Two new shirts

from the American Library Association, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary, so these are vintage designs they've brought back from the past.

 

Then there are those of us who were on the cusp

WILL UNWOUND #681: “Stone Age Reference”

Will Manley, who sometimes gets librarians up in arms over various topics, but whom I've always enjoyed reading, wonders if those who learned their reference skills pre-Internet had to be essentially more creative than those who came after.

I was in the process. I graduated in 1993, and took a few classes afterwards. Until after graduation, I didn't have an Internet class. So my training involved, well, books mostly, plus proprietary databases that involved code-like search strategies, but on the other hand I was an early adopter of this whole World Wide Web thing (just like my first computer was a 1983 Atari 800XL, which I had part-way through graduate school. It was so primitive the word processor was on a ROM pack, but I loved that thing. Played a mean game of Joust, too.) I first saw the Web through the old Mozilla browser. It was pre-Google. My main search engine was Ask Jeeves back then, which was more fun than what's left of it now.

So anyway, maybe I got a little of the best of both worlds. When I started my job as a medical librarian fifteen years ago, we were still using Grateful Med, searching using that specialised language. Now there's PubMed, and you can still use subject headings and for the most part that specialised know-how to search the MEDLINE databases (there's a big thread on MEDLIB-L right now on trying to explain the difference between PubMed and MEDLINE, and I think those who did have to learn to do it the old-fashioned way grok that difference better, given their analogies).

I'm used to being on the cusp in a way. I'm an early Generation X-er (born 1967), that smaller generation between the Boomers and the Millennials, and I'm in a position now to be looking for a job as we (hopefully) start crawling out of the worst recession in my lifetime. I'm on a new cusp now, too, because much of the profession is nearing retirement age, and I'm discovering that I'm in a position to be, well, maybe one of the 'older' librarians soon, firmly in mid-career. It should be an interesting 20 years or so left, with the grace of the Gods, and I for one am looking at it in anticipation.

How does your generation and timing of how you learned about technology affect you? Are you readily able to accept technology? Can you do anything when the power goes out? :)

I feel all herb-y

It's 7 pm and I've finally taken a shower after being in bed for most of the day. I have a new rosemary and mint shampoo and pomegranate and lemon verbena bath wash, so I smell like some mixture of herbs and fruit.

I still feel awful, though. Warm water just helps a bit.

My only link to the outside world today was YKWIA, who'd asked me to look up some Arabic translations of English words for him. Now, I don't know Arabic (just some Hebrew), and it was pretty challenging since I needed the transliterations (he does know a little Arabic and can transliterate, but wanted to bypass that step if possible) and those are somewhat hard to come by on the Internet, but I succeeded. I swear it's good that he has a personal librarian--he's come close to breaking librarians on those occasions he calls the public library with rather esoteric questions.

I really want to do something, but I'm so tired. I think I'll play a little Freecell and try not to go back to sleep so I can sleep tonight.

I'm wet and cold and ready for bed

A friend of mine works second shift, so the best time to make the every-two-weeks grocery run is midnight, and it usually lasts two hours. Tonight was normal, except it's raining pretty hard. Don't get me wrong, we've been in a drought and need the rain. But with loading two cartfuls into and then out of the car, I got pretty wet. And even though it's in the 50s, it is a cold rain.

Now I'm home and have changed clothes. My mood has been somewhat mitigated by a lovely tangerine, the first of the season that I've eaten. I picked them up because they looked nice and were a very good price, then shared some with a friend, since I won't eat a whole bag fast enough.

It's been a good day. I found out that I passed the inspection. They thought the apartment looked very nice. Yay!

I got home early tonight (8 pm) and tried to work on notes, but just couldn't focus. I guess it's not close to the deadline enough to panic and get some adrenaline. I really have to get over this procrastination. So, instead, I'm getting up early tomorrow to work on them (or at least, that's the idea).

I applied for a job at the branch of the public library that's down the street (within walking distance) of me. It's a reference position that pays $33,000-$52,000 a year. I think I'm pretty qualified, and I have my certification now, so that won't be a problem. The only stumbling block I see is my misdemeanour record when I was having trouble with cheques I'd written. I addressed that in my cover letter. The application says that it isn't necessarily a disqualifier, and of course, I think a felony would be far more a problem, but I didn't get the job at Jessamine County because of that record. The nice thing about the job is although it's primarily reference, it also has got a cataloguing component, which is what I actually specialised in school. I miss cataloguing. It also deals with authority control, which is what I did as a graduate assistant. I have to admit...I love authority control. There's something very satisfying about correcting incorrect entries and making them uniform, bringing order from chaos. :)

Good night.

PS I found my old webcam and tried it out, getting the above picture. It's not great quality, but it was still fun to play with it. Somehow I don't see me going onto YouTube anytime soon, though. :) I definitely need to get my hair cut before I go on any job interviews, that's for sure, to give it some body.