menu »
war »
rings »

/journal

divided

off to maryland for a week – a conference and a double baptism, plus meeting up with some cool online friends. i’m lucky for all of these events, but right now all i want to do is the above. here’s a favorite song of mine recently, by blonde redhead. listen to it loud.

comment [4]

posted 21 March 06 & filed under cranky, libraries

library re-cap

hi there ~ it’s already late, my feet are aching, i have to be up at 6 am to go volunteer at the library booth, but i’m determined to write a little bit about today.. it went great. i was all jittery last night, getting nervous for today’s presentation, this morning i just got more blabbery-nervous, then it started and… i loved it. so fun. i could’ve talked about it for hours!

a little background, i presented with three other women, susan rosenblatt, from the bay area, of retrofitted librarian, susan fisher, a jail librarian, of inside, and sarah houghton, from marin county, of librarian in black. none of us had ever met until we presented this afternoon and it was so nice to meet each one, each really fascinating women.

so there i was all nervous, just realizing one of my shoes had this giant stain on it, seeing my name, along with the others, all splashed up on the screen “Andrea Hull – Mellow Trouble”, and it just felt very surreal. happily surreal, but still wow-inducing. susan f. began and then i felt only excitement – could. not. wait. to present. it was just so exciting to be talking about something that i’ve largely studied and learnt about on my own, in my head, and then there i was in a room with three other women who are also crazy bloggers and not only that, we’re facing probably 50-some people who want to know all about blogs too. !

so, yup, it rocked, i loved it, and a big thank you to all three women who presented with me, especially sarah for proposing and organizing the whole panel. after such a great experience, i know i want to do this kind of thing again, and it definitely strengthens the whole tech-librarian leaning in me.

[for those that want to see the actual presentation, here it is.]

it was interesting that the whole private/public, what not to/to blog, etc was brought up during the q&a – again, no answers from me, besides that for now, i’m fairly open about my life, good and bad. no real specifics, but moods are noted, politics are presented, cats and family are photographed ;), and silliness is everywhere. but all that could very well change and i very much understand others’ reluctance about posting personal stuff online.

on a totally random note, one other thing i noticed is the different titles a library can have.. a while back, i wrote about the cerritos library here in southern california, which is calling itself an “experience library”. i’ve also heard “knowledge center” used instead of ‘library’ – as before, i’m not crazy about that term either. what’s so bad about library?

i’m all for expanding terms to indicate new content, but i can’t help feel like it’s some wanna-be-slick attempt at branding and all that other p.r. annoyance. also, the emphasis on libraries as vital community centers and public spaces is great and true, but with these new terms, it’s like they’re trying to say a single entity, the library, can replace the numerous spaces and institutions that used to be publicly available and which helped form a real sense of community… and that’s a problem. for one, that puts too much on libraries, and believe me, they’re already wayyy too busy. i’m a little rambling here, but i guess i’m wary of re-naming things that are fine with the name they already have – on one poster board at the conference, i saw “name-of-town free library”. hm, “free library”. now that’s a term i’d love to hear more of.

[i love the free library of philadelphia’s motto: “Free Books for All”. simple and sweet, awesome.]

comment [3]

posted 6 November 05 & filed under libraries, workwork

knowledge center?

hello world.

i really didn’t like how the word librar* is being replaced by all these slick-sounding-and-yet-totally-vague phrases. one concrete example: renaming a library a ‘knowledge center.’ grr, i don’t like that! so with that feeling in mind, i went searching for why this lovely cozy old word ‘library’ was being replaced by the cold vague ‘knowledge center.’

having loved etymology for years now (and one day i will own a copy of the oed!), i’m happy to reprint the origins of the word library (according to take our word):

Chaucer certainly can be thanked for recording the earliest known instance of the word in English .. about 1374. At that time the word referred simply to a room in a house where books were kept for reading. It derived from the French librairie “bookseller’s shop”. The French word came, via vulgar Latin libraria, from Latin librarius, an adjective meaning “concerned with books”. The root of librarius was liber “book”, and that word came directly from liber “bark of a tree”. Some etymologists suggest that this was because bark was used as an early writing material, but others think that the Romans simply had a tradition that bark had been used for such a purpose. Cognates are Russian lub “bark” and Lithuanian luba “board”, and there are cognates in the Romance languages, as well, having the meaning “book shop”.

looking for the origins of the term “knowledge center” proved a little trickier: no dictionary definition, no wikipedia entry. in 1984, barbara moran wrote an article entitled “Academic Libraries: The Changing Knowledge Center of Colleges and Universities”. i couldn’t find any earlier references to the term.

my interest in this whole changing terminology came about from the latest american libraries, where they mentioned that the university of nevada at reno just recieved millions of dollars to build a knowledge center. their website surprised me a bit: not only totally web compliant but, although the new center is several years from being built (2008 is the projected date), they already had all this info up, such as why a knowledge center. cool, so what’s their definition: “It is only through analysis of—and reflection upon—data and information that knowledge is created. The Knowledge Center will contribute to new advances in various disciplines by making knowledge creation easier.” hmm, sounds kinda buzzwordy to me, but ok, knowledge creation it is.

if i type in “knowledge center” on google, the first thing that pops up is monsanto’s own biotech knowledge center. of course, this in of itself means zip (if it was called a library, i would still think monsanto sucks.) but once i started looking through the list of all the knowledge centers around, i noticed that almost without exception, all are corporate. why? when did this start?

what is the difference in calling it a “knowledge center” over a “library”? why not call it an “information center”, since information is much more value-neutral than knowledge. after all, information to me means ‘consciously trying to be objective, so i can make up my own mind’. knowledge on the other hand is something i seek from those older than me, more experienced, who i trust.
maybe it’s all semantics, who cares anyway, blah blah. and really, as long as it’s publically supported with money, staffing, etc then i really don’t care. but i still can’t help and not like new gadget-y sounding name. library means books, and more. knowledge center means boring facts and lists and uncomfortable seats. maybe i’m just getting old though. hm, i’ll think on this a bit, and reorganize it later tonight.

btw, see wikipedia’s list of famous libraries and this barcode decoder and, so pretty but also so modern! and shiny! seattle’s new library and, last but not least, this new article on bolivia via zmag.

~ andrea

speak [1]

posted 24 May 04 & filed under libraries

oz

hi there!

last night i watched the wizard of oz for the first time in many years. at work, we have a stash of dvds and, looking for something for my friday night, i decided on the wizard of oz. i thought vacya would be totally against it and it would just be me watching and singing along :D but he was all for it. it is a pretty bizarre movie, and the technicolor just adds to that sense of unrealness (the only similar colored movie, i think, is willie wonka when they’re in that garden place and the boy falls into the chocolate river).. but it’s good! the singing is so awesome (and yes, i sung along, even with through the high-pitched parts, and there are lots of those) and the lyrics (by yip harburg, who wrote ‘brother can you spare a dime’) are great. dorothy is, as i remembered thinking when i was teeny, so not a child or teen or whatever. and kansas looks so beautiful, not the least because it is in black and white. the munchkins are the best in style. this time, unlike when i was 5, i thought a little about the political allegory that so many claim is there. (also, there’s that whole spooky pink floyd’s dark side of the moon and oz connection.) now, i want to see the wiz with michael jackson as the scarecrow and diana ross as dorothy. i also want to re-read the excellend ‘wicked’ by gregory maguire, who tells the story from the point of view of the wicked witch of the west. it’s really good..

today i’m off to the downtown library. downtown l.a. is really a crazy area, especially at night when it literally empties of people except the homeless and those waiting for buses. but the central library is gorgeous and big big, though i’ve heard that many librarians who work there complain about the lack of space (still!) and the building as a fire safety. the children’s section has it’s own pretty and rich carpet, with beautiful mahogony-ish furniture and nice lighting. oh! i’ll take my camera and take pictures. yay!

tomorrow i plan on writing up a food-post, to satisfy my yearnings for delicious food (yup, my fridge is slowly getting warmer and warmer so i guess it’s time for my bi-monthly de-frosting. don’t laugh). there are som many great food blogs and sites out there, enough to satisfy any foodie, and i know at least two. ;D (by the way, we need to have our next spaghettata!)

have a great saturday! classes start for me monday so i’m enjoying these last few days of relaxation..

~andrea

speak

posted 3 April 04 & filed under libraries, politics

hiking

hi ~

running out the door to go see good bye lenin! since i bought a pack of movie passes months ago and they’re due to expire in three days.. vacya says it is condoleezza rice’s favorite movie. also, he calls me a bushie for thinking the movie looks good. with no school or work today, it’s matinee time, yay!

we did go hiking on saturday – for five hours! which was quite! a shock to our sedentary bodies, and so sunday we were both staggering around like drunks. ok, i’ll write more later, for now here’s a link to the pictures we took while hiking around..

almost midnight. goodbye lenin! was really good. last night and the night before i saw two good documentaries: etoiles: dancers of the paris opera ballet and hell house. etoiles was very pretty, as suspected, but hell house was better, i think. i never had heard about hell houses before but, to sum up, they’re basically christian-themed haunted houses. put up around halloween-time, they depict all kinds of modern horrors, like the columbine shootings, rape, murder, suicide, domestic violence. and no hell house is complete without an abortion scence and a gay-person-dying-of-aids scene. the idea is to scare people into converting/being born again. scary indeed.

i read a lot in the last few days, but still for the whole month of march, outside of school-reading, i only read four books. that might be a clue to my current (and really for the past two weeks or so) extreme moodiness and jitteriness. hopefully april will be a better book month.

i received the ala catalog today, which included all kinds of “read at your library” posters featuring celebrities holding a book ostensibly ‘caught’ reading. it was funny to see who was reading what. tim robbins was reading howard zinn’s a people’s history of the u.s. bill gates and enrique iglesias are both reading ernest hemingway’s the old man and the sea. weird al yankovic is reading stephen hawking’s a brief history of time, whereas stephen hawking is reading marilyn monroe.

sunday morning was very nice. i woke up and immediately sat on my green plush armchair and read from start to finish a long awaited zine, number 6 of zuzu and the babycatcher. it was very good and as much as i enjoy the internet and spend so much time on it, i loved the smallness of it, it fit perfectly in my hands, and i loved the writing and drawings and the feeling of closing it when i finished. you should read it too.

~~bye!~~ goodnight,

~andrea

speak

posted 29 March 04 & filed under libraries

last updated: May 6th, 2008. feeds: rss or atom.
i like valid xhtml, css, rss, and i'm crazy about textpattern