This dude made stargazing cool for me.
Keep looking up Jack.

Following the Beerfest we marauded over to Brian and Debbie’s for a graciously hosted cookout.

Then I closed my evening out on a roof in Hamtramck with Seestore and Nicole. We saw a Wendy’s scraping monster and fireworks with a nice breeze.

Anyways, I made a quick video.

Beerfest 2010, Ypsilanti MI from kevinyezbick on Vimeo.

In case you don’t already know – I like to occasionally document the weird and wonderful objects that make their way into my mailbox at work. It had been a while since I last checked my mailbox, but to my delight today I unearthed from its depths a couple of handwritten thank you cards from authors Jennifer Brown and Robin Brande. Both were thanking me for my part in serving on the Michigan Library Association’s Thumbs Up! award committee.

Jennifer Brown’s Hate List won the award and Robin Brande’s Fat Cat was an Honor book winner.

Kinda made my day you guys.

This is an inexcusable lapse as I am waiting for a call alerting me to the arrival of a factory part for my air conditioner which has been out of service for THREE WEEKS. That’s easy enough to remedy though – call the company when I get to work and give ‘em my work phone number. Settled.

But OH MY FRIENDS, we aren’t THROUGH just yet.

While walking back into our technical services department to place a DVD incorrectly catalogued as a Videocassette on the SNAGS shelf – what do my eyes behold? There upon the brown carpeted floor before me, its white form and lazy edges accentuated by this soil-like solid background, a lone teabag. It struck me as quite preposterous. Ludicrous. HILARIOUS. I reached into my pocket for my cellphone to share it with all of you and — spacious pockets. No phone.

It’s a shame that the world will never come to realize the oddity of the lone teabag in the tech services area.

My sincere apologies.

and the bounty of pizza was had by all.

I also had two valid reference questions today that I totally rocked out. The one I’ll mention was from an education student at a local university who was looking for information on Resource Rooms in Special Education.

I have no idea what Resource Rooms in Special Education means – so I did a quick google search and fell onto the about.com web page that gave me a little bit of background. I knew pretty much off the bat that we weren’t going to have much in the public library on the topic, especially in our print materials. The student related that she had already been through WilsonSelect and ERIC without much success. She said she had found one article that she Interloaned from 2000, but it wasn’t enough, and that she wasn’t finding much at her University Library.

I did a quick keyword search for “resource room special education” in ERIC and came up with something from 2008. But she was right, this was gonna be a little bit narrow on the results. I’m not familiar enough with educational terms to do the whole synonym thing – so my next step was to head to Google Scholar with the author’s name as a search.

We found the original article and I pointed out how Google Scholar shows you who has cited the article – and how you can use that to kinda expand your search. (Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten the official citation search database I was using at WSU — somebody refresh my memory please.) Then – once she grabbed the journal names that the articles were in – she could likely use her University’s resources more wisely. Her professor had enlightened her to ERIC and WilsonSelect – but something was nagging at me that she had failed to mention the specific journals as opposed to the conglomerate databases.

The end result was that she walked out with what I’m going to take as a swing in her step – a little confidence – ready to do the business herself. It really saved MY day today – almost as much as my sole.

*edit* Oh. I almost forgot to mention Google Reader Play. There. I mentioned it.

Yeah. I know. Not really all that grand right? But it’s made for some fun diversions at work and in chat, so I thought I’d mention it.

Actually, the past couple of days I have mostly spent in bed. I think between Friday and Saturday I was out of bed for about 8 hours total.

Then I went to work on Sunday. It was hellish.

So I really haven’t had a lot of time to cruise the interwebs in order to scrounge up any other tasty morsels. About a week or two ago I did manage to stumble across Programming Librarian. Immediately added it to my diet of feeds and look forward to seeing their booth at PLA (booth #1035) in a couple of weeks.

I’m also rather intrigued by this Anythink business. They’re really pushing out their message along the social channels – but I still don’t quite get it. LISNews ran a story about ‘em back in September. The comments on the story, while brief, are somewhat telling. (They seem a bit angry too, don’t they?) I especially like the “branding” comment. Right now this seems like somebody has taken a library system, changed the philosophy, and really pumped up the marketing. David Lee King did a presentation for them in October, also mentioning the word “brand” in his blurb. I look forward to seeing them at PLA as well, and maybe getting my hands on a kazoo. I kinda feel like I’ll have to watch myself though, or risk indoctrination. I really need to know more to say anything else about it.

More about PLA Portland – I’m once again working on constructing a map to guide me around town.

View PLA 2010 in a larger map

Thankfully, http://www.portlandbeer.org had already mapped out the breweries, and http://foodcartsportland.com the infamous food carts – so that saved me a lot. If any PDX residents want to drop some helpful hints on what else we should hit up while we’re there – the comment box is open.

*edit 3/12/10 3:55pm*
just came across this video

*edit 3/12/10 4:18pm*
Hidden Portland Facebook page

*edit 3/21/10 1:16pm*
Zinester’s Guide to Portland

I have sadly become one of them.

There’s a lot of stress in library world right now. What with property taxes taking a nose dive and the economic downturn as a whole, not only is the general public on edge, but your friendly, normally heavily sedated librarians are feeling the grind as well. At our library we’re looking at a 15% reduction in the budget, on top of the 5% or so drop we took in last year. Where does that leave us? Substitute librarians are a thing of the past for now. Department, committee, and any other meetings that take us away from the desk are being shuffled and cut and spaced out further and further apart. (I can’t say that this is completely a negative thing. There are often better ways to communicate within an organization than through monthly meetings. Still, the encouragement to become involved with your professional organizations or any other outside the box thinking is not as boisterous as when I first arrived on the scene about 5 years ago. Our lot has been cast, and that lot means that) Our eight hour days are now to be spent with additional hours on the desk dealing with increasing amounts of reference transactions.

Yet, even with the increased gate counts and reference transactions – libraries are taking a hit. It’s a cruel twist that in the times we’re used most, we don’t get the support we need. So it goes.

So I am pressed for time, and I’m pressed for sanity. It hasn’t been an easy three years for me. I’ve experienced unspeakable pain and loss, well, unspeakable in that I won’t talk about it to anybody but my therapist. I really had no desire to sit down here and type anything out. But the other night I was lying awake in bed and I was thinking about how good it felt to finally sit down and actually think things through and just write it out. I have a post about group/silent study rooms or the lack thereof to thank for that. I’ve read Nicole’s work on the web as far back as I can remember, but group study rooms and their demand has become such a flashpoint in the past two years that I had to respond. I was a little unfair in picking at her choice of words, but I was trying to convey that there was equal frustration on the other side of the coin in regards to what libraries can and can’t do with the space and resources that we have. I think she understands that, and I’m glad that she takes the time to write up posts that are more often than not worth the time none of us have to read.

So I want to start writing again.

I used to put pen to paper daily. I used to love the ink releasing and actually used to have decent handwriting. I’d go all out for the loopy letters. These days I’ve been reduced to chicken scratch. I would much rather type than pen. I think I just have to accept the new medium, but I can’t accept where it’s put me as regards to my writing. I don’t need to find the time. I need to make the time, getting back to the introductory paragraph. I don’t want to be that person who shuns off something because they feel they’re too busy. I know I can do this. I see other people doing it everyday.

There are really three things that stopped me from writing. One was the aforementioned unspeakable. I went to a dark place, and I think I’m just about ready to emerge from that. I’m not afflicted with clinical depression, thank goodness – but I was definitely not in a good place for the past 3 years. The second was the chilling effect from worrying about what work would think about what I wrote. It was doggone thoughtless to register this site and expect to write about professional matters without fearing the repercussions. I’ve got a backup plan in the works for when I feel like I need to vent, something akin to this, but not. The last reason was that I’ve become fed up with my hosting provider. All I wanted was for the lifestream to update on its own, every 30 minutes or so – but these guys haven’t been able to get it done. So – for the first time since Yezbick.com has existed (2003?) – I’m likely to migrate to a different host once my lease runs up here.

There are other things, of course. Facebook and twitter are worthwhile distractions. But they don’t give me the release I can get from pounding at the keys to usher in an 800+ word update. They distract me from that. I’m fairly convinced that this is my return. That I’ll go ahead and make an hour an evening and have a go at it. I’ve got plenty of material to rehash. For starters there’s my delicious account. I could talk about any one of those sites that I’ve found it worthwhile to store into my own personal database. It was actually my “Read it Later” queue that inspired me to sit down here tonight. I’ve let it grow and I meant to make this post an exploration of the links I haven’t quite gotten to as of yet. Instead I’m on a rant. Perhaps I’ll put that off until tomorrow. I’ve become quite adept at procrastination.

1000 words. I promise it won’t be like this every night. Not even close. More than likely it will be more akin to:

Interesting –

Social Eyes presents librarians with an exploration and discussion of new social tools and current trends. The column will address both practical and innovative uses of social technologies that will improve the quality and efficiency of library services.

Unfortunately I don’t remember where I grabbed this from – as Read It Later – doesn’t give you the spot where you actually noted it from your twitter stream or wherever. So I can’t give credit. SOZ. This isn’t the case with my delicious account. There I often make the effort to at least plug a little bit of what the site is about and try to hook up a via tag. Either way – I think there’s a lot more to be said about the things I come across – if just to make me feel better and more productive.

And here I am – closing out this rant – and it turned into something exactly the opposite of what I expected it to be. Here’s hoping I have the same resolve tomorrow to go over what I didn’t get to today.

I’ve put in a few support tickets to the hosts of the site — but they haven’t ever really followed through – and likely won’t be getting a renewal in the coming year. I haven’t tinkered with it in a while though, either, so maybe I’ll try to scratch together some time.

The design is a little overwhelming too.

So many excuses