The doctor said our baby has “a beautiful aortic root” which of course got me thinking of my fav line from the Wife of Bath’s tale: “It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote.” Which (of course) makes one think of Skelton’s line “He ys the kynges derlyng and his swete harte rote.” All this to say, I have a new nickname for the baby: myne herteroote. Right up there next to “mon petit chou.”
Month: January 2013
Tell ’em the story raindrop
Got too busy explaining / Now it’s just rainin’ pain / Pain in form of a raindrop / Yes a rain drop made of pain / Tell ‘em the story raindrop / “I don’t wanna tell ’em mister” / Tell ’em the story raindrop / “I don’t wanna tell ’em.”
Reframing library space
“Further, the library must be willing to allow dedicated time for what happens after exploration. The “serve ‘em and send ‘em along” model is no longer serving a patronage whose information needs include planning, building and executing projects that utilize the strengths of librarianship (information organization and broad contextualization). Reframing the library as a productive place, a creative place engaged in producing and creating something – whether that be digital scholarly works or something else entirely – will open the door to allow the library into the life of the user.”
Source: Micah Vandegrift and Stewart Varner, “Evolving in Common: Creating Mutually Supportive Relationships Between Libraries and the Digital Humanities.”
Evolving toward a studio model
VA Tech is one of my models for what academic libraries should be in the 21st century. Even though I risk my UVA-degreed soul when I say that.
“At Virginia Tech we’re positioning ourselves to not only provide content, but to support content production. We think of this as not only about access to information, but also about enabling the creation of new knowledge. We’re evolving from a warehouse model toward a studio model.”
Source: Brian Matthews, ITERATE OR DIE: Reflecting on Blockbuster & Atari
One student’s pledge to publish open access
This is brave. I fully support this:
Source: What I Must Do
I have come to the conclusion that my knowledge should and will be accessible. Therefore, I will only publish openly.
- I will only publish in open access journals.
- I will only review for open access publications.
- I will only sign book and chapter contracts that share copies of the text online (whether licensed through Creative Commons or made available in some other, free form).
- I will only attend conferences that make any related publications accessible for free.
- I will also only contribute to open-access publications that do not charge authors for publishing. […]
Change begins when we as a community move forward together. However, absolute change can only come about with absolute decisions.
The joys of interlibrary loans
“The Terminus University Library had by no means been a great resource in this respect but, when he grew older, he discovered the joys of interlibrary loans. He had printouts in his possession which had been taken off hyperradiational signals from as far away as Ifnia.”
— Asimov, Foundation’s Edge
There is a student in the stacks singing Rebecca Black and I have not had my coffee yet. This will not stand.
Another cold has got me down. Time to crawl up on the couch with tea, a pug, a blanket, and Netflix.
It’s the new normal
“Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we’ll see or hear about today. The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online – which is almost all day many days – we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.”
Source: The Technium
When in doubt, go to the library
”Harry — I think I’ve just understood something! I’ve got to go to the library!”
And she sprinted away, up the stairs.
“What does she understand?” said Harry distractedly, still looking around, trying to tell where the voice had come from.
“Loads more than I do,” said Ron, shaking his head.
“But why’s she got to go to the library?”
“Because that’s what Hermione does,” said Ron, shrugging. “When in doubt, go to the library.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets