Thank you! , Michael Edson – Director, Web and New Media Strategy with the Smithsonian Institution – for reminding me of something I read long ago and need to remember everyday. Our library users are heroes on their own epic journeys and we need to help them – like, can I be Samewise Gamgee to your Frodo Baggins? – help them!

I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Edson preach – Come, Let Us Go boldly Into the Present, My Brothers & Sisters – at CiL2012. In fact, he “saved” the conference for me. I can learn what I need, but I need to feel that what I learn and teach matters…call it big picture, call it inspiration, I know it when I experience it. And, sadly, not every keynote is worthy. But. Michael Edson lit a spark that still glows in me and for that I salute him.

As we celebrate April icons like baseball, poetry, and libraries, remember the everyday heroes we serve – let’s help them on their information quests!

Computers in Libraries 2012 – Day 1 was a fun one. I met new people and talked and exchanged cards with many. I checked in at the exhibits, especially with all my science vendors, and I asked everyone of them to consider new funding models – pricey subscriptions are not sustainable in this library culture.

Great software find: Scientific Visualization with Sci2: Science of Science

I’m thinking about (more than 1 good idea):

• Great mobile apps from DCL Digital Branch and Emma Clark Library
• Mary Ellen Bates on searching
• Chad Mairn on jQuery Mobile
• Kolding Bibliotek mobile strategies
• Jason Clark on HTML5

I bought Designing the Digital Experience by David Lee King

Thanks EAPD for the beer & dinner and Maddy’s!

I love Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  It may be my all time favorite book and isn’t it nice when others so eloquently think likewise.

From: My Daily Read: David Bellos March 16, 2012

Q: What books have you recently read? How do they stand out?

A: 1. Paul Fournel, La Liseuse, a charming dissection of the state of publishing in Paris, organized like a sestina. 2. Roy Harris, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein (third attempt: this time it made sense to me, and I got right to the end). 3. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, umpteenth time (because I am teaching it this coming semester), a book that “stands out” in every imaginable way—for its size, its complexity, its emotional intensity, its fantastic range of vocabulary, its images, its vast stretches of boredom, its quantity of sheer piffle, its moments of drama, its goodheartedness, its naïveté, and its constant reminders of almost every book that has been written since.

 

Image from http://www.livingdoing.org/2011/11/nigellas-banana-muffins.html

My son, who is so much more clever than I, FaceBooked this week that he had a good class and was inspired to make muffins.

Well, I have had a really bad day (in a not so great week) and so I will continue the bad metaphor by saying…burnt muffins! Lots of prep for a stepped on presentation, meetings, work piling up, class prep still to come and probably getting home tonight after 8PM!

But, even with burnt muffins, you can have good crumbs and enjoy a moment in a bad day. Just a few minutes ago a student brought me a cup of coffee as a thank you. Unexpected and totally delicious. Earlier today, I received a beautiful email from a friend and yesterday the afore mentioned son sent me a lovely email that made me cry at my desk and bask in my mom-dom!

I’ll count my blessings and just do good work!

I had to laugh this morning reading David Brooks’ column from the New York Times The Jeremy Lin Problem. He ends his column by saying:

Life and religion are more complicated than that.

Yes, they are.

I took time to read his column this morning because I haven’t had much time to do anything these days – I’m teaching a new class this semester and always seem to be reading for class and behind in my reading and prepping for class. Hence, very little time for blogging.

For my friends from far away, I am sharing my class syllabus CLSC638 Science & Technology Resources and a short screencast one of my students asked for about Twitter.

How could I not blog about this? Inspired from the #scio12 conference (Science Online), Kevin Zelnio started a meme [I know - one of those very online words - but read his blog post here #IamScience: Embracing Personal Experience on Our Rise Through Science]

I was asked in my 2009 interview for the job I currently hold, (it’s a mouthful!) Coordinator, Science Libraries at a university, what experiences prepared you for the job of a science librarian? I think it must have started in my 4th grade Math class with Mrs. Hannigan in Royal Oak, Michigan. She made me love Math! Then in 6th grade Mr. Majeiski made us do science projects. In HS, I had a wonder-woman of a Math teacher in Mary Johnson (and she made me love Calculus, can you believe that?) and I took drafting and Physics and decided to pursue Engineering at the University of Detroit. Dr. Kedzie, of UD Physics fame nearly did me in; as did Dr. Rhomberg in Concrete; but, nevertheless,  I graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. So, you could say…my teachers made me do it! I know they made it all possible by sharing their curiosity and passion with their students.

And to paraphrase Kevin Zelnio, that’s when my “wicked, twisted road” to science librarianship began. From then to now,  I have worked as an engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers in Buffalo, NY; I taught math at a community college in western NY; I worked as a computer consultant for an engineering consulting firm; [during this time of my career I was raising two sons and trying to keep my hand in to get back to work someday] then worked writing grants ( my first encounter with the NSF) and working as a tech consultant with elementary schools; then more grant writing with the Rochester Public Library; then my first library job as a library assistant (I loved telephone reference – so varied and so fun and such good training from the Information Department Librarians at the Rochester Public Library!!!) and then I worked as a HS Librarian and got my MLS from Kent State University.

One of the most amazing things that happened to me in 2006 in Toledo, OH, was my opportunity to meet and assist Gene Kranz (NASA Flight Director during Apollo 13) in donating his “moon rock” to his alma mater – Central Catholic High School. His piece of the moon sits in my favorite library in the whole world – the Kress Family Library.

In 2009, the recession was wrecking havoc in OH and so with my lovable engineer of a husband, we moved to the DC area – and I was asked about my life in Science and began my new career as an academic science librarian.

I don’t tell my story often, because it is not a traditional path. Last year I had the opportunity to participate in a SLA workshop as a mentor. I couldn’t tell the above story in an elevator-speech format and so, in a roomful of very important librarians…I wasn’t. But, I have a passion for my subject(s).

And now, I get to teach graduate Library and Information students all about the profession in my class Science & Technology Resources. I hope I do as well as my teachers did in sharing my curiosity and passion and inspiring librarians wherever their path may lead them.

#IamScience

NOTE: meme …according to the OED : from Biology:  A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene. From American Heritage Dictionary : A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

Baseball, literature and life make for a great story. I just love a good book and hated to put this one down. I’m still missing Henry and Schwartz.

Another hard year has come and gone. Let’s just let 2011 die.

I hate to feel this way. When I had a chance to read this small part of the longer In Memoriam  by Lord Alfred Tennyson I was comforted and inspired to be more hopeful.

2011…
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

If it were that easy…
Ring out the grief that saps the mind

Look up and strive to be better…
Ring in the nobler modes of life

Help me remember my blessings…
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

During this political year…
Ring in the common love of good

Everywhere…
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

In me and in you…
Ring in …the larger heart, the kindlier hand

In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells] by Lord Alfred Tennyson
CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

I have to laugh! My dad used to tell me to “roll with the punches.” Now, every morning, I am greeted by this sign as I exit my train platform to walk to my Metro platform. It’s a good sentiment until you feel like a punching bag. You know the kind I mean. The full body blowup size kind that you punch and then it rebounds and hits you in the face. Yeah! Life is a lot like that these days.

How do you measure – life, job, relationship? Do you measure by happiness, by satisfaction, by goodness? I’ve blogged about this before, maybe too often? [F2F Inspiration, N+1 or N-1, By the Numbers,  Embracing Complexity] I have a new, scary, perspective after a “magnitude” event like the earthquake last week, and the “category” hurricane last weekend. I measure myself…very lucky, but a little unsteady.

I find I am walking gingerly expecting that rumbling tremor to start again any minute. Yet, I also regularly get on the Metro here in DC and travel underground and over bridges trusting the infrastructure of this place. This makes me feel foreign and naïve in my everyday life setting. This may be what the Freshman on campus experience, now known as First-Year’s, and now having their very own FYE (First Year Experience.)

I get to talk with a group of these students tomorrow. The very best part about working at a University, for me, is working with students of all ages – faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. All of us, especially me, always learning. As Michelangelo is oft quoted “I am still learning.”  This is the joy of the work at the University.

I’m reading what our First Year students are reading in their ENG101 course.

“A story of education – seventy years of it – the practical value remains to the end in doubt, like other values about which men have disputed since the birth of Cain and Abel; but the practical value of the universe has never been stated in dollars.” From The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter 1

And in unrelated, but succinctly relevant online reading I came across Happiness, Philosophy and Science by Gary Gutting.  He points out the good sense of studying philosophy as it is “the origin of most scientific disciplines.”  We search for data and measurements to explain happiness, and when that doesn’t work we fall back to philosophical theories.

Gutting reminds us of the intrinsic value of the humanities as he implores us to “engage philosophy with the other disciplines – history, art, literature, even theology…”

“That is not to say that, as Plato thought, we can simply appeal to expert philosophical opinion [that] tells us how we ought to live. We all need to answer this question for ourselves. But, if philosophy does not have the answers, it does provide the tools we need to arrive at the answers.”

The First Year students are here to answer the question – how to live – for themselves. They will determine their own tools, whether scientific or philosophical, for measuring their lives.

I am their Librarian.