largely on an exhibition game of kirball. Kirball is kind of like a combination of Quidditch and capture-the-flag, but with horses, foot-soldiers, Heralds, and Companions. I promise it all makes sense if you’re familiar with the world, or even if you start with the first book of the series. My take: two thumbs up, and I hope I’ll have enough time in the next three weeks to finish it before it’s due at the library.
Emily
Image courtesy of Amazon.com
I’m finishing up the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed these books (especially the last three, considering I’ve read all of them in last than 2 weeks), especially Percy’s development as an annoying pre-teen to his more mature (if a little cocky) 16-year-old. The pacing of the books is great, mixing action, adventure, a hint of romance, and realistic life lessons. I’m almost 2/3rds through the last one and I wish I could be reading it instead of reading about how video games can change education (hint: they really can’t, at least not with the education system we have now). On my graphic novels front, I’ve taken a break from Sandman (mostly because the 4th volume wasn’t available at the Library) and have gotten back into Locke and Key, a thoroughly terrifying horror/thriller story. The story is heavily helped out by the incredible artwork, which is highly detailed and beautifully colored. The story itself is intriguing and complicated, if a little risque at times. A truly great graphic novel.
Music and the digital age
Lately, I’ve been seeing a rash of musicians using iPads for scanning music, displaying music, and even performing. It’s been in my Facebook feed from my musician friends, on personal blogs, and on NPR’s classical music blog. Using computers for performing isn’t new, Harry Connick, Jr. has been doing this for years, but it hasn’t been exactly usual either.
It’s pretty exciting to think about what the digitization of music can do for individuals and groups. In purely practical terms, when I was in music school, my instrument case often weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, most of which was the weight of the music I carried around on a daily basis. Having all that music and more at my finger tips without the weight would be fantastic. There are no more worries about page turns. Simply press a button or touch a footpedal and the page turns. No more concerns about planning page turns in advance, copying pages out and taping them back together again, a page not turning properly or turning more than one at once. Some applications will even let you do half page turns. Plus, if you’re scanning your own music, you can trim out overly large margins to optimize the size of the music on your screen.
At the same time, there are significant challenges using an iPad or computer as the sole deliverer of music. Any musician can tell you that playing outside is a pain, and not just because it puts extremely expensive instruments at risk for water and temperature damage. For one thing, wind and paper don’t mix. Using clothespins to secure music works pretty well, but it makes turning pages very difficult. With a computer screen this is no longer a problem, but screen visibility in changing light situations becomes a concern. With a backlit screen, you don’t need a stand light when playing in a pit, but you also can’t see the screen as well in bright light. And about those margins: a large portion of music in the classical repertoire is printed on nonstandard sized paper. You see everything from 4X6 and 9×12 to contemporary music printed on much larger sized paper. Viewing the music on a standard screen size would work very well for certain music and much less well for others.
And what do you do if your system crashes? Harry Connick, Jr. scoffs at this, saying that it would never happen with his band because their computers only run one program. How many iPad users can say the same? What about notating the music? With paper you can scrawl a note while counting rests. What options are out there for digital music? We also can’t ignore the push-back factor from conductors or audiences. Violajack has faced some of these issues as a freelancer.
I don’t have an iPad myself, but I am extremely curious to see how the practicalities of being a performing musician translate to the digital world. Does anyone have experience with this? Please, let me know!
Resources:
- Patents; A Sinatra-style crooner comes up with a way to use computers, not sheet music, to call the tune. An article in the NY Times from 2002 by Teresa Riordan about Connick’s use of computers for reading music on stage.
- Another Harry Connick, Jr. story. From the Finale blog, the notation software the Connick uses to display the music.
- Technology, Music, Life. A great blog about the practicalities of this kind of music technology in practice. Want to know what kind of free software will help you trim your margins? This is the place.
- Rethinking Sheet Music. An article from NPR about Steinway’s new app, Etude 2.0.
From the Department of Random but Related:
- Cleaning out Ives’s Closet. An article from Slate about the fate of American composer Charles Ives’s estate. It’s probably no surprise to most of us in the information profession that if estates are not planned well in advance, we stand to lose significant cultural history.
- How Music May Help Ward Off Hearing Loss as We Age from NPR. It’s a bitter irony that musicians are better able to hear and decipher a wide range of sounds but we are also at significant risk from hearing loss as a result of the incredible decibels we sustain on stage. Many musicians wear earplugs, but this report suggests that it is the connections our brains make at an early age that can help with hearing loss.
- How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online from Information is Beautiful. Love Spotify? Consider loving your musicians more.
mmm… Book Check!
Monday Morning Mid-Month Book Check is a way for us to share what we are reading at the moment, no matter how brilliant, menial, or embarrassing.
Meggan
I am reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Actually, that’s not the proper title of the book. The proper title is the picture of Earth that you see on the cover. If you look closely, you will notice a little asterisk next to the picture with the corresponding explanation (in this case, the words being used as the title) underneath Bryson’s name on the cover. Since pictures can’t be titles, I guess we will have to make do with words, unless anyone wants to take on that blatant metadata challenge. Anyone?
I’ve been a fan of Bryson’s for a while now, starting with Mother Tongue, which is about the English language and features an entire chapter on the history of swear words. Fascinating, I tell you. For an etymology geek like me, Bryson’s combination of curiosity and a keen sense of the ridiculous made a book that was already of interest into a wildly entertaining read. Bryson’s humor and curiosity have followed him through years as successful writer on travel and the English language to science. The book ostensibly covers “nearly everything” as the title implies, but I’ve only just made it past the creation of the solar system, so I’ve got a ways to go yet. The book is extremely well written and researched but presented in a very accessible way. The chapters are relatively short and are frequently broken up into smaller chunks, which makes this book perfect for bedtime reading – funny and engaging but not overwhelming and presented in digestible portions.
Anne
I am currently about halfway through Cast in Fury by Michelle Sagara. Cast in Fury is the fourth novel in Sagara’s Chronicles
of Elantra. The main character, Kaylin, is a sort of private investigator in a world with a number of species that are relatively at peace with one another, but still negotiating living together. In this volume, Kaylin’s supervisor (a Leonine) is under investigation for murder. While Kaylin is assigned to another case, she does look into the details of what happened with her supervisor and encounters a number of cultural norms that make the case delightfully complex for the reader and not-so-delightfully complex for the character. Sagara has developed a rich world. As a former anthropology student, discovering the variety of social and cultural norms through the plot rather than plain exposition is enjoyable.
I started reading this series several years ago, and when I was pulling together this post I realized that I had somehow skipped the third book. I guess I’ll just have to read that one next! You can read the first chapter of Cast in Fury at the author’s website.
Adriana
One of the few things that I love as dearly as old books is old photographs. Due to various internet sources, especially the always fabulous mental_floss, I first heard about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs months before it came out. Due to what sounded like an eerily fascinating story, combined with extensive use of an old photo collection, I knew this book would catch my attention. It rather slipped my mind, until it was recently brought to my attention then kindly given to me as a birthday gift. I’m not too far into the book yet, and the adventure is about to begin. Already, though, we have met a teenage boy, Jacob, largely friendless, who has spent his life listening to his grandfather’s stories about monsters and strange characters from his past. After his grandfather is seemingly killed by a monster, Jacob sets out to make sense of his grandfather’s last words and find the truth in what had seemed like fantastical stories from his childhood. This will lead him to an island near Britain, and (I hope) more wonderful photographs interspersed with the story. I’ll admit that it’s a bit slow going, moreso than I had hoped, but there is still plenty of time for the plot to develop in exciting, delicious, and creepily picturesque ways. Check out the trailer here.
Emily
Image courtesy of Amazon.com
For this upcoming month I was asked to choose the book for a speculative fiction book club. Going with the theme of horror (for Halloween), and because it was on my list to read anyway, I selected Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is more well know for Fahrenheit 451, but I feel like this book better showcases his talents as a storyteller, intricately weaving three stories together. The story is set in the midwest and focuses on two 13-year-old boys, William “Will” Halloway and Jim Nightshade, who are best friends, next door neighbors, and connected by the fact that they were born the same night, but on different days. One dark and stormy night a carnival comes into town, and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I’m drawn to the descriptions of the boys, who are the same in so many ways, but are also opposites, one light and one dark. The growing mystery also intrigues me, Bradbury did a fantastic job of building the tension within the story, as well as blending the lyrical storytelling with the movement of the plot.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
It must also be said that I’m reading The Sandman graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman. I’m still on the fence about it in many ways, sometimes I finish a chapter and am intrigued, the next chapter I’m disgusted. The artwork is visceral and moving, the story is only so-so (at least in the first one, the second one picked up a bit).
Duality
Marcel Proust, who is making a reappearance in my life.
As the time has come to once again return to the proverbial grindstone, shoving my nose into the books that now largely exist in PDF form, I can’t help but notice what my course list is telling me about necessary skills and knowledge in the information profession. Of my four archives-oriented courses, two are distinctly about social theory, while two are practical computer and programming courses. Half my work is theory, half is computer-based. I’m sure that 50-50 split is not exact regarding the demands of the profession, and there are many other skills that are also crucial (I still long for the days of my physical preservation class last year), but theory and practice are both crucial to performing an accurate, thorough, complex job that, hyperbolically speaking, can impact all of society.
This is why going to library school is important. Much as teachers must also take psychology courses in order to understand their students, librarians and archivists, at least the good ones, should understand the theories of the profession and know how to understand their users and their needs. Learning how to code XML means nothing if I don’t know how the XML will be used. Meanwhile, knowing what is important for users in a cultural framework is irrelevant if I don’t know how give them an accurate finding aid.
As information professionals, we must remember that we are here to help to create access to what people need, and there are multiple facets of both users and information that we must understand in order to do so. Perhaps jolly old fellows like Proust and Derrida are always lurking below the surface, telling us what we need to think about before touching a line of code or a single subject guide.
Society of American Archivists Conference 2011
As one of the final elements of this summer, I attended the Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual conference in Chicago. This was my first professional conference. The Society of American Archivists is the oldest and largest national professional organization for archivists, so the conference is quite large. I was nervous! But, armed with my business cards and a schedule, I had a great time.
I would agree with past suggestions for conference attendance, but here’s some observations and recommendations of my own:
1. Swag can be a great way to network. At SAA, ribbons that attach to your name badge are all the rage. While many are provided by the conference itself (for example: student, new member, SAA fellow, etc.), members also print their own (such as: I like beer, fancy, deranger, etc.). Tracking down ribbons gives you a reason to start a conversation. Also, some ribbons may encourage others to speak to you. I found that by wearing a student ribbon, folks were extra friendly!
2. Chose something unexpected. While many of your session choices might be motivated by personal interests or work responsibilities, selecting a session about something different can be especially beneficial. You’re more likely to learn something new and identify opportunities for growth and collaboration. Plus, you get a little mental break while still taking in valuable conference activities.
3. Use twitter! Before grad school, I thought twitter was seriously silly. I’ve found that it is a great tool for professional development – you can follow fellow professionals in a less formal relationship than through listservs or Linkedin. During conferences, twitter can be particularly helpful for gleaning information from sessions you aren’t attending, finding someone to have lunch with, or hearing about event changes. Using a twitter app (I use Tweetdeck) to organize your twitter feeds is very helpful in this kind of situation. Just be sure to use the correct conference hashtag when tweeting or searching! You can explore tweets from SAA here.
Have you picked up any other great conference tips? Tell us about them in the comments!
patrons as customers
Customer service and providing excellent goods and services is at the heart of Librarianship.
This thought stemmed from an experience I had recently. My local library was hosting a summer game series, part of which was online and part of which was reading 5 books, filling out a form, and turning it in at the local library. When you turn the form in, you receive a code for an online badge, which also entered you into the grand prize drawing for various electronic gadgetry. I got an email update about the end of the contest looming and decided to venture to my local branch to secure my entry. I printed off the form, filled it out and went to the reference desk, where I was met with blank stares and lots of um-ing and ah-ing. “Oh, the online contest is over, it ended last week,” was the response to my query about gamecodes. I was confused, certainly the only reason I’d come in was because of an email received the day before reminding us that the end was nigh. The reference desk attendant then sat back in her chair and started doing whatever it is she was doing on her computer. The other attendant hadn’t even bothered to look up. Now, I could have fought and been obnoxious (in another lifetime I would have, but my more adult self has learned that won’t get you anywhere), instead I decided to try another branch. The second branch turned to be much more useful, the reference desk attendant took my form, gave me a coupon for free bread at Great Harvest, and added the badge to my online page, it took less than five minutes.
The question I ask is whether the first person had know the game wasn’t over and wanted to get back to checking her Facebook status, if she didn’t know how to add the badges to the online game, or if she truly thought the game was over. In any case, the answer is that she provided incredibly poor customer service and, if I were a less determined individual, she might have discouraged someone from coming back to the library.
Click the picture to link to the blog Connecting Librarian, it's an interesting story/perspective on customer service.
Coming from a customer service background, the antipathy that is shown to patrons by classmates and colleagues is disheartening and destructive. Now, I’m not saying we should treat patrons like traditional customers (they aren’t always right, after all), but we should at least take the initiative to provide excellent care to them. Sitting at a desk, eyes glued to the computer, is not encouraging someone to seek your help. Neither is giving quick answers then immediately returning to your computer work, without making sure that the answer is enough or truly what they are looking for.
Being a librarian is a service position, the entire job should be focused on providing quality services to your patrons, which includes providing them with someone who is friendly, responsible and happy to help them. Because, without these returning patrons, libraries really are screwed.
mmm… Book Check!
Monday Morning Mid-Month Book Check is a way for us to share what we are reading at the moment, no matter how brilliant, menial, or embarrassing.
Meggan:
image credit: Amazon
I just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I am, once again, late to the party on this book, but I finished it in time to see the movie. Does that count? Anyway, I’d heard some conflicting reviews, which made me a little cautious to begin reading this one. I picked it up last week, and within 15 pages I was hooked. As Darth Vader might say, “The voice is strong with this one,” and, as a reader, voice is one of the crucial elements that I require of a story. The book is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. The world is on the verge of some crucial events, and Jackson is a flashpoint on the issue of civil rights. The story has three narrators: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are black domestic servants while Skeeter is a rich white girl recently returned from college with the dream of becoming a writer. Skeeter sells a book idea to a publisher in New York – she’s going to write about what its like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. The only problem is, she needs to convince at least a dozen maids to tell her their stories. Aibileen and Minny sign on first. As each narrator takes a chunk of the story, we see many different aspects of the white/black tension present in Mississippi at the time as well as peeking into each narrator’s personal life. Some critics have said that this is yet another book about black people’s lives from a white person’s point of view, and while they’re not wrong, they are missing the point. The author has included an afterward, which, in contrast to the usual afterward full of hot air and empty words, is a part of the story that pulled it all together for me. She says, “I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don’t think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.” This attempt, while undoubtedly imperfect, is still an attempt, and it if it has opened a few more minds, it has done its job.
Emily:
I have a little bit of book ADD right now, mostly because I’m reading at least 2 books and shoving in graphic novels in between.
The first book I’m reading is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (mostly due to Meggan’s recommendation last month). It’s the story of Oskar Schell and his quest to solve a riddle left by his father, who died in the World Trade Center. Oskar is one of the best narrators I’ve read, his voice is distinctive and fascinating, but also rings true of any 9-year-old you might happen upon with his stream-of-consciousness though process. I’m excited to get into the bullk of the story, since I’m only about 100 pages in.
The second book is quite a different one, in terms of tone and audience. It’s called Leviathan and it is by Scott Westerfeld (who you might know from the Uglies, Pretties and Specials trilogy of books). Leviathan is a re-imagining of World War One, with the addition of steam powered walking artilleries (think The Empire Strikes Back) and genetically modified animals. The Clankers, consisting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and her allies, and the Darwinists, England and her allies, are coming to odds due to their differing opinions of industrialization. We view the story from the point of view of Deryn, a girl disguised as a boy in the English air force, and from Alek, the crown prince and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire after his parents are murdered in Sarajevo.
I really enjoy how facts are intertwined with the steam-punk elements, it’s a nice history lesson. The one aspect that nags at me is that he Darwinists have genetically modified and combined animals to make things such as flying whales, which rival the hydrogen powered Zeppelins of the Clankers. It’s a rather large leap of faith that they are capable of such advanced technology, not to mention the moral problems of enslaving and changing animals.
I won’t bore you with a summary of the graphic novels, but I read Echo Volume 1, 2, and 3 by , Chew Volume 1 and 2 by, and have just started The Walking Dead Volume 1 by Robert Kirkman.
Adriana:
My tendency to get overzealous about books and start five at a time has really come back to haunt me, and I’m now determined to stick closely with one at a time until the task is completed. Right now, I’m getting deep into Six Days by Elinor Glyn. She was a well known romance novelist of the 1920s (I hope somebody out there has heard of It, the origin of the term “It girl,” which was made into a movie starring Clara Bow. That was Elinor Glyn). Anyway, the story follows Laline Lester and David Lamont, who first meet in Washington then again cross paths on a steamer bound for Europe. I am only halfway through the book, and have just begun the “six days” stage: David Lamont’s six days of vacation time between assignments. Of course there is a dash of mystery and political intrigue, what with the recent end of World War I, and the blurb promises a cave collapse and plenty of grand adventures for our heroes before the story ends. This book was lent to me by the erstwhile Mimsi Marsh, who masterfully discussed the book on her blog (warning: she does give away major plot points, so if you have any hope of reading the book, you want to only read the beginning of her post – it is worth it). Sometimes, a romantic adventure from the 1920s is the best cure for a serious case of summer.
Do you like the work?
Recently, I was catching up with a friend. We chatted about our respective summer internships and the projects we were working on. He asked me, “Do you like the work?” At the time, the question startled me. “Do I like the work?” I repeated to myself, and half a second later I replied without hesitation, “Yes, I like the work.” “So do I,” he said.
image credit
What has struck me about this conversation is that simple question. Do you like the work? It is so easy to get caught up in the schooling: the circular discussion on topics that aren’t relevant to the day to day workings of a library or archive, the professors who haven’t worked in the field in years, the seemingly pointless assignments with ridiculous hoops to jump through all in the name of a degree that doesn’t guarantee that you can actually perform the job you are striving to win.
In the last year, it has becoming obvious to me how far the schooling is from the actual work of a librarian. Without an internship or part-time job in a library, it is very easy to lose yourself in the forest of minutiae and and wonder how these things apply to real life. After my internship, I am not only certain that I like the work, but I can see how many of the endless debates that have annoyed me about school have given me a valuable frame of reference with which to approach my work as a growing information professional. Here are some tips that I’ll be using in the next year to keep myself focused and remembering that I am headed in the right direction:
1. Work in a relevant environment. This might be through an internship or a part-time job or both. Get exposure to the actual work that you think you want to do. You might change your mind, and it’s much easier to switch up part-time jobs and coursework before you’re searching for a full-time job.
2. Talk to the people who do the job you want to do. Or even just people who work in similar environments. I have found that every time I talk with an actual librarian, I feel centered, capable, and focused – a complete contrast to the way my school work makes me feel. Find out what they are looking for in a new librarian, the kinds of skills that are crucial to the job and ways to go about gaining them. Ask them for tips to get ahead, about trends they see in the field, and about crucial resources for the profession. Don’t forget to stay in touch! This might mean the occasional email or a few minutes of chatting at a meeting.
3. Go to conferences. Yes, they are expensive, but they’re not getting any cheaper and student discounts can help out with the cost. Conferences will show you the real state of the field, plus there are lots of real librarians to talk to about their work. Check out the poster sessions, the vendor booths, and the meetings. Find out where your interests align with the field and then pursue them.
4. Frequently search job postings. Many schools and listservs will send out job postings daily. Scan the ones that look like the kind of work you want to do and then turn yourself into the person with those skills. You will probably also find, as I have, that your coursework applies to resumes in unexpected ways. It is never too soon to start doing this, so if you’re new to library school, don’t be afraid to flood your inbox with this kind of thing. You’ll have days when you just mark all as read, but you won’t be able to avoid them, and that’s important.
5. Find ways to turn your coursework into professional work. Can you turn the paper you wrote that your professor liked so well into something publishable? How about that project? Could it be a poster session? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel for these things. Use the coursework you’ve done in new ways that will help you to get excited about actual work you hope to be doing.
It’s no surprise that these tips will probably also help in a job search – keep your eye on the prize. To survive the second year, I’m doing all these things, but I’m also making an effort to keep my mind open to the assignments and debates that seem off-topic or irrelevant. Who knows where they might lead?
It’s Alive!
Oh, look, it’s Adriana talking about the past again! I promise I won’t glorify it beyond its worth (I’m trying to live up to Theodore Roosevelt’s standards), but I do want to discuss a recent effort by the Smithsonian, publicized a few weeks ago by NPR, to better connect people to a relic that has long seemed largely useless. Go ahead, take a look. Stereoviews!
These stereo images make history feel real. Just by looking at those few images available, General Sherman and his comrades feel far more like real people and much less like historical legends. They now feel a lot less like Paul Bunyan and more like, say, Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan (how’s that for non-partisan?) – Sherman has physical depth and fits into an actual world with three dimensions, rather than filling the pages of what could be just another storybook, even if it is one based on fact. The Civil War happened in the same world we share now; maybe I’m alone in this, but for all my love of the past it has always felt distant, different, and it’s easy to forget the people and places of previous centuries look just like ours. We rarely have the chance to see them entirely as they were, without artistic intervention and literary flourishes.
I realize that I’m probably spouting off big vague ideas again, and many people, especially those most in need of opinion shifts, might be unimpressed by this technology that is still not an Avatar or even a Smell-o-vision. But this stuff is real! This is a nearly tangible connection to the past that we cannot even receive from the photographs themselves, and one of the moments when I concede the value of computers and advanced imaging technology in relating people to the past. The big issue standing between a minor diversion and a useful tool for teaching history is this: will people use these images? Will they make any difference? I hope I’m not alone in drooling at my computer screen over this fantastic effort from the Smithsonian.
metamayhem 