Category: Avenging

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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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WordPress upgrade

I took advantage of the jet-lag to upgrade WordPress at 5am this morning. Please let me know if you find any bugs, blips, blops, or bloopers.

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Halloween

laiapumpkin.jpgWe had a great Halloween – I put a bunch of candles out in the yard, and we got bombarded with neighbor kids until we ran out of candy. Then Chris dug up the confetti eggs from Easter and we started giving those out. They got a great reception, especially from the middle-school boy contingent. I think we’re going to get more and just give out cascarones next year. 

If you’ve ever been around us, you know our fondness for confetti eggs.  Chris’ family mails them up from Texas, and we usually have a carton or two kicking around the house JUST IN CASE. When our friends Kim and Brian had their daughter Anika last Easter, we brought confetti eggs to the hospital and cracked them all over the room, to the horror of the nurses. Kim swore we almost got her bounced from the maternity ward.

So for Halloween, Chris was Number Six and I was the new Number Two. We finally finished watching all the episodes of 60’s tv show The Prisoner, and wanted to pay costume tribute. Clay and Mike helped us carve scary pumpkins. Owl the cat obliged everyone by hopping around with his back fur up and looking extra halloweeny. I carried him to the door and offered to put him in the kid’s bags a few times. And at ten o’clock the ceremonial Four Teenagers Without Costumes showed up to finish the day.

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Oxford


shannon Says:
October 18th, 2005 at 1:47 pm e
Awesome! If you make it to Oxford (hours train ride from London) you can go to the Bodleian Library and visit the various haunts of people like Lewis Carroll, Tolkien and all sorts of famous literarys (as in pubs).

Believe it or nay, fair reader Shannon,  I have BEEN to the Bodleian library in Oxford. I was studying abroad in Dublin. I had two days in the UK. Where did I go? Oh yeah. The only library in the world that makes its patrons vow not to set the books on fire.

En route, I was lectured by an unamused train conductor on the correct pronunciation of Oxford. According to the man in the hat, it is not pronounced (imagine a thick midwestern accent) AAHHXFERD, as we kids insist, but rather (imagine a thick plank lodged irretrievably netherward) UHXFERD. This remains my only real memory of Oxford, so perhaps I should return.

Anybody want to hook a sister up with Bodleian backstage passes? In return, I promise to tell you the (two-drink minimum, not work-safe) story about my deadly encounter with the MSU library masturbator.  

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I grant you

I’ve spent an enjoyable afternoon poking around the web looking for grants. I now present you with a braindump of the grant-ese that is currently swirling around in my skull. Mix n’ Match! Build your own funding agency! Try writing an abstract that uses all of the following words:

  • Effective
  • Develop
  • Partnership
  • Nationwide
  • Resources
  • Model
  • Exellence
  • Best practices
  • Community learning
  • Innovative learning
  • Digital
  • Enhance
  • Integrate
  • Standards
  • Collaboration
  • Institutional