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Bridges do more than connect two land masses
So I arrived in the Bay Area in time for the closure of the Bay Bridge, and might I add, if they who know these things believe the bridge should be closed, then by golly, please do close it.
Right before I arrived in the Bay Area I had a chance to swing through Monterey and attend a reception for SCELC, the key consortium MPOW belongs to. (MPOW, for those new to this blog, means My Place Of Work, which in this case is the Cushman Library at Holy Names University.) This was a chance to meet our peers in the private-academic-California sector of LibraryLand and to soak up some of the SCELC zeitgeist.
While I was listening to people talk about libraries and librarianship, more than once I overheard someone describe SCELC members as “the libraries that aren’t CSU or UC.” I can see why they would say that, since UC and CSU do tend to dominate the discussion in California academia.
Yet collectively, the SCELC libraries are quite the force; and a consortium such as SCELC helps them become more than the sum of their parts. To date SCELC has been extremely useful for these libraries. And tomorrow, and the tomorrows beyond? As we as a profession move toward massive-scale resource-sharing and centralized print and digital collections, the neural networks built by consortial bridges will make the smallest libraries powerful indeed.
California it is!
So we made it to Des Moines by way of Springfield and Champaign, where we visited the Lincoln Museum and UIUC GSLIS–both were in fine form. A beautiful building makes me feel smart and important. I had a great education at GSLIS, but the old building was a bit weary and cramped.
Note to current GSLIS students: because the library-science library is now housed in the GSLIS building, you may not be aware that there is a relief of Katharine Sharp in the graduate library, near the former location of the LIS library. Rub her nose and she’ll bring you good luck — with jobs, tests, whatever. (Though perhaps not so much with driving.)
In Des Moines, Sandy went back to Florida for a denominational meeting, I gave my talks (hello, Ellen, Jessamyn, Karen, Louise, and others!), and then I plowed through Nebraska, Wyoming, a chunk of Utah, and Nevada. Within that cohort group, Wyoming won the “I feel pretty” contest hands-down (it reminds me of New Mexico, except flatter), though the wind was so stiff I thought I would fly away when I stopped to refuel.
I was all prepared for a heartwarming moment when I crossed the California state line, but I-80 had some horrible curvy concrete chute going on for several miles that had me sweating through the winter coat I dug out of the trunk, so the defining emotion as I crossed into my home state was relief. Perhaps that is apropos!
Now I am at my sister’s place in Truckee, catching up on computer-based tasks and laundry. My iPhone has been a great help on this computerless trip–from email-reading to finding motels–and I already have about 30 apps on it, including one for finding farmers’ markets in California. I am also faster on the keyboard than I was two weeks ago. But the keyboard is still this machine’s weakness. I’m happy with the iPhone, and with AT&T service, but the keyboard is inefficient. Doug’s analogy was clever, but I think off a bit: it’s not like making music without a bow, it’s like picking a guitar with mittens on. Eventually you get better at it, but only relative to mittened musicmaking.
So with the mittens off, I’m catching up on the big stuff! I drift westward tomorrow, and start my new job this Friday. Eventually Sandy, Dot, Emma, and our stuff will drift this way as well. West!
My Tech Choices
In short:
* Got an iPhone. Zero regrets. The Barbie Doll I never had. Going from a Blackberry to an iPhone has raised my expectations of mobile platforms and software in general. Already filling it with free apps. Keyboard is kinda lame, but I’m figuring out how to type on it.
* Holding off on the netbook until Windows 7 debuts. This is painful, because it means I absolutely have to finish my presentation before I leave next weekend, but I think it’s good advice. Couldn’t find an Acer with a coupon for a Win 7 upgrade or would have gone that route.
* GPS: between the Garmin with the Olde Mappes and the iPhone with its Kewl Apps, I’m fine for now.
* iPod: will keep using the one I have until it’s time to get another, and then get something small, just a step above the Shuffle, for exercising. Don’t want to get all sweaty on my iPhone. May store some podcasts on the iPhone — just enough for long trips, the only time I really listen to an iPod in my car.
Thanks again for all the advice!
Responding to trends, and avoiding the “bash”
There were some great additions to the trends, including the emphasis on mobile computing, though in running over the list, I’d add the blurring of public/private personae.
But Michael Golrick honed in on the challenge of my presentation: not to point out problems, but to point out responses to those problems (avoiding the pat term, “solutions”). His suggestion of a social-networking policy can be broadened to these responses: enable, guide, and empower library workers to strategically participate in social networks.
My challenge in the next week, before I box up my desktop computer and am PC-less until I get to California, is to come up with more responses. If you have thoughts, I’m all ears.
If I may segue, one of the things I have dwindling tolerance for is the librarian-bashing presentation. You know the talk, where someone gets up and points out all the ways we librarians are limited. We are timid, slow, convoluted, hesitant, short-sighted, without imagination or rigor.
The audience laughs along with these presenters — perhaps a wee uneasily — and then the bashing ends and the sparkly speaker vanishes off the stage, leaving us with nothing except a vague sense of shame and inadequacy.
About the only talk I’ve liked in that vein is Joe Lucia’s “sheeple” talk at Evergreen 2009, perhaps because he was fingering a narrow group that may bear responsibility for some of the problems that challenge us. But Joe also did us the favor of talking about what we need to do, and where we need to go.
