Library Buzz

Suddenly I feel as though I’m channeling Garrison Keilor… It has been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone… actually it hasn’t been a quiet week.

On a personal side – my dad is in the hospital with pneumonia. I always thought people caught pneumonia in the hospital; maybe he is helping out. He should be out in a day or so. Early in the week I learned from a friend that a former colleague was recovering from surgery. Yikes!

The email he sent had a subject line.. Reg is doing well. “Okay”, I thought when I saw it, “what was wrong?” It was good to hear that he is recovering. But it reminded me of a much-loved joke.

Seems there was this Librarian who never took a vacation and finally friends and family convinced him to take some time off and travel. He made his plans and asked his brother to take care of his beloved cat, and off he went for two weeks in Ireland.

He arrived in Ireland and made his way to a B&B and made straight for phone to call his brother to let him know he had arrived and to check on his cat. Well, the brother just blurted out that he was very sorry, but when he stopped in to feed the cat, the feline bolted from the house, ran into the street and was hit by a car and killed.

The man was devestated! After several moments of strong emotion he composed himself and told his brother, “Look, you know I’m going to be here for two weeks. You could have broken the news over time. You could have said something like, I don’t know, maybe your cat is on the roof. Then the next time I call you could tell me that you were having problems getting the cat down. That way I’d at least know there was some problem with the cat and you could eventually tell me that the cat was frightened and ran and was hit by a car.”

The brother apologized and said he was sorry to have inflicted such pain on his brother.

So the Librarian asks his brother, “Well, enough of that. How’s Mom?” After a short pause, his brother responded, “uh, Mom’s on the roof.”

Have a good weekend Reg!

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Greetings Readers,

Years ago my dad worked part time for a small town radio station. He said he had to imagine that he was talking to at least one person – otherwise he might start to ramble or mumble or just go nuts. Maybe that’s why modern radio programs have a team. Thank goodness Howard Stern has guests and Larry King too – I can just imagine what they’d be like rambling stream of consciousness and unchecked.

So I envision that I have readers – maybe only my friend Eddie who is hosting my Blog – but that’s a start. And maybe he’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends and then I’ll finally rule blogdom. Of course – that’s assuming I’ve found my voice.

Since reading Ayn Rands’ The Fountainhead, I’ve often thought of becoming a modern Ellsworth Toohey and running a column “One Small Voice” and do what I could to sway popular thought in one direction or another. Of course, I’d only be using my influence for good – peace, love, tolerance, brother/sister-hood.

It is a spring-like Friday in February here in Washington, DC and I am looking forward to the holiday weekend. I’m a federal employee remember. So I’ll be engaging in those non-librarian activities such as sleeping, house-cleaning, painting and getting my taxes started. This year I’m going to use Turbo-Tax for the first time!! Very exciting!

Hopefully I’ll make the time to practice my trombone. At the Internet Librarian Conference last October I met a couple other trombone playing Librarians – trombrarians. Even funnier – I know two other tombrarians!! Run a Google search on trombrarian and you’ll find one of them!

The buzz you’ll hear this weekend will either be from the work I’ll be doing – or it will be my snoring….

Peace out, man!!

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It is amazing where professional development and courtesy will get you.

In 2004 I attended the SLA Conference in Nashville and met with the Financial Institutions Roundtable to discuss the future of the Roundtable. I’m still learning about the SLA Hierarchy that there are Roundtables and Caucuses and Divisions and sometimes you belong on the org chart and sometimes you float in your little category of other like the GLBT Librarians who somehow aren’t exactly a part of the Diversity Caucus. But I digress…

The Financial Institutions Roundtable wanted to have more of a program and invite a speaker for the Baltimore SLA Conference. I extended an invitation to one of the executives at my agency and he politely considered the invitation. We talked about it once in the hall one day and then earlier this week he came to my office. He had sent me an email from his Blackberry – but technology failed, so I got a personal visit!

So he sits in my office for about 20 minutes and we talk about Libraries and my agency Library. We also asked me why I became a Librarian. But he also answered my question about what he looks for when he is doing research. His example was his daily read of Financial Times (FT)– a newspaper he used to read because he was working with international finance.

He feels that if the FT runs an article about something going on in the US, it must be important. One example he used was the recent override by the Maryland Legislature of Governor Erlich’s veto of the so-called anti-WalMart bill. The Bill specifically requires WalMart to provide health care for employees. The FT editors decided that was important enough to make their pages – so it may be something to look at. If other states follow that lead it would likely affect WalMart’s profits and their expansion around the US and the world.

So my efforts with SLA are helping me to network with the executives at my agency – pretty cool.

By the way, he declined the invitation for this year, but he would be interested in the future. Also he suggested some other executive level folks who have been with the agency longer and could perhaps be better speakers.

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Okay folks – I’ll try this again.

I wrote out a couple of blog entries only to find that I had timed out so when I went to publish… nothing was saved. Of course, the blog was brilliant and now my lame attempt to re-create the spontaneity of the blog that I typed earlier.

So where was I…. Ah yes, I was making an effort to jumpstart my blog and thought I’d share my morning news routine.

Over breakfast amid conversation with my partner I listen to the news report on the local NBC affiliate and skim through the Washington Post. Before leaving I always take a quick glance at my horoscope – not that I expect to head back to bed if there’s a prediction of doom.

At the Metro I’m given a copy of the Daily Express also from the Washington Post and that provides me with a Sudoku for the train ride to Union Station. Once I’m at work – I skim The American Banker, Financial Times, and if I’m lucky, The Wall Street Journal.

Then I settle down to my blogs – my newest daily fix of Vatican news is Whispers from the Loggia by Rocco Palmo - http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/ Last Spring when the world was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Pope John Paul II (the Great?) to die I was guiltily searching for any and all information about what was going on. I wish I had found the site then.

Another daily stop on the blogsphere is The Daily Dish from Andrew Sullivan - http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/ Andrew is a conservative writer, columnist, blogger and occasional pundit. He is well-read, intelligent and articulate and he offers a welcome perspective on the political news of the world with occasional time out for movie reviews and essays on life and love. Truly one of my idols.

And then I usually check the Drudge Report. Why – you may ask? Well – many years ago I regularly read some print journals that were conservative to the point of being reactionary. But they would report on stories that I didn’t see anywhere else. More importantly, they’d report on stories that months later would be picked up by the mainstream press. Much like Matt Drudge’s claim-to-fame Monica Lewinsky – these journals were way ahead of the curve. Nowadays the blogs satisfy much of this crucial need. By the way, Matt’s dad is Librarian Bob Drudge – creator of www.refdesk.com

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