C2E2 2016 – part iii (the lemon happens to still be in play)

Dear Internet,
Sunday was the last day of C2E2 and I left the conference a different person than when I arrived. This is to say I got conference cud and I feel terrible.
I blame the children.
The con, as it is every year, is fabulous. If your nerd / geek, I highly recommend hitting this one up. Now on to the images!









xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2003, 2002

C2E2 2016 – part i (The lemon is in play)

Dear Internet,
It’s my fifth consecutive year of C2E2, and I only have my iDevices, so enjoy the images.
P.S. What the fuck is with the lemon? It’s from a BBC radio play, Cabin Pressure, where one character hides a lemon in plain sight and another character has to find it without disturbing where it was lain. Fans have adopted this as the traveling lemon where we take pictures with / of the lemon in our locales. It makes a good ice breaker.
















xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 1999

50 Things To Do in 2016: 1 – 10

Dear Internet,
Earlier this year I wrote down 5 goals I wanted to accomplish:

  1. Get a job and all the accouterments that go with said job
  2. Continue on with the healthy plan
  3. Travel more
  4. Write more and not just in my paper journal. Write true, write what matters, write what you love.
  5. Per the graphic, Be Fierce

A lot of these are general things already in progress (healthy plan, writing) while others, like travel more, are often planned dates and times. I’m heading to Chicago in March to be with my #cmmrb crew for C2E2 and there are some other travel plans potentially on the horizon. And I’m being as fierce as I possibly can be. Have I mentioned I’ve signed up to play ladies’ rugby? Yes. Me. Rugby.
But what I need, what I believe everyone needs, is to plan for things and accomplish in the next year. Some of them can be quite small and others can be amazingly large. Earlier this year, Gala Darling posted an illustrated list of her 50 Things Things To Do in 2016 with encouragement for her readers to use this a jumping off guide for their own list. I’m taking her challenge and decided to do my own 50 list, 10 of which I’ll reveal over each day over the next 5 days.
You may note there is far more than 50 items on my list and I’ll probably continue to add more as time goes on. Can’t hurt to over shoot!
A couple of things you may also note in these lists: Nothing having to do with romance and no couple-y things. I’m on dating lockdown for at least a year. It’s all about me, baby!
One thing I totally want to kick ass at this year? Being silly. I’m goofy as hell but I need to be sillier more. It’ll help with my often crippling social anxiety.
(I may not believe in a god, but I do believe in woo-woo. I have a close witchy friend who does tarot and spells for me and I’ve got lots of friends who are pagan and druids. Even if my belief isn’t super strong in the woo, I like having something to believe in and a lot of the list is woo-woo)
50 Things To Do in 2016: 1 – 10

  1. See at least two music show this year
    1. I used to see numerous shows a year, local and national bands, and that has petered off significantly.
  2. Learn how to read tarot cards
    1. Yes, it’s true. Mock all you want but a few days before TheEx and I split, I saw a psychic. She told me he and I were going to break up very soon (we did two days later), I was going to be married twice (one down!), and I would not have kids other than the furry kind (See.). It could all be pure coincidence but learning to read tarot is not going to hurt anyone. So there.
  3. Write a letter everyday for a month
    1. This, hopefully, will be happening during the month of February.
  4. Wear false eyelashes for no reason
    1. I’ve been told over and over again I don’t need them, but why the hell not try them for a night or two?
  5. Volunteer time at a least one charity
    1. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, now that I’m in a city for some time, I should back up my talk.
  6. Commit to doing something physically challenging
    1. I start rugby in a few weeks. Hopefully I can keep up with it.
  7. Read a new fiction book a month
    1. The amount of fiction on my shelf and in my to read lists is staggering. Time to start cleaning that out.
  8. Read a new non-fiction book a month
    1. See fiction above.
  9. Buy and use more scented candles
    1. While gerbera daisies are my favorite, flowers make me sneeze. Here come the candles.
  10. Knit a sweater something complicated
    1. I need to move on from hats and scarfs. This has been going on long enough.

xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 20151999

quotidian victories

Dear Internet,
Sometimes you  just need to celebrate life’s little victories, even when they feel so tiny against the bleakness of the world.
For today, this entry has theme song, which is Elbow’s One Day Like This. You should see a Spotify embed below to play while you read or you can click here to listen directly within Spotify.

[iframe src=”https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:7oTYgZAZhTlZnZEH45mfpo” width=”300″ height=”80″ frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true”]

  • I have a job interview this week. I am beyond chuffed as chips because I’ve applied for approximately two jobs and sent my resume to a beloved vendor, who seemingly was very, very interested in me. So out of three cautious approaches, I’ve got a definite bite, a very flirtatious interest, and who knows yet on the third. I told TheHusband that for next six months, I’m going to be ultra picky about the jobs I apply for, meaning the ones I really, really, really want and not the mass ijustgraduatedilltakeanythingavailable I did four years ago.
  • Elbow’s latest studio release comes out tomorrow, but since I pre-ordered on Amazon, the mp3s were made available to me this weekend. TheHusband argued that since everything is now, more or less, on Spotify, why the deuce am I buying albums on Amazon? Because I’m supporting a band I love and not everything is on Spotify as evident by my massive collection of b-sides and one-offs from Elbow that triples what Spotify has available to US customers.
  • I bought tix to Elbow’s upcoming show at the House of Blues in Chicago in May as part of their 11 date North American Tour, so TheHusband and I are going to take a mini-break to Chicago which I’m super excited about.
  • Plans have been laid this week for CMMRB’s return to C2E2 in April, which marks our third year attending the con. I love this con with all of my heart.
  • Daylight savings. FINALLY. It is not officially spring but it’s getting on towards twilight at 7:30PM now and winter is finally ending. THANK THE GODS. We’ve had 110″ of snow this season. Throbbing Cabin? Oh they got 243″. That is not a damned typo.
  • I cleaned and sorted my office this week and no dead bodies were found, which is always a bonus.
  • My hair has gotten long enough for mini pigtails. This delights me beyond end.

And in other news:
The social media sabbatical is going surprisingly well. I’ve toyed with the idea of keeping a text file of The Husband’s witticism and my often laments of the world for when the need to depart wisdom gets too heavy and perhaps do a weekly round up of said pithy comments.
The need to tweet was especially bad this weekend when we went to see 300: Rise of an Empire, because holy hell was that a fecking terrible waste of celluiod. Fishnets are not period authentic, okay? I didn’t necessarily have SUPER HIGH HOPES for this movie, but I was expecting more than blurred action shots, bad acting, and convoluted plot lines.
TheThrobbings give it two thumbs down.
I finished two books this week, got caught up on my profesh dev magazine reading, and have cut through some of my RSS feed reading. Plus, I’m back to writing every day. Everything is coming up crocuses right now.
I am still caffeine free and other than a few hiccups, that has also been working out dandy in this development. Thus, I’m feeling pretty good!
Thing you learned today: During triumphal processions, Roman generals would carry a model phallus in their hands to ward off envy. [Source: Veni, Vidi, Vici: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Romans but Were Afraid to Ask]
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 2010, 2003, 1999

Librarians as Doctor Who: A Wrap Up of C2E2

Dear Internet,
A coulpe of weeks ago, after many months of planning, myself and nearly a dozen of my closest friends met up in Chicago to hook up for C2E2 to present on best practices, programming, and more for graphic novels in libraries, have karaoke good times, and other fun shenanigans.
Overall, as a conference, C2E2 rocks the fuck out of all the other conferences I usually attend. The registration price is super inexpensive, it’s close by, we get work with great people like Toby who acted as our liaison to ALA, we get to meet new people from the Internet, and we get to have a lot of fun while doing our jobs. THIS Is what makes being a librarian awesome. From a comics and pop culture experience,  I also love C2E2 because everything is easily accessible, the guests are approachable, and the panels are excellent. This conference is a win-win situation all around. And the city itself ain’t too shabby either.
The cherry on cake this year? Several of us cosplayed as Doctor Who.

L-R: 11 (Kristin), 4 (Julie), 10 (Carolyn), Donna Noble (Sarah), Rose (Val), Captain Jack (Beth), 9 (me)

Hilights from C2E2, including vines and more:

x0x0,
Lisa
Credits: Me (Instgram, Vine), Kristin (Instagram, Vine), Val (Instagram, Vine), Carolyn (InstagramTumblr), Beth (Instagram), Julie (Instagram), and Rob (Instagram, Vine).
 

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003, 2012

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: April 27, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,
This week has been insane as I prepped for and am now at C2E2, so things are a bit light in terms of watching and linking. I’ve also been off of my ADHD drugs now for about a week and it has been glorious! I feel like this is the first time in ages I have felt myself and I’ve been wrapping that feeling around me like a coat.

Watching

  • Project Runway
    The season has finally ended and truthfully, one of the worst seasons yet. I called it who was going to win within the first few episodes, and I was thrilled to see my prediction was right. While this is  a nice show for filler, can we have less crying and emotional break downs and more drama in the work room? Actually, it doesn’t have to be drama but SOMETHING, ANYTHING to create good TV because it certainly wasn’t there this season.

Weekly watching: DaVinci’s Demons, Justified, Mad MenNurse JackieThe BorgiasVeepDoctor WhoGame of ThronesVikings, The Vampire Diaries, Elementary, The Americans.

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

Introducing Graphicdemia: Collecting Comics and Graphic Novels in Academia

On March 2, I presented, along with two other colleagues, at the MSU Comics Forum on Golden Age: Comics and Graphic Novel Resources in Libraries. Our schtick, if you will, is to present the collection and outreach methods from three different types of libraries: academic, public, and special; and present specifically at a non-library conference.
In 1974, Will Eisner (yes, that Will Eisner) penned an article in School Library Journal entitled, Comic Books in the Library. For at least 40 years, libraries have been well aware of the importance of collecting comics and graphic novels. Librarians write and present on this topic to other librarians at librarian conferences and publications across the country all day, every day.
But what about interaction with the public, the communities we serve, comic stores, artists, etc? Do they know we’re doing this?
The answer is: Not so much.
My presenting colleagues and I recognized there is a disconnect between what librarians are doing and the community and artists we’re doing it for and this is where our presentation comes in. We’re also going to be doing similar presentations at C2E2 in April and Grand Con in September. The C2E2 presentation is going to be more of a how the collection is promoted and utilized, while the Grand Con presentation will be similar to MSU Comic Forum presentation or a hybrid of the two.
At the MSU Comics Forum, our Q&A after was pretty awesome and we got a lot of great questions. I felt really confident about our work and the audience seemed to really respond well to what we were saying. The confidence/passion of how we feel about our topic is evident, and we had a great rapport with each other to back up the other’s points. I’m excited about our future presentations.
Now, I began collecting graphic novels at GRCC for a couple of reasons. We literally only had a few titles, like Astonishing X-Men Vol 1 and Cartooning for fun and profit (circa 1945), but there was absolutely no cohesion to our collection (series titles were not continued, some of the books were older than dirt, and so forth). In addition, I was told someone local was going to donate a few boxes of graphic novels several years ago but they were all rejected by the librarians at the time as not being relevant to our curriculum. Even despite the fact someone was obviously buying titles since the library already a small growing collection in the stacks. So, no consistency or cohesion to the collection.
The other reasons I wanted to collect graphic novels was the value and diversity they bring to the collection, they would or could be supported across various curriculums and lastly, they could introduce students to new topics or be a bridge to a difficult topic.
I took my proposal to the librarians and my director, and they supported the idea of collecting graphic novels. I worked with our cataloger on how to best catalog our collection. By mid-spring 2012, I started collecting graphic novels and peripheral books.
When you hear librarians talk about collection development, they often mention the core collection. Typically this means titles that should be standard in your stacks, for whatever reason. To bring cohesion to the collection, I needed to find fairly recent core collection lists, websites, and books to start gathering titles as well as start tracking newly published titles to purchase.
This is when I started running into a number of problems.

  1. 90% (if not higher) of professional literature (print and online) on comics/graphic novels is geared for teen, tween, or younger
  2. General core collection books were outdated or the titles recommended would be out of print or geared towards teen and younger
  3. Suggested reading lists from various organizations (library and non-library based) would include out of print or age inappropriate or content inappropriate titles
  4. Review lists from in the profession literature or general newspapers and magazines, concentrate more on teen/youth over adult titles
  5. Academic institutions that carry comic / graphic novel collections either had their collections in special collections (typically non-circulating), focused on a specific type (golden age, silver age, etc), or  the emphasis was on research only
  6. Catalogs by publishers or book distributors concentrate on youth  over adult books. A recent spring catalog by a large distributor was 20+ pages on graphic novels, maybe 3 pages were geared for adult content.

First let me clarify, when I refer to something as being “adult,” I am not referring to something as being racy or pornographic. I am referring to materials that contain situations, language, or ideas appropriate for 18+.   It is generally accepted most weekly comics are rated as such, but per my list above, publishers, reviewers, and such concentrate on the under 18s. Which is maddening!
I am also get that adults will read content geared for the under 18s, which is fine. But my first goal is to support our curriculum so I have to be very specific on what I can and cannot buy. I can also afford to be picky as our local public library is one block away, whereas if it weren’t, my range would be much more diverse.
As I started researching and creating my core list, I was finding a lot of great sites that I thought would be of interest to my students, so I started a graphic novels subject guide. In order to get a better idea of what to put on my guide, I searched for other guides on graphic novels and became disheartened by what I found.

  1. Guides that were obviously templates and could be for any subject, with no relevant information on the specific topic (general database links, general how to pages, etc)
  2. Guides with dead links, broken embeds, out dated information or rarely updated
  3. Guides with mixed messages: Instructions on how to use databases, cite papers, find materials and then provide available books geared for instructors / researchers.
  4. Guides that did not provide additional information outside of their own resources, so no list of blogs, websites, societies, museums, etc for future investigation.

Many guides had one problem, but most had multiple. I imagined myself as a student gettings super frustrated if I was doing homework on the inability to find information.
This is what got me thinking about how graphic novels are perceived in academia, from a student’s point of view and a librarian’s point of view.  And to be honest, it’s a mess.
This is when I sussed out I had numerous goals I wanted to achieve when it came to graphic novels in academic libraries.

  • Present at non-library conferences how libraries of all shapes and sizes are collecting, promoting, and circulating graphic novels
  • Inline with collecting the collection, promote the heck out of it to my patrons and community
  • Keep the subject guide as divergent and current as possible for not only my students, but others as well
  • Start Graphicdemia, and keep it as current and robust as possible as a resources for librarians who are collecting at non-research institutions,  special libraries, adult services public librarians, or something else entirely
  • Perhaps write on this topic for publication

Currently I’m debating on what to put on Graphicdemia vs putting it on the subject guide, so currently my rationale is, “If it helps someone on the development and collection side, that goes on Graphicdemia. If it is of general interest, that goes on the subject guide.”
The response to this has been fantastic so far, and it’s interesting to see how many librarians are struggling with the same problem. This is what makes working at a community college so unique is we fall into that sphere between public and four year academic institutions  and we can pull from both on many things but others, we get lost in the shuffle.
I have a lot of work to do.

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