a glowing Aurora overhead

Are you planning on getting an iPhone 3G on Friday?

I've changed my LJ name from _overhead to librarychan... Just so you know. ;)

Inspired by this article from the NYTimes...

Draw Yourself as a Teen, too!

And yes, I finally got to use the tablet again. :)

Stars
@ The Tralf, Buffalo, NY

( + )

Why is it that EVERY professor distributes their workload the same way? Is it some sort of we-hope-you-fail conspiracy? Procrastinator discrimination?

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
(Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 17)

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
(Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 102-3)

'The modern city,' Otto Cone on his hobbyhorse had lectured his bored family at table, 'is the locus classicus of incompatible realities. Lives that have no business mingling with one another sit side by side upon the omnibus. One universe, on a zebra crossing, is caught for an instant, blinking like a rabbit, in the headlamps of a motor-vehicle in which an entirely alien and contradictory continuum is to be found. And as long as that's all, they pass in the night, jostling on Tube stations, raising their hats in some hotel corridor, it's not so bad. But if they meet! It's uranium and plutonium, each makes the other decompose, boom.'
(Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 325)

But she'd never shaken off the feeling of being damaged by her ignorance of Love, of what it might be like to be wholly possessed by that archetypal, capitalized djinn, the yearning towards, the blurring of the boundaries of the self, the unbuttoning, until you were open from your adam's-apple to your crotch: just words, because she didn't know the thing.
(Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 324)

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
(Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 290)

23.

Woe.

6/22/07

I got to the hotel later than expected. There was a mix up from either the university or the hotel, but all was well 20 minutes later. Met my roommate. We went to the Convention Center via the metro to get our badge holders. When we got there, we discovered that many, many, many people had the same idea. It was crowded, but the lines moved quickly. There must've been two hundred people ahead of me, but it took less than 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. Once I got there, I was greeted warmly and taken care of quickly. By that point, it was already late and we were hungry. We entertained the thought of going to the Film and Libraries program, but our hunger won out. We went out to eat, and by the time we were done, it was too late for the film program. We wandered around Chinatown for a while and then came back to our hotel.

6/23/07

I woke up and headed to the Convention Center early. I went to get my exhibitor badge and discovered the trade show. I had time to kill, so I scoped it out. I took pictures, and salivated a little at the sight of all those new books and tools. It's huge! I was amazed. Soon thereafter, I attended a program called ACRL 101, and on the list of programs, it indicated that it would be good for new bees. So I went. It was interesting and informative. The panel was warm and friendly. I was a little confused with the fact that they expected us all to be members of ACRL. Are we not supposed to go to divisions meetings we don't belong to? Is that a rule I'm unaware of?
They spoke about ACRL, and how it's the biggest division in ALA with over 13,000 members. Impressive. Around the perimeter of the room were tables of some of the committees within the division. It was an interesting set up, and if I had more time, I probably would have spoken to someone from one of the tables. They also spoke about the exhibitions and strategy for tackling them. That was helpful. It's nice to know that you're not the only one at the conference who doesn't know what the heck to do or is overwhelmed.
After that, I had lunch at Potbelly, a sandwich shop. Then I went to Ann Taylor Loft and went shopping.
After my mini-spree, I sat at a couch in the Convention Center and went on the interwebs until my next program.
When the time came, I went to the Teen Graphic Novels: Maintaining Your Collection for Maximum Impact! program by PLA and YALSA. It was great. There were four panelists, three young adult librarians and one young adult collections specialist. There was someone on the panel asking questions, so the session had fluidity. They all came from different places: two of the four were fanpeople (fans of graphic novels). Those two wrote books about the subject. The session was organized and the panelists were well-prepared. Robin Brenner made some goods points. One of which was that not all comics are for children; there are different comics for different maturity levels. Some patrons are unaware of this and give YA librarians a hard time about it.
Todd Krueger claimed that it is vital to have an adult collection of graphic novels if you are to create a collection; it is the easiest way to avoid challenges to the collection. The panelists talked about manga as a culture shift--more explicit than "normal" comics. Americans, especially parents, are wary to the idea of nudity, and don't understand its place in manga because of the culture difference. At the end of the session, they opened the panel up to the audience. One librarian asked about the challenges to graphic novels and what is a good way to deal with it. Robin Brenner suggested that our American society was going to have to catch up with the rest of the world somehow.
Afterwards, I went to the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee Subcommittee on the Impact of Media Concentration on Libraries. It was really interesting. The members were working on a guideline for ALA support. They call for the library to support laws and regulations that promote and preserve equitable and affordable distribution and transmittance for small, independent, alternative, and community groups or businesses, such as license fees and postal rates. Some key issues they addressed in their guidelines were net neutrality, internet radio, postal rate. They said that there is an importance to the existence of an environment that fosters new and independent ideas. Recent laws go against the idea of diverse voices being protected and encouraged.
The members of the committee were welcoming and extended themselves to me in conversation. They made eye contact with me throughout and took my name at the end. Deborah Caldwell-Stone took my email address and offered to put me on the listserv for the subcommittee.

After that I was pooped but I ate dinner alone at a nearby Tapas Bar and had tapas and sangria. It was yummy. I can't wait to see Joe in less than 4 days. Squee. Lots to do tomorrow.

The end of all evolution is dissolution. This is not absurd. It would be absurd if the end of evolution was the perfect state. It would be absurd if evolution had any other end but dissolution. Evolution is therefore meaningless if it is evolution towards. It is now or nothing. A better state, a better design, a better self, and better world; but always these things beginning now.
(John Fowles, The Aristos, p. 176, para. 126)

I've been so deprived. Pedro Almodóvar is THE MAN. All About My Mother gets an A+ in my book.