Caveat Lector

You wouldn’t think I’d be glad about getting up at 4 in the morning on a Saturday, sitting on buses for an ungodly number of hours, and slugging it out with a DVD player that won’t display elapsed time. But I am glad. Very glad.

At about 2:40, I peeked out from the little A/V booth to a sea of empty chairs. “Eh,” I said to David, “looks like about 30 people. If we’re lucky we hit 50.”

Five minutes later, lovely and accommodating librarian Karen Moen peeked through the door to announce gleefully “We’ve got 70!” And I’m guessing we ended at close to a hundred. Didn’t have to turn anybody away, which was lovely.

You guys will laugh, given my previous A/V tribulations, but despite the DVD player’s incapacities, this was the smoothest presentation I’ve ever managed. I only interrupted the talk with a misapplied un-mute button once. Go me.

Questions, as usual, were plentiful and excellent. We donated a copy of David’s book, which became a door prize as the library already owns it (and, I’m told, it’s checked out). I was personally quite tickled when it went to a man whose question to David showed that he knew a bit about language.

I also wish I’d gotten a picture of the very earnest young lady (ten years old, maybe?) copying down everything David had written on the whiteboard. Such people remind me of David, and I think the world could stand a few more like him.

It was a good time. Sorry y’all missed it; it’s been a long day and I don’t have the spare vocabulary to describe it properly.

Home tomorrow, after another ungodly number of bus-hours. Even so, there are many, many worse ways to spend a weekend.

ETA: Just got an email to let me know that the final count was (get this) 141! W-h-e-w. I would not have guessed. And the follow-up Pantagraph article is online, too.

Someone at SLIS was genuinely surprised to see me laugh out loud over the Malachi Bowles skewering of CavLec. Apparently I’m supposed to be offended.

Sorry, no. Funny is funny, and my verbal crotchets are at least as funny as everybody else’s. And being able to laugh at myself is a fine thing; I wish I’d learned to do it much younger.

Perhaps my interlocutor was correct that Malachi was trying to hurt me. I rather doubt it, but anything’s possible. If that’s the case, what earthly good would letting the arrow strike home do me?

I defer to the almighty Slashdot. “It’s funny. Laugh.”

We’ve had a hawk in the neighborhood for some time now; I’ve seen it circling overhead while I walk back from the library, and this morning I saw it in a nasty fight with a crow over the grocery-store parking lot.

(We’ll just not discuss the detached hind haunch of rabbit in a neighbor’s front yard a couple weeks back, all right?)

And spring has come to our front yard in a wave of dandelions, as usual. It’d take more than a hacksaw to get rid of the darn things.

I’ve got Perdóndaris’s presentation done except for talk notes. (It’s even got a gimmick. ’Cuz ya gotta have a—somebody stop me before I start singing.) I have a scenario ready for that networking RFP. The class gift is on its way. And I’m about to turn my hand to the ugly backlog of job applications.

The Bloomington-Normal trip this weekend, then one more week of class, then the Perdóndaris interview, then the Beta Phi Mu initiation, then graduation. I can do this, if the wind stays southerly. I think.

Bloomington-Normal’s daily newspaper has an interview with David up, pending his talk on Saturday.

Enjoy!

People keep mailing me this opening, which has been around for at least six months and shows no sign of being filled. I’m tired of seeing it. It’s unfillable as written. This post is by way of a friendly (really, sarcastic though I’m about to be, I mean this to be helpful) clue-by-four to the University of Kansas people.

Let’s run down your requirements list, shall we?

• MLS from an ALA accredited institution.
• Minimum one year experience with library or digital library systems. (Candidate may substitute experience with general database systems and knowledge of standards, technologies, and techniques relevant to digital libraries.)

Oh, so you want a digital librarian. Cool.

• Demonstrated ability to manage and oversee complex projects in a team environment, meet deadlines, and to prioritize work in alignment with the service goals of the university and Information Services.
• Ability to thrive in a team environment, working both independently and collaboratively as appropriate
• Experience developing policy and procedures for digital systems and services.

Wait, you want a project manager. Who is also a digital librarian. Well, okay, they exist. By now I qualify, though I’m short on what you would call “experience.”

• Demonstrated knowledge of content organization and management as relevant to the university spectrum of disciplinary needs
• Strong commitment to users service and support.

Okay, so an information architect, who is also a project manager, who is also a digital librarian. Guys, the air’s getting a bit rarefied up here. I still qualify, sort of, but I have to stretch a bit at “demonstrated knowledge.”

• Significant development experience using advanced techniques such as XML, XSL/T, CSS, Javascript, HTML and standard scripting and query languages.
• Demonstrated and documented evidence of successful design of database-driven content systems based on a broad understanding of the information seeking behaviors of users.

So a combination database designer/administrator, hardcore markup geek, webmonkey, information architect, project manager, and digital librarian is what you’re after. Um, yeah. Good luck with that.

I know a fair few geeks. I can’t think of anyone who fits this description. Leave out the “librarian” part and I can come up with two, maybe three—but I guarantee you the people I’m thinking of are making one heck of a lot more than your upper salary range.

• Excellent organizational and communication skills, including demonstrated ability to develop written project documentation, process procedures, reports, etc.

Whoa, whoa, hold on—you want all those things plus a tech writer? Why not ask for super-aquatic perambulation and be done with it? And I haven’t even touched the “preferred” qualifications yet! Not to mention that the jugglin’ fool who takes this job is going to have to carry out a research agenda, in his/her oh-so-copious spare time.

You won’t get an experienced librarian to apply to this position, because any institution possessing such a paragon of digitality is hanging on to him/her like grimmest death. You won’t get a newbie librarian either, partly because of the usual two-years-experience clause (in the preferred quals), partly because we newbies are nervous about getting in over our heads as it is.

Please, y’all. Your reality check just bounced. Sit back down in your conference room and figure out what you really have to have. Then rewrite that job description so that it can be filled by a flesh-and-blood human being untouched by deity. I, for one, will thank you for it. And I might even apply.

I just sent three files of search results to my search client, one of them over a hundred pages long (and no, I wasn’t doing full-text!). With luck, I won’t have duplicated too much of his existing research (which he was supposed to email me and never did). I think I’m in good shape, though, because the lion’s share of my results came from a database I’m sure he didn’t look in. I wrote up my search strategy while I was working on it, so I’m also done with that.

Down to one last project, one informal presentation (akin to the one I did on Monday), and one exam. Truly, it doesn’t seem possible.

Lest I get too excited, however, I’ve also got a presentation to whip up for Perdóndaris (I’ve done all the lit searching I’m going to, and I’ve got an outline; I just need to fill it in), a SLIS class gift to buy, and a raft of jobs to apply to. It’d be awfully nice to have all that done by Friday…

I’m a little late on this one, but that’s just as well; I had the date wrong until David straightened me out just now.

He’ll be speaking at the Bloomington (Illinois) Public Library this Saturday, April 30, at 3 pm. As far as I know there’s no advance notice necessary; I expect the movie furor has died down enough (finally!) that that’s no longer needed.

So if you’re in the area, c’mon out and say hi. As usual, I’ll be there mucking up the A/V.

Well, yesterday’s Michael Gorman experience went about as I expected it would. He’s got zero use for me, I’m sure, and I very little for him.

My presentation all but put the man to sleep, gesticulate howsoever I would. Now, I’ve never been guest-of-honor at anything, and I don’t ever really expect to be… but my parents taught me when I was merely a sprat that one at least feigns interest. I grant that the self-reinvention travails of a tiny campus library are of somewhat less than universal interest, but really!

(I couldn’t get to Gorman’s talk owing to a conflict with networking class, but from what I hear of it, I may have lost him as soon as I pronounced the class title, “Systems Analysis and Design.” Nothing I could have done about that. The class is what it is.)

I’m still glad I did it, because the head honcho of campus branch libraries was there, and he very much liked what we (both my group and the class’s other project group) had to tell him. That’s a significant victory for both renovation projects, and I’m quite chuffed about it. I’m also glad for my classmate Bridget Zinn that her short movie “World’s Fastest Librarian” (which is an absolute hoot; loved it!) went over much better, and for our ALA-SC chapter that Gorman liked the school T-shirt they gave him. It is just the Best Shirt Ever, and I’ve ordered that second one in red.

In other words, I’m the only one who got a pie in the face from Gorman, and I can live with that. The honor of UW-SLIS has been upheld.

Gorman also went off into an anti-PowerPoint Tufte rant in my face just before lunch, which given that my presentation had (necessarily; this is SLIS, and it’s expected) used the tool seemed a wee bit less than wholly polite. I smiled and agreed; heaven knows I’m not PowerPoint’s biggest fan.

Lunch was a subdued affair. However aggressive Gorman’s writing may be, he is remarkably reserved in person. Another reason I grated on his nerves, I suspect; I’m not reserved in the least.

I did get a chance to bring up the job market and ALA’s recruitment efforts. Gorman clearly believes the received wisdom that a wave of retirements will mean a wave of new librarian jobs. When I brought up the situation in academia after the Bowen report, Gorman answered that a lot of professors at his school had indeed retired, and while “about a third” of the positions had gone adjunct, the rest were tenure-track. I forbore retort, but honestly—is a proportionate reduction of librarian positions really an acceptable outcome in ALA’s mind?

I did suggest, as mildly as I could, that a likely outcome of the retirements would be a great many position eliminations. Gorman found that he could agree with that, bringing up the sad situation in Philadelphia. But avenues of attack he had none.

We can expect no leadership from ALA on this, if yesterday’s lunch is any indication. None whatever. They will go on trying to solve what is and will continue to be a problem of severe disrespect for librarian labor by increasing the supply of librarians. That’s just peachy-damn-keen, that is.

Gorman did have a helpful suggestion for new librarians wanting to get involved with ALA, which I will pass on in hopes that someone will find it useful. To get a committee position, it turns out, one simply writes to the incoming chair of the division or interest group to express one’s interest. It’s actually quite hard, apparently, to recruit young librarians for committee work, so one is virtually guaranteed a position.

Glad that’s over. Will be gladder, I must say, when Gorman’s tenure as ALA president is.

The latest Journal of Books and Wenches is out, and the below-the-fold front-page headline is “SLIS LAUNCHES BLOG—World Ends.”

Uh-oh, I thought, grinning. I’m in trouble.

And sure enough… I reproduce for the general benefit of CavLec fans and detractors everywhere the quote manufactured by the inimitable Malachi Bowles:

“Drat and double-drat, this annoys me no little,” she gesturingly noted. [ Obviously Malachi's been to a talk or a workshop of mine. I do gesture a lot. ] “I’ll be blunt: this is really quite excruciatingly bad. And it’s not as if such an outcome couldn’t have been forecast—in point of fact, I recall mentioning myself that there was no small chance of things blowing up. Even started a pool about it, if I’m not mistaken. Which, if I might allow myself a brief moment of immodesty, I won. Not that anything really blew up in the most literal sense, mind you—sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare, after all—but I rather think that this is just as good. And there is a bright side; there’s always a bright side, of course. The OPAC in the sixth circle is in utterly dreadful shape—if I could somehow finagle the redesign gig, methinks it would be one devil of a career-booster, if you’ll pardon the pun. Do they have the Fenster award down here?”

I’m truly sorry Malachi Bowles probably didn’t see me busting a gut reading this in the SLIS commons. My hat’s off to the piratical Malachi—that’s me, all right, hoist a considerable distance by my own petard. Brilliantly done!

David, in a fit of morbid curiosity, took Star Wars II: Clone Wars out of the video store. He invited me to watch it, warning me that one 20-second scene would leave me howling with wrath.

Now, I can’t possibly manage to express how badly this movie sucked. It sucked beyond any conceivable expression of pure unadulterated suckitude. The “romantic” leads were stunningly horrendous, both of them, not to mention that it is an utter waste of such screenwriting talent as George Lucas has (and, baby, that ain’t much) to try to give Harrison Ford snark to Ewan McGregor, who utterly lacks the snark gene. (Nice-looking guy, decent actor, quite believable as a proto-Alec-Guinness—but no, I repeat, no snark anywhere in him.)

The music sucked. The extras sucked (with a couple of exceptions). The cinematography often sucked. The plot sucked. The screenplay sucked beyond belief. How many more ways can a movie possibly suck?

To be scrupulously fair: The costumes did not suck. (I quite liked all but one or two of Natalie Portman’s and the new Naboo queen’s getups.) The design of ships and aliens did not suck. The kid playing Boba Fett conspicuously failed to suck (especially compared to the whiny bratling playing Anakin in movie one). Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid also conspicuously avoided sucking. (Actual acting, involving decent line-readings. Wow. What a strange thing to have in a George Lucas movie.)

I did surprise David, though, by not howling at the 20-second archivist scene, which anybody who knows me and has seen the movie has probably guessed was the scene David was referring to. I mean, this is George “never met a stereotype he didn’t cling to like grim death” Lucas here. Of course his archivist is going to be a clueless, vinegary spinster.

What had me howling (as David will attest) was the Vast and Galaxy-Shaking Importance pinned to (*gasp*) Something Missing From The Archives. If I’d rolled my eyes as hard as that howler warranted, I’d have rolled them right into the next county. Sheesh.