what's a snooki?

It's been a tradition that after the Newbery and Caldecott Medal Winners are announced at the American Library Associations' Midwinter meeting the award recipients are interviewed on the Today show live in New York City. That didn't happen this year. Apparently the Today Show the morning after the meeting was already booked, and Matt Lauer interviewed...

...Snooki.

For those of you who don't know who Snooki is, she's famous for getting drunk on ron ron juice and smushing in front of millions of viewers on MTV's The Jersey Shore.

Really, today show? Really? You're going to promote Snooki's new "novel" over award winning children's literature? When America is clawing itself out of a horrible recession, there was a recent national tragedy and the political arena is so vitriolic its painful to watch the news, this is what you choose to put on your show?

Classy.

For those of who are as outraged as I am - there is a facebook campaign to try and get the Medal Winners back onto the today show. Who knows how successful it will be, but if facebook got Betty White onto SNL than it might just work for this campaign too.

And for those who are interested in who actually won the award, rather than the drama surrounding them, check out the Newberry Winner by clicking here and the Caldecott by clicking here.

Random theory...

Photo credit: accessed through creative commons from the State Library of Queensland.

Today as I logged into my work computer, I got that pesky message reminding me that my password was about to expire and asking if I wanted to change my email. I did, and am now in that annoying time period of a week or so where I enter my old password (out of habit) and then scramble to remember what I made my new password. Which leads me to my theory:

Remember back in the days before cell phones, when a lot of memory space was devoted to random phone numbers?

As we store contact information in our phones, I'm convinced that the specific brain function once used for phone numbers is now consumed by remembering all of the various passwords we need to access personal email, work email, school email, social networking, online banking profiles, online shopping profiles, etc. etc. etc.

Not that there would be much point in proving this theory (I would imagine that brain scans and inferential statistical analysis would be needed) - it's just interesting to think about how our minds need to adapt as technology evolves, and how the future of online informational security might look like...

sunday morning infographic

I've mentioned in a previous post how much I love DIY culture, and even though I am not necessarily crafty, I believe that there is a strong correlation between it and librarianship.

Recently, I saw this post that made me think about this intersection again: 10 Things You Already Own to Wrangle and Label Cords. The post shares some pretty awesome ways to keep the multiple cords (that seem unfortunately necessary in this day and age) manageable, using common objects - from toilet paper tubes to action figures.

I'm always thinking of creative ways to organize information online, it's great to see creative ways to organize objects in real life.

Because it's Sunday morning, and I don't want to start my homework, and I'm a super dork, I processed my thoughts about librarianship and DIY culture into a Venn Diagram (which you should click on to get a better look at):


Putting together this infographic was a really interesting process. I found it way easier to think of common elements rather than unique elements. Granted, the fact that librarianship is a profession and DIY culture is (mostly) a hobby is a major difference. But once I started to really think about it - I was surprised at how much these two concepts overlap. For example:

Misunderstood: Most people think that libraries only deal with books and that crafters are crazy ladies who scrapbook. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Fetishized: The general public loves the concept of the sexy librarian. DIY culture is being co-opted as a marketing strategy to sell products.

Sustainable: reusing and recycling and self-reliance are major tenants of DIY culture. Libraries are at the heart of communities and community centeredness leads to stronger ecological values.

This post was a lot of fun. I have a recent obsession with infographics, and I'm always looking for an excuse to make my own. Writing this post makes me think if there are any other hobbies/professions/concepts that would be fun to fit into a Venn Diagram...

A big thanks to Serenity (and the magic of Gchat) for letting me bounce some ridiculous ideas off of her...

Should the ALA follow the Bar Association's example?

I have seen a lot of criticism among the online library community against both the ALA and library schools concerning the high number of students who are getting churned out every year in an unsustainable job market.

Here is some fodder for the fire: It appears that the American Bar Association has issued a warning about the potential risks of going for a law degree.

I first saw this on The Atlantic website, where the author provides statistics showing that the salaries for first year lawyer's have been cut in half since the recession started while the average amount of loans taken out by students remain ridiculously high.

My question is: Should the ALA follow the ABA's footsteps? I haven't seen any statistics about salaries or hiring rates for first year library professionals or recent MLIS graduates, but as my graduation approaches, I am certainly feeling the heat...

On trolling....

As the digital exchange of ideas becomes more common, information professionals need to be cognizant of trolling.

Here is an awesome article on the phenomenon: Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt. It is written by a Julie Zhuo, a product design manager for Facebook, and offers some really good ideas for redesigning comment moderation for blogs and websites.

The article is worth the read, but for those who don't have time at least consider the following snippet:

Trolling, define as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory of provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the fourth century, B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and morality in his parable of the ring of Gyges.

That mythical ring gave its owner the power of invisibility, and Plato observed that even a habitually just man who possessed such a ring would become a thief, knowing that he couldn't be caught. Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly.

Tattooed Librarians of the Pacific Northwest

One of the great things about attending a distance learning program is that our cohort has the autonomy of planning our own graduation ceremony. However, with great privilege comes great responsibility: we have to pay for it ourselves.

To try and circumvent this (if we're already in debt for the degree, we don't want to have to pay for anything else), the graduation committee has come up with a nifty little fund-raising campaign:

The Tattooed Librarians of the Pacific Northwest 2010-2011 Calender!!

This has been quite the endeavor putting it together, but we are really proud of the end product. We are selling them through a print-on-demand website, you can check out our online shop here: zazzle.com.nyssaj

We know at $25 dollars it's a little spendy: we had to add on a royalty so we could actually raise funds through the calender. But, if you band together with friends, the more calenders you buy, the cheaper it is - and we still get our royalties!!

So please check it out, and if you like what you see: help us out and buy one!! They make great gifts and are the perfect calender to spice up any drab office wall!!

Librarians finally learn web design

I know that it has been forever and a day since I last posted. This semester I made a decision to really focus on school, and it's paid off in spades. I feel like I've done the best academic work that I've ever done. I know, you must be thinking, shouldn't every semester be like that? Yes, it should, and it usually is. But I think this term I realized that my MLIS program is about to come to an end, and I really want to make the most of the time I have left.

But of course, focusing more on school has had it's downsides, too. Mostly, I neglected my blog, and probably lost most of the amazing readership I had built up over the summer.

But now that the semester is winding down, and my big projects are behind me, I'm ready to start back up again. So, for you dear readers, a short post, as I dust off my blogging skills:

San Jose Public Library just launched their new sight, and it is glorious:


It's simple. It's clean. It's colorful. It gives me hope.

It's sad to say, but there are more bad websites out there than good ones. Especially for libraries. More often than not, it's because a library is part of a larger organization or institution (such as a university or city/county government) and has to abide by their bureaucratic rules for web design.

But San Jose has really hit the mark here. A good website should be simple, and easy to navigate. It should have clearly marked paths and landmarks. it should not overwhelm the user, but inspire them to explore and return.

You can read a bit about the web site's redesign, and some of the new features, on The Librarian in Black's blog. Some of the new highlights that I really like are the fact that the words database or OPAC or other library jargon aren't on the site, and that users can comment on almost any aspect of the site (which aren't moderated) and that all staff members can blog (and again, their posts aren't moderated either).

Why does all of this give me hope? Because smart, well designed websites are our future. More and more information searches are going to be conducted not in the library, but on the library's website. In this new model of librarianship, we need to provide excellent user experience, and web design is the way to start.

Bravo and Congratulations to the staff at San Jose public Library!!