Tinfoil + Raccoon

It's All About Meme, Meme, Meme: 80 things

Joshua Neff, that Goblin fellow, tagged me for the latest meme: Eighty Random Things about Me.  Strap yourselves in, kids, for this epic tell-all:

1. I like to make homemade valentines and feel crummy that I didn't make any this year.
2. Yesterday was my one-year anniversary in Wisconsin. Rock on!
3. I loathe polo shirts. I mean, if you want to wear one fine, but I'm pathological about having one on my person.
4. Favorite sports as a child: dodge ball and kick ball. Actually, those were my only sports as a child--the two things that did not make me cry in PE class.
5. I have rosacea and pray to the Goddess of Dermatology that I don't end up looking like WC Fields.
6. I have had an inordinate number of schizophrenic, bipolar and other mentally ill people in my life. I don't especially relate to normal or neurotypical.
7. I stopped watching serious films after being devastated by Sophie's Choice about 15 years ago. 
8. When I was in my early teens, I was pretty set on marrying Elton John. At present, only David Furnish and Mr. Raccoon stand in my way. Oh, and can anyone arrange a meeting with Reg?  We've not been properly introduced.
9. I miss the smell of curry-suffused saris.  There were lots of East Indian folks in Bloomington. And, boy, did they know the value of libraries.
10. Random celebrity birthdays that I remember: David Cassidy: April 12, Elton John: March 25; Salvador Dali: May 13; George Carlin, Howard K. Smith: May 12; Harry Truman: May 8. Ms. Mishler, my senior lit/drama teacher: April 17.
11. I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a kid. I was in at least three times, and my mom was in and out a lot.  As a result, I feel very at home in hospitals, and rather like them.
12. I love pork.
13. Ever since I was a kid, I've been pretty sure I could fly.  I just haven't figured it out yet.
14. I believe in magic (see above).  It's physically possible and someday people will figure out how to use the other 98% of their brain energy.
15. My favorite flowers are violets, lily of the valley and lilac which all bloom around my birthday.

Gem for Hire: Walt Crawford

Several of us raised our eyebrows with last year's merger of OCLC/RLG.  Mergers are certainly beneficial in many circumstances, for many reasons. But, they are also about bottom lines, consolidation, streamlining, winnowing--and not always the best thing when you look at it from the people side of things.  Unfortunately our wariness was warranted, as evidenced by Walt Crawford's announcement that he has received a termination notice from OCLC,  effective September 30, 2007.

I've known of Walt since early on in my library career--hard to miss, given that he is one of the most influential and prolific people in librarianship.  Aside from his general laudableness (honest, that's a word), Walt has distinguished himself to many of us through his collegiality and generosity.  Distinguished and influential don't always translate into accessible, but Walt has been a good friend and sparring partner to many of us not-so-luminous front-liners.  In addition to his public contributions, he has also been privately supportive to several of us as we have struggled with professional challenges and made transitions. We owe him no less and wish him the best.  I'm looking forward to a Michael Stephens "Reinvention: Walt Crawford/That's Hot!" post by year's end.  Here's a Walt Primer for you:

Walt Crawford is an internationally recognized writer and speaker on libraries, technology, policy and media.Crawford was for many years Senior Analyst at RLG, focusing on user interface design and actual usage patterns for end-user bibliographic search systems. Through September 30, 2007, he works on RLG-OCLC transition and integration issues.

Crawford is the creator, writer and publisher of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, an ejournal on the intersections of libraries, policy, technology and media published monthly since 2001. He also maintains a blog on these and other issues, Walt at Random.

Crawford’s books include Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change (2007), First Have Something to Say: Writing for the Library Profession (2003), Being Analog: Creating Tomorrow’s Libraries (1999), Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality (with Michael Gorman, 1995), and eleven others going back to MARC for Library Use: Understanding the USMARC Formats(1984).

Crawford writes the “disContent” column in EContent Magazine and has written columns for American Libraries, Online and Library Hi Tech. In all, he has written more than 400 library-related articles and columns appearing in a range of library publications.

Crawford was recently cited as one of the 31 most frequently cited authors in library literature 1994-2004 (the only American writer on that list outside academic libraries). In 1995, he received the American Library Association’s LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Communication for Continuing Education, followed by the ALCTS/Blackwell Scholarship Award in 1997. He was president of the Library and Information Technology Association in 1992/93.

More information is available at Crawford’s home page.

 

Hello Library Society of the World/Good-bye ALA Council

(This one's for you, Blake!) 

Twitter continues to rock my world in the most surprising ways.  It has connected me to librarians and others in my new hometown that I might never have otherwise found.  It has been great fun to share questions from the ref desk--there's been some excellent collaboration on a few stumpers.  In general, it's been a satisfying community builder that fits the way some of us connect and communicate.  Last week, however, a small Twitter conversation about disappointment with the American Library Association's unsuitability as a representative organization for a growing number of library folk, grew into the creation of a new library organization, Library Society of the World. 

It's sort of a joke, but sort of not.  Right now, it exists as a wiki and has, at most, 25 members.  It's not a joke in that it represents the way in which many of us wish ALA worked--it's flat, democratic (okay--anarchistic), inclusive, responsive, fluid and cheap (as in free).  In fact, I just changed our mission statement: 

the mission is to [represent / raise awareness of] the issues of importance to the library community and to share our knowledge and experience.

I changed it from "librarians" to "the library community," because patrons are a much larger part of the library community than librarians (small "l"--inclusive of everyone from maintenance staff to director).  But, anyone can go in and change that if they don't like it. I'm not going to try and justify or sell it at this point. It is what it is.  It might turn out to be a flippant diversion.  It may turn into something wonderfully unexpected. It may quickly become a parody of everything we most hate about ALA.  Thanks to Josh Neff for being so responsive to the discussion--"hey kids, let's put on a wiki!"  If you've ever bitched about ALA or wished for an alternative, now's your chance.  Because it is based and dependent on participation, it is a No Whine Zone.  The only bummer is that it does require a password, in order to foil blog spam.  Email or leave a comment here if you want the password.

This all leads to the announcement that I am resigning my seat on ALA Council, just a year into my 2nd three-year term.  I've been thinking about it for awhile, but this week's election results and the postcard flap cemented my decision. I'm not giving up on ALA as a whole--I truly value my work with the Public Programs Office.  But, for now, I am done with ALA governance.  I could leave it at that, but will offer a full explanation soon.  It's a post that deserves more than my usual throwaway writing.