Delicious!

If you thought I was going to write about something tasty I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm here to tell you about Delicious bookmarks, an on-line social bookmarking service. We don't always access to our own computer or laptop so it's really nice to still have access to all of your favorite websites, or resources that you never want to forget. If you're like me and you don't have a memory like an elephant, you may like Delicious bookmarks.

I was introduced to Delicious in spring of 2009 when I took LIS 407 AKA Reference for Information Professionals. I bookmarked, tagged and annotated all of the resources we studied (over 200), and when it came time to take the open "notebook" timed (75 minutes) 75 question exam at the end of the semester, I used my Delicious bookmarks to get me through and got an 96 on the final (out of 100). Yay for Delicious bookmarks!

In the Fall of 2009 when I took LIS 484 Literature of Science and Technology, which is sort of like Reference for science librarians, I used my Delicious bookmarks again to bookmark, tag and annotate the new resources I was learning. Thankfully there was no final exam at the end of the semester.

I've continued to use Delicious bookmarks in my career as a library school student because we're always learning about new resources that we may want to refer back to and it's nice to be able to keep them all in one place, annotate and tag. Most recently I installed the Firefox Delicious plug-in and, wow, it's going to make adding bookmarks and tags even easier than ever before. There's a side bar that you can open and have access to all of your bookmarks.

Thank you Firefox and Delicious!

This Post is Overdue

I met author Marilyn Johnson  at the recent NELA (that's New England Library Association for those non-librarians out there) conference in Boxborough, MA. She's author of This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save us all. She's also a friend of my friend and fellow GSLIS student, Sasha. They worked together at Life magazine back in the day. So, I actually got to talk to her for a few minutes, not just shake her hand and have her autograph my book which is what usually happens when you meet authors. I forgot to bring my book with me! But I think we'll meet again so I'll be sure to bring my copy along with me. She's a super nice person.  I made the horrible faux pas of admitting that I'd [only] read half of her book. She asked me if I liked it and I said yes and then had to come up with a quick excuse for not finishing her book. The truth is, I really enjoyed what I read and told her so, however, as soon as the spring semester started I stopped reading it. I got too busy. Her book is fabulous, like a long love letter about librarians. For me, though, she's preaching to the choir. I know how fabulous librarians are. I just hope that non-librarians are reading her book too. Librarians don't often toot their own horns about how we are saving the world (?!) so it's nice to have people like Marilyn Johnson tell the rest of the world how wonderful we are.

If you don't hear from me for a while...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm taking a class called Social Media for Information Professionals and the funny part is, I don't have time for this blog right now. I'll be blogging elsewhere for a while.

Summer School

I'm taking 2 classes this summer and they both started the week of July 12th. One is a 100% on-line class and the other is an intensive (Six 7 hour days in class plus a week-long reading and research period). The intensive class ends on July 29th just in time for me to go to Maine for 2 weeks. The on-line class ends on August 20th. Fortunately for me we have WiFi in Maine.

What is that jumble of words, you say? That's called a word cloud. You can make one for yourself in Wordle. I made that word cloud from an introduction I wrote (about me) for the on-line class that I'm taking called Social Media for Information Professionals. It's taught through the WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) consortium at the University of British Columbia. That's right, Canada, and not just Canada but West Coast Canada. I'm trying hard not to let that interfere with my on-line experience but it already has. I'll spare you the gory details but just trust me, it's been frustrating. As usual, I will "suck it up" and do my best and get all the work done in a timely manner and likely receive a good grade for all that.

The other class I'm taking this summer is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  It's called History of the Book and it's taught at Smith College in the Mortimer Rare Book Room. Our instructor is Martin Antonetti, curator of the Rare Book Room at Smith College. I've been very excited, almost to the point of giddy, about taking this class. Not just because it's at Smith College (a mere 7 miles from home), and not just because it has received rave reviews from other students, but because it's taught in the Rare Book Room at Smith College which is comprised of approximately 30% manuscripts and books written in Latin, 30% in French, and 30% in English and 10% in other languages (like Ethiopian). Plus the room is chock-full of EARLY, like really OLD stuff. It's amazing! The craftsmanship that went into the production of books in medieval times is mind-boggling at times. We've had the opportunity to look at absolutely stunningly gorgeous 15th and 16th century illuminated Bibles. I'll stop gushing about this class because the on-line class pales in comparison and I don't want you to think I'm not enjoying the other class but it's just different in a very 21st century social media kind of way. 

4th of July weekend

After feeling as though I lost an entire week last week due to my misadventures in airline travel, I was really looking forward to spending the holiday weekend in Carver with my pal Beki and her husband Jason. Trevor had a gig in Burlington VT on Saturday night, and was hired to stilt-walk in the Hingham, MA 4th of July parade on Sunday afternoon. I love the Hingham 4th of July parade so I decided to drive to Carver on Saturday and enjoy the company of Beki and Jason and Trevor would meet us there much much later (like in the wee hours of the morning.) Beki and I enjoyed refreshing cocktails on her deck before dinner and got caught up on "news" (AKA gossip). We had a yummy home-cooked dinner and were snoozing by 9 p.m. Trevor arrived sometime around 3:30 in the morning and somewhat surprisingly, went directly to bed.

On Sunday, he was up and out the door by about 9:30 a.m. and headed to Hingham for the parade. We planned to meet him at the end of the parade route and drive him and his fellow guild member and stilt-walker, Henry, back to the start of the paraded route to get Henry's car and Trevor's stuff. We arrived in Hingham square just moments before the route was barricaded and parked at the town beach. Since we were at the end of the parade route it wasn't until almost 12:30 (parade kick-off was 12:15 p.m.) when the parade reached us. Trevor and Henry arrived sometime around 1:30 p.m. looking hot and tired! Since it was a bit of a scorcher on Sunday, Beki, Jason & I decided we'd seen enough of the parade and found Trevor and Henry just around the corner from where we were sitting taking off their stilts and wiping sweat from their brows. We walked to the car and then took a round-about route back to Hingham High School where Henry's car was parked. Loaded up my car with Trevor's stuff and drove back to Carver.

Later on Sunday afternoon we visited Beki's brother Sean and his darling 18 month old cutie-pie daughter Caroline for a short while. Caroline is, without a doubt, adorable! From Sean's house we drove to Fairhaven to Beki's BFF Amanda's gorgeous beach house on West Island to hang out, play Quiddler, watch the sunset (above) and then watch an absolutely amazing display of fireworks across the water. Trevor counted a total of 36 different shows in surrounding towns.

On Monday we drove to Scussett Beach and were disappointed to find the the parking lot was full so drove north back to Plymouth in search of a beach with parking and eventually ended up in Plymouth to see the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock. We drove home that afternoon in scorching heat in my car with no AC.  We all had a such a great time that we hope to do it again next year! Except the part where my car has no AC and beaches were too full.

Horrendous Trip Home

I went to St. Paul, MN for our annual church convention and had a wonderful time with all those fabulous people, some of whom I only see once a year. They're like an extended family to me.

My trip home was absolutely the most horrendous airline experience I've ever had in my entire life. When the Delta baggage agent remarked to me, "Hartford the hard way", he either knew how hard it was going to be for me to get home or he really had no idea how hard it was about to be.

I had a flight on Delta airlines on Sunday afternoon from Minneapolis/St. Paul at 3 p.m. that got into Milwaukee at 4 p.m.  From there I had a connecting flight to Detroit that was delayed due to weather. If I took that flight I would have missed my connecting flight to Hartford. I got on a different flight to Cincinatti with a connecting flight to Hartford. Then it was announced that the connecting flight to Hartford from Detroit was also delayed so I'd be able to get home, even if it was 1 or 2 in the morning so I re-booked for that flight. The plane that was going to Detroit got in and it was announced that the flight attendants had been working 13 hours already and it was "illegal" for them to fly so that flight was eventually canceled. I spent the night in a hotel in Milwaukee. Got a mediocre night's sleep and got up at 3:30, showered and got the shuttle to the airport by  on Monday morning by 4:45 for a 6:00 flight to Memphis and (supposedly) connecting to Boston (not my 1st choice but a decent 2nd). Got to Memphis and on the flight to Boston. The flight was about 1 hour into its 3 hour trip when it was announced that there were mechanical problems and the plane had turned around to Memphis. Landed in Memphis and was re-booked on a flight to DC  (any city on the east coast, preferably where I know someone and there was an Amtrak station was my attitude at that point) with a connecting flight on US Airways to Hartford at 6:30 p.m. that would have gotten to Hartford Monday at 7:45 p.m. The flight leaving Memphis was late and got into DC at 6:00 p.m. There was no ground crew to meet the plane and they were having technical difficulties with the jetway so we didn't actually get off the plane until 6:40 p.m. at which point my connecting flight on US Airways to Hartford had left. There were no Delta customer service agents anywhere so I called the 800 number and within no time turned into an hysterical, crying, sobbing mess. I had been traveling for over 24 hours and was still not home. Had I driven a car from Minneapolis/St. Paul I would have already been home. The next flight for Hartford was sometime on Tuesday via Detroit. There were NO direct flights to Hartford, Boston or JFK. At which point I decided I didn't want to take a chance on getting stranded in another airport and called Amtrak and made a reservation on the next train going to New Haven, CT (2 hours from home).  I took a taxi to Union Station in DC (which is gorgeous, by the way), and got on a train at 10:50 p.m. (leaving 50 minutes later than scheduled) The train got to New Haven, CT ON TIME at 4:20 a.m. Tuesday morning. Unfortunately I had to wait until about 5:10 a.m. for Trevor to pick me up since we thought it was getting in late around 5:00 a.m. He took me to a near-by diner for breakfast and by 6:05 a.m. we were on I-91 North headed for home. Got home at 7:45 a.m. and was in bed by 8:15 a.m. Slept until noonish. Got a call from US Airways at 12:30 p.m. saying they had my suitcase so we drove to Hartford to pick it up.

In total I was on 4 flights in 28 hours and was still not home. I made it as far as Washington DC on Delta. If I stayed on Delta I would have gotten home sometime on Tuesday, having left Minneapolis/St. Paul on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Amtrak was WONDERFUL! I made my reservation over the phone, printed my ticket at the station, didn't have to go through any long lines for TSA security, boarded the train, found a seat and we were off and moving. The seats are way more spacious than airplane seats, more leg room, more head room, electrical outlets to plug in your phone and/or laptop. Although the train left DC almost 50 minutes late we arrived in New Haven ON TIME! I will definitely consider taking Amtrak on my next long trip.

I will never fly Delta again.

Sort of a Big Deal

I've been asked to serve on the Board of Trustees for Hatfield Public Library. There's suddenly a vacant position on the board and Eliza (director of HPL) asked me if I would be interested. The requirements for the position are: interest in libraries (YES) and community member (YES). I told her I'd more than likely say yes but that I'd want to discuss it with Trevor... and blast it all over Facebook and Twitter and my blog before officially saying yes. It's kind of weird though because instead of being "just" a volunteer at HPL I'll be Eliza's boss! I'd better finish that project before my first trustees meeting (early September).

Miss Cataloged

One of my self-imposed tasks that I do when I'm putting in some volunteer hours at the Hatfield Public Library is to create book displays in the non-fiction room. I do this because I enjoy it, it keeps the room looking fresh as opposed to stagnant, and most importantly because it gets people to check out books! The theme of one of my recent book displays is Travel Memoirs (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one). This week when I arrived at HPL and went downstairs to the non-fiction room I discovered that among the half-dozen travel memoirs was a book that clearly did not belong. Apparently when a patron took one of the books from the display (actually, it was Eat, Pray, Love), someone replaced it with just any old book that was nearby. I took the book out of the display and looked at it a bit closer only to discover that it was cataloged wrong. The book in question was about writer Robert Bloch, who is best known for Psycho. It was cataloged as 813 Robert, not 813 Bloch. I checked the circulation card and saw that it hadn't circulated since 1996. Hmm...I wonder why?

I asked Eliza, the library director, what I should do with the book since it was cataloged wrong. Maybe she would want to re-catalog it? So that people could actually find it? She looked it, asked me how long it had been since it last circulated. I told her 15 years ago, and even then only twice. "Let's just get rid of it." was her response. If HPL had more space it might make sense to re-catalog the book but since HPL is SO TINY it's sometimes simply not worth the bother of correcting the cataloging to keep a book on the shelves.

Farewell, Ann

Our friend Ann died. She wasn't a close friend, but a friend, nonetheless. A kind, sweet, and hilarious person. We first got to know her when she started doing stand-up comedy with our friend, Jennifer, about 4 years ago.  Ann's partner of 16 years, Linda, passed away last September after a battle with ovarian cancer. When Linda passed away I thought to myself that Ann would certainly have a few decades on her own. She was relatively young at 50. But I'm sure it was as much a surprise to her as it was to many of us when she became ill with multiple myeloma in February and was suddenly on a downward spiral. Trevor faithfully read her blog and occasionally filled me in. Being ultra-busy pursuing a MLS from Simmons College, I have little time for reading blogs that aren't written by librarians or about libraries. So sadly, I wasn't following along. On June 1st Trevor told me that Ann announced on her blog that her doctors told that she had 1 to 3 days left. My head was spinning. I really felt out of the loop. So I called Jennifer. Jennifer very nicely replied and said, yes it was true, Ann was dying. Every day, several times a day, I checked in on her blog until Saturday June 5th when it was announced that Ann had passed away.  I felt relief for her that her struggle was over and that she died peacefully at home surrounded by her friends and family.  We attended the memorial service on Sunday and it was lovely. Trevor is not one to jump at the opportunity to attend funerals but we both wanted to go to her service simply because we liked her and she was a really nice person. I knew I would see Jennifer there but it turns out there were a few other people there that we knew, including Rev. Andrea Avayzian, whom Ann affectionately called P.A. "Pastor Andrea". There were several heartfelt, touching, and funny remembrances by friends. Once the service was over Jennifer gave her remembrance and then showed a video of Ann's stand-up comedy routine. Everyone applauded like she was there in the room with us. I laughed at her jokes like I always did. It was a perfect and fitting ending to a very personal memorial service.

Down to One

This may be a bit personal but I will proceed with it anyway... I was driving home from a lovely Memorial Day extra long weekend spent in Fryeburg, Maine in a cabin on the Saco River being constantly irritated by my brassiere which was about 2 years old and falling apart. I refrained from taking it off at the White River Junction rest area on 91 South and driving the rest of the way home bra-less but I didn't. However, as soon as I got home I went right to the bedroom and took the darn thing off and tossed it in the trash. And then, to be absolutely certain I wouldn't try to fish it out of the trash, I dumped the little trash basket into the big trash can in the kitchen (who knows what's in there). Luckily, our housemate, Ilai (pronounced Ely), emptied the big trash can within a day or two. Now it's in the dumpster and I'm definitely not going to dumpster diving to retrieve this bra. Why in the world would I even consider this? Because it was one of two comfortable, well-fitting bras that I own. Now I have one. And it's brown. Which really limits my choice of top colors to dark colors. So, if you see me and the top I'm wearing is any of the following colors: dark red, orange, brown, black, dark green, or navy blue you'll know that I still only have one bra. How long will I tolerate this? Who knows...

It Was Meant to Be

I'm working on my final project for LIS 488, AKA Technology for Information Professionals (that's me). The assignment is to write a tutorial for the technology of your choice on our class wiki. We're given a lot of freedom with assignment. It can be:

• hardware
• software
• programming language
• social networking tool
• or any technology that is sufficiently complicated enough to require a tutorial

So, I chose LibraryThing.  Why? You ask? Well, because I felt the need to make amends with LibraryThing. Not that I'd really done anything wrong to LibraryThing but maybe I'd spoken ill about LibraryThing and just didn't get LibraryThing. Why did I need LibraryThing? All of my pleasure reading comes from the public library. Who cares? I'm not building a personal library. I've got Good Reads to help me keep track of what I've read (from the library) and what I want to read. But what about those hundreds of picture books we have? Don't they deserve cataloging? Even if it is in LibraryThing? So I embarked on this project to add all of our picture books to my LibraryThing account. I even upgraded my membership to Lifetime member ($25).

Today I started adding all of our picture books to LibraryThing. Wow! What a trip this has been so far. It's tempting to read every single book but so far I've resisted. Between the two of us, we really do have hundreds of children's picture books. Some dating back to the early 1900s. Several first editions, as well as several Caldecott award winners. We both have personal favorites and oooh and ahhh over them. By the way, if you think I want to be a children's librarian, you're wrong.

So, while I was adding books to LibraryThing today I came across this funny little note [THERE IS A TAPE THAT GOES TO THIS BOOK] from many years ago:

I admit that I'm not sure if the handwriting belongs my sister or me but I can tell you that this is from when we operated a community library in our attic sometime in the late 70s that we appropriately called, The Attic Library. We organized all of our books alphabetically and even put cards in the back.  We even had a Reference section that was mostly decades-old encyclopedias. We had a periodicals department that consisted of old National Geographics and Life magazines. We even published a newsletter. It was a cozy space to hang out in with cushions on the floor (it was an attic, after all). Hours of operation were limited to when we felt like hanging out in the attic (not on wicked hot summer days). It was fun while it lasted (a couple of summers).

When I found this note today, I laughed out loud and realized that library school really is where I am meant to be. Who would do that? And where is that tape?

Library Humor

I love Rhymes with Orange!

The not-really-a-break Spring Break

I've been on Spring Break this week! Woo hoo! Or is it boo hoo? It's true, I don't have classes on Saturday of this week. However, I still have plenty to do. This is how I've spent my spring break:

• Instead of getting right back to work on Monday morning I took the day off from schoolwork and got busy with writing the registration form for camp. It needed to be done by March 1st. OOPS.
• I went to the gym on Monday morning because I could. The sauna was so toasty warm I almost fell asleep in there.
•  On Tuesday I started researching for an upcoming paper due on 3/20. 
• Volunteered at Hatfield Public Library Tuesday afternoon.
• Wednesday morning found me back at the research. Finally settled on a topic and emailed my prof. She's so excited (?!) about my topic (RFID in libraries) that she wants me to present to the class. I'm pretty excited about my topic too but now I'm wishing I'd picked something dull and ordinary.
• Paid bills, filled out paper work for health insurance from the Commonwealth, mailed my passport for renewal. ($75!) Cleaned off my desk in the process. Have you ever noticed how your virtual desktop is far easier to keep tidy than your physical desktop?
• We went to the annual spring flower show at Smith College on Wednesday afternoon (see tulips). It was such a lovely afternoon we took a walk along the Mill River in Northampton after sniffing flowers. And because I wasn't in a huge hurry to get home we went to the Forbes Library while we were in the neighborhood. I picked up a cute-looking graphic novel I was hoping to read this weekend but Mom's visiting so I don't think that'll happen.
• Trevor had a meeting on Wednesday night so I plopped myself on the couch and watched Jon Hamm (of Mad Men) host SNL on Hulu.com on my new MacBook. It was really funny! 
• Thursday morning I was back at the research. Saved all the articles I want to print to my flash drive and drove to South Hadley to take advantage of the free printing at the GSLIS office. Ate my lunch while printing articles for the paper due 3/20. Chatted with a fellow student who was also experiencing a not-really-a-break break. 
• I got my hair cut! Found a stylist at Ochoa in South Hadley who is trained in the curly girl method of cutting hair. 
• Went to the gym Thursday on my way back from the haircut. Went to the co-op after the gym on my way home. 

That's it so far. This is my plan for next week:

• Read about a dozen articles ranging in length from 1-21 pages for the paper due 3/20. 
• Write the 5 page single-spaced paper due 3/20.
• I'm still researching my topic for a short assignment due 3/20. 
• Study for exam on 4/3.
• Read the usual chapters and articles for classes on 3/20.

Looking forward to my "real" break when the semester is over on May 8th!

Miss Me? Part 2

Well, it's been a whirlwind of technology impediments for the past 2 weeks. That wire? That's the phone line that brings DSL into our house.

First, my trusty circa 2004 Mac iBook started acting flaky on me totally out of the blue. It was experiencing "kernel panic" which made me feel all panic-y about my laptop that's been my trusted friend and gateway to the "Interwebs" since November of 2007.

So, I brought my circa 2004 Mac iBook to a local Apple authorized dealer and repair shop and they kept it for 5 days! (2 of which were a weekend) I was in the midst of writing a paper for one of my classes. I got up in the morning, ate breakfast, showered, packed a lunch and drove 25 minutes to S. Hadley to use the computer lab at the Simmons GSLIS West office every day for 3 days. I even started getting a bit territorial about "my iMac". I even went so far as to add a few things to the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar that would make creating citations from a website so much easier. I am a tiny bit embarrassed to admit that I even kicked someone off "my iMac". I was becoming such a regular there that the Assistant Dean laughed at me on the second day in a row when I was there to continue working on the paper. 

On Monday I went back to the local Apple dealer to check in and they said they would call me that afternoon. They also had a refurbished laptop for sale. It was installed with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). My circa 2004 Mac iBook was a refurb which I bought in 2007 from a reputable outfit in Florida. My iPhone is "refurbished" (cost me $49). I'm in favor of "recycling" so I normally don't have a problem with refurbished equipment. However, this time, I was severely disappointed. I started writing a paper for a new assignment and got about 4 pages done. The next morning it started acting really flaky and the screen would just go black. I could barely keep it stable long enough to save my paper to my flash drive. I packed it up, brought it back and said, "I made a mistake. What I really want is a new MacBook with an Intel processor."

I bought a brand new 13" MacBook with the newest operating system, Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, installed. I also bought iWork (word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentations) for $79 (there's a $30 rebate). In the end, I paid twice what I paid for the refurbished laptop. With the Intel processor I'll be able to upgrade to new operating systems.

So I brought it home and did a two-hour software update. I went to volunteer at Hatfield Public Library that afternoon and had a great time shifting and weeding the non-fiction collection. It snowed on Tuesday evening. It was that wet, heavy snow that we get this time of year. I woke up on Wednesday morning to no power and no DSL. A branch knocked down the phone line that brings DSL into our house. Here I was with a brand new laptop and now power and no DSL! That afternoon I went to my gym and used their power and DSL to work for about an hour. We went to our public library the following day to get caught up on email and, for me, on-line research for another paper.

It took no less than 5 communications with my Internet Service Provider (starts with a "V",  sounds like "horizon") to get them to understand that someone needed come to my house to fix the downed phone line. A technician showed up on Saturday morning at 8am (one hour before my on-line class), and said, "Is that your phone line down out there? Do you think that's why your DSL isn't working?". "Yes," I replied. "They didn't tell me a phone line was down...." And then he grumbled, "Verizon is idiots." (oops! Told you who my ISP is!)

It was fixed within an hour and I was able to participate in my on-line class on Saturday morning without borrowing my neighbor's wifi. As soon as I was done with my class we packed up and drove to Cambridge for the rest of the weekend. But, that's for another post. You'll have to wait.

Miss Me?

Classes started up again on Saturday January 30th. At the end of this semester I'll be half-way done! I'm taking 2 classes this semester: LIS 451 and LIS 488. Pardon me for speaking in Librarian. I will attempt to translate.
LIS 451 is also called Academic Libraries. What does that mean, you ask? The following is from the (daunting) 17 page syllabus, "This course surveys the development, current state, and future directions of community college, college, and university libraries. The focus will be on broad issues within a context that connects academic libraries within their parent institution and the broad context of higher education. Such issues include managing change, scholarly communication, publishing, information technology, advocacy, staffing, budgeting, public relations, policies, services, evaluation and assessment, planning, and higher education environment. The course approaches these issues from a systems perspective and the framework developed for ASERL. Prerequisite: LIS 407."

Our first class was the equivalent of a technological train-wreck. Our instructor is based in South Dakota. Yes, I said South Dakota. Our first class meeting was conducted via an on-line meeting using DimDim. It was horrendous. Future classes on-line classes will be conducted using Elluminate. We've been told this is better. I have high hopes. Fortunately we were able to divvy up the reading assignments for the first week amongst a group of 4 so instead of each reading approximately 200 pages we read about 50. Right now I'm researching a topic for the first paper (10 pages) which is due Saturday 2/20. In addition to reading 4 chapters and 2 articles for this week I'm reading at least 8 articles for the paper. Some of which are almost 30 pages long. YIKES!

LIS 488 is Technology for Information Professionals. The following is from the 11 page syllabus: "This course covers the conceptual and contextual foundations of computing, networking, the internet, social networking, and digital publishing technologies as used in information-intensive professions.  There is an emphasis on the terminology used in the professional LIS literature.  The course serves as a gateway to other technology courses offered at GSLIS."
 
The instructor for this course is Linnea Johnson and she's based in Boston at Simmons College's main campus. She's really cool, super nice, wicked smart and really knows her stuff in a geeky/techy way. Our first on-line lecture was an MP3 which I was able to download and put on my iPhone so that I could listen while working up a sweat at the gym. It was a chronology of the history of communication and computers. Really neat. She also included a slide lecture that had links to 13 youtube videos. One of which was a clip from a David Letterman show featuring Grace Hopper. Watch it. She's a hot ticket, as we say. I love her visual demonstration of a nanosecond.

We're also using Twitter in LIS 488. We're using a hashtag which aggregates all our tweets about class-related messages. I'm relatively new to Twitter so it's fun to get an opportunity to use it. If you want to follow me you're welcome to. I mostly tweet about library-related stuff that I find interesting. Micro-blogging on Twitter is challenging since it's only 140 characters. That's right,  140 characters. Not words. No mucho blah blah blah as I like to say.

Trip to Boston

I spent the weekend in Boston with two friends from Simmons College GSLIS,  to attend my first ever ALA conference. I picked up several ARCs while I was there. ARCs are not giant boats that you may need in the event of flooding but they are Advanced Reader Copies that publishers give away! Most of the time ARCs are unproofed but they're free so I'll take one, and then another, and another and before I knew it I had at least 25 books. Some of which were not ARCs at all but regular books. NEW! Hardcover! Autographed by the author. Perfect for giving as gifts.

In addition to gathering up as many free books as possible from publishers, I also attended an author forum which featured 4 authors whose books have been made into movies; Eric Van Lustbader, Chuck Hogan, Tracy Chevalier, and Julie Powell.  I had never heard of the first 2 authors. Tracy Chevalier is the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Julie Powell is the author of Julie and Julia, which was recently made into a movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

Immediately following the author forum, I scurried down to the Exhibit Hall to fork over $10 for Tracy Chevalier's latest novel, Remarkable Creatures. She was there autographing books so I even have an autographed copy. It's the story of a young woman, Mary Anning, in the 19th century who is an amateur fossil collector whose discoveries were, well, remarkable.

On Saturday after collecting more ARCs from publishers, I attended a lecture by a former US VP who is fond of speaking about the environment. It felt like he was preaching to the choir so I left and went back down to the Exhibit Hall to, yes, you guessed it, collect more ARCs.

By mid-afternoon, my fellow student, Laura and I had bags of ARCs and decided we needed to get rid of them before we could continue with the rest of our day. After a semi-quick trip on the MBTA back to Cambridge to drop off books, and headed to Copley Square to visit the Boston Public Library. I used to work in that neighborhood back in the 80s and occasionally ate lunch in the courtyard but it had been decades since I'd been inside the old McKim building. It's so gorgeous!

We headed up Boylston to Lir where we attended a social hosted by the DLS, Distance Learning Section is their official name but when we arrived they told us that the acronym also stands for Drinking Librarian Section. Providence was at work yet again when I was sent that email!

After hanging with the DLS for a while, Lexi showed up and we decided to depart and form our own DLS. After wandering the upper end of Newbury Street we settled on Daisy Buchanan's. Not exactly the experience I was looking for, but it was inexpensive and not crowded at all.

Another semi-quick trip on the MBTA back to Cambridge, we stayed up way too late chatting and finally called it a night at 11:30.

It was a really FUN, yet exhausting time, and I've managed to find room in my book shelves for all of the ARCs.