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?