Category: Career

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It’s hard out here for a digital library interface designer/product manager


Photo by パックマン

10:40pm and I’m still at work.

Science Magazine is publishing a blurb about our library of animal sounds on Thursday. We got an award for second-best “educational interactive”. Yay.

Unfortunately, this means that a huge group of people are going to visit our site.

And our site was, up to a few weeks ago, still half-baked. We’ve got one of those higher education software teams, consisting of five underpaid geeks and a couple of CS students. Ebay, we are not.
These last few weeks have been a blur. Everyone on my team is pulling dot com hours, working for twelve hours on Sundays, and generally being foolish with work-life balance.

Tonight we ate dinner at the mall food court.

The weird part is, I love this.
I love the focus.
I love the commiseration.
I love the feeling of doing something good for the world that I get working at a nonprofit.

But right now, I would really love a beer and some sleep.
Goodnight, all.

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Moving, changing, constant rearranging

It’s official now, and I can finally talk about it here. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, yes, yes, yes, I’m buying a house. Well, it’s a theoretical house at this point, just a glimmer in the mortgage-lender’s eye, but someday soon, around the end of June hopefully, I will be an actual homeowner. It’s a big deal, but I think I’m handling it well. I’ve limited my panic attacks to one a day, and am reading this very helpful book called The 106 common mistakes homebuyers make, which is totally helping my anxiety.

decorative giraffes

Oh, and I’m changing jobs.

Starting February 23, I’ll be a web developer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Yup. Leaving librarianship for I.T. Not a huge surprise to those who know me, but possibly controversial considering I run a website called Librarian Avengers. The good news is, I’ll still be working in a library. The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds holds the largest collection of bird recordings in the world. As their web developer, I get to create an interface for the stadium-sized database holding their digitized collection. It’s a big fat moose of a challenge, and I’m looking forward to getting started. Among other things, it means that this weblog is getting archived along with the one I wrote in grad school, and will be replaced with something new and appropriate.

I was kind of nervous about announcing this job change here, because I didn’t want to deal with any “say it ain’t so, Joe” emails in my spam-riddled inbox from hardcore librarians who think I’ve betrayed the profession by jumping ship for a mostly interface design position. To you, I say: Buck up. There are still plenty of good, stylish librarians out there. I may not be a librarian in real life, but I’ll continue to play one on the web. And, hey, there’s more than one way to serve an information need, buddy.

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Snowed In!

Three feet of snow rolled into town yesterday. Two of them landed on the ground, and the other foot is just blowing all over the place. People are walking backwards by my window because of the wind, but from my indoor perspective next to an overactive heat register it’s just beautiful. I’m going to bring my sled in to work tomorrow and sled home.

Today is the annual Holiday party. I’m going to have to go home and change, because I forgot and wore jeans today, which isn’t normally a big deal since the only humans I see at work are also in jeans, but in the context of a university-wide soiree, might be seen as a bit skuzzy. The thing is, what with the three feet of snow and all, I’m not sure what else to wear. I’m not one of those women who owns sixteen pairs of lined woolen slacks. I was planning on doing a bit of work clothes shopping after the break, but right now its either jeans, cargo pants, or a skirt. And the skirt is right out. Do other people have these problems?

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Troubled patrons?

Crazies 101

My employer is holding a workshop:

“Trouble or Troubled: Dealing with Difficult Patrons

This workshop will describe the various kinds of patrons who create problems in the libraries. It will provide information which will assist you in determining the difference between a “patron with a problem” or a “problem patron.” The workshop will then provide information on what to do as well as how and when to access resources such as the police.”

Judo class to follow. Seriously, there’s a pretty wild thread going right now in the forums on the subject of crazy patrons. Our workshop folks must have an entire Crazy Patron taxonomy going, since they will be specifying the “various kinds of patrons” along with, I assume, their Latin names and feeding habits. I’m looking forward to it.

I actally talked to a patron today. I was locking up the office this evening when a woman using the OPAC stopped me and asked if I had a pen. I did. No need to thank me, public service is my middle name.

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Ivy

First, I would like to officially apologize to Peter for talking his friendly Minnesotan ear off at the I.T. thing yesterday. Low blood sugar almost inevitably leads to leftist political rants. I’m sure I read this somewhere in the New England Medical Journal.

The window ledge skateboarders have not returned today.

Someone once pulled a gun on my friend Erin and demanded her skateboard. This was back in Flint, MI. She ran away, and now runs marathons in San Francisco.

At this point I would like to emphasize the Not-Flintness of Ithaca, NY. I feel confident that my library window skateboard boys are back in middle school today, snapping bra straps and setting off stink bombs.

I’ve been reading this book:

This fine place so far from home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class

Speaking of which, there sure is a lot of ivy in the Ivy League. It all turned red over the weekend, and it looks just glorious. Ivy can cover a great number of architectural flaws. Someone might consider planting some around Olin Library…

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I graduated… where’s my houseboat?

First of all, and lets just get this out of the way: a full-time job is actually a pretty shoddy reward for 2.5 years of graduate school stress. Yes, I’m grateful and all, glad to be here, nice to meet ya, etc. but frankly, I think I was looking for something along the lines of “congratulations on your degree, here’s your houseboat, now get out of here you scamp.”

I suppose having a stable schedule and slightly-more-realistic paychecks is reward enough, but lately I’ve had to face what seems to happen any time you put enormous effort into something. Which is, a rather slow transition into something different that requires enormous effort. Like learning not to scream when someone suggests you attend the Metadata Working Group Meeting.