Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

"I've had all I can stand. I can't stands no more!"

I feel the need to dissect the 2009 LITA National Forum in gory, gory, blow by blow detail.

I must confess I meant to write this a bit earlier during the perfect storm of Budget Season. I couldn't work up the stomach to do so until

I Saw It Again

*sigh*

As someone that was awarded an A in killing people, as well as someone that knows a whole heck of a lot of brave firefighters, I feel as though I can unequivocally say that, yes, we are in the same company as the Army and the Fire Department when it comes down to budget time.

"Why?" you ask. Perhaps "That's absurd!" you posit.

From time to time, I get emails from various listservs that I'm a part of. This time, my mailbox had a letter from Simmons GSLIS.

The Open Movement and Libraries
Online -- February 1 - 28, 2009
$250 ($200 for Simmons GSLIS alums)

Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture? If we're talking about Open Source and Open Access, why are we insisting on closing doors by charging several hundred dollars during a Depression? (Sure, folks are calling this a Recession right now, but that's another story.) The very nature of this screams professional hypocrisy to me.

I get this phone call, as I was on WOW tonight. I was in a good mood, so I answer it in English.

"Hello?"

"Yes, ma'm, we're conducting a survey. We aren't asking for money, and it'll be brief..."

My curiousity was piqued.

"Where do you turn for reliable information?"

This took me very little time, maybe a quarter of a second casting about, before I emphatically responded.

"Librarians!"

Yer man thanked me and hung up.

So I wake up of a weekend to find a piece of trash in me inbox from James Rettig via Keith Fiels about what they consider political speech.

*************

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Keith Michael Fiels
Sent: Sep 5, 2008 3:49 PM
To: ALACOUN
Subject: [alacoun] Message from ALA President Jim Rettig

Dear Colleagues:

Haven't you always wanted to be * on World of Warcraft?

Come to the dark side!

Kirin Tor server, we just got started.

Awards, particularly the lifetime achievement flavour, seem to be loaded, risky business. This seems a particularly stinky year for those particularly sticky awards. The people that have the dubious honour of sitting these committees have my sympathy as well as my scorn. In a very inclusive field, why do we feel the need to have exclusive awards?

Like pornography, we tend to know who deserves one of those jobbies when we see them. Something resonates in us, and we think "Yeah, they deserve it."

I'd love to see the feelings set aside for substance.

This is a How Not To on website design:

http://prattsilssitesucks.wordpress.com/

It serves to spotlight how awful a lot of our stuff is, but more importantly, how one might improve things in future. I must say (and I really, really, hoped against hope I'd never have to) that I think the Pratt site trumps ALA's in terms of confusion.

Scarily, folks have occasionally invited me to speak or contribute writings.

This has led to a scary amount of paperwork in paper form related to copyright. Some of it quick, easy, logical, and non restrictive (Thanks MLA and Code4Lib) and reams of scary paperwork from ALA.

Between all of the Patrons and pick up work, we don't seem to have too much time to reflect.

Maybe reading The Diagnosis forced me to mull things over even more lately, but I've always kind of felt like we don't spend enough time with Patrons. One of the most rewarding things about rural Librarianship was not having someone standing about with a whip giving me agita about how much time I spend per Patron.