Tag Archives: BEDA2009

Human? Or…

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My day was uber-relaxed. After a morning walk with Tim, I got back to the apartment and, in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, I ended up taking a mid-morning nap on the couch. I actually felt better afterward though, unlike my usual experience of waking up feeling like a zombie.

I finished reading Ink Exchange, which I didn’t enjoy as much as Wicked Lovely but was satisfied with the ending. I can’t elaborate though, I’d hate to give anything away. I was compelled by Ani and her background. Perhaps we’ll learn a bit more about her in Fragile Eternity, which comes out this week. Hopefully, the public library gets it cataloged quickly. I’m first on hold.

Russell and I watched what was available of Being Human today. This BBC series follows the adventures of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost who share a rented house and attempt to blend in and be, well, human. The characters are likable, their back-stories are interesting but it’s the show’s study of humanity that kept me watching. It may not be for everyone but it may be worth a try.

This is yet another brief and boring post I’m afraid. Frankly, reading up on TEI is sounding more interesting than writing more about my day.

Shiny News

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Note: this post was written on Thurs, April 16 but could not be published until administration had its ducks in a row, which was quite quickly.

I am very happy to report that I have just accepted the position of Metadata Specialist & Cataloger in the Indiana University Libraries Technical Services Department. This is a brand new position in the department and a promotion for me.

Yes, Jen, you say, but what does the fancy title MEAN? Fam and friends, this means that I get to do the FUN (no, really, it is!), cutting edge stuff: enhancing information discovery through text encoding (similar to marking up web page content, only more complex) and metadata enhancement, developing new projects, acting as a liaison between Technical Services and Digital Library Program, and let us not forget adding an arsenal of acronyms to my daily vocabulary. In short, I am giddy with excitement.

Although my official start date is May 4th, I will be attending a project planning meeting next week. The timing of it all is rather satisfying to me. I started my current position on May 2, 2006. I will have been a Monographs Cataloger for exactly three years before starting my new job.

Still spinning back and forth happily in her desk chair,
Jenny

Don’t Let Friends Blog Tired

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Ugh, put this off again. OK, focus Jen.

Spouse Creature and I went out to partake of a carb-filled dinner this evening. We came back and I decided to take a forty minute walk in the last of the sunlight. By the time I got back from my walk, I was tired and the laundry was finally done. Now, it is 10:30 and I’m really, REALLY ready for bed. And yet still, I blog for you, oh gentle readers!

I’m more than halfway through Ink Exchange and I’m enjoying it. Leslie still isn’t my favorite character in the Wicked Lovely ‘Verse but she’s growing on me. The pacing in this book is a bit more stop-and-go than it was in Wicked Lovely but not to a fault.

And I’m going to change subjects suddenly because it’s that kind of night.

I’ve been wanting to play Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, of all things. I have Twlight Princess. For whatever reason, I just feel like goind old school. Plus the music rocks.

OK. I’m out. Brain off now. Must remember to blog early in the day tomorrow. I can’t hide how dull I truly am if I’m punchy.

Looking forward to some amazing weather this weekend.

And Then There was Distraction

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I’m going through my GoogleReader bookmarks again. Here are a few stuffs I found.

Dirty Librarian Chains. There are quite a few unique-looking necklaces and bracelets (and rings and earings too). They are out of my price range but fun to look at. I like Archive, Due Date, Publication and Source Bracelet in particular but I find others pretty too. A few of the piece names gave me a chuckle, like Sudocs. Clearly, someone in this company knows the library world. It’s probably not a coincidence that the jewelry line’s acronym is DLC, which is also the OCLC library code for the Library of Congress.

Pauline from DCPL's CommonsDCPL Commons. Washington D.C. Public Library recently joined the numerous other libraries now on Flickr’s Commons. They don’t have much up yet, but I expect that to change in the near future. This picture is from the Color Images set. Apparently President Taft had a pet cow.

European Library Web Exhibit. Beautiful old libraries are almost as appealing to me, historically and aesthetically, as the treasures that these buildings house. This site best for the casual browser. There is no search function, which is wildly irritating.  They have a few different indexes: Buildings, Countries, Reading Rooms and Specials (I assume the later refers to special libraries). The display of results in the Buildings index doesn’t seem to be much different than the other indexes, so it’s a bit confusing. Platform faults aside, there are some pretties to be looked at here.

Grow Your Own: Fresh Air. This is a short TEDTalks delivered by Kamal Meattle on how the addition of common household plants can improve air quality in the home and office, improving health, wellness and productivity.

To find other TEDTalks, see this spreadsheet for a complete listing by speaker, title, summary and publication date. Includes links.

This linkalicious post is brought to you by Distraction.

Note to Self

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I’ve been feeling off lately. There are times when it is more intense than others. Changing my diet, regulating sleep and keeping a more positive attitude have helped but I still have… moments. And then I realized what my problem was. It’s the same problem I had last year but didn’t realize it and hence, suffered for it.

Self, it’s me. Listen up. This is your yearly reminder.

Don’t confuse being alone with loneliness.
The first is a state of being, the later an emotion.
You feel lonely in Autumn; you are alone in Spring.
You’d think it would be the other way around.
You’d think these things would be negative.
Neither is true, not for you.

You’ve always known this.
Even when you’re not paying attention.

Autumn brings lonely creatures together to face down the cold in unison.
Late Winter brings upheaval.
Spring brings the reset.
You find yourself now more introverted, almost craving solitude.

You need this time to yourself.

Others will have to understand.
The restlessness will come.
You will seek out others soon enough.

No Zombies for Me

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Both Barnes & Noble and Borders were out of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It is back ordered at the moment, the publisher can’t keep up with demand.

Ah well. B&N will give me a call when it is in, if I don’t order it online first.

Yep. That’s all. As you were.

On Sunday

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I had a good day today. I talked to family back home and then had a very nice dinner with Ann and David. Russell and I met their new mut Lexi for the first time. Initially, she was very territorial and hard to approach but a few treats and a walk around the property later and we were all good friends. I meant to bring my camera, which of course I forgot to do.

I really don’t have much else to say. This blogging every day thing has been a good exercise but quantity doesn’t guarantee quality. I suppose I could have guessed that weekend posts were going to be rubish. Oh and the ‘b’ key on my laptop doesn’t always want to work. I suppose I really ought to be using my wireless keyboard anyway, as the laptop beastie is hardly ergonomically friendly.

I’m a few chapters into Ink Exchange. Leslie wasn’t a stand out character to me in Wicked Lovely (she was the friend of the main character but didn’t feature too prominently) but I’m waiting for her to grow on me. I’m also curious about the timeline. I’m not sure how much time has passed. Hard to tell at the moment.

It just occurred to me that I didn’t pick up a Reese’s peanut butter egg this year. Argh! Maybe I’ll see one on clearance somewhere? Mmm, peanut butter chocolate goodness…

Upcoming Reads

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After work yesterday, I walked to the public library and grabbed some books and CDs.

I picked up Melissa Marr’s books Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange, to read before the release of Fragile Eternity. I read Wicked Lovely awhile back and really enjoyed it. The heroine is intelligent and strong (although she doesn’t always know it). Seth, the amazing friend turned love interest, is dreamy in a ‘pierced, boa-owning, reads everything, lives in train cars, and listens to Dresden Dolls and Rachmaninoff’ kind of way. If you’ve read Holly Black’s books Tithe, Valiant or Ironside, you’ll probably enjoy Marr’s work. I sped read through Wicked Lovely as a refresher last night. I never got around to reading Ink Exchange, so I look forward to starting that soon. Fragile Eternity is due out April 21st.

I also checked out the first two books of the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare, City of Bones and City of Ashes, in anticipation of City of Glass arriving at the library soon. I haven’t read this series but I keep hearing recommendations, so I thought I’d give it a try. City of Glass is out now.

Perhaps a blog post will come out of  the completion of Trevor’s short story collection, Cheating at Canasta. I’m not quite done yet. I’m taking my time. I just can’t tear through Trevor’s work. His stories are so rich. In each story, he teases out many facets of the overarching themes of guilt and loss. The characters are very real to me and the landscapes often seem to figure as  missing characters. More on Trevor later.

Now to sleep! Tim and I are walking in the morning.

Libraries on the Go (and We’re Losing the Mule)

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I need to get this post out early so I’ll have time to prep and relax when I get home for tomorrow afternoon’s interview (wish me luck). This post probably won’t be very well crafted (as if yesterday’s post was well-crafted and meaningful!). There are, however, a few things going on in Library Land that have got me thinking, so permit me to ramble, kind reader.

First, there was news that Washington D.C. Public Library released their own iPhone/iPod Touch app, allowing patrons to search their library catalog. More importantly, the good folks at DCPL released the code under a Creative Commons license so that other libraries could build their own iPhone apps as well (IU, are you paying attention?). I haven’t tried out the app (and, as I’m not a patron, I couldn’t test out the full functionality anyway) but reviews from ACTUAL patrons are fairly positive. Negative reviews came from people who weren’t in the DC area and complained that this app wasn’t useful to them (you don’t say!), which is unfortunate because the app’s rating has gone down as a result. However, these unlucky people may be happy to hear this next piece of news.

OCLC, a worldwide cooperative of libraries, recently tweeted that they have released their own iPhone app, WorldCat Mobile, which allows you to look up titles and check availability in libraries local to you. I downloaded the app and plan to test it more at lunch but quickly: the search works great (in searching KNOWN titles, anyway), however the interface needs a lot of work. The menu options aren’t intuitive and a stupid pop-up kept trying to find my current location, a feature that doesn’t work when I’m in the Tower (Wells Library), even though I already set my location manually. It’s a little frustrating to use but I hope the folks at OCLC take continue to develop this app. A hint to OCLC: hire a programmer who designs Apple apps for a living because while this app is a fair start, it does not look nor function like any other well-developed app I’ve used.

For more info on libraries’ forays into the mobile world, see this February 6th article from Library Journal.

I enjoyed a couple of Heidi Hoerman’s posts at Future4Catalogers’ from a few days ago (I really need to get back to the items I star in GoogleReader a little faster!). One post in particular compares MARC (the standard markup language which libraries use to code metadata) to a mule. Heidi says: it’s time to shoot the mule.

YES! Free the metadata! Don’t get me wrong, MARC served us well in a time well before the internet. In fact, it was probably ahead of it’s time. But now it is very outdated. Our users intensively engage in interweb culture and MARC does not play well with the World Wide Web. It’s time to get away from MARC and I don’t mean by simply converting MARC to XML (although even going over to the Library of Congress’s MARCXML would be a start). No. We truly need to reinvent the containers for metadata with the needs and habits of today’s users in mind, users who aren’t necessarily even stepping through our doors to utilize our services.

I find it amusing that everyone is getting so worked up over RDA (the next generation of guidelines, currently in review, that tells us WHAT to put in metadata containers) when, in the end, whether we’re using AACR2 or RDA, our metadata is not readily shareable using MARC. Forget RDA for the moment and fix the delivery system! Perhaps we should be experimenting with RDF?

My Friend Pinky

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My mind is a complete wasteland right now. I’m not whining- just stating facts. OK, that said, onto the post.

…

So, if you had a flying pink monkey, where would you keep it? Personally, I’d keep it in my non-running car. It would be able to come and go as it pleased of course, but it would sleep there and play and eat and crap outside. NO monkeys in the apartment. Aside from the mess it’d probably make, my apartment is SMALL. It wouldn’t be fair to keep a cat here, well enough a large-ish, flying primate.

What do flying monkeys eat anyway?  Do the pink variety ever wish they weren’t pink? I saw pics of tattooed hairless cats recently. I wonder if flying pink monkeys like tats. And maybe they think that is CRAZY.

I wonder what the other tenants would think. You’re heading out to your car on a cold, early morning and WHOOSH. Flying monkey. Come on. That would be pretty sweet. Unless the flying monkey scene in the Wizard of Oz scares you. Then I suppose the above scenario would be decidedly uncool.

OH! I could ask Pinky to crap on that stupid white boat of a car, which is always poorly parked because its owner is a genetically deficient asshat. Take THAT! I bet Pinky would scare the crap out of the lady who pushes her cat around in a stroller. She’d probably think that Pinky wanted to eat Baby. I think Pinky and Kitty-Baby would get along famously. Monkey not eat Baby. Baby friend.

I wonder how well flying monkeys take to training. He could fetch the mail. It’s probaby a bit much to expect Pinky to do the laundry, but maybe he could master taking out the trash. I wouldn’t trust Pinky to water my plants. In fact, I’m not sure that Pinky wouldn’t EAT the plants. Bad monkey.

Alas, Pinky isn’t a servant. I’m not even sure he’s a pet. Pinky is his own person-primate-thing. That flies. He could fly away one day and not come back. Maybe Pinky would get lonely. He might leave to go find a Mrs. Pinky to settle down with. I would wish Pinky well. It really wasn’t right that he was reduced to sleeping in cars and terrorizing the neighbors for my amusement.

Be free Pinky. Be free.