Author: Erica Firment

Erica Olsen Firment is an omnivorous mammal of the genus Ailurus, having an endothermic physiology and a long, furry tail. Erica's range extends to both deciduous and coniferous forests, and can often be found working on software user interfaces and creating information architectures in Silicon Valley.
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A New Line of Librarian Action Figures

I got a catalog in the mail the other day advertising the new deluxe version of the Librarian Action Figure. She comes with a book truck, and some extra books. Nice.

Still, I think there should be a whole line of librarian action figures, including one with the earlier, discarded, exploding bun feature.

Lightning-fast reference is an obvious Librarian Superpower, as well as maybe, oh, I dunno, Willingness to Dedicate One’s Life to the Good of Others. But I don’t know how you would turn that into a pushbutton feature…unless you push the button and she detaches her head and offers it to you.

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Mappin’

147 members! That frappr map is actually starting to spook me. It’s one thing to write for a few people who I know are reading, (my family, a few ex-coworkers, the library school grrls) and a few theoretical people I suspect are reading, but to have them all laid out there on a map…whew.

Well, anyway, good to meet you all and thank you for caring about my goofy life. I’m sneaking out of work early so I can see the sun, so short post today. Say no to seasonal affective disorder.

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Overwhelm them with sheer numeric superiority

Me and Dewey at ALAI just checked the frappr map, and dang you Librarian Avengers are so cute! And geographically disparate! All 81 of you. Gulp.

Once I realized there are so many people out there willing to read about my battles with bad librarianship, scary interfaces, and look at photos of my grandma, I had to sit in the closet and rock back and forth for awhile. But I’m back! And do I have news for you.

According to Siva and the ALA, there are more libraries in the U.S. than there are McDonalds. Let’s consider this news. Let’s consider the possibilities it opens up. Let’s consider what, say, 16,220 librarians (that’s one librarian from every U.S. branch) could DO if we all decided to work together. Are you thinking? Let’s make a list. I’ll start.

  • We could swarm the U.S. Senate carrying burning copies of the Patriot Act on pitchforks.
  • We could donate one book each and create a brand new library
  • We could build a search taxonomy for the ALA BY HAND
  • We could build an entire neighborhood for Habitat for Humanity and call it Librarian Land.
  • We could dig up enough dirt on our local censors and anti-library-funding jerks to put them all out of commission.
  • We could start selling yummy hamburgers and make the whole country fat.
  • We could start making people do pushups for books and make the whole country fit.
  • We could have the world’s biggest librarian party! Every year! Twice!

Your turn.

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Come On Everybody Let’s Get Together and Map Ourselves

If there’s one thing I love more than Google Maps mashups, it’s Google Maps mashups that let me see who is out there is reading this website. Besides my mom. Hi mom.

Frappr is Friendster for maps. I made a Librarian Avengers frappr map so that we might all peer at one other’s geographic representations. Go on, add yourself. Stand up and be counted.

If I get more than 200 folks, I’ll host a librarian party at SXSW. With strippers. Feminist strippers.

Update: Holy crap. It hasn’t been a day and there are already 33 folks on the map from all over the world. That’s 16% of my 200-librarian-challange! I’d better start researching burlesque clubs. Where the heck did all you people come from? Have you been here all along? Jeepers.
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Bad physical interfaces: Photo evidence

Those things I was complaining about in London? I’ve got documentation. I just started uploading the ten gajillion photos we took when we were overseas. There are more to come, but here are two fun ones involving British hotels and some baaaaad interface design.

The first is our web-enabled tv that showed a 404 page not found error whenever you turned it on. Someone installed something weird and Windows-based on it, and apparently it went all wrong. Like British TV isn’t strange enough.

And then there was the hairdryer, conveniently located and unmovable from the desk drawer.

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One sentence movie review – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This movie, with its fantastic effects, original cinematography, and great directing has convinced me to forgive the franchise completely for all of those spiders in the second film.

Ok, I can’t restrain myself to one sentence. Believe it or not, I liked the latest Harry Potter movie even more than the book. For me, these days, the sign of a good action-adventure film is one with absolutely no Grab-my-hand scene, and very little Escape-in-front-of-the-fireball. There was one minor Escape-in-front-of-the-fireball incident, but since Harry’s butt caught fire in an amusing way, I choose to overlook it. There was lots of great, original stuff in this movie, and very little of the cliched crud that littered up the last few films.

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My library helps Harry Potter!

screenshot of Cornell homepage with Macaulay library featured
Take that Voldemort! Several articles have come out in the Cornell press recently about the Macaulay Library’s huge collection of animal sounds. One of the ways we stay afloat is by licensing our sounds to movie studios. Recently, this has included helping give a voice to Buckbeak the Hippogriff in the Harry Potter movies.

Also, today we are being featured on the Cornell homepage. This is all in buildup to the release of our massive, monumental, absolutely nifty, online collection that will make all of our sounds and videos available for free Real Soon Nowtm. Just you wait. You’ll see.

Buckbeak saying Meyow!In other news, it’s snowing here and I’ve got a two-foot high stack of receipts representing three different currencies to sort through from our Euro-trip. We also have that penguin movie sitting in a Netflix envelope at home. And I made matzohball soup last night using this recipe.

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By the way…

If you are one of the kind people who has written to me in the last few months, my lack of response is not necessarily an indication that I don’t love you. Although that is entirely possible. I deleted my entire inbox right before I left. It was a gory Thunderbird conversion accident. You may now call me slick and proceed with the wedgies.