thoughts and rants

but it wasn’t totally uneventful. the security folk in Montreal weren’t sure what my XO laptop was so i got the “special” treatment - went into that little glass room and told them all about Nick Negroponte, MIT, the issues surrounding the north/south digital divide…
actually i just turned it on for them and tried to surf the net (no free wifi at the Montreal aeroport - blech!) i guess they believed me because rubber gloves never made an appearance.

so i’m here and bunking with krista. our beds have remote controls and the wine glasses come with lids (sippy cups anyone?) so i feel like i’m the lap of luxury.

i’m not meeting up with the twitter gang (twang?) tonight because i still have homework to do and they are doing naughty things.
but tomorrow night - i’m meeting them for a beer or two and so that cindi and i can write the rules to the twitter drinking game (more on that soon).

…like me.

i really hope i don’t act like a complete dork (a little dorkiness is de rigeur for me) at CiL2008 when i come face to face with librarians i think. are. the. bees. knees.

i’m heading down april 6-10 (returning in time for my presentation at the ABQLA conference on the 11th) and staying at the Radisson which i’m told has free wifi in all the guest rooms, which is good, because the conference hotel does not. (actually, that’s not true, it has T-Mobile, which isn’t actually bad for me because my little XO laptop came with a year’s free T-Mobile service! yay! free stuff!)

oh! and i get to spend some time with krista writing our IFLA paper (has to be dunzo by may 1st) which rocks because i have only met her once in real life (though we’re old SL buddies).

Stephen Abram came to speak at McGill and the SLA Eastern Canada Chapter and rocked the house.
he wore an awesome tie.

key points from his chats:

• reciprocal mentoring: the concept that newer librarians have skills to share with established librarians. love this concept. share share share people!
• the concepts of victimization and risk aversion have become part of library culture. this is bad.
• it’s very important for librarians to play with new technologies. (hence the creation of SLA’s Innovation Lab - to be launched very shortly.) you don’t have to love it, or even use it, but you need to play with it to have an informed opinion.
• the internet is terrible at answering “how?” and “why?” questions, which is why librarians rock.

it was a great day and i always laugh a lot when i’m hanging out with Stephen.

today i helped some folks who live in countries where a lot of news is censored, find quality information to answer their immediate needs.

Amy Kearns had an idea a few weeks back about having a 24 hour “twitter librarian” that would answer questions shot into the twittersphere.

Metafilter offers similar reference services (tho not answered specifically by librarians), through a community of users.

THIS. THIS is why i love the possibilities of the web. getting information to people, via avatars, micro-blogging, or discussion forums.

get.
information.
out.
there.
now.

*over the past few months i’ve discovered oh-so-many blogs and podcasts that i consider required reading/listening. i’m going to try and blog weekly about one of them and why i think LIS students - hell, even regular library-folk - ought to check them out.*

Uncontrolled Vocabulary is “A weekly live interactive roundtable discussion of all things library”. the podcast is recorded Wednesday nights at 10pmEST and here’s the kicker, ANYONE can join in (thanks to TalkShoe). if you can’t join in during the recording, you can always check out the podcast which is posted to the blog shortly after the recording. (and downloadable from TalkShoe.)

the issues to be discussed are posted before the show is recorded, and they are always timely. and the invited guests are, frankly, some. really. interesting. folk.

i can’t recommend it enough. i’m busy catching up on all 33 previous episodes.

oh, and i found out about it through the Twittersphere - which continues to amaze me as a LIS resource.

for those of you unaware of who Stephen Abram is, he’s the president of the Special Libraries Assocation and has an oh-so-fun blog (Stephen’s Lighthouse).

(as an aside, i attended the SLA conference in baltimore just prior to beginning my MLIS and it confirmed my decision to go into the LIS field. i still have all the business cards i collected at the conference and though everyon was from a different industry, doing a different job, they were all concerned with the dissemination of information. exactly the people i want to surround myself with.)

so Stephen is coming to talk to the LIS students of McGill (aka SISsies) and having seen him speak before, i know that a) it’s gonna be fun, and b) we’re gonna have lots to talk about.

i may live-blog it, since i’m addicted to Cover It Live.

i’ve just finished reading all the Movers & Shakers profiles.

my RSS feeder is now wonderfully full with the blogs of exciting folk in the LIS community.

so fortunate.

… except that i haven’t actually filmed the movie yet.

i’m a bit in awe to be included in the list of Movers & Shakers.

i can’t believe i’m on the same list as these people - all of whom i look up to for the amazing work they’ve done in the LIS field.

as for me, well, let’s just say, i guess i now really have to “do something!“

yesterday i tweeted that i was not going to join any more associations unless they furthered my career, were fun, or were for a cause that i believed in.

in response Wayne (one of my Twitter friends) promptly invited me to join the Librarian Glee Club for the Homeless.

he even designed a tshirt for me.

thanks Wayne!

check out Open Students. i seriously love this mandate:

We’re students – the next generation of scholars.
We believe that science should be open, for everyone to learn.
We’re changing the way that research is disseminated.

and they invited me to guest blog! (i better figure out something to say… any ideas out there?)