A Good Cause

My library director just sent this link around: http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/main.asp?SectionID=43&subsectionID=120&articleID=7533

If you need to get your license plate renewed in Georgia before the end of the month, please consider buying one of these new library plates! Proceeds go to purchasing new materials for public libraries.

Rowling Outs Dumbledore

Just read this while sitting at the reference desk...in a question and answer session in New York author of the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling outed Dumbledore. Asked if Dumbledore had ever been in love, Rowling replied that she had always thought of him as gay and that perhaps he had been in love with his nemesis, the dark wizard Grindelwald, who he defeated in a battle of magic.

I think that this is awesome. Doesn't change the books one whit and doesn't change the characterization of Dumbledore in the novel. I do fear that this does give further ammunition to parents who try to get the books banned from libraries and schools. I can only imagine the claims that will now come out about Dumbledore's interest in Harry and if he should be a school administrator, etc. It would be great though if instead people were able to read the books and see him instead as just a positive role model.

Duelling Moustaches

On Wednesday our campus had it's fall festival - AASU Day. Our library booth won Most Creative which was definitely justified as we'd put a lot of hard work into creating quite the scene. Our theme was "Your future starts at Lane Library" and we had a gypsy telling fortunes inside the tent (of how the library would help them in their future) and a Wheel of Destiny outside the tent to spin for prizes. Here's a picture of our library director and I working our magic as carnival barkers. While my fake moustache got rave reviews, it just can't compete with the real thing.

Banned Books Week

I'm a week late. The ALA sponsored Banned Books Week ended this past Saturday, but still I thought that it was interesting to note their top ten list of most challenged books for 2006:

• "And Tango Makes Three," by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family and unsuited to age group.

• "Gossip Girls" series, by Cecily Von Ziegesar, for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group and offensive language.

• "Alice" series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for sexual content and offensive language.

• "The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things," by Carolyn Mackler, for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language and unsuited to age group.

• "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison, for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group.

• "Scary Stories" series, by Alvin Schwartz, for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence and insensitivity.

• "Athletic Shorts," by Chris Crutcher, for homosexuality and offensive language.

• "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," by Stephen Chbosky, for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language and unsuited to age group.

• "Beloved," by Toni Morrison, for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group.

• "The Chocolate War," by Robert Cormier, for sexual content, offensive language and violence.

I don't know the rest of you, but knowing that they are challenged just makes me want to read them more!

Lyrical Ode to Librarians

Just came across this from reading the Tame the Web blog. Local North Carolina indie rockers, SNMNMNM, have recorded a catchy little ditty in honor of a librarian that they know. The song is great because it's about the experience of a patron who is helped by a reference librarian who helps them find some pretty obscure information. Besides that, I've never heard call numbers sung so that they tug on my heart strings before.

What's also cool is that the band is inviting librarians to record themselves singing along to the song so that they can be included in a music video montage. AND there's a library challenge to find the books belonging to the call numbers highlighted in the song. First ten entrants win a CD.

Check them out: http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/

Creating Metadata for electronic works

I read this morning that the Library of Congress has announced several partnerships within the private sector to help to create metadata standards for digitally-born records - specifically for photographs, films, sound recordings, videogames, and cartoons. Why should this be exciting?

Well, I must admit that electronic records scare me a bit. When I think about how many years it's taken me to feel comfortable with describing the various physical formats that I work with within my job - books, journals, archival collections, DVD's and CD's, etc - and then think about how to approach a record that has been created digitally, I find it pretty intimidating. Here I am learning all the idiosyncracies of how to catalog formats that have been around for decades or even centuries and I'm expected to learn how to catalog and describe and potentially archive formats that change so rapidly that the systems they were created on are often outdated within months?

Having standards set and maintained helps to ease my mind. I'm sure that the day is not so far off that I may just be called on to catalog and maintain access in our online catalog to the electronic versions of much of what we're now used to seeing in print. Our E-books collection may continue to grow; perhaps we'll replace our DVD and audio collections with online access; our archives will begin to recieve digitally-born photograph collections and electronic files. And from an archival perspective, it's just mind-blowing to think about how we'll maintain access to these things as technology continues to change and upgrade. Overwhelming, but exciting.

Task : Summary

Final thoughts on the Lane Library 2.0 experience - overall fantastic. I've decided to keep the blog up and running and will try my best to maintain it with new posts. I've had a lot of fun going through the experience and definitely feel like I've learned a lot. I was either already aware of or very comfortable with at least half of the things on the task list, but there were definitely new things that I tried out that I had previously been a bit intimidate by before (wiki's and feeds for example).

In the end, I can definitely see the personal and professional value to this exercise. I'll incorporate many of the aspects into my own personal life and have been really challenged to examine how I can incorporate them into my professional life as well. In the end, I really can see the value in almost all of the different aspects that we looked at - one exception for me is Facebook. In that case, it's not that there isn't/couldn't be value, but I think that I am really stuck in my own prejudices about it. I don't particularly like the interface and found it difficult to browse through it and on top of that I think that I'm a bit stuck by my own use of myspace. However, I can see that it could be successful for other users as just one more tool to gain access to libraries and librarians.

In the end, this whole experience has really made me aware of just how much is going on online. While I like to think of myself as relatively computer-savvy and in touch with what our group of patrons are using the digital environment for, I've realized that there is so much more happening that I realized! Being able to speak meaningfully to our patrons about where they can find information online, how to evaluate it, and how they can creatively use it is integral to our success as a library. I am convinced that in order to have those conversations, we need to maintain our awareness of what's actually happening out there.

Kudos to our library director and our marketing team for pushing this program forward!