Two small highlights of my trip. One, seeing Eli’s smiling face on the projection screen at the ALIA dinner. Apparently the ALIA New Graduate’s group had borrowed a powerpoint presentation from ALA’s New Members Round Table with some headshots and little quotes from people about being a new librarian. I looked up from my drink, halfway around the world, and saw Eli and nearly sprayed soda on my tablemates saying “I know her!” Second highlight, flying home and catching some of the Geminid meteor shower from the window of the plane.
Author: jessamyn
library outreach: pub trivia
Andrea and I were chatting outreach options recently. She may not have known that during my freelance lirbarian times, I actually did run a trivia night at a local pub run by a pal of mine from library school. The question lists I created are, naturally, online.
quick, before the meme gets away from us
Breaking news: Google + libraries = ??? Will Google’s ads appear by Harvard’s libraries’ content? I’m sort of dying to know how this is going to work out.
We have agreed to a pilot project that will result in the digitization of a substantial number of volumes from the Harvard libraries. The pilot will give the University a great deal of important data on a possible future large-scale digitization program for most of the books in the Harvard collections. The pilot is a small but extremely significant first step that can ultimately provide both the Harvard community and the larger public with a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. The pilot project will be done in collaboration with Google. The project will link Harvard’s library collections with Google’s resources and its cutting-edge technology. [genehack]
hi – 13dec
Hi. I’m back at my house finally. I’ll be saving the big reunion with my boyfriend until he gets back from my place up North which has done some freezing during my absence. Last night I slept for 14 hours which I think was the first time I have ever done that without being sick, possibly ever. A lot has happened while I was away: blog ethics discussions, a neat blogging at ALA project [I’ll be doing my same old thing here, fyi, I think Steven has the project well-covered and there was talk of a “be nice” agreement that wasn’t my style], and my pals Dan and Jeremy are sending around a draft of a paper they’re working on called Service Autodiscovery for Rapid Information Movement [check it out, I swear it’s relevant]. I’ve been doing almost no blog reading or feed-checking in two weeks, so I’ll be getting up to speed slowly over the next few days.
update: apparently I literally interpreted what was supposed to be a figurative [and off the record] statement by Steven, damned IM and its lack of shaded nuance. The so-called “be nice” waiver that he mentioned people would have to sign was more about preventing libel and less about content restrictions and doesn’t exist yet in any case. My main interest at this point is working on an aggregator that will collate all the posts from any and all ALA attendees or interested parties who are blogging at the event or from home, sort of like how the DNC blog worked. IM or email me if you want to chat more about any of this.
Librarian’s Career Guidebook Available
One of the cool things waiting for me when I got back was my copy of Priscilla Schontz’s Librarian’s Career Guidebook which I wrote a chapter on freelancing for, ironically, right before taking my current job.