Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

Driving drives me to think. I've a long commute. Such things are not good for society.

Anyway, as is often the case, I was cruising along and a sticky problem from years back rattled to the front of my head.

(Sticky problems have a nasty rattling tendency. Easy problems get solved and out of my head rapidly, thus making room for beer. So we needs handle sticky problems for their obstructive properties.)

So, I'm innocently behind the wheel thinking on the aboutness of classics and what makes a classic a classic.

This past Friday was the second Friday where I felt like I'd rather not be at woik. This isn't to say I'd rather not work in Libraries, I'd just rather not work in my own.

Granted, like the previous week, I had run hard on Thursday.

But I'm increasingly finding it difficult to pry myself away from shiny larger scale theoretical things for the small pond of my Library. This is strange - my Library overall is not a bad gig.

It's doubly strange when I consider that I'm pretty sure that administration will scale.

So, I'm innocently emailing to and fro. The other end of the line is much heavier on the IQ than I, so I'm trying to put a little spit shine on ye olde reader's advisory.

(Is it easier for you to book talk in bytes? It is for me.)

Here I go, posting stuff I oughtn't. This is the stuff born of flattery.

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Two of the lists I'm on that are fantastic for philosophy are GOVDOCS and GAYLIBN, though the droughts between deep thinking oases seem pronounced sometimes. I stick around for moments like these.

Right now on the latter, there's an awesome back and forth on NACO, Authorities, RDA, OPAC display and all sorts of other heavy duty cataloguing junk.

The initial uber relevant list question was something like "Hey, what do we do with trans people's authority records?"

I can't help but wonder how much we all wonder.

Have we sidelined philosophical discussions to the point of irrelevance?

There are listservs, bulletin board systems, conferences and all sorts of outlets for our musings, but the format I find most comforting is the Library Camp. (http://librarycampnyc.wikispaces.com/) I found out about this year's too late, but I dished with someone that had gone, and it sounded like it lived up to my imaginings.

I had the most rewarding day on the job I have ever enjoyed thus far. So that's round about 7 years, which I realise makes me wet behind the ears in Librarian time.

But I don't care.

I know a lot of people that come into contact with me wonder why I choose the hard road in life. I stand and fight against impossible odds or I'll fold meekly in a seemingly unpredictable fashion, and certainly in a manner that would lead a cursory examiner to conclude strange things. A lot of it's cultural.

But really, days like this are why I do what I do.

Check it out, an up and coming Masters' student (or perhaps he's gradumatated by now) is in to ranting, too. I found his blog by accident.

http://threegee.wordpress.com/

Navigation can require a couple clicks hither and yon to actually yield watcha want.

ALOnline is asking me for a username and password, thus effectively barring me access, so to heck with Library Stuff. It is Sunday.

Seeing as how Shirley Keech is above the fray (or possibly that the teeming masses were hideously unintelligent), we've no choice but support Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Need I say more?

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/fan_forum/redsox_nation_president.jsp

Librarians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your petty cash!

Ditch your fines.

Seriously.

Something I wanted to test when I came into my evil duhrectorship was whether fines were worth it or no.

After a couple months and literally a couple of dollars, I picked no.

Yesterday was odd on all counts. I took the scenic route home via work from the Region. I'm fairly sure I'm magnetically attracted to Libraries. I just rove from books to more books.

Anyway, I'm seeing my totems through the whole trek, so I know I'm on the right path.

Inevitably I drop by the Library on my "day off".

I wrestled with the idea of taking the South road from the Region to go see one of the Elders, but decided to see an Elder of a different stripe.

I swear I'm getting to the point.