La de da

Hello fair readers!

I hope your Vernal Equinox and your potential Easter celebrations went smooth and hopefully with much less snow than mine did.

(photo taken by Yenna, posted on Flickr with the tag “Winter sucks”…I agree)

But all this winter snow in Spring has given me some time to stew and grow more and more annoyed with this article:

Our Public Libraries Are Being Turned Into Video Arcades

and the fuddy duddy librarians who are rallying around it, as if this was a good point.

I would like to take one particular response to the article and break it down into it’s ridiculous components. Why you ask? Because it’s sad. And angering. And wrong.

Posted by anonymous in response to the LISNews blog about the article:

Wow. Just wow. That’s right people. Librarians like that actually still exist. Sad, yes?Let’s debunk that statement.

“this is just part of the problem with public libraries since they forgot what they were in the early nineties”

What is a library? According to the free online dictionary:

li·brar·y

(lbrr)

n. pl. li·brar·ies

1.

a. A place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending.

b. A collection of such materials, especially when systematically arranged.

c. A room in a private home for such a collection.

d. An institution or foundation maintaining such a collection.

2. A commercial establishment that lends books for a fee.

3. A series or set of books issued by a publisher.

4. A collection of recorded data or tapes arranged for ease of use.

5. A set of things similar to a library in appearance, function, or organization: a library of computer programs.

6. Genetics A collection of cloned DNA sequences whose location and identity can be established by mapping the genome of a particular organism.

So there’s a definition. But truly, a library is what a community makes of it. A library can be as big, or as small, as the school, city, business or organization it serves provides it to be.

So libraries can be this:

But libraries can also be this:

(this picture was taken by The Shifted Librarian at DOK Delft, one of the hippest libraries in the world)

Needless to say a library, a building, an inanimate object, does not forget what it is. A community, a school….people change it when they see a need for change.

Back to the hater:

“and decided to become this hybrid amazon.com/barnes and noble/arcade/rec center ordeal that we have now”

This comment implies that a library cannot change to keep up to date with the times. That a book-store style of library, or a library catalog that has pictures and words that everyone understands in it….are bad things. Let me direct you back to a blog I posted about librarian stereotypes. If change does not occur, if keeping up to date with modern trends…not just in libraries but in the whole world

If these things do not occur, then it is logical that the entity will cease to exist. I recommend this poster reads a little something called The Origin of the Species by means of natural selection by Charles Darwin. Check out the bit on survivial of the fittest. Apply.

Let’s continue:

“I am a young adult librarian”

Really? Well that’s quite a surprise. Because most teen librarians that I know…totally rock.

“and soon we will be losing ref desks for kiosks so that we are encouraged to wander around and bother the patrons ala target employees”

First, Target employees certainly do not walk around bothering people…or even asking if you need help. They are few and far between. And would it really be so bad to get rid of those awful reference desks that scare the bejeezes out of most patrons? Wandering around and asking people for help…well that’s just helpful. Not bothersome.

“this is sad. the video game aspect, while i don’t agree with it, isn’t the libraries fault. we have books here. we just have adult and children too stupid to read them now“

As soon as I read that sentence…well it took every bone in my librarian body to not pick up a volume of the OED and chuck it across the reference section.

And no, the typo in the sentence does not make it any better.

Talk about a total loss of hope.

Not just in libraries…or even librarians…but humanity as a whole.

It’s sad.

So I suggest to reading this to cleanse your palate of that awful taste of bitter librarian:

Videogames and Martinis: 25 years later

It’s much more useful than calling someone stupid….which as librarians we should all know….is just no excuse for poor service.

Have a lovely week, fair readers! And do yourself a favor, play some video games.

Dear fair readers,

My sincerest apologies for my severe lack of posting in the past week or two. I know that excuses are no excuse, but what can I say? My to do list is catching up with me.

This week alone I have one presentation on Hoover’s, another for Humanities class on Scientology, a paper on privacy for my Info Policy class, one phone interview for a job, and one second interview for a different job.

Oy vey!

So, you might wonder, what am I doing to keep completely sane?

Oh Nintendo DS Lite! Your accessibly simple, yet educational gaming saves my sanity every time!The Nintendo DS has oodles of educational games that you can pick up, play for 30 minutes or so, and then go back to whatever things you really should be doing atm. My current favorite is My French Coach.

Through a series of games and quizzes and an excellent “coach”, I can refresh my memory of all those lovely high school french classes with Mdm. Roselle.

So next time someone tells you that video games rot your brain, tell them to bugger off in french. (Va t’en! Tu es tres stupide!) Or your could tell them to read up on their Jenny Levine. She’ll tell them what’s up.

So again, my apologies fair readers. If you need something to do, I recommend gaming. It’s good for your brain.

Happy Monday!

Hello fair readers!

I came across this site today: Purple states and it set me to thinking.

Purple states is web broadcast-style coverage of the primary elections. It is user created ala Web 2.0, but watch the introduction video. It is only user created to a point. It is professionally edited and enabled by the creator, New York Times.

The other day I was talking about Web 2.0 with my boyfriend and he said this, “Web 2.0 is over. It’s evolved. More complicated”. Is that true?

I suppose from the beginning 2.0 has always been a very broad, difficult to define term. It took a sixteen page, or so, article just to explain it by the man himself.

Yet I have always been lead to believe that the theory of 2.0 revolves around one major concept: user created content.

Take Second Life, for example. A world where the vast majority of the content is indeed user created.

As a former MMORPG player, I found Second Life to lack something….a little shine maybe? A good solid point and purpose. So I wonder in a world when 15 million users are playing the same games that made me slightly less excited about the clunky graphics of Second Life, how long will it be around? Is this just the first stage? A hint of metaverses to come?

I do not know the answer to these questions. I’m not sure anyone does. But I suppose that this is the glory of 2.0. It’s all so nebulous, yet exciting. People can barely define it but want desperately to be a part of it.

Still if this is the case, that 2.0 is “over”, then what is next? And most importantly, what are the librarians going to do about it.

Have a lovely Sunday fair readers.

Hello fair readers!

As November is upon us, I am beginning to turn my thoughts to winter. As many of you know, Chicago is right on the edge of the Central time zone. What does this mean you might ask?

It means Chicago goes from day to night at around….4pm.

And truly, Chicago in the winter, in the dark is beauty.

But this doesn’t take from the fact that the majority of our days for the next fews months will be spent in darkness.

So I have been thinking long and hard about how I will get through this winter. Since last winter, my first Chicago winter, I simply hid in my house playing MMORPGs. In small doses this would have been fine. But I think anyone who has played Lineage 2 can tell you that a “small dose” is very difficult to manage and one usually ends up online for anywhere from 4-12 hours a day.

Not healthy?

I think so.

So this winter I am determined to find better coping strategies. Does this mean I’m ruling video games out as an option?

Absolutely not.

Just less addictive video games. And ones that don’t involve needing to spend many hours a day grinding. (ugh. any online gamer will know and hate that term)

Besides some simple gaming, here are the tools that will help me get through the winter.

Crochet

That, dear readers, is my winter project. It will eventually become a blanket. As previously blogged, I had been knitting. However I’ve switched over to crochet for this project. Maybe it’s because I find the act of switching colors simpler with crochet? I’m not sure. But the decision has been made. And my project is underway.

A Sewing Machine

Honestly…I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with this. But now I have it. It’s a very viable option for winter entertainment. Right?

Finally I’m going to pursue this whole cooking thing.

Last New Year’s I made several resolutions. One of them was to cook more. Finally I’m actually doing this. But now I’m no longer eating meat. So cooking had become quite interesting. Adventures recently include Egg Salad, Southwestern Bean Soup, and cupcakes

which is baking…I know!….but I’m working on it.

Anyways, if anyone has any other suggestions for getting through the long winter months I would love to hear them. As much as I adore the winter season

in all it’s splendor and beauty

I also like to keep my sanity.

Enjoy the dying days of Autumn, fair readers. I know I will.