Meredith’s ALA blog has a list of people who will be blogging at the ALA Conference. I leave tomorrow. My schedule is here. I like meeting folks, though my time is getting pretty well-spoken for. If you see me in the hallway, or eating alone, please come up and say hello.
Tag: me!
am I online?
Thanks to Library Web Chic, I now have a little indicator next to my IM link that shows if I’m available on IM or not. Green = yes, grey = no. Nifty.
Radical Reference @ ALA
Radical Reference is doing a bunch of things at ALA in Chicago. The Boston events that I went to were fun and low key and very welcoming to newcomers. If you’re interested in the work they do, swing by and say hello. I’ll be doing a short skillshare called “Oh No He Didn’t! Rumor Control As an Essential Part of Event Based Radical Reference” Monday the 27th at 2:30.
late to the book meme bandwagon
I’m late to this meme but I always think it’s important to not only stress our librarian skills with computers, and our facility with people, but also the fact that many of us read, a lot, an awful lot. So with that in mind:
Total number of books I’ve owned: My books are spread out over three houses and two states. While I try to get rid of books I’m done reading, I don’t always do this. I also have some encyclopedia/dictionary sets [is the OED 20 volume set one book, or 20? do bound periodicals count?] that I feel like I need for reference purposes. My ballpark estimate is somewhere between 500 and a thousand, but I haven’t visited a lot of them lately.
Last book I bought: We went to the five college book sale in Hanover and I came home with a bagful of books for about $8. One of them was called How to Shit in the Woods. One was a nature guide to trees. One was Moving Mars. One was a John Grisham somethingorother. I find that with good libraries and a strong network of book-loaning friends and family, I almost never have to buy books. I can’t remember the last full price book I bought, I think it’s been years.
Last book I read: As if this writing it’s The Secret Life of Bees. By the end of the day it will probably be American Gods. This page is the final arbiter.
Last book I finished: I’m not sure why this is different than the above question, there are very very few books that I read but do not finish. The last book I didn’t finish was a book about the Slow Food movement, I think it may have lost something in translation.
Five books that mean a lot to me: this is a static respresentation of a shifting list
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers [librarian love story written for smart people]
Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder [Tom West is my dad]
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin [my intro to magical realism]
Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book by Shel Silverstein [an early book I enjoyed when I may have been too young to fully appreciate it, with some delightful subversive humor]
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins [whimsical and poetic, gave me the strength to go on and get out of high school and the wretched suburbs and live the way I wanted to live. I use some parts of this book in my technology instruction to this day]
Five people I’d like to see do this as well: Greg, Dawn, Kate, Peter and Maryellen, Cathy
My ALA Schedule – ALA Chicago
In the interests of meeting up with people, and my own terrible memory, I’m putting my ALA schedule online. To find me at ALA look in whatever room the Council meetings are at, I’m generally there. I’ve also linked to it on the Unofficial ALA Conference Wiki where others are keeping their schedules.