nichole's auxiliary storage

I give. Here's a quiz.

C'mon, it's a holiday.

You're Mrs. Dalloway!
by Virginia Woolf
Your life seems utterly bland and normal to the casual observer, but inside you are churning with a million tensions and worries. The company you surround yourself with may be shallow, but their effects upon your reality are tremendously deep. To stay above water, you must try to act like nothing's wrong, but you know that the truth is catching up with you. You're not crazy, you're just a little unwell. But no doctor can help you now.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Rubber stamps redux

So I found out at graduation that more of my family than I knew of reads my blog. (Hi folks!) That's how my mom-in-law, a stamper herself, found out about the rubber stamps I bought.

Ma, I just got another three rollers and four ink pads, and a "Bitty Bolds" set of tiny holiday-themed stamps. Kayla was really nice and let me use some of her hostess credit. Now I need to wrap some presents so I can use my new stamps...

Janet Morton

Looks like there's still time to see Janet Morton's large-scale sewing, knitting & crocheting exhibit, "Femmebomb." Though the title piece had to be removed due to wind damage, there are pictures.

Libraries in Vietnam

My mom clipped and sent this story about a Waukesha woman's involvement with the Library of Viet Nam Project from Milwaukee's Catholic Herald:

Today, through the efforts of Theusch and supporters such as the Dombroes, there are at least 10 libraries in different parts of Vietnam and Laos. Some are free-standing, others are part of schools or orphanages.

The Project's own web site is sincere but in dire need of a good edit. The VFW ran a news release on the Project in 2002.

There seem to be a lot of these little NGOs involved with libraries in Viet Nam:
Peace Trees, the Quang Tri Province Women's Union, the Australian Agency for International Development, and the Dutch Embassy helped found five small libraries in Quang Tri Province in 2003.
There's also a Virginia-based Library and Education Assistance Foundation for Vietnam - can't tell exactly how active they are.

On the official side, there's the UN's directory of libraries, with a link to the National Library of Viet Nam. The NLV's tantalizing link to "Websites of Provincial Libraries" is a dead end.

There's the 1973 Smoothie Publications (!) book "Libraries in Indochina : a brief survey of libraries in Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam," by J. (James) Rowlands, in the LOC catalog.

Interesting stuff. Without learning Vietnamese (or, you know, doing some real research) there's not much more I can add.

update 4/8/05: LISnews posts: "Inconvenient hours and time-consuming borrowing procedures have caused many Vietnamese students to shy away from libraries as an ideal studying place for exams and term papers. More at THe Thanh Nien Daily."

Jail suicide

This news from the City County Building maximum security jail comes as the "jail library" at the Public Safety Building - i.e., the ca. 150 square feet that holds Jail Library Group's donated book collection and the carts used to bring books to inmates every week - is being moved to a smaller room due to severe jail overcrowding. It certainly puts our imposed move into perspective.

From the Wisconsin State Journal, May 22: Inmate hangs herself in cell

A 19-year-old jail inmate, despondent over being in jail again, committed suicide Thursday by hanging herself in her cell with a bedsheet, the Dane County Sheriff's Office said.

Sheriff's Capt. Mike Plumer, who is in charge of the jail, said Tierra Hill of Madison left a suicide note which made it clear that she was making a "serious attempt." In the note, he said, she wrote about being sad that she was in jail again.

Hill was in jail for shoplifting and resisting or obstructing an officer, both misdemeanors. According to the state circuit court database, she was arrested a week ago on May 15 and was awaiting a pre-trail [sic] conference scheduled June 24.

She had also been convicted two years ago of a felony related to armed robbery and battery and was still on probation. The database indicates that, at the time of her arrest, she was under psychological care and required medication.

Hill's death is the first suicide in the Dane County Jail since 1998, when there were two suicides. Plumer said that last year, 46 inmates attempted suicide, while 33 attempts were made in 2002.

The jail volunteer who notified the group of this story said Tierra and her friend Sinceray had used JLG's library service in the past.

More: "Jail problems are serious," a Capital Times editorial.

blondelibrarian

Thanks to daisy, I found "Culture Shock and the blondelibrarian: reflections of an expatriate American librarian living in Germany" today. Seems she lives around Munich, close to Rosenheim, where I spent my undergrad semester abroad. That part of Germany seemed an odd cross between Texas pride and Wisconsin dairy-hood.

I loved Rosenheim's library. For one thing, they has a copy of "Alan Mendelsohn: der Bübe vom Mars" (that was the German title, if memory serves) by Daniel Pinkwater, and a toll Kaffeemaschine.

Reading blondelibrarian's blog brought back some of my good memories of those four months - my host family was a little weird, and in retrospect I was a typically cavalier nineteen-year-old, but it was good.

Pulling the pin

A library school prof said one mark of a librarian in the olden days was learning the flick of the wrist used to pull the pin from a drawer of catalog cards, permitting cards to be added or removed. (Of course, some 2-year-olds and ghosts can do it too.) My new part-time job entails a good deal of pin-pulling.

Good omens - I saw three four-leaf clovers at the bus stop. Plus, the first drawer of old catalog cards I get to work on is number 42.

"Can I get your autograph?"

On my last trip to the jail library, one dep joked to an inmate as he grabbed for a book, "Make sure you get one with lots of pictures."

An inmate asked me if there was any chance the library volunteers would help him find a book that belonged to him. He'd lost track of it when he was put in lockdown - a little preoccupied with getting strip-searched, he'd left it on a table and thought maybe it had been tossed onto a library cart by mistake. I told him we could look if he would fill out a request slip with his name and the details of his story, but he declined.

The dude who had been reading the World Book Encyclopedia volume by volume has been transferred to prison. "Thank god," said the dep in his pod.

The library got a request slip for a new dicksionery.

An inmate came up to me and asked, "Hey, can I get your autograph for that book you wrote, you know, what's it called..."
I said, "I didn't write a book," and he dropped it. I think he was trying to get my full name.

Mel & Smarty Pants classic; and, I'm going on break.

May 21 brings us a "classic" episode, originally aired on March 26.

So I'm all graduated now and stuff, so I should have time on my hands, right? Not so. This summer promises to be busier than ever, so it's with a twinge of regret that I say that after almost 9 months of regularly recording the pithy remarks of Mel, Floyd, and Mr. Smarty Pants, I'm taking a break.

I might cover a show now and then, but now that there's a sample of the phenomenon that is Mel and Floyd's Summer Replacement Show recorded on the inter-net, my compulsion to archive it has subsided somewhat.

Plus, there's room for guest authors/Mel and Floyd scribes here. Drop me a line at jumbledpile@yahoo.com if you're interested.

E-voting and lotteries

So I needled JM into writing about why it seems no one in the debate over electronic voting seems to have noticed that dozens of massive state-run IT endeavors, namely lotteries (and their vendors), have solved the technical problems involved in creating a secure, anonymous, and auditable online transaction system.

Then I forgot to link to his post on the topic, even after the stir about electronic voting in India hit BoingBoing and Wired, and now the Onion's got an infograph on electronic voting machines. Sorry I'm late, Mr.!

Fun with MARC indicators

How would one catalog this hypothetical item?

245 10 The shit / ...
or
245 14 The shit / ...

Recreational media roundup

Does del.icio.us count? Because it rocks. I just wish I had more faith that it will exist in a few years, and that it offered more options for organizing my links. S'pose I could send the guy some cashos by way of gratitude...

Fried butter : a food memoir by Abe Opincar: nice little foodie recollections from Japan, Israel, California - I learned a new trick for frying eggs in olive oil with turmeric/paprika/mustard powder. Tasty.

Girl cook by Hannah McCouch: what made me think I'd enjoy chick lit this time?

Mitch Hedberg: borrowed this comic's CD and liked it a lot. "I don't have a girlfriend, I just know a girl who would get mad if she heard me say that." Plus he was in an episode of Home Movies.

Down and out in the Magic Kingdom: first I've read of Cory Doctorow outside of BoingBoing. Devoured in a day, and went back for more. Speaking of Disney...

Pirates of the Caribbean: great for a popcorn movie.

Marimekko: fabrics, fashion, architecture: A fascinating history of Armi Ratia's Finnish design company. Designer Maija Isola's bio in the book mentions that she traveled to Madison and Boone, Idaho in the 1970s. We own two Marimekko prints by Katsuji Wakisaka, Kumiseva and Sademetsä, for a total investment of $6.32. For once some brash crud I picked up at Goodwill and coerced JM to drive home on the roof of the car turned out to be cool - art, even.

House of leaves: Borrowed from the jail collection until I can repair the back cover. Once past the sort of post-something novelty, it got to be a pretty dull horror novel, except for the lurid sketches (scans coming soon to Jail Finds) on several blank pages, courtesy of some talented inmates.

Catalog librarian Felicia Uhden

So I missed this when it first appeared on librarian.net: a Seattle Times profile of cataloger Felicia Uhden, who is quoted touching on a common theme:

"One of the things about technical services is that you tend to hear from people when something went wrong. But your success," she says with a strangely satisfied smile, "really is invisible."

WiLS Peer Council

I totally should have worn my Metamucil-themed "Metadata: keeps the information flowing" tshirt yesterday. On the other hand, I saw librarians from at least four phases of my library life, so the points-and-buttons were probably more appropriate than a tee and jeans.

It was an inspiring, metadelicious day, and a great kickoff to post-grad school library life. Diane Hillman from the National Science Digital Library spoke on metadata quality and - even cooler - the cultures of metadata both inside and outside the library world. Quick overviews of the Open Worldcat project and the OCLC 2003 "Environmental Scan" filled out the schedule. It's an exciting time to be a new librarian. (What a word! Hee.)

At lunch I got to catch up with some of my erstwhile colleagues from my undergrad LIS minor days, including my first cataloging practicum supervisor and a classmate, Jacob, who got his Master's from UW-Milwaukee. After talking to them, I felt better about choosing Madison SLIS after all - according to Jacob, Milwaukee's program didn't offer much more by way of cataloging education.

"What cataloging class?" Jacob, who's now the cataloging coordinator at a technical college library, asked. "My formal cataloging education stopped with what I learned from [our adjunct instructor]."

One theme of the post-lunch talk was that library education should go beyond "traditional cataloging training" to prepare future librarians for big metadata dreams - but I chickened out and did not ask what the chances are that this can come true when even a traditional cataloging education is so hard to come by.

Two words for you, Benjamin.

Out with the "grad student," in with the "new librarian!"

And such a graduation weekend it was: Saturday was SLISeriffic, and on Sunday my sister got her BFA. Today is WiLS Peer Council so I have little time to blog just yet.

May 14: Mel & Smarty Pants

Last week there was some enticing talk about chatting up librarians.
"What are you wearing? Is there a pencil in your hair?"
I was listening from my couch, post-school deadlines, even took a nap... it was lovely.

Read on for notes on another installment of Madison's second-favorite talk radio show, Mel and Floyd.

---

It's a problem to be omniscient but not omnipotent. Leads to lots of Cassandra moments.

Like watching a Bush press conference...

...not that he has many.

[missed, like, 10 minutes in another off-the-clock work-like conversation - dangit!! We're gonna get a DSL hookup at home soon, maybe I can take this gig out of the office then.]

They deep fry that salad just in case. [wish I knew what led up to that.]

Kerry blasts veterans' health care cuts.

You know, Limbaugh compared the prison atrocities to college hazing. Typical trivialization of evil...

Bush Sr. is starting to look like a saint compared to his son.

Out of Washington, DC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton, a story about discount drug cards for seniors and what a scam the whole thing is. Too many choices are just overwhelming - so the new new thing is to charge seniors for advice about which discount plan is best. Mel: The AARP has that sewn up.

CIA sought contractors for interrogators. SP: We used to call them 'mercenaries.'
Mel: So we have to go to the private sector to find interrogators.
SP: Ex-cops, man...but why are they "Ex"? Shouldn't they be sitting on a nice fat retirement plan somewhere?

Mel: FCC is really cracking down... but not on Spanish-language broadcasters. Apparently they don't have bilingual staff to monitor polyglot obsecenity.

Bad news for Bush: Not many taxpayers believe they paid less this year due to Bush's tax bills. In fact, 25% believe it's Bush's fault they're paying higher taxes.

10th annual SPAM-carving contest is coming up, May 22 at 2 pm. The password is 'swordfish' but they can't tell you where it is. Bring your own carving utensils, but SPAM will be provided. [here's a compendium of SPAM links; and pics from a different contest.]

*break*

Letter from Mindless Minion Jack to Monsieurs Mel and Smarty Pants (to be said in a French accent).

(by the way, Smarty Jones won the Kentucky Derby.)

He compares and contrasts M&F to Harry Shearer's radio show. M&F make him laugh uproariously, while Shearer's is more an a-ha of sharp insights - not that M&F don't have sharp insights...
SP: Sharp as a bowling ball, as they say. Don't you think?
Mel: My headphones were tangled - I wasn't listening.
SP (reading from letter): I think you should have a larger audience.
Mel: Our audience is wide enough already.

Mel and Smarty Pants like getting real mail at 118 S. Bedford St., Madison, WI 53703.

How is Peg Lautenschlager doing? Better now that she can use that state rickshaw.

Supreme Court splits over long sentence.

Sentencing Project reveals that 10% of all inmates are serving life sentences. (full report in pdf) SP: They don't have that problem in Texas.
Mel: Or, as the Pres said - quoted in a George Will column - "Please don't kill me," as he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, a woman on death row.

Greenfield alderman defends mannequin with lawsuit.

Pietrowski added the mannequin to his City Hall office decor in August 2003, dressing it in a baggy T-shirt and jeans and accessorizing the handless doll with political buttons. His lawsuit asserts that the mannequin "serves as a social equalizer designed to facilitate communication with persons he invites into his office."

Mel: I think he means it's an icebreaker.

David Duke is out of prison and back on the job. David Duke working for `white civil rights'.
Mel: He got a job in his field. Nice resume.

Study by Richard Thompson out of Plymouth, England shows that microscopic plastic fibers have accumulated in sea sediments.

Rob Krebs, a spokesman for the American Plastics Council, said a lot of the data in Thompson's study "is old, and we'll have to review it."
"The most important thing industry can do about ocean debris is educate each of us about the personal responsibility we have to keep debris from getting into the ocean, no matter what type it is," Krebs said.

*break*

Mel: Do the monkey stories quick, before we lose them.
Story from St. Andrew's, where if it's not Scottish it's crap, finds that "Amid Jungle Cacophony, Hornbills Heed Monkeys' Alarms."
SP shares a demo of what he's picked up from his Learn Monkey language tapes.

Lemurs aren't so dumb.
Mel: They play computer games and eat treats - if they could drink beer, they could get into my old college.

Out of NYC: since Welfare to Work programs got so popular, there hasn't been a significant increase in the number of spots for child care.

Mexican Air Force pilots film UFOs.

And that's it. Stay tuned for Dr. Dave's Menudo Special.

Warning: grad school grumpiness dump

Last chance - I'll be over it and ready to look back with rosy glasses in a day or two. Hell yeah.

So I did an exit interview. I hope I made my points without being a snot or a kiss-up. It helped to remember that I met my goals - namely, to get the degree, not go into debt, and learn to catalog better. The first was easy, and my job helped about 9% with the second.

That third goal was my sticking point. Somehow SLIS became an obstacle to getting a better cataloging education. I knew the basic cataloging course would be old hat, but the advanced course on the books was never offered, and the placement adviser (not my academic adviser, who had a real right to tell me what I could and couldn't take) tried to keep me from switching my enrollment from a good-PR-for-SLIS service practicum to one I arranged myself.

Some of this is my fault for not arranging a cataloging practicum sooner. The rest is either poor communication or undue emphasis on "the student in the life of the school, rather than the school in the life of the student," to wildly misappropriate Douglas Zweizig's famous quote.

The moral of the story? I should've taken even more responsibility for my own experience. Plus, I can't take for granted that I was able to go to school where I live. It's a rare privilege.

In other news, I was a dork and did what Dorothea wisely avoids: I plopped down dues for honor society recognition and the chance to wear (borrowed) cords tomorrow. I was also a poor guest - came to initiation underdressed, arrived just as the show was starting, and left early despite their plea to stick around and get a head shot for the web site. But my loyalty lies with my long-suffering "grad-school widower," and I promised I'd be home early. Plus the vibe was a tad stuffy and self-congratulatory - speaking of "service," I could think of 50 better things to do with $50 or three hours.

I sat next to SLIS's career advisor and observed as she made a list of grads with jobs titled something like: "Send placement survey," which may or may not corroborate stories I've heard from alums who didn't hear a peep from SLIS between graduation and landing a professional job, sometimes months later. Hm.

Enough of that. School's out, probably forever, and it was OK.

Kids are smart

So over at Datacloud, Johndan made an observation about postmodernism and this art student's story of discovering, at age nine, the idea that everyone actually sees colors differently, but we don't notice because we call them by the same names. Several of the comments on that post reveal that it's not so uncommon for kids to "discover" this idea - and just a couple weeks ago, a couple-three friends and I were swapping stories of childhood and realized we'd all "discovered" this idea too, and had been very proud to share our genius with our moms and dads.

The best part, in my mind, is that kids are so eager to explain such theories to their parents as if their parents know nothing. On a related theme: the Kid logic episode of TAL.

I remember when I first learned to make snow angels at about age 4, I didn't catch on that one was supposed to move both arms and legs. My angels had wings but all wore pants. One winter afternoon Mom shoveled while I made angels in the backyard. When the neighbor-lady looked over the fence and told me I could move my legs to give the angels gorgeous robes, I was ecstatic - and ran to show Mom the "discovery." I don't remember, but I imagine she and the neighbor-lady shared knowing glances.

Rubber stamps

I've succumbed to the allure of a rubber-stamp-craft catalog and ordered $70 worth of gift-themed stamps and color-coordinated inks because, er, I'm too cheap to buy wrapping paper, preferring to re-use paper grocery bags. Besides, a friend got the sales commission.

One perk of having stamps on the brain is that I quickly recognized that "Colors of Provence," a two-volume instructional video set the library just ordered, fits better in the 761s than 752s, which is where the original cataloger had put it.

Scouted

Wow, my day's made - the Mel & Floyd "archive" has been cited on the Internet Scout weblog, which is read by scads of librarians and other metadata-types:

Here you go all you librarian-nerds. This library science grad student took her seminar assignment to a previously unheard of level. Each week, Nichole transcribes the decidedly random, odd, and goofy ramblings of a local talkshow called Mel and Floyd. The show is aired on the community radio station -- W.O.R.T. The only problem with the transcript is that you don't get the effect of Mel and Floyd's trademark giggling. Thus, add those as needed. Enjoy.

It helps if you throw on James Brown's Greatest Hits too.

(Thus ends my self-indulgent meta-meta-meta-commentary.)

Flash-splash

I love my other auxiliary brain, a cute SanDisk Cruzer Mini flash/jump drive. I've even started to use the chic lanyard (included) to wear it around my neck. But one of these days it is going to land in my coffee.

Wigfield

From the Strangers with Candy team, it's a 'demented' little book, but sort of funny and blessedly brief. The narrator writes about watching the movie version of the Scarlet Letter:

I checked it out from the library. That's right, a movie from the library! For my money, it was hard to be excited about libraries until they started checking out movies. I can't wait until the switchover is complete. What better way to show the obsoleteness of a book than by setting it next to a DVD? I'm glad libraries are leading the charge against books.

Forcing some t-shirts around

Shari Elf's now got t-shirts over at her place. What makes them worth noting is that, like her art, they're 100% "trash" - one-of-a-kind thrift store finds screenprinted with her name and some stuff. Very neat.

Planning your future

Graduation is getting close. People who know that are asking how my job hunt is going. The gist is that I like my current paraprofessional gig for now, it pays the bills (being half of a frugal DINK couple helps rather a lot), and it's where I want to live. I'm in the enviable position of not having to rush into the job market -- which could lead to career stagnation pretty quickly.

So over at Boxes and Arrows there's been an article by Erin Malone called planning your future that kick-started my own long-term career goal setting.

Finishing library school has been my biggest goal since the idea broadsided me in 1998, when I was an undergrad floundering towards an ill-conceived music therapy degree. If I don't develop a new plan, I'll hem and haw about what kind of professional positions I should go for. I'd also overcommit to volunteer efforts and poor JM would never really recover from his grad-school-imposed "widowerhood." Plus we'd risk more nasty notes about the state of our lawn. So I'm going to sit down and chart a course before throwing myself headlong into anything.