Month: July 2010

Summer/Time

beer-flight
Beer flight at Bastone, Royal Oak.

I’m currently ensconced in the wilds of Illinois, where Wednesday I’ll be heading off to my second interview with a local library system. I’m alternating between being nervous and depressed about this interview, not because I don’t want the job – I do, but rather because job hunting is exhausting and at times, incredibly depressing. But I think the depression is not so much about the looking for the job but rather how much my life will change once said job is obtained. It is not so much about what I’ll be doing as it will be where I’ll be doing it and how much coin will be slipped across my hand for my performance. Justin and I ran the figures on what I needed to stay solvent, independently, to fend off the U.S. student loan sharks1 and save a buck or two for retirement. 2 And then there is the probability if we want to have kids, buy a second home, or even a new car. It feels like everything I want takes money and I will never catch up.3
And if I’m not stressing about money, I stress a lot about time. I never seem to have it and when I do, I never seem to manage it properly. Which is odd since I managed it quite well juggling everything I did while in school. All the silly projects I had set up for the summer, I have not even touched. It feels when I have two seconds to myself, I’m prepping/heading off to go somewhere else or do something else. I always wonder how people can accomplish so much when they have the exact amount of time that I do. Time is not flexible
This is the first summer since I was a bonafied kid that I’ve had “off” – no work or school to contend with. But my time has been packed and while I can easily account for it all – job applications, job interviews, volunteer work, trips to professional conferences and such, it still doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything this summer. Well, I haven’t accomplished I had set out to do: learning new programming languages, research projects, writing projects, knitting projects. Job applications are a two day process and when I have an interview or two a week lined up, even by phone, those interviews require prep work, which means more time set aside when I could have it allotted for something else. I’m not resentful I have to do these things, I’m more resentful that I’ve let so much spare time slip through my fingers.
This will also be the first fall in nearly a decade in which I will not be heading off to some institution of higher learning. Books will not be bought, notebooks will not be scribbled in and notes will not be taken. I will not be graded on my achievements, not in the usual way of a letter grade, but there is something sad about not having grades made instantly available at the end of the term. Now all is the piling of rejection notices and “We’ve not quite made a decision yet” emails. Summer, when I was a kid and had no real responsibilities to contend with, meant cookouts, overnight pajama parties with friends, long bike rides to hidden areas where I would pack a lunch and read for the day. Trips to the exotic lands of Canada or to a cabin up in the Thumb area4 with family. There were many, many days of going to the beach and getting brown like a raisin.
The seasons always have a certain smell to them, each one is completely distinctive from the others. Summer always smelled of fresh cut grass, meat roasting on the grill, and the smell of coconut from the tanning lotions. My skin and hair always smelled of the lake we lived by, and while I did not go swimming every day during the summer, I did so enough that the smell lingered for weeks. I always felt that my best moments, my adventures and my memories, are all romanticized from those days. Even in the summers when I was working or in class, there was still a sense of excitment about them even if they were not close duplicates to my childhood. Then it was more about the sense of getting time off to do some of these things, the freedom and de-stressing form work/school whereas this summer, it’s about the additional stress and in some cases, the derailing of freedom. We’ve made many plans this summer, only to have them curtailed by sudden changes in my schedule, whether that meant I was leaving for job interviews or by Justin’s schedule, with him being on call or there was a strike or two happening within his company.
We’ve tightened our belts, financially, since I have no income coming in. We’re not struggling, no, we’re fine but mini-breaks, cabin overnights or day long picnics all must be accounted for somehow. We’ve been trying to set something up before I get whisked away by a library system and I’m working fulltime, but until the strikes end, when we can call our time our own again, those plans will not be happening. Last summer we planned on driving up around the eastern coast of Michigan, going up as far north as Mackinac before heading diagonally home on I-75. We wanted to sleep in cabins, splash around in the beach, and go walking in the woods. Hunt through sleepy little towns, lounge about in hammocks, reading all day and eat fruit so fresh, our faces are bathed in their juices. We never went because we could never sort out my work/school schedule for the summer and then fall came, and everything went to hell.
In the wilds of Illinois, I would give anything right now for that weekend to happen. Just one more last summer hurrah before adulthood, and reality, sets in.

1. My car will finally be paid off soon, so student loan debt will be all that I have. Before you get all jealous, that debt is nearly $100K.
2. Solvent in that I should be supporting myself, in case Justin leaves me for an (even) older woman or young hussy, or dies by Pug strangulation or something. Since I’m seven years older than him, I should have money in the bank for retirement and since I do not, I have to be aggressive with the savings.
3.. You know, The Jones
4. Michigan is shaped like a mitten, so the “Thumb” is the thumb shaped area that is directly north of Detroit.

To: Read: One Day

oneday [Cross-posted to GoodReads and LibraryThing.]
You’re going to read this book and know at least one thing: That the end won’t end happily or tied up in a big pink bow and that tissues will be needed. This is David Nicholls we are talking about here, where his endings are never simple nor do they tie together at the end to make the reader happy. No, the book is about the author and the challenge to the reader to believe – whether or not a story of a friendship between man/woman over 20 years can make it without sounding like a rip off of “When Harry Met Sally” or some other derivative, trite plot line. The story is gorgeous and IT IS believable. You can feel Emma’s frustration in her letter writing, the pooling of the grease on her nose and Dexter’s legendary trim backside and feel the heat of his hand on your ass. Nicholls knows how to capture that fine line of realism without being overtly descriptive and to not use the description as mere filler for the novel. The plot, the snapshot one day every year into the lives of these two people, is also incredibly clever. Watching Dex and Em (Em and Dex, together forever), grow up, fall in love and struggle with that idea of love over the course of 20 years is painful, hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time.
Nicholls has a way with prose that you cannot put the damned book done – it’s like they injected heroine or crack into the binding of the book. I was so desperate to finish the book that I stayed in a black car in 95F heat while my aged mother was shopping because being 2 hours away from the book was painful. The night before, I was up to 4am because I couldn’t imagine falling asleep while there was more Dex + Em to get through. I finished the book in less than two days, reading at diners, coffee shops, parking lots, and until my eyes were bleeding from lack of sleep.
The reviewers who said this was chick-lit are wrong, it’s not even lad-lit. There is no happy ending and no moral or tale or lesson to take from it. The guy does not, for the sake of argument, get the girl. It’s, simply the snapshot of the lives of two very ordinary people and their extraordinary relationship. And it is also one of the better written books in the last few years. THIS, that feeling of having to finish the book before anything else was to take place is the feeling that all writers should aspire their readers to want to feel whilst reading their book. Writing in the last few decades has become almost unbearable dreck with a few jewels thrown in – particular in American writing. If you’re not writing some fake existentialistic-esque material with a vaguely catchy title, then you won’t be read. And that’s a shame because Nicholls, being a Brit, will be mostly ignored by the American audience who will attempt to liken him to Nick Hornby which is like comparing Jane Austen to a Bronte: There are similarities, yes, but they are vastly different. And if you don’t love it, then you are simply Un-American.

Biblyotheke: A Meme. (Look into a thought process.)

TBRJuly2010-300x225
o Be Read Pile: As of July 2010.
Does not include the TBR piles from the library or on our bedside tables…”

This is how it works:
My wonderful friend Alice and I were bemoaning to each other a few months back that we were behind on a number of projects, blogging on our websites and in short, world domination. We decided to support each other since we were in the same boat on a numerous things and so she wrote up this post to kind of nag us to well, stop bemoaning! One of my things is/was to clear out Google Reader and keep the more quality stuff while in turn, Alice would update her blog more on her antics with her crafts, charming daughter ‘Melia and whatever floats her boat that day. Total win-win situation.
This morning I’m poking Google Reader with a big stick and see that Alice has indeed been writing and not only that, but name checking me in the process. Except that because my gReader account is getting beyond scary, I haven’t been checking it as much as of late because well, it’s getting beyond scary even when marking many of the accounts “Mark as Read – Anything Over 7 Days.”1 Plus, I’ve also been talking to Alice nearly everyday so if she was name checking me, surely she would have told me, yes?
Well, no. 🙂 But the post, a meme, which looks kind of short and fun to do, instead of spending the 15 or 30 minutes of whatever writing, editing and posting the damn thing, I, being me, turn this into a big production!
In order to get the post out, I have to:

  • Take pictures of our TBR books!
  • Compare from photos taken a year ago.
  • Notice that many of the books haven’t really moved position in that time.
  • Wonder
  • Upload the photos to Flickr and to the blog!
  • Oh, wait – there is a work around for posting to Flickr and Twitter at the same time? I must debug that! 2

The meme (unanswered):
1. What was the last book you read?
2. Recommend a book.
3. Recommend a children’s book.
4. My guilty pleasure is:
5. This one was rubbish:
6. If you wrote a book, what would it be? (Adapt as desired if you are writing or have written a book.)

1. This is a definite note to self that I must clear out my gReader of stuff that is less than mildly interesting, educational or amusing.
2. Originally, any camera photos were being uploaded to Twitpic. The problem I have with this is that I wanted a central location for my photos and while Flickr has a great iPhone app, said app does not have capability to upload photos to your Flickr account and then repost, from the app, to your Twitter account. Poking around, however, discovered that Flickr allows you to email photos to Flickr+Twitter simultaneously, so I can ditch the Flickr app, dump the Twitpic account and just post photos to Flickr as $deity intended.

To: Read: Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargave Manor #everythingausten

[Cross-posted to GoodReads, LibraryThing and Opinions of a Wolf. The entry chronicling my #everythingausten list, has also been updated.]
One of my, um, “hobbies” is that I’ll occasionally google authors/books/characters/worlds whatever and see if there is fan fiction for a particular pairing, no matter how bizarre or unlikely that pairing may be. Then I get obsessed for hours reading the wretched details of say Lizzy Bennett (from Pride and Prejudice) is having sex with Captain Jack Harkness from (Doctor Who/Torchwood), moments after she’s already, supposedly, banged Darcy.1 Paraliterature, which is to say materials derived from their original works but reworked/reedited/completed with additional new elements, is a twin sister to fan fiction, but in a much more structured and in some cases, academic way. Where as one can write about Draco Malfoy having sex with Hermione’s nose2 and publish it on their blog or fan fiction website, paraliterature usually requires vetting in the form of research, editors and physical publication. Another way to look at it is that paraliterature is usually in a physical book format, typically novel length while fan fiction tends to languish on the internets. And another confusing aspect of this? Paraliterature is fan fiction, but not all fan fiction is paraliterature. Right now, this is how I understand it and my definition is pretty fluid. For the rest of this piece, I’ll use “paraliterature” in the context of the above definition.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: Being the First Jane Austen Mystery

With all that being said, I love Jane Austen paraliterature. I love the idea of her stories being continued, of her unfinished books being completed and of the reinterpretations of her novels. Jane Austen paraliterature has been around for nearly 100 years, according to The Republic of Pemberley, with the publication of Old Friends, New Fancies in 1913, but it’s been in the last 30 or so years that it has really skyrocketed to a whole new level. 3 I knew, then, that finding materials to read for the “Everything Austen” challenge would not be terribly difficult. I discovered Stephanie Barron and her “Jane Austen Mystery” series when I was working at $corporate_bookstore a few years ago. The books were never HUGELY popular4, but they did occasionally sell and the concept, I thought, was clever: Friends of Barron “discover” via happenstance letters/materials, secreted away in the family’s cellar in the Colonies (America), apparently having been written by Austen herself. And lo’ and behold! Austen is a sleuth! The family demurs to Barron, gentle reader, as the editor and keeper of the volumes instead of donating the material to Oxbridge or anyone of note. Each JA Mystery, then, is a portion of Austen’s “diaries” that Barron has “edited” and published for public consumption. Like I said, clever idea. While the series has spawned 10 books, with the 10th one (Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron) coming out in September, I realise the first few books would be a little rough and that it would take a few books for Barron to get her writing chops in order. But there are some picayune points that kind of drove me nuts that I wanted to address:

  • Barron claims that she wrote Scargave Manor before any of the J.A. books were made into films – for someone who has an incredibly impressive resume and worked as a CIA intelligence analyst, apparently she forwent her research skills – JA material has been on the silver screen since 1938. There has not been a decade since when something of Austen’s was not made in some capacity, so while yes, Barron’s publication of her first book was timed well with the release of BBC adaption of Pride and Prejudice, she was not the first person to write paraliterature nor did she start the fires for Austenmania.
  • Verbal anachronisms: Barron has the fictional Austen saying “fiddlesticks” a lot, which is more reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara than of Austen (or of any Austen characters). Fiddlesticks, as an exclamation (according to the OED), made an appearance once in 1600 and was not seen again until the 1840s, decades after Austen dies. In addition to “fiddlesticks,” Austen is doing a lot of “espying,” which also according to the OED, has been long obsolete before Austen’s time, this is not something she would have said. There were also a few others, but these stuck out in particular.
  • Repetitiveness of phases: In the book, Austen (or a minor character) cannot possibly have X issue because it cannot “be born.” Fictional Austen is also running around doing a lot of “espying” (see above) on people (typically as “espied,” so always in the past tense).
  • The servant’s speech, regardless of where the servant is from, is ALWAYS Cockney. I hope Barron learns later that not all servants come from East London.
  • Barron uses a variation “It’s a truth universally acknowledged” in some format, which drives me NUTS in paraliterature, particularly in materials that are spin-offs rather than rewrites or completions.
  • The killer is announced in the first paragraph, in the last chapter which to me signals a classic rookie mistake. You never announce who the killer is in the last few paragraphs because you’re essentially telling the reader: “Hey, don’t read my stuff! Don’t use a few braincells to figure out WHODUNIT! Let me feed you the answer and save you the trouble!”
  • Unnecessary minor characters with similar names. This is nothing but filler, right thar.

Barron suffers, at least with this book, from the delusion that more flowery the language is, the closer it must be to Austen’s time. I also hope in future tales she calms down a bit on this aspect of the story. Many (not just Barron), it seems, think that JA’s time is distant enough that Modern English was still in its infancy when in actuality, they are confusing Modern English with Contemporary English5. ME has been around since the time of Shakespeare (Elizabethan – Late 1400s) but CE has only been around since the Industrial Revolution (1850s)6. The distinction is not so much how English is used but growth of vocabulary, verbal usage, and structure. The older English gets, it seems, the more erudite it becomes.
Okay, I’ll stop pontificating. Overall: a decent read. Not fantastic, but not awful either. The story flowed, mostly, and despite my above criticisms, I did not feel bored or impatient with the book. I did, however, felt that the overlap between drawing JA out as a fictional character and Barron’s attempt to emulate Austen prose kept swapping the driver’s seat. I wasn’t quite sure what voice Barron was attempting to write in and that did get confusing. The plot seemed to dip in and out of consciousness, some of the characters seemed weakly drawn while others were extremely vibrant. Barron DOES have tremendous skill at writing and what parts she was lacking in with creativity she more than made up for in talent. Would recommend with a caveat that it is the first book in a series and might be a little rough. Am extremely hopeful that book two will be much more fleshed out.

1. Yes, this pairing does exist. If you google it, it will come.
2. This also exists. See, what I do for my readers?
3. For a wonderful list of JA paraliterature, The Republic of Pemberley has wonderful list, sorted by book as well as searchable, complete with reviews.
4. Clearly Jane Austen is not as fetching as a sleuth as Stephanie Plum or as a Cat.
5. Technically, CE is not an “official” term since the CE period referred to is known academically as Late Modern English, but most people’s eyes glaze over so I just define it as Modern English and Contemporary English.
6. For the sake of argument, I’m referring to what is known as the second industrial revolution but is more commonly known as THE industrial revolution.

KEEP CALM and LIBRARY ON #KCaLO

I recently became obsessed with the “KEEP CALM AND” campaigns popping up, parodies of the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON British WWII campaign. After spending hours flipping through the Flickr group and Google images1, I noticed there seemed to be a KEEP CALM parody for just about everything EXCEPT for libraries.
Libraries, regardless of what type, are more in danger now then every before. The reasoning, however, as to why and what can be done would be not blog posts but websites about the topic. Several groups/websites have already begun to push this importance of saving libraries/library advocacy to the public forefront such as Agnostic, Maybe, Losing Libraries, Crave Libraries and Save LA Public Libraries. These are just a few of the dozens of grassroots people/websites bringing to the public advocacy and grassroots campaigns to better serve/protect/save libraries.
Once discovering the font (Gill Sans, amongst friends, seems to be closest2), I planned on blocking out some time later week to play around to create a library parody but then I stumbled upon the KEEP CALM-O-Matic website! Who needs to fiddle with Photoshop and fonts when the web can do it for you? Plus this just saved me ton of time on trying to make everything “just right.”
To the above is mock-up I did for “KEEP CALM AND LIBRARY ON,” which I think is a great umbrella term that, like the British during the throes of WWII, illustrates libraries and librarians will persevere. We have lasted two millennia of cutbacks, burnings, bombings, death, scandals, awful stereotypes and whatever else has been thrown our way. In short, there is nothing we can’t handle and librarians are certainly not going anywhere.
While KEEP CALM-O-Matic is fabulous since you can instantly create and purchase, via Zazzle, your KEEP CALM stuff, you cannot upload your own images (for example, I would like to swap out the crown for the ALA “Reader” logo3). And the t-shirts are not solid colors, rather, they are the image created by the KEEP CALM-O-Matic and just superimposed on the shirt, like an iron-on. I know there are loads of other super talented people out there who would totally dig this and can make this spectactular. Me? Probably not so much.
So if anyone plays around with this, let me know either via Twitter using the tag #KCaLO or in the comments below.
Keep calm and library on.

1. One of my favorites.
2. Thanks Chris!
3. Thanks to Librarian JP for the heads up on the name of that blasted logo.

Storm clouds and bendy trees

Storm clouds and bendy trees.

The heat broke today for the first time in weeks and I’m hoping the blanket of humidity that has been suffocating my brain will rise and let me think more clearly.
We’ve been slugs around these parts, our bodies languid in the heat and our minds unfocused and restless. We can barely stand to touch each other at night because we stick together like glue, which makes sleeping highly uncomfortable in queen size bed with two overly tall people.
The heat break does boil down to taking back what is ours, what is mine – that semi-precious gift of time that I keep forking over to other not-so -important things. Summer is racing to an end already, I can feel it even if the calendar says differently. As my calendar fills and swells, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that there once was a time when summer was the signal of new adventures waiting to happen and it should always be about that feeling.

Everything Austen II: The Jane Austen Challenge #everythingausten

So, Jane Austen. Woman writes six books, dies at the age of 41 with something no one is quite sure what killed her and is discretely known during her lifetime for her writing. BUT! And here’s the big but, she’s NEVER gone out of print in the nearly 200 years since her death. She’s as beloved today as when she began publishing as “A Lady,” is if the “not being out of print for 200 years” doesn’t grab you by the cajones, than it should be the fact that there is a pop culture explosion of Jane Austen goodness has been going on for the last couple of years.

Entrance to the Jane Austen Centre
Bath, England

Her popularity is so huge that when I traveled to England in 2008, there were two things I had to do: Visit the For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond exhibit at the IWM and lodge in as many Jane Austen locales as humanly possible. My friends Andy and Charlotte, whom I stayed with on this particular trip, graciously drove me to various points around south east England to get my fix. They even suffered through a talk at the Jane Austen Centrein Bath for my benefit. True friends will suffer for anything with you (and hide the bodies later). Andy and Charlotte also lived within minutes of Basildon Park, which was the location of Netherfield in the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice1, and I had to suffer through Andy’s mockery of holy that is Jane Austen and P+P as I toured the estate. But then again, Andy continually mocked just about everything I did on that trip because he loves to remind me that my country is mere toddler to his country and I’m easily and suitably impressed with any structure, monument, or bridge over 50 years old. In America, if it’s over 50 years old, it must be knocked down and the space made into a car park. Yes, apparently England is up to HERE in castles.3
You may remember that book-thing, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which came out in the spring of 2009? The mash-up of the old and the new has spawned a whole new industry and it’s not even just the mash-ups, it’s also the paraliterature, retellings (Clueless, Bride & Prejudice and cannot forget, Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Yes, it IS a Mormon version!) – which I willingly did watch.), action figures, t-shirts, and the list goes on.
P+P and Zombies did not start the paraliterature trend, not by a long shot, but it DID push to public Ms. Austen’s popularity beyond that of Janeites and English Lit majors the world over. However you wish to explain Ms. Austen’s renaissance in the 21st century, it does go without saying that one could read/watch/listen to a plethora of retellings/mashups/adaptations/etc and not run of things to do for a very long time. When I stumbled across the Everything Austen II Challenge a few weeks ago, I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to organize my obsession a bit better. Goal: Pick any six Austen things (books/paraliterature/movies/audio/etc) and read/watch/listen to them between July 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011. Because there is so much, and I also read/watch/listen rather quickly, I’m fattening up my list to more then six items because I want to take pleasure in this for quite some time.
To Read:

To Watch:

  • Pride and Prejudice (1940), with Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy and Greer Garson as Lizzie. [With a tagline of, “The Gayest Comedy Hit of the Screen! Five Gorgeous Beauties on a Mad-Cap Manhunt!,” it will surely be hard to resist.]
  • Sex and the Austen Girl. [A webseries based off the work of Laurie Viera Rigler.]

To Listen:

  • Old Harry’s Game. [A BBC comedy radio show, Harry is actually Satan and the series, based in Hell, revolves around Harry\’s relationships/conflicts and tensions with his minions and the damned. J.A. is played as a foul mouth creature. Can’t wait to listen!]

Updated: 07/14/2010

1. In the holy war of the 2005 vs 1995 version of P+P, I’m firmly in the camp of 2005. Before someone starts squawking about the “integrity” of the 1995 version and how “true to the book” it is, let me remind one and sundry that there is not a single effing scene in the book describing Mr. Darcy’s exit from the lake. SECONDLY! Having re-read P+P after watching 2005 and 1995, 2005 is MUCH CLOSER to the book than 1995 version. Besides, K.K. is much “truer” to Lizzie’s spirit than Jennifer Ehle.
2. Grabbed P+P and Z when it was first published and tried desperately to read it. DESPERATELY is as close of word I can come up with because it is essentially JA’s writing worked around some awful “writing” that is to allude that if P+P had Zombies, this is how it would go. But the book is awful not because it’s a mashup but it’s awful because Seth Grahame-Smith delivered a great idea but an awful execution. What’s obvious is that he “attempted” to imitate JA’s voice but he fails madly at doing so so instead of having a blended work that is to be “80% JA and 20% SGS” comes out as “100% dreck.” Having started on the prequel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, which is far and away 1000 times better than the P+P and Zombies, this is the one I recommend for JA paraliterature/mashup over that other one.
3. Nod to Eddie Izzard for that one.

Naked Librarians: ALA 10 Unplugged. #ala10 (Part I.)

I made several of these shirts in several different colors for the #ala10 conference and wore them all weekend. The QR Code does indeed work.
I made several of these shirts in several different colors for the #ala10 conference and wore them all weekend. The QR Code does indeed work.

Holy. Cats.
After much hemming & hawing, I made it to D.C. this past week for the American Library Association’s annual convention (or known in Twitterland as #ala10). Geeks, by the way, have NOTHING on the librarians ifyouknowwhatImean.
Now that the conference is over, there have been a trickle of posts coming out of the blogosphere about various libarians’ experiences with #ala10. A few worth mentioning are: I’ve been a passive fan girl of Andy Woodworth for some time now as he’s been super helpful in helping me with that murky area between the ending of my SLIS program and being thrust out to the world of librarianship with only a single arm floatie to prop me up. Andy wrote a breakdown of of the conference, specifically talking about social media advocacy. What I took away from this was, “STFU. You’ve got the tools, now USE THEM.”
P.C. Sweeney also wrote up his experiences for the PLA blog, which captured some of the spirit of the conference. While not a blog post, I DID ran into (almost literally) to one of the creators of Crave Libraries on the exhibit floor (and also scored a few cool buttons FTW!). Advocacy, awareness and grassroots-esque ideas while not heavy on the sessions list, were definitely huge topic of conversation at the dinners and social events.
A knockoff of my Moo cards that I printed at home since I forgot to order new batch before the conference. These were also a big hit at #ala10.
A knockoff of my Moo cards that I printed at home since I forgot to order new batch before the conference. These were also a big hit at #ala10.

The second thing I want to tackle before I going my observations on the conference (and because I know how wordy I am, this will be a two part post, with the first discussing the positive and the second post why ALA (and by extension, most librarians) are still huddling in the 19th century) is the plethora forwarding and retweeting of a blog post by Bobbi Newman that she wrote last year called, Why I’m over people Twittering Conferences, Meetings.
A year ago I would have been nodding my head vigorously and shaking a fist while proclaiming, “Right on, sister!” but having attended three separate conferences within the last year, I can only respectfully disagree.
Here’s why:

  • If you’re Twittering, you’re not paying attention – multitasking is a myth The problem I have with this statement is that it’s flat generalization across learning and theory styles. Statistically, I do much better cognitively if I took notes and in lieu of having a pen/paper or my netbook with me, tweeted the information for later user. I also am a much better visual learner so I need something to connect the aural with the visceral. This also doesn’t take into account those who have smart phones (and thus there is an app for that productivity if you’re sans your netbook) or those with just text only options, so texting at leas to their Twitter accounts may be the only way to keep notes.