First, a note (now that I’ve gotten through the initial bustle of dealing with the news):
I’m job hunting again, since my position is being cut due to budget issues. I’m looking widely (and have already had some interviews) but if you’re reading this and know of a position that might suit someone with my interests and skills, feel free to point me in that direction.
- My resume is online here (PDF).
- The thing I most enjoy in library work is connecting people with information and resources that make their lives better, easier, or just more fun.
- That translates into especially loving reference, instruction, reader’s advisory, and collection development, as well as a fascination with how we can use technology to do things better.
- I’ve got a broad range of library skills beyond those things, too, and strong technology/user training/etc. skills and experience, but am not a coder. (I’d like to do more of that sometime.)
- I’ve got a particular interest in accessibility issues, and in how collections and library services support and reflect the diversity of the community a given library serves and the world at large.
- Geographically, I have some preferences, but I’m really looking for the right mix of job and life (I’d like to put down roots somewhere), and willing to consider a lot of options.
- If you’ve ideas or other questions or want to talk about a possible job, feel free to contact me via the contact form (or the email on my resume).
On to the links! I didn’t manage a roundup two weeks ago because I was in Boston for job hunting purposes, so this is a long one.
Links:
People talking about jobs:
There have been several discussions about a public library posting in Kentucky. I’ve been interested in this, because a number of small public library jobs in Maine work the same way (the library is open part time hours, has a non-degreed librarian, and the pay is – well, usually not $7.25 an hour, but not necessarily a lot more.) Jason Griffey about this – he grew up near there. Metafilter discussion with additional links (the comments go a bit afield in places). Lots of links in that second.
- The head of security at the Getty Museum critiques the LEGO Museum Break-In toy set.
- What it’s like to work as a teacher in Whittier, Alaska (accessible only at the end of a long tunnel, and basically everyone in town lives in one building.) Video, captioned.
- The Hiring Librarians blog has been doing a survey of the current state of hiring in the field. It’s a fairly small set of data, but it has some interesting results (especially re: number of applicants and percentage who are hireable.)
- An essay on collection development, from Phyllis Rose (extract from her book The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading)
- Changes in the GED that are making it a lot harder to acquire.
- Andromeda Yelton’s closing keynote for Code4Lib last month talking about open accessibility, disciplined empathy, and how we need to keep questioning our assumptions of how things work and keep doing better. Transcript and links and extras.
- Secret life of a library security guard (in Portland, ME). Discussion of it.
Diversity and books:
One of the things I’ve been talking about in interviews and cover letters is the importance of a diverse collection.
When I put together a display or a list of related titles, I really try to find things that will let people from a wide range of experiences (gender, ethnicity, economic class, health issues, etc.) see that there are books about (and ideally by) people like them – and so that people can read and watch and learn more about how other people live. Obviously, no single display or list is going to be able to include every option or type of diversity, but the goal’s still so important.
Anyway, some recent conversations about it.
- Selection bias, children’s books, and why diverse collections matter.
- Perceptions of diversity in YA book reviews – an essay with many examples by Malinda Lo, from the excellent Diversity in YA blog.
- K. Tempest Bradford posted a challenge to stop reading white, straight, cis male authors for one year. I am not attempting to round up reactions to it, but here’s her followup, and as usual, I find the discussion at John Scalzi’s blog informative and well-moderated. (I have some additional thoughts on this one, and hope to post them this weekend.)
Arts and music:
- Recreating an ancient Hurrian song.
- A nice roundup of librarians in SF movies/TV/books.
- Mood lines and design (i.e. how lines in a design may read to others) – lots of examples.
- Paper engineering – a whole host of amazing books about ‘pop-up’ books and other variants.
How we know things (and a few other bits of info)
- Models of movement in pre-heliocentric models of the universe.
- New techniques for reading scrolls burned in Herculaneum.
- Buzzfeed and Facebook in Info Lit sessions : using social media sites to teach information evaluation skills.
- The history of Vanport, Oregon (How Oregon’s Second Largest City Vanished in a Day) things I did not know about race issues in Oregon history.
- Commentary on the new ACRL standards from In the Library with a Lead Pipe
- Is there a library sized hole in the Internet?
Technology notes and tips:
- Using the Workflow iOS app and Evernote to do things like create booklists.
- Decreasing the gender gap on Wikipedia.
- Creating just online community spaces. (Just as in equitable)
- Terms of Service: a graphic novel (it’s a project from Al Jazeera, intriguingly) about understanding our role in the world of Big Data.
- An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues and Reframing Accessibility for the Web – both excellent overviews from Anne Gibson about why accessibility matters online.
- Creating color-blind accessible figures.
- Baltimore transit, data formats, and APIs (Metafilter link, because it has links to pieces with additional context)
- John Green on copyright violation, inadvertent plagiarism, and intellectual property. (Link from the Swiss Army Librarian, with additional info and context)
- Lesser known services for streaming video. (The one that I use that I don’t see there is Acorn, which does various BBC productions, mostly)
- David Lee King’s recommendations of books to help you make better presentations lead me to Ned Potter’s excellent SlideShare presentation on some specific ways to use design.
- Nancy Sims on ‘zealous advocacy’ when it comes to lawyers (but more broadly about using the communication suited to your actual goals)
- What would it cost to buy everything? An attempt to answer what the costs of database and other resources are for libraries and why they’re like that.
- Integrating Wikipedia into your courses (and while relevant to Wikipedia in particular, there’s some interesting meat in there about other crowd-sourced sorts of projects)
- Tim Cook (Apple CEO) on privacy and why it matters.
Just plain nifty:
- Periodical table of spices (organised by family and genus).
- Love tokens from the Thames.
- Leave Home : Timelapse photography of New Zealand (Video, music, but not necessary to enjoy the photos.)
