Mick Jones, Punk Rock Librarian

Okay, so the title of this post, much like the title of this Guardian article, is misleading. Mick Jones (of the The Clash) hasn't really gone and picked up an MLS degree and become an honest-to-goodness librarian, but it's still kind of neat that he refers to this project as a "library."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/5894780/Clash-guitarist-Mick-Jones-has-become-a-guerrilla-librarian.html

Tending my garden

I've spent my morning weeding the reference collection here. Actually, weeding and consolidating the reference collection. Because the collection had been split into two seperate sections. And nothing was in order, despite the call numbers plainly marked on the spines. So it wasn't like LC numbers A-K on one side of the library, J-Z on the other. No, it was more like "this pile of outdated material on this side of the library, that pile of outdated material on the other."

So I spent about two hours pulling old materials and then re-shelving the few I kept, in order, all together. This is what I pulled:

• The Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance 1949 ed., 1962 ed., and 1973 ed. (for some reason the call number had been covered up with white out on the 1973 edition.)
• 2 copies of Roberts Rules of Order. I left two on the shelf, which is more than generous, considering I've seen a copy on the shelf in almost everyone's office.
• 3 different Dictionaries of Philosophy.
• 4 copies of the 2nd edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage. The second edition was published in 1965. Yeah, modern.
• One copy of The New Fowler's Modern English Usage." This was published in 1996, so it's not exactly out of date, but I left a copy on the shelf, so we should be good.
• The Columbia Encyclopedia (In One Volume). Let me tell you, it's a big effing volume.
• A 1977 Cassell's Italian Dictionary, whch is to be replaced by the Italian volume in a set of language dictionaries found by one of the researchers here published in 1962. Why am I exchanging a 1977 edition for a 1962 edition? I honestly couldn't say.
• The Glossary of Typesetting Terms. Yeah, typesetting.
• 3 copies of Strunk and White's Manual of Style. One copy stays in reference, one copy goes to the circulating collection.
• 4 Turabian Style guides. I felt bad culling seven copies of something, so I left four on the shelf.
• The 1984 Government Printing Office Style Manual.
• 3 copies of a 1957 Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage. This lists "Negro" as the proper term for African Americans.
• A 1996 Swiss Stock Guide. I would have kept it had there been a run of Swiss Stock Guides, but there was not.
• Two State of the World Atlases and an Atlas of the World Economy that still include the USSR.
• the 1993 CIA World Fact Book. Now entirely available online, and (slightly) more up to date.
• A Standard French and English Dictionary that only translates French to English, and does not include voume two, which would (hopefully) translate English to French. Similar situations with an Italian, German and Spanish Dictionary.
• A 1957 Black's Law Dictionary. I imagine some terms have been added or updated since then.
• A copy of the Qur'an. Had there been also a Bible or any other religious book, I would have let it stay in reference. However, the lack of any other remotely religious based text had led me to decide to re-shelve it with the circulating collection.
• And last, but certainly not least, eight copies of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I left three on the shelf. That's a lot of dictionaries.

On a not unrelated note, I'm thinking of writing an at-work exercise guide for librarians.

So I kind of forgot I had a blog...

I don't think I posted anything last week. At least not since very early in the week. My energy is starting to wane.

I've been working on putting together of collection development policy for the library. It's not necessarily a difficult project. I'm using the IFLA guidelines for a CDP, so I pretty much just follow those and add stuff in when necessarry. So it's not hard, but it's tedious. Which sort of makes it hard.

Last week I wrote a policy for the serials collection. That one wasn't quite so in depth, but it had the nice little bonus of putting sole responsibility for selecting periodicals in my hands. I'm not saying that I'm going to all out cancel the subscriptions that annoy me, but I am saying that the Conservative Chronicle may not be long for this world.

If I can find out usage statistics, and it turns out that the CC is read with some regularity, I'll keep it. After all, it's all about making the patrons happy. But in my professional opinion, it's not exactly a "scholarly" publication. It's pretty much just Ann Coulter-esque liberal bashing. With nativity scenes on the front page of the Christmas issue. If it gets read less than once an issue, I'm not wasting the library money on it. And I like knowing that the decision is mine to make.

That being said, I have no idea how to go about collecting usage statistics here!

Also, local update: I found a lovely wine bar in GB this weekend. I plan to patronize them frequently. Jim is not so thrilled with this idea.

Really cool open access resource

Maplight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws.This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable.

Very cool to look through. Also a bit disheartening. But cool.

Government websites and why they suck

I got my first real reference question today. Yay! Unfortunately, it was over email, as vague as possible, and related to soemthing completely foreign to me. Yay!

After some work with my dear friend Wikipedia, I figured out what the heck they were asking me, and actually managed to track down the transcript of the congressional testimonial they needed. The problem? It's on a government website, which means there's a 70% chance that the link to the full text of the testimonial will be broken.

Sure enough, I can't access it.

Is it 4:30 yet?

The perils of early mornings

I am not a morning person. I am good at one thing before 9 am--sleep. So it sucks that I'm expected to be in the office before the students arrive at 8:30.

Yesterday a student said to me, "Being a librarian must be such a peaceful job." I refrained from rolling my eyes, and told him that, while it's a great job, it's anything but peaceful. I have, in fact, never read a book while at work (with the possible exception of sneaking off to "shelf read" and instead perusing the Bombshell Manual of Style at TCPL). I'm not sure he believed me though, so now every time I see him, I act super business-like.

Which brings me back to the early morning thing. When I'm trying to be business-like but I'm not fully awake, I end up looking somewhat lobotomized, rather than merely sleepy. I think I avoided actually drooling this morning when he asked me whether we subscribed to a certain journal, but I don't think he'll be coming to me with any complicated questions in the future.

I've been trying to write a haiku about turkeys (turkies?) but can't get the last line. I'll post it if I ever complete it.

It's 9 am and I have sorted the mail, shelved the first round of newspapers, nearly drooled on a student, checked out books for a course reservation, and started back in with my good friend Ulrich's. Together we're trying to make some sense of the serials collection here. It may not sound like much, but for me, it's a whole lot to do before 9. I need more coffee.

Reshelving is apparently very Zen

Who would have thought that the happiest, most soothing moments of my day would come when re-shelving books? It's seriously the only time where I really feel like I'm in a library. The rest of the time, I'm in my office, trying to figure out which serials we still get, which we need to pay for, which have ceased publication, which are now only available online...I suppose it was a good idea not to sell back my serial management textbook. I plan to re-read it this week.



In addition to the periodical nightmare, I anticipate some very heated arguments between me and some of the scholars here over how I spend the library's money. There seems to be a pretty scary leaning towards print material here. Never mind the fact that databases are easier to use (usually) and less heavy than giant books. These people like their books and journals. Perhaps that explains the lack of decent online resources. I foresee some intense user instruction sessions in the future. As soon as I can sort out the current mess and start subscribing to some new databases!



But I have at least found a perk to my job: free tickets to the upcoming Antiquarian Book and Ephemera sale in Stockbridge, MA later this summer! Sure it only saves me six dollars, but librarians don't tend to get a lot of SWAG, so I'm going to get excited about the things that come my way. It's not exactly four boxes of free books from ALA, but it's something.

Day One

My first day on the new job and I literally feel like I might cry. Not because of the stacks of paper, which seem to have no organization to them; not because the previous librarian (who left in January) left no decipherable notes about what the heck she was doing; but because I'm trying to analyse the library's databases and the best thing they have is JSTOR. Which they don't even access directly! They have remote access to the Boston Public Library, which happens to have JSTOR. This system is going to have to change.

Beyond BPL's remote databases, most of which are innapropraite for deep scholarly research, the actual direct access subscriptions are sort of underwhelming. I fail to see the purpose of a subscription to EBSCO's Literary Reference Center for an Economics Library. Generally, if Shakespeare appears in the logo, it's probably not relevant to the social sciences.

I've still got five to look through, and the titles alone give me some hope, but at the same time, the pit in my stomach is growing larger. While the titles may sound impressive, I've only actually heard of one of them. And frankly, if it didn't come up in Marilyn Lester's overview of databases, or at least in my Government docs class, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On a more positive note, Massachusetts is beautiful and if I manage to stay afloat amidst my endless sea of paper, I think I might enjoy living here. The fact that my closest neighbors are turkeys freaks me out a little bit, but when I venture down the mountain into town, it's pretty cute. Sort of Wicker Park meets Little House on the Prairie. There's an actual Cheesemonger.