Welcome to those of you joining me from an unidentified class at San Jose State’s SLIS program. Since I can’t access your BlackBoard system, perhaps you’d tell me what class you’re visiting from and what was said on the discussion board that led you here. But if you’re the shy type, that’s OK too.

I’ve been outed on my GSLIS bulletin board as well. Not that any of my schoolmates have come to visit or say hello, but I’m not bitter.

Well, I don’t have anything pressing to say today. Last night, I came across a post (Nov. 14, sorry no permalinks) over at tarheel bloggers:

“Here’s a librarian-blogger who links to LIS students at the Univ. of Washington: Open Stacks: “…the new way to tell the world what you think”. Greg Schwartz links to a lot of other librarians, but I think it’s time he learns about the excellent bloggers at UNC’s SILS.”

Of course, the post’s author, mistersugar, is alluding to the fact that there are no SILSers on my blogroll. That’s true enough, as far as I know. But those of you familiar with my history here, on Blogsource and with the dmoz LIS Weblogs categories would understand why I find his suggestion amusing, to say the least.

I can’t wait to see this, if it ever gets finished:

Checked Out, the Movie – “Checked Out is an indepedent feature length movie about a crazy day for four student librarians, currently in pre-production in Anchorage.”

The link leads to a blog occasionally discussing the production status of the movie. There’s also a link to some pictures.

It’s great to see LIS students talking about blogs. I stumbled across an interesting article written by Blythe Summers, a first-year LIS student at the U. of Washington:
Dear Diary and Then Some:
Blogs as the New Form of Self-Expression

Sure, I’m linking to it because she mentions me, but I also want to direct your attention to a much longer paper entitled Planet Blog (Word doc) written by Betha Gutsche, another LIS student at UW. Both writings are worth a look.

Since virtually everyone who visits this blog is a regular reader of Library Stuff, I really don’t need to point out Steven’s Public Libraries article on the “New Breed” of library weblogs. But here I am, doing it anyway. As always, Steven, thanks for the publicity. I wonder how long I’ll have to keep at it to move from the “New Breed” to the “Old School.” And what will be characteristic of the new “New Breed?”

The Lipstick Librarian recently called for library catchphrases “that resonate with the Youth of Today.” Amongst her offerings:

Get the 411 @ your library
Libraries are phat!
Reading: the booty-call of free entertainment

And my personal favorite:

Wait two hours for your mom to pick you up after school @ your library

Let me offer up a few more:

Libraries: Bustin’ a cap in your information gap.
The porn filters aren’t air-tight @ your library
B to the izz-O O to the izz-K!

And in today’s thrill du jour, David Bigwood gives up some love for my library system.

Steven passed along an interesting tidbit for my ego-stroking pleasure. Looks like I’ve received my very first mention in a print publication. There’s an article in this month’s Computers In Libraries called “Here a Blog, There a Blog, Even the Library Has a Web Log” and the author has seen fit to mention me as a “champion of library blogs.” I have to say I’m honored to have an entire paragraph devoted to my one and only article on the topic.

Fortunately, I was able to procure a photocopy of the article, but I’d really like to find a copy of the issue to hold onto for posterity. Does anyone out there either subscribe to CiL personally and not keep the issues OR work at a library that subscribes, but eventually weeds past issues? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: Copy procured. Thank you!

Over at TechnoBiblio, Steph mentioned that the Web needs some weeding, due to the prevalence of old information and broken links. She goes on to talk about the ability to conduct searches for recently updated content. Having read the post, I found myself wondering what the weeding of an online reference collection might entail.

For example, let’s say that you maintain both a general collection of subject-specific links and a physical collection covering the same topics. It seems to me that the motivations and approaches to weeding these collections might be quite different.

When I weed my collection, one significant consideration is whether the book is ever used (please note public library bias). Well, what’s the online equivalent…a click-through? Would I eliminate the links that no one ever clicks on? (And at the risk of betraying my ignorance, is this easily measurable?)

What about space considerations? We often weed to make room for newer materials. In a physical space, it’s both a practical and aesthetic issue. Do the same constraints apply to an online link collection? Or is an online collection’s size determined mostly by the librarianly ideals of selectivity balanced with breadth and/or depth?

I, of course, have no answers…only more questions.

I wonder how lii.org deals with the issue of weeding its ever-growing collection. I’m sure they know which links are broken, but do they know which resources aren’t used? Does it matter, based on their objectives? Probably not, as I would imagine that the more classic reference source evaluation factors take center stage: currency, authority, accuracy, and all of your other grad school favorites. Perhaps weeding an online link collection shares more with an academic library weeding approach, but having never worked in that environment, I’ll open the floor to the wisdom of others.

So after weeks of anticipation, Nancy Pearl made her appearance at our library today. She’ll be making a public appearance tomorrow night, but this afternoon it was librarians only. Although I’d say 75% of the attendants were from our system, some people had traveled quite far to listen to the Librarian Action Figure speak.

Our director gave a protracted introduction. He apparently played a pivotal role in bringing Ms. Pearl to Seattle and there were many stories between them. Once the stories had been told (although more would come later), she shared the story of her current release, Book Lust: how it came to be, the process of putting it together, some examples of the results.

There were lots of little insights revealed. We learned that there will be a sequel to Book Lust with the working title Book Lust II: Because Once Is Not Enough. Although I suspect the title won’t last, I’m pulling for it.

One interesting thing that Ms. Pearl mentioned was that she is hesitant to meet authors, for fear that any impressions she gets from such an encounter will influence her readings of their texts. She added that there is a similar problem with the audiobook concept, as the reader essentially mediates the experience of the text for the listener. I couldn’t agree more.

There was time for some Q and A at the end, so I summoned up some courage and threw a question her way. One of Ms. Pearl’s notions is that life is too short to waste on books you’re not enjoying. Some of you are familiar with her espousal of giving a book 50 pages to engage you (less as you get older and time gets even shorter). My question was whether she had ever revisited books that she considered favorites in her earlier days, only to realize that, if she had been employing the 50 page rule, the book would have gone unfinished. She responded that, although she hadn’t had that specific experience, she did come to recognize that some of the books that were favorites in her childhood proved to be poorly written pieces of literature. I wasn’t surprised at all, as this emulates my experience.

Of course, this event was ultimately a book promotion and we had the opportunity to purchase the book and have it signed. And admittedly, Nancy Pearl made me excited about reading again, so I paid up and waited in line for my little moment with a celebrity librarian.

And what did I do with that moment? Well, we learned that Ms. Pearl was able to select half of the books in the little stack that comes with the Librarian Action Figure, while her publisher picked the others. So did she pick Bulgarian Flax? Uh, no.