Look who is advertising themselves ...

I had to read it twice. Yes, it's real. No, I have not included a link.

Note that "this advert is not endorsed by this blog". It was found on the sidebar of a Facebook Page.

The good thing (for me at least) that as I have not yet lost the capacity for surprise, clearly I have not yet become jaded by the "offerings" of the Internet - as well as those other Professional Places Of Which We Will Not Speak. At least, not here, and not now ....

Published Article # 1 for 2011

Sydney broadsheet Sydney Morning Herald yesterday published my latest offering, in the infamous Column 8 section. I'm so glad that I'm not the only one amused by my musings ... otherwise there may be those who have "mental health concerns" about me. No, wait! That complaint has already been made ...

The Warrior Library in Real Life

Unless you live in or near the town of Warrior, AL (Zip 35180, population 13,225 according to Zip-Codes, or 3000-odd according to a number of other sources ), you may never have heard of it - nor the Warrior Public Library.

Obviously the staff there are, by default, Warrior Librarians. You can "check out" the library website (http://warrior.lib.al.us/) , but don't forget to bring it back on time.

A little library joke there. OK, it wasn't a very good one. Mea Culpa, yet again.

Folklore and Library Administration

I recently purchased a pair of Peruvian Worry Doll earrings at a local fete, and was interested to hear the folkloric background of these enchantingly cheerfully colored figures.

Apparently, legend has it that one could tell all one's troubles to these dolls, then place them under one's pillow - from whence they would vanish, taking one's problems away with them.

Needless to say, they don't quite work for the vast majority - particularly adult users who's mothers aren't prepared to get up in the middle of the night to remove them.

This struck me as particularly pertinent ... how many of our profession have poured out our deepest most professional concerns to personnel Up The Management Line (or Food Chain, depending on your organization) - only to never hear from the manager ever again. Not to mention the troubles not actually going away either.

Just a thought.

Struggling with GMDs ...

In the never-ending quest for consistency, a whole stack of assorted GMD's got a thorough smacking today; CO (COmputer equipment) and SO (SOftware) got the old Global Change treatment and became ELs (Electronic resources). The two genuine SO (SOund) resources had a manual change back to the correct designation. "L" (Library equipment) joined the EQ (EQuipment) GMDs, and nary a grumble was heard.

Which I guess is one of the positive attributes of working with MARC record fields, as opposed to actual PE (PEople). Notably though, PE isn't a recognised SCIS-compliant GMD, although they are still pretty important.

Still unresolved is what to do about another all-sorts arrangements for what may be loosely referred to as "movies"; the MO (MOtion picture) variety which might be on a VI (video) tape, or as an EL (electronic resource) - although not a computer program. They ("movies") may also fall into the classification of FI (FIlm) if the content is mounted on a nitrate-style medium, as opposed to a "flicks" if on SL (SLides) flashed (FL if FLash-cards) at a high enough speed.

OK. That's it. I'm going to LE (LEave it alone) for a while, before my toenails start curling backwards.

Tomorrow I'll have another go at sorting it all out. Why, do I hear you ask? Because the web cats linked to the library software management program generate icons for our users so they can see what media they are not going to be allowed to access. Makes sense? No, I thought not. Glad to hear it's not just me on this one.

Information Currency in Real Life

The most excellent book "Clean it fast, clean it right" (Brendenberg ISBN 174121162x) was one of my more fortuitous purchases for The Home Library - a mere seven bucks for remaindered stock following the release of a new edition.

How much updating can a 1998 copyright-dated book on cleaning need in 2011? Well, gee and heck, nothing significant changed for removing vomit or grease stains. Grease is grease, right? And vomit ... well, let's take it as read. It's still fairly early in the morning here, at least for a Saturday.

Anyways, I wanted information on a homeopathic-style polish for copper, as in the metal. Yep, it was right there on page 131. "One tablespoon of salt, one tablespoon of flour, one tablespoon of white vinegar". Simple?

Would that be mined rock salt or evaporated sea salt? Iodised? Crushed, powered or crystal?

Can wholemeal flour be used, or does it have to be the refined pasty stuff; celiacs would be unlikely to possess such a product. Would it be OK to substitute cornflour? Or an oat derivative?

"White" vinegar? Oxidized alcohol. In Our Global Village, wouldn't a rice vinegar introduce a modicum of gracious culinary delight? Fruit vinegars, wine, balsamic, so many to choose from, and yet we are limited to plain old ordinary "white" vinegar.

Then there's the additional pressure of making socially responsible decisions. Even the briefest consideration of the countries of origin of the above-mentioned ingredients exposes the possibilities of their respective histories of human rights abuses; unsustainable environmentally unsound practices; domestic fiscal policies particularly in relation to the monetary support of school libraries, and similar issues of international concern.

As always, the devil is in the detail. So I bought a bottle of the commercial product "Brasso", for less than the cost of the book. Admittedly, the can of metal cleaner doesn't give anywhere near the same level of aesthetic satisfaction sitting on a book shelf ...

Catch me if you can ...

(Hint: One of these is NOT me)

Valentine's Day: Display and Competition

Amazing what you can do with a ten dollar budget, a "free" hour (OK, laugh here - I did) and a box of bits left over from previous years.

The competition this year involved getting teachers to nominate their favorite "romance" story, film, poem, song, TV show, etc - then printing the teachers' name and their favs all mixed up so the kids could "guess" which teacher nominated what.

Fun for all, particularly the small child who walked away with a big box of chocolates at the end.

Prophets and real life

I'll admit it; sometimes I have a look at my horoscope. They're sometimes good for a laugh. Often they're so generic they have to come true. But today's (Sydney) major broadsheet instructs me to: " ... Keep track by documenting everything important in writing, and [keep] a detailed list of everything ...". Is that spooky, or what?

Video of the Day: Reading a book

Many thanks to loyal supporter Bridget for the heads-up on this one!

The Universal Patron?

Way back when, there was a song "The Universal Soldier". It's so far back that even recalling the first line -without resorting to some form of Internet Research (ie Googling) - is just about impossible for the average Person In The Library, let alone the Man in the Street.

But thanks to the wonders of modern technology, together with the brilliance of a human mind, "they" have come up with a composite graphic for The Face of any city, location, and - by extension - presumably mindset.

It may (or may not) be a simple progression then to produce a composite face for a library's most valued clients; and one for known library vandals, returns defaulters, computer regulation violators, and other categories of miscreants.

What we could actually do with such a graphic leads to so many possibilities, it makes one's ears bleed just from thinking about it. But that could be just me ...

The Western canon goes East

ANZUS is still alive and kicking (if that's not too violent an image) ; and it seems as if all treaty participants are still participating in the move from the West to the East ... the western canon appears to have moved into modern warfare. (And yes, the pun is intentional. This time.)

It's been many years since I bought my last saddle and accompanying tack, but still wanting to keep up with latest trends I came across this intriguing fact. Australian saddlers are making "equipment" for our American Cousins. For use in you-know-where.

It's probably best to go to the website for more information, coz I don't want to get into any more trouble than I'm usually in. Still, it's not like this is any state secret or anything. It comes up on a Google search for Australian saddles. Heck, the manufacturers even have a "civilian model".

Library Display: Holiday Activities

"Not an overwhelming effort, but considering a zero budget and a 10 minute Window of Opportunity for book selection, construction, printing, and pinning, not too shabby a result." This self-assessment was brought to you by End of Year Inertia, the Number 4, and the letter V.

Film as Text: A commercial opportunity?

OK, not quite I, Robot, but needing a much lower budget. All roles via honorary cameo appearances by real librarians, filmed in actual libraries - so no prop costs; unscripted in a faux documentary style. Michael Moore, eat your heart out!

This blog entry brought to you by a cool weather change - after a week at, near, or over 100 degrees.

English as she is wrote

Fantastic news: "NSW 15 year olds rank amongst the best in the world in literacy, according to the latest (2006) OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Only Finland significantly did better than NSW ..."

"Only Finland significantly did better ..."???

Surely that should be "Significantly, only Finland did better ..."; or possibly "Only Finland did significantly better ..."?

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the literarti letting out a global sigh. Irony, thy name be formal reporting on literacy levels.

The full report (2010-2011) was available online at the time of this entry. Enjoy.

Win an author visit?

OK folks ... no-one knows everything, right? And there's so many authors in the world, that no one librarian can have heard of all of them, right again?

So there should be no shame in a secondary Teacher Librarian not knowing about "a beloved children's author illustrator with more than 36 million books in print". You still with me here?

The way I figure it, I may not have heard of Jan Brett, but then again there's a good chance she won't have heard of me. Sounds fair and reasonable, at least to me. I may not do "reasonable" very well - from some folk's perspective - but "fair" is mandatory.

Anyways, there's currently a competition to win a "school or library" visit from Jan Brett. I almost entered into the competition, until it came to the part about entering personal information. I'm still more than a little wary of that, since my personal bank account got hacked. (Luckily the bank stepped in after a mere one-cent transaction had been detected. Well done, St George Bank!)

So, being in the situation I am currently in, I paused to reflect on any possible negative ramifications my winning may produce. I couldn't find anything in the competition rules that precluded the author from travelling to Australia (return airfares currently being around USD$1400 LAX to Sydney); at least a few days hotel expenses (excluding The Y, around AUD$300 per night), meals, etc. Oh-oo ... Code of Conduct, Clause 26.5 et al.

So technically, the Author Visit would be the property of my employer. Which I guess would mean that Jan Brett may have found herself in Head Office reading her Hedgehog stories to folk in suits and/or "up" hairstyles, complete with note takers, observers, members of the press, and a disgruntled Teacher Librarian writing indignant blog entries.

Probably lucky for everyone that I closed the competition page before I finalised the competition entry details.

Library Advocacy and Social Networking

It seems that many may have lost touch with what's happening in Libraryland, but with Web2.0 and social networking, we can thank Facebook for bringing at least one issue back to the front. (Hopefully that makes grammatical sense?)

ALIES has "uploaded a print2-sided and fold" flyer to help in their campaign for a library in every school". Whilst not wishing to seem negative about any effort of this type, I'm not sure who the flyers are intended for. Those that already are convinced of their worth (libraries, not flyers) don't need one; those that make the decisions and hand out the money have already been told, given the research, lobbied and more - but have remained unmoved.

It's a similar story for understaffed, underfunded, underutilised and misunderstood current school libraries ... and for that matter, Teacher Librarians. Here in Australia, after much gnashing of teeth and sweating of brows, we finally got a Federal government 'enquiry' ... but without the power to actually change anything, regardless of the findings.

Good luck with it, folks.

A Different State of Mind

Having returned safely, facing nothing more dangerous than a collapsing bed (two of the struts were too short), I have indeed returned with a different mind-set. Amongst many reflections was questioning the wisdom of continuing with a number of current commitments ...

In the mean time, I've been revisiting a few of my (almost) long-forgotten pursuits that brought me so much pleasure in the distant past:

No, I'm not praying for inspiration at the start ... there was a spider on the ceiling which had to be "relocated" before anything could proceed.

World Peace has to start somewhere ...

I'm off for a little personal Reflective Retreat - a cabin in the mountains with a bed (well, a mattress on boards) and a fridge. I'm not taking anything electronic (except my eBook reader) loaded with a few selections, and an electric kettle - which strictly speaking isn't "electronic". I can do without almost all the creature comforts, but even the drifters on ye olde range had hot coffee at the end of the day. But it being bush fire season 'n' such, no camp fires allowed.

Yeah, OK - there's a shower/toilet block a short ways up the track, but that's it. Back in a few days, bush fires, landslides, falling trees, venomous spiders and snakes permitting ...

An exercise in futility?

Having spent months trying to decide if, then what, eBook reader I might purchase, I've just come across one on Summer Sale at a local purveyor of such electronic devices. Even better, they were running a competition to actually win one! "In 25 words or less, tell us why you want ..."

I wish I had an eBook,
Like all my librarian friends;
Then I'd read a thousand tomes
And other odds and ends.

I did try for something in Iambic Pentamiter, but it was a little too difficult to stay under the word limit, get some rhyme happening, and make any sense. But still, this isn't too bad, is it? And only 22 words. Bet there's more than a few recipients of my more formal correspondence that wish I could be as brief and to the point with them.

Anyways, the downside of it is that if I should happen to win the competition, the prize - according to my employer's Code of Conduct - goes to my employer, as we are only allowed to "accept" prizes up to the value of $50.

Ah well, maybe they'll let me use it over the holidays or visit it or something. The CofC doesn't say who would actually get to hold the eBook reader in protective custody, in order to save me from being open to possible allegations of corruption. I must check into this, in the unlikely event that I win.

So much to do, so much of it most probably pointless. Sigh.