The Days & Nights of the Lipstick Librarian!

Even More Observations...

More things learned at ALA:

• Disneyland may be the Happiest Place on Earth, but Anaheim? Not so happy.
• Even celebrities visit Disneyland, or at least the restaurants in Downtown Disney.
• Stephen Abram is the quantum particle of librarianship, seeming to pop up in every location I visited. By the end of the conference I was half-expecting him to walk out of a stall in the women's restroom (sorry Stephen, but you were that ubiquitous).
• I am very afraid of the Baker & Taylor cats, unlike this fearless soul. Despite my fear, I was shamed into a photo op with these furries of PR.
• An author humorously berated me for not knowing who he was ("I'm your public defender!"), even though we live in the same town. I promised to make it up to him by having speak at my institution. For gratis, of course.

A Few Observations...

...from the trenches of ALA 2008

• All the power hitters in ALA are in reality petite women with big smiles
• What happen to the massive vendor receptions?? Get on the freakin' stick, ferchrissakes!
• Sadly, no amount of Mickey Mouse paraphernalia will ever disguise our true nature to the public. Or at least to other librarians.

More later?

Addicted to Puppets

Leaving for Anaheim at 7:15 am tomorrow morning; but before I go, a question to ponder while avoiding eye contact with a lonely vendor:

What is it with librarians and puppets? They're more to us than just story time props, they're our spirit guides to conference attending or, better yet, a passive-agressive way of letting your staff know that you actually have a social life.

See you in SoCal. If you're wondering who I am, you may spot me by my attempts to pour the contents of a chocolate fountain into gallon-sized baggies....

What Are We Doing With That Book Cart?

I know: I haven't posted in a while and got distracted from the passion quilt meme. Maybe it was the whole Hillary-evil-Barack-good thing playing out on the evening news. Or the Sichuan earthquake and its impact on the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Or the logistics of smuggling in a pitcher of cosmopolitans into a Friday evening showing of Sex and the City (sugar-frosting the rims in the dark was a bitch, btw). Whatever the reason, I promise I'll wrap up the PQ meme before I leave for ALA. But first, a confession:

As the instigator of the Lipstick Librarian! site, I get a lot of e-mails from folks asking me to promote stuff or an event, mostly library or lipstick (go figure) related products, a web site or book. Some of the requests are funny, but most are fairly mundane.

Until I got an e-mail with the innocuous subject line "ALA Convention".

I almost deleted it without reading because experience has taught me it was most likely an invite to a scintillating vendor show explaining a product I still wouldn't comprehend afterwards, but I opened it anyway in the please-jeebus-let-it-be chance it was an invitation to a function involving all-you-can-eat strawberry shortcakes and an open bar. But I was wrong.

It was a plea. A plea for me to publicize an orgy in Anaheim during the conference.

At first I thought it was joke--I still wonder if it's a joke. However the message seemed so sincere that I suspect it wasn't joke but a real request from an actual librarian. The tip-off? The excruciating detail of his (at least I think it's a he) message: not graphic descriptions of the hoped-for soiree, but a list of the difficulties he's encountered. Apparently no one's responding to his Craiglist postings due to censor bots, librarians not reading Craigslist, or maybe, just maybe, lack of interest.

I'm betting on the latter.

If you're interested, don't even think of contacting me. I'm too busy configuring the optimal schedule for hitting as many vendor events involving food on as little sleep as possible. And woe betide anyone getting between me and the teeny computer-screen squeegee giveaway....

Passion Quit Meme: Reading is the New Black

I was tagged for this meme by The Free Range Librarian (uh, thanks a lot, Karen). What is it? Slap a pix online from flickrCC, Flickr Commons or another similar source, add a caption that distills what I'm most passionate about for The Kids to Learn, give it a short title and link back to the originating blog post, THEN tag other professional colleagues.

Got it?

I'm not a fan of memes; to me they're the blog-content equivalent of eating raw cookie dough: tasty but ultimately lazy. But the Free Range Librarian's response to the meme intrigued me: all the well-intentioned but "Hallmarkian" (to quote TFRL) responses to this exercise. I sympathize: it's tough to come up with hip, terse sound bytes, though Ranganathan knows we try.

So here's my attempt:

Just how did I decide on this as my meme output? I'll explain in the next posting. In the meantime, why not show the world just how you feel about reading?

The meme:

1. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
2. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
3. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

You've Been Tagged Dept: The Gay Librarian, Filipino Librarian, DIY Librarian, The Laughing Librarian, and last but certainly not least, Darth Libris.

Krumping the LCSH

Ever had that fantasy of coming up with a Library of Congress Subject Heading and having it adopted within your lifetime? Now's your chance: Radical Reference invites you (from now to April 27th) to submit a subject heading or, if completely devoid of any ideas, select one from Sandy Berman's proposed SH list. (Sandy; seriously--are you still using old technology to compile your list?)

Get crackin' and suggest away!

I to the Uzzo, G to the Wazzo Dept: I'll be attending the Innovative Users Group Conference in Washington, DC next week. Look for me surreptitiously guzzling half-and-half out of shiny pitchers at the complimentary coffee table!

It's a Bargain at Any Price

Oh Shad--if this were a just world, any magazine featuring Britney shaving her head should be priced at $150 a year....

Our very own Blake Carver has created yet another librarian-related blogging adventure: Stuff Librarians Like. It's "a scientifically accurate look at all the little things that bring small moments of joy into the otherwise monotonous and empty lives of libraries." So when in Anaheim if you see Blake heading towards you with electrodes in one hand and a free muffin in the other, just remember: you're helping the profession.

It's That Time of the Year Dept: Got a soon-to-be graduate on your hands? Wondering just what the heck to give them for a graduation present? Peruse the fine items featured in the Lipstick Librarian! Ephemera Store for that ever-so-special gift that screams "got job?"

Select "Other"

Yes, I support Barack Obama. I'm guessing that's not exactly a shock to most of you out there.

It's not because Barack is mixed-race, though I won't deny it has tremendous appeal. Like many of you, I'm in agreement with his views, despite the fact the media has deemed I should be a Hilary fan. But there's something else about him that appeals to me, something that, though hinted at in the endless discussions of race, hasn't been brought to the forefront: it's Barack as The Other.

What is The Other? It's a demographic that doesn't have a demographic, in a sense. It's those of us who straddle the line, as much culturally as racially, the ones forced to select the "Other" box when presented choices about our ethnic/social ties in these United States. Though technically American citizens, we've grown up in other cultures, be it Jakarta, Indonesia or San Francisco's Mission District. We've celebrated the Fourth of July with fried chicken and futomaki or deviled eggs and kimchi. In short, we're the ones who've lived our lives in a cultural twilight, not entirely American but not completely belonging to other cultures either. And on that level, Barack speaks to me.

And what makes him The Other? First off, he's lived his formative years in either an Asian country or culture, born in Honolulu and then bouncing between Hawaii and Indonesia. He didn't move to the continental U.S. until after graduating from high school. His father was Kenyan; his stepfather Indonesian. He even has a Eurasian half-sister; in an interview she recalls their childhood as "drifting in and out of worlds". All of this makes Barack the first presidential candidate with not only a pan-racial background, but one who's lived in an almost exclusively non-Western culture.

I find all of this enthralling because it means we as The Others have finally arrived as Americans. The cultural dichotomy that dogged us is no longer hidden, or more importantly, make us less than Americans. The sense that the average citizen (i.e., white and living in the continental United States) would consider someone like me an American, much less presidential material, is astounding.

This fall I will be voting for Barack Obama. And afterwards I'm celebrating with a hot dog and a musubi.

What I'm Listening To Dept: "I Have a Dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King. Because it never grows old....

Hipsta Gangsta Librarian

And just how does your average, dimly-aware-of-the-pop-culture-zeitgeist librarian use the previously blogged about music genre to her/his advantage? A few handy tips:

Nod Nod Revolution: The winner is the one who manages the most imperceptible head nodding while listening to Okkervil River. Team prize goes to the group who can exchange knowing smiles at the most obscure allusion to the Johnstown Flood.

Teach twentysometings to create acerbic t-shirts featuring quasi-cuddly characters with fang-like teeth using potato stamps and fabric dye mixed with leftover IPA from the local organic brewfest.

Convince a dewy young thing who sings in a cockney accent to write a song about a YA librarian falling in love with a stuttering Egyptologist with double-jointed thumbs. Try to get her to work in a shout-out to your homework guides when she's awarded the SXSW People's Choice Award.

Have a group of girls knit knockoffs of the hottest leg warmers on American Apparel (NOTE: Must be 18 or older to attend crafting session)

Hawk bibliographies on the Synoptic Gospels outside an Iron & Wine show. Avoid getting beat up by angry ticket scalpers for harshing sales by insisting potential customers investigate the latest CD at their local library.

For the adult services librarian: hold a memoir-writing workshop for the parenting set. Read aloud one with the biggest potential to go viral at Starbucks. Be sure to serve sustainably-harvested coffee and lie-detector tests to prevent being served a subpoena when it's revealed that the harrowing account of a welfare mom in a crack-addled neighborhood raising triplets who eventually attend Harvard was written by a hedge fund analyst from Dartmouth.

Librarians and Crime Continues Dept: Job Search Tips: when interviewing for as media specialist, remember to ask about combat pay.

What I'm Listening To Dept: Godspell, the movie soundtrack. Thanks to whatever deity inspired Turner Classic Movies to broadcast the movie yesterday, even though my co-workers weren't impressed with my rendition of "Turn Back, O Man". Must have been the feather boa and tube socks....

Precocious is as Precocious Does

My geek-chic-lovin' friend strode into work the other day wearing a suspiciously new concert t-shirt. Not wanting to cripple what little pop-culture cred I have with a member of the microbrew 'n felting set, I pretended to be down with my local rep of All Things Indie: "The Decemberists, I see." Who says I'm not the master of the noncommittal comment?

"Yeah," he replied, "I'm a sucker for the whole lit rock thing." Truth be told, he didn't really say that. He did launch into a lengthy exposition about the relevancy of the band to his generation--something to do with pirates, accordions and the American Civil War, I think, but by that point I had wandered away in search of freebie M&M'S® in the library administration office.

But six hours later (after several loads of laundry and a Very Special Episode of Celebrity Fit Club) he did get me to thinking: maybe I can use this lit rock idea for good, to support the profession in our never-ending quest for relevancy with the Wii-boxers out there. After all, if the millennials are willing to stare at teeny backlit screens to text their interpretations of lyrics to all BFFs in the middle of a Mountain Goats show, why not leverage the self-absorbed angst? Heck--it's easier than chasing down teens and trying to slap temporary "reading is dope" tattoos as they flee the last round of Dance Dance Revolution in the YA section.

Next Time: A Very Special Lit Rock Guide for Librarians

Be Careful What You Declaim Dept: Remember my assertion that being a librarian is the perfect foil for those with criminal inclinations? It seems now we're either a magnet for crime or more frighteningly, a possible long-time propagator of it.

Bit 'O Libraries

Librarian Tip: don't become too annoyed at the guy snoring at the table next to you while you're trying to read Nylon--he may be someone you recognize.

Vintage Video Dept: The year: 1987. The hair: Pat Benatar. The sweatin'-to-the-oldies taskmaster: Betty Glover!

Deselecting Burl Ives

Be careful what you select when you've got a love-sick, slightly psychotic librarian managing your branch....

What I'm Listening To Dept: why, Lavender Blue, of course!