Librarian Avengers

hese kids today and their wacky video freeculture.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, after minutes of painstaking research, I have determined that librarians reign supreme on YouTube.

Steve Reed, kickass Library Media Specialist at Wilmington High School sent us a link to an excellent video some of his students made, featuring a library ninja.

As you know, one library ninja video leads to another, and another. Once I finished with the library ninjas and ninja librarians, I was naturally drawn to the librarian superheros.

Troubling indeed, were the librarian villains, librarian vampires, and librarian nazis. But worst of all, are the schlumpy “librarians” who shelve books all day.

Enjoy!

Sorry for not writing yesterday. Someone snuck peanut-laced almonds into my mint chutney, and I had to give myself a shot.

Anaphylaxis is a bad dining companion. It was a rough night.

Also? I got a new camera.

Every year they gather…

(thanks to ann at sivacracy, et. al)

challenge you to play the BBC’s online Climate Challenge game. It’s free, fun, and uses Flash, so you don’t have to download anything stupid.

I learned more about the relative merits of various greenhouse gas reduction techniques by playing this game then I did from four weeks of reading every popular science article I could find on the topic.

You are the President of the EU. You have a few years to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions before the gulf stream stops churning and Europe floods and/or plunges into an ice age. Goodbye, Paris. You have a whole bunch of options, but only limited time and money. You also need to avoid plunging your economy into chaos, drought, famine, or poverty.

Go get ‘em tiger! Oh, don’t forget to keep your approval rating high enough to stay in office, you tax-raising pinko, you.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but I have a rather librarianish habit. I get on research kicks, usually to no end except my own edification.

For a month or so, I’ll just get on some topic and won’t let it go. I’ll read books on the topic, surf it when I’m supposed to be doing something else, and bore you with conversation about it.

In the past, I’ve become a mini-expert (knowing just enough to be dangerous) on the following:

• The Northern Cities Vowel Shift
• Beekeeping
• The use of scientific imagery in cosmetics advertising
• US Copyright law
• Yiddish and Zionism in the 1940s
• Japanese cooking

After watching An Inconvenient Truth, I’ve been in a state of semi-panic. I’ve researched hybrid cars, veggie cars, rentable solar panels, household wind energy, and biofuel. I’ve swapped out our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, covered our windows with plastic, and turned down the thermostat. We bartered webwork with our friend Lexie, who does home efficiency evaluations (hire her!). But we still have a long way to go.

Point being, I thought I might start share some of the stuff I dig up. I’ll title the posts Research Obsession so you can skip ‘em if you don’t care about the Poetry of William B. Yeats or whatever it is I’m currently nuts about.

oppleganger at 50 books hearts librarians.

ff to Vancouver, BC for the week. I’m stalking the sea otters at the Vancouver aquarium.

I get in tonight. If any CUPE 391 members want a beer, I’m buying. Organized librarians rock.

tried out Cornell Library’s book-delivery service this week. A nice stack of David Foster Wallace books quickly appeared at my workplace yesterday afternoon, and I got a friendly call when they arrived.

If you are a Cornell student or staff, you can have library books delivered to any library-location of your choice for free. For me, this means walking upstairs to our sunny little ornithology library overlooking the pond, and sitting by the fireplace for a bit.

I’m an irredeemable Amazon.com addict, so I view as a right the ability to learn about a book, click a few links, and have said book delivered to me. Imagine my pleasure at being able to do this without paying for it.

Unfortunately, you pretty much have to be told about the service to find out about it, unless you are the type of user who clicks links labeled “requests” on library websites and enjoy library jargon. Like many public services in the country, the crucial step of communicating to humans was overlooked.*

*Many nonprofits seem to say to their clients: “Look, we provide a valuable and benevolent service. You could at least be arsed enough to jump through a few design hurdles in order to discover our valuable service that you don’t know exists because of our design hurdles.”

I’m not sure, but I think the Cornell Library Patron narrative is supposed to go like this:

1. A student or staff member goes into the library catalog and searches for some interesting books, thinking “Hey, I’ll go pick these up at the five separate library locations where they are housed”
2. The patron adds each book to her “bookbag” (navigating a series of hurdles involving ID numbers, multiple passwords unique to the library system, and cute-not-descriptive service names) to create a list of books she wants to get.
3. A MIRACLE OCCURS HERE
4. The patron mysteriously knows that she can have her books delivered.
5. The patron clicks into the catalog page for each book (students love catalog pages!) and separately clicks “requests” at the bottom of the page, knowing instinctively that book delivery is a “request”.
6. The patron chooses “Book Delivery Services (9996 available)” from a dropdown list conveniently located below the fold.
7. Assuming the patron does not receive the helpful error message “Your Patron Initiated Call Slip Request failed. This item is not available for Call Slip requests.” like I just did (Patrons Love Call Slip Requests!), she enters her ID number again.
8. The patron is familiar with the names and locations of the dozens of small on-campus libraries and selects her nearest branch.
9. The patron knows that, unlike use of the weight rooms, climbing wall, or campus cinema, the library book delivery service is free.
10. The patron clicks “submit request”, then repeats the process for each item she wants delivered.
11. The patron celebrates her triumph with a fine malt beverage.

Still, mad useful if you know about it.

The financial advice site Get Rich Slowly suggests using the library as a frugal way to save money on books. I agree, and am going to endure more bad OPAC design in the interest of financial progress. Stay tuned.

Cornell librarians: Please do not kill me. I’m glad to have your services. Bad online user experiences are common in the library world. I’m sure you are busy right now improving the OPAC and writing clear non-jargon filled text describing your services. Go Big Red!