Collectable Books

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I am a rare book collector, specifically books from the 19th century including : fiction written by women, European fairy tales, children's literature, school primers, feminist literature and 18th and 19th century British household books. Every so often I stumble upon a fantastic book find and sometimes I'm lucky enough that I can afford it. At a Jane Austen Convention (yes I'm a dork) in the summer of 2008 I picked up a wonderful book from an antique dealer that was published in 1799 titled, The Way to Ruin. This fun little read is in fragile condition but I couldn't pass up a book about the perils of "drink" and the effects of it on the ruination of a young gentleman's life. Oh and the illustrations are hysterical.

Many of my books have beautiful covers made of leather or cloth. If you are a beginner collector or just interested in buying beautifully bound books, here is a nice collection of books to collect for their beautiful covers.
http://www.abebooks.com/books/antiquarian-rare-design/more-beautiful-19th-century-covers.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-h00-30bbksX-_-feature

Do You Podcast and/or Videocast?

While at ILA I attended a program on podcasting which is a technology I have been playing with for a year or so at my own library. Podcasting makes the audio recording of events, programs, book reviews etc easy to stream over the web via simple RSS feeds. Podcasting has been used successfully at many libraries including at my alma matter Ohio University. For a listen check out OU's podcasts through the University's Alden Library here. The selection of podcasts range from short clips highlighting their map collection to a Chinese language tour of the library.

Videocasting (or vodcast)works in a similar style with the combination of audio and video recording. These "on-demand" videos can be distributed via a file or RSS feed and viewed at the viewers convenience. The website of the Orange County Library System in Florida has a virtual library where you can watch online tutorials on topics such as their catalog and technology or take virtual classes. You can check it out here.

Have you visited Ted? Known as "Ted Talks" the website TED: Ideas Worth Spreading is a video site featuring videotaped talks on entertainment, technology and design. Filmed at Ted's annual conferences in Long Beach, CA and Oxford in England these videos will inspire you, move you and hopefully create more ideas worth sharing.

Looking for a quick book review then check out The One Minute Critic here. This "vlog" is a video blog featuring...you guessed it...1 minute book reviews. Created by the Fort Vancouver Regional Library this is an excellent way to use simple video technology to reach viewers on the web.

Are you interested in taking online courses? In my opinion there is no limit to one's life long learning and at Academicearth, you can take a variety of courses through major universities like Yale, Harvard, MIT and Princeton.

Let me know if you have any podcasts/videocast/vlog or other sites to share.

The Fun Theory-How can you use it in your Library, Life, Job..?

Thoughts on ILA 2009-Peoria

Now that my 3 days at the Illinois Library Association 2009 Conference in Peoria are over I have time to reflect on the experience. Here are a few thoughts:

1. Peoria. The largest city on the Illinois River has a nice but small conference center in the middle of the downtown district that is accessible to larger hotels like the Hotel Pere Marquette and smaller hotels like Days Inn. There is very little to recommend Peoria. Options for dining are either fast food chains like Panera and McDonald's, sit down fast food like Chili's and Hooters or a few "Irish" novelty pubs near the riverfront. There is no charm to Peoria and the downtown district is very depressed. After talking to a few Illinois Library employees I found out the ILA Conference jumps between 3 locations, Springfield, Peoria and Chicago. Last year I attended the conference at Navy Pier in Chicago and the attendance was good, the programs were full and of course the options for what to do when not at an ILA event were endless. I was told this years attendance was half what was expected, somewhere in the range of 600 attendees. With such low participation I don't see how ILA can continue to hold a conference anywhere outside Chicago where numbers were much higher.

2. Programs. I attended 2-3 programs each day as well as an author/awards breakfast (which was the highlight of my conference experience) and the Fashion from the Stacks dinner/cocktail hour and fashion show (which was the lowpoint). Most presenters presented in groups of 2-3. At almost every one of the programs I attended there would be 1 very good, dynamic presenter and 1 presenter who was either not a good public speaker (lots of ummms, pauses, loss of thought etc) or not prepared. At one particular program the first female presenter was terrific, lively, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. The woman who presented 2nd was a good public speaker but would go off on tangents and was really just not interesting. After she finally stopped speaking half the room emptied and unfortunately there were very little people left to hear the 3rd presenter. Awkward.

3. Bang for your Buck. Hmmm, that's a tough one. The conference is not really expensive to begin with and considering my extremely nice accommodations (I did NOT stay at a conference hotel and booked the room on my own, see post below)rather a bargain as conferences go. Definitely more affordable than an ALA conference but based on the quality and variety of programs and special events not really worth the money. For example, I attended the Fashion from the Stacks Fashion Hour and dinner on Thursday night. Last year during the ILA Conference at Navy Pier this was one of the most popular events of the week. Great participation, great press, lots of fun and a terrific opportunity for networking. This year, and I'm assuming because of the location of the conference in Peoria, this event was a very nice disaster. Lovely room at the grandest hotel in town, plenty of food served buffet style and what should have been a fun cocktail party with dinner and dancing after with ample opportunity for networking and meeting new librarians. Ya..no. There were 2, count them 2 librarians who walked the runway. Apparently another librarian had been in a fender bender and she would have presented an additional 2 designs for a total of 4. How you can have a fashion show with 4 designs I have no idea. (The fashion show highlights creative costumes/outfits created from items found in the library like a dress made out of DVDs or a jacket made from paperback book covers) Picture is of one of the 2 outfits this year.
However probably to make up for the lack of participation, a library director had her teenage staff model fashion through the decades which was fun although had little to do with anything library related. All in all for the $45 cost it was not worth it.

4. Highlight. One of the best programs I attended was the Youth Services Author Breakfast organized by the Youth Services Forum. My Synergy teammate Patricia was on the Forum and another teammate Elsie receieved one of the 2 awards presented at the breakfast. This event was perfectly organized, well set up, and a great way to network with other Illinois librarians. The featured guest speaker was Jill Thompson the most widely regarded female comic book artist working in the profession today. She is the author and illustrator of the Scary Godmother and Magic Trixie series. She also was an artist on my favorite graphic novel of all time, The Sandman series. Jill did a drawing demonstration and passed around her artwork while explaining the process of creating a comic book. Absolutely fascinating. You can see a video of Jill drawing on my Facebook page.

Overall I do plan on attending next years ILA Conference when they return to Chicago. I can only imagine when held in one of the world's greatest cities the conference will be a larger success not only with participation and quality but with increased opportunities to learn, network and be inspired by those in our excellent profession.

Librarian Shoes

I'm in between events on my 2nd day of the ILA Conference and enjoying a glass of wine while waiting for the cocktail party/dinner/fashion show Style from the Stacks to begin later this evening. In the name of style I thought I would blog about a particular area of the library professional that drives me a wee bit insane. Librarians and their footwear.

This afternoon while sitting in a rather boring session about reorganizing your workflow, I started to glance at the ground and thus found it hard to avoid the overwhelming display of bad shoes. Now librarians are not known for their sense of style, the hard to break image of the middle age librarian with her hair in a bun, her oversize sweater, practical skirt and non nonsense shoes is alive and well and most likely helping patrons at your neighborhood library. However many librarians, (like myself, rewatch my librarian fashion show video) are trying to change that image. Unfortunately based on the shoe parade down here in Peoria, we have a long way to go.

Here is a sampling of some of the more awful shoes women are walking around in. Don't even get me started on those with runs in their pantyhose (AKA nylons for those of you who've never had the pleasure of sliding flesh colored stretch material over your entire leg) If you have anything REMOTELY like a pair of the shoes pictured below, give them to Goodwill. Yes I know they are comfortable but there are excellent shoe companies that make attractive AND comfortable shoes. Try Clarks, you'll thank me.





If you haven't seen the hysterical and painfully accurate video March of the Librarians, check it out below. Note their shoes and welcome to my world.

Home is where the...

So where do you lay your head? Where do you eat? Read? Think? Where do you "live"?

I checked into my hotel in Peoria Illinois this evening and unexpectedly walked into a mini condo. I was expecting a typical small hotel room but was thrilled to be staying in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath suite with living room and kitchen. Frankly this suite is larger than some of the apartments I've lived in in Chicago. I closed the doors shutting off one half of the suite and am happily ensconced in the bedroom with the largest bed and attached bath. It's nice to have so much space but I'm happy to be cozy instead of sprawling.

Between my weeks in Oxford and London, my multiple trips to hotels around Illinois for Synergy workshops and library conferences as well as personal vacations I've often been living out of a suitcase this year. I'm an efficient traveler and can pack and go in the blink of an eye. I have certain small bags (bath-toiletries, kitchen-wine opener, candle, music etc) packed at all times that I just grab and throw into my suitcase. As I was unpacking in my suite tonight it made me think, "What makes the place you lay your head your home"?

Since I was 22 years old I've lived in more than 10 apartments, condos and houses. My son and I have been rather gypsy like in our lifestyle and until recently have never lived more than 3 years in any location. I've not really been attached to any particular home although I can make myself "at home" almost anywhere I go. I prefer to surround myself with some of my favorite things like my books and my pictures which conveniently has meant that I have less and less to pack with each move.

As I drove around downtown Peoria this evening to check out the area I found charm and comfort in buying a bottle of wine from the local grocer, by watching the ritual of couples strolling down tree covered streets and seeing families leaving a local church. It reminded me of Oxford where after just a few days, the rooms where I stayed became a comfortable home, the view became familiar and the faces became recognizable. For me, home is where I'm learning, where I'm meeting new people, where I still have a place to connect with those who aren't with me. And these days with the Internet and cell phones "home" isn't so far away.

Back in the Saddle

Got sick about a week ago, was in bed for a couple of days and worked the weekend but am now back at work for a day. Tomorrow I leave for the Illinois Library Association Conference in Peoria for the remainder of the week. I'm looking forward to the conference, it's always nice to attend as an attendee instead of an employee. The years I worked for ALA, the conferences were long hard days so it's nice to be a librarian at a library event instead of a scheduler-planner-walkee-talkee-holding-monitor. While I am there I will be blogging about the conference and if you are going to be there, drop me an email and we will meet up!

Here are a few things I meant to blog about last week and didn't get too.

This unusual but excellently named website offers unique and quirky necklaces. I've seen them on celebrities and in fashion magazines and they are beautiful and "green" being made from reused vintage pieces. Check out Dirty Librarian Chains here.

Those of you who used to follow my Talking Beagle Blog know that I have a fictionally named dog. My beagle Eloise is named after the precocious Eloise from the popular and timeless children's book Eloise at the Plaza by Kay Thompson. A few years ago the famous luxury hotel The Plaza in New York City got bought out and remodeled with residential condos, commercial space and new hotel suites. Well now, thanks to designer Betsey Johnson you can stay in Eloise's suite. For more info go here. Hopefully they didn't remove the wonderful painting of Eloise in the hotel's lobby.

Here is an interesting article via the Telegraph in Britain titled, "50 Things that are being killed by the Internet." An interesting read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6133903/50-things-that-are-being-killed-by-the-internet.html