Day from Hell/van

The bookseller Ed Maggs on books:

"Maggs says he enjoys the process of discovery behind letters and books. 'I'm a frustrated historian or novelist,' he says. 'Books and manuscripts are the greatest repositories of history and history, maybe, is the most important thing of all for giving meaning to our lives.'"

Today was one of the most fascinating and educational days of my LIS career. I needed to observe a library for not one, but two projects, and had spent some time looking for a library that would fit with my interests. After sending e-mails around about the possibility of there being an archives in Denver with an Asian bent and getting nothing, it was serendipitous that during a completely unrelated meeting of a publishing group I mentioned wanting to work with Asian collections and someone mentioned that UC Boulder actually had an Asian special collection. After a few e-mail exchanges I was in contact with the librarian in charge of the Japanese/Korean portion of the collection, and arranged to meet him. That happened today. The interview I had with him, and subsequently UC Boulder's Archivist down in the library basement, was worth an entire semester of classes.

The only downside to this facinating education was that it took twice as long as I had been anticipating, and I had expected to be able to finish to projects before class that evening. Instead I got to enjoy a leisurely ride through 20 some miles of rush hour traffic, and banged out a somewhat unprofessional bibliography in the hour I had before class. The assignment didn't carry too much weight though, and what I gained today was more than worth it. I am absolutely exhausted, so I'll have to go into more detail tomorrow (but not too much. I don't kiss and tell.)

Hnnnng

Nothing warms you up like trying to pedal a bike with a flat tire. I filled the tire with air (75c for air! What is the world coming to!) and it went flat again immediately, so it looks like I'm going to have to replace a tire.

I was doing a little RSS reading after coming home from class and came across a list of resources for job searches in the library field. The first link was for North Suburban Libray System. Their front page reads " On May 31, 2010, all NSLS full-time employees (except delivery staff) were laid off. The only member service NSLS will provide in the immediate future is van delivery. This scaled down version of the NSLS website will remain up until further notice."

FUUUUUUUUU

Well, here's hoping that in two years there will be employment prospects again. I should really get started on cultivating expertise somewhere to make myself more employable, but I find it difficult to find the time in between the classes I am taking, which are are as introductory as you can get (with the possible exception of Organization of Information, but that one drives me a bit nuts.)

I am still holding out judgement on this whole ten weeks a semester thing. Way too short in my opinion, but then again, I am looking forward to taking classes that are more relevant to my focus.

I am currently in the interview process for two different jobs. Both are full time and rather decent. What I -really- want is a call back from the libraries in Rangeview, but I'm not sure if that would happen. I turned in three separate applications to them on Monday, and because the computer was having a terrible time interpreting the file I had to go over every little check box individually and double check that it wasn't changed from the last time I loaded the file. I realized after I had printed that I was not thorough enough and one check had gotten through, and then, when I could not find any white out, decided to fix the issue when I got to the library I was submitting everything to. Of course by the time I got to the library I had forgotten about this, and so two applications say that I was previously an employee of Rangeview and one says correctly that I have not. I literally did not have a moment to do anything today, so I guess tomorrow I'll have to call them and set things right. Bleh.

So far I've gotten a whole sentence translated of the Japanese book I'm trying to go through. I don't think I'll get very far, but some Far East Language skills would really help, and I need to brush up VERY badly.

CALCON Report

PHEW. The last three days have been the most busy since I drove West, and considering the fact that I have been intensely busy for months now that is an achievement. I was up in Loveland  volunteering my time at the CAL Conference since I couldn't justify the cost of simply attending, and, as I mentioned before, events are just more fun when you're working behind the scenes. That's where you meet the cool people

And boy did I meet a ton of cool people. I know a big part of attending conferences and participating in clubs and groups has to do with networking, but if the Denver Library community is a web then I am tangled all up in it. I must have met a dozen or so awesome people, and have spent the time after the conference trying desperately to keep their names and faces straight in my head. I figure if I can recognize half the people I met at a later date I did ok. I won't go into specifics because it would take forever to cover everyone and what made them awesome, and I don't want to commit the crime of forgetting someone important.

Because I was volunteering for a good portion of the time, and was playing DDR when I wasn't volunteering, and chatting when I wasn't doing -that- I didn't actually attend very many of the seminars or panels. I'm not much of a seminar person anyway. It reminds me too much of class, and besides, I wasn't registered. I did sit in on a talk given by the staff at anythink Libraries (small a) and was extremely impressed. The entire district when from being a "dump" to the ideal that all public libraries should strive to achieve. When I think of my own time trapped in the hell of suburbia, I know I would have loved to have a library as forward thinking as anythink. I would have preferred they not be so extreme that they do away with capitalization though. And that's not to say my hometown library is -bad-. It's just not nearly as good.

Besides the parade of friendly and fascinating people, the highlight of CAL has to be the Battledecks competition Friday night. Competitors had to improvise a speech that followed the conference theme (Transformation and Illumination), plus a bonus theme that was different for each person (Urkel an H1N1, American Bacon vs. Canadian Bacon), all without seeing any of their slides before hand. And the slides were a collection of lolcats and non-sequitur captions. I have not laughed so hard in a very long while. Every presenter was hilarious, and a few of them straight up killed the audience. Apparently the winner of the competition was the state librarian, so if I ever meet him face to face I'll have to compliment him on his ability to make squid pants relevant to the library profession.

There was an auction table at the conference with some interesting stuff, including a plush owl and some exquisite woodblock etchings, but the item that really grabbed my attention was a three credit tuition waver, worth almost 3k. I had a chance at cutting 1k out of my tuition right there, but unfortunately I ended up with competition at the very end, and wasn't willing to get into a bidding war just so I could pay up front nearly the whole cost of a single class. Oh well.

The weather has taken a turn for the cold. Just last week I was hot in a t-shirt, and now it's 50 degrees and I'm sitting with a blanket, turtleneck, and sweater. I'm going to have to go out and pick up a box of tissues.

So now that that week is over, I have time to relax, right?

Haha. No.

This week I have to:

• Arrange an advising meeting and get next semester sorted out.
• Visit the Asian collection in UC Boulder for two separate classes.
• Finish a comparative paper. (And read the papers I need to be comparing.)
• Create a service bibliography
• Submit applications for every position Rangview library has open, because Rangeview is awesome.
• Attend a volunteer orientation at the local animal shelter.
• Register to volunteer at the DPL CTC
• Attend two job interviews on Monday
• Build my new website and put up the intro tutorial to web design
• Contact someone at the Talking Books Library about volunteering there
• Cajole the Michigan Lighthouse Conservatory into providing me with their collections list for upload into librarything
• Post flyers for the Denver satellite to the Rally to Restore Sanity
• Add another 100 prompts to a fantasy project
• Do some research on spy libraries 
• Finish reading a book in Internet Neutrality
• Review one e-book, and two magazines
• Find some time to eat and sleep.

Wish me luck.

Cardinal Sins

This month I almost committed a grave sin. I almost lost a library book.

I had been reading it in between classes, and tucked it under my desk when the lecture began, only to leave without it at the end of class. I realized it was gone the day after when I was shuffling my books around for the new school day.

Now, I have never lost a library book, which is a very impressive feat for me considering how many things in life that I -have- lost. It was a point of pride that even though I've had a library card for almost as long as I could read, which is almost as long as I've been alive, I've always returned the books I took out, even though sometimes I've returned it late, or not -wanted- to return it. (And there were a few books I really wanted to put on my shelf and leave there.)

So when I couldn't find Na Kua'aina anywhere after three days I dragged myself over to the library confessed my sins, and prepared to pay a hefty fine.

The man behind the counter brought up my account, looked at it, and said, "That book isn't on your record."

"What?"

"I don't see it on your record."

He printed out said record and handed it over. Na Kua'aina was indeed missing. Did someone return it for me? I crossed my fingers and went into the stacks to find out. Sure enough, the book had been returned by some good samaratin the day before, and I checked it out a second time.

As I was walking home with it I mused at the many times I've been lucky enough to have lost something in Hawaii and have it returned. I've lost my wallet twice, once while riding the bus, and left my backpack in a classroom over the weekend. Every time my items were returned to me without a thing missing. Considering how often things are stolen on this campus, from bikes to hand bags, I wondered why I had managed to completely misplace things and still have them returned to me safe and sound.

Maybe it was karma coming back to me for being a good person and returning things that I found myself. Or maybe it was just because I was a good person in general. I mulled that thought over for a second, remembered that pride was a sin, and promptly disposed of it.

I think I'm just lucky.