Category Archives: trading cards

Fun Stuff and Why I Have a Headache

By IRIS Posted on by

First, the Fun Stuff.

My co-worker, Heather, presented at the Minnesota Library Association conference on using social software to keep up with government documents (ppt here). Then she brought Jenny Levine back to Minneapolis with her so we could all meet for dinner. What fun! [Update: Here's a picture of us having fun with Jenny.]

We also discovered the William College Liaison Librarians must have liked our 05-06 trading cards. Wow.

I’ve become a del.icio.us convert. I’ve even received a link from Steve in that oh-so-cool “Links For You” section. Now I wish all my co-workers were on del.icio.us so I could send them links. I still haven’t imported my links from Furl yet, but already I’ve more than doubled the number of links in my collection. Two things I’d like from del.icio.us: an easier to type name, and more than 255 characters to describe my links. (Two things I’d like from Furl to make me go back: faster/easier bookmarking, more social features like “links for you.)

And now… Why I Have a Headache.

Because it’s been a rough week, that’s why. I haven’t had the time or energy to blog at all, so the backlog of things I want to blog about is getting distinctly overwhelming. (I’ve started using the toread bookmarklet and in only a week I’ve accumulated 60 unread items! Yikes.)

I relearned how evil Elsevier is, though I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss their new act of extortion and peevish tantrum-throwing just yet.

I also spent almost all of three days trying to help one class of students answer impossible questions only to be told by a professor (not the professor class I was helping, btw) that I was doing their homework for them. Oh, and he copied the professor I WAS working for. He’s not even a professor in my liaison departments. Coming at a particularly vulnerable and tired time for me, this criticism completely shook me. I kind of expect to be told that I could do more, and I generally welcome constructive criticism, but the only two times I’ve been completely and utterly shaken by criticism at work were times when I’d worked extra hard only to be (figuratively) patted on the head and told “that’s nice, dear, but we didn’t want you to work that hard and we don’t really think the effort was worth it.” I guess it comes with the territory.

Basically, I’ve had one of those weeks a librarian dreads: all impossible questions with no sense of accomplishment. I even made people mad over the fact that we have electronic access to the Chronicle of Higher Education but aren’t allowed to give out the password or copy and paste articles. No, it’s all freely available, but you have to come “all the way” to the library and have one of us log you in. Yes, I realize that you might as well just read the paper copy we have at the library, but that’s life (and our license agreement).

Oh, and I’m facing a 6-day week since this is my Sunday to work and there’s no time for a comp-day next week. Bwah-ha-ha-ha.

But, I resolve to get to some of my backlog of blog stubs.

Strong Bad Takes on Trading Cards!

By IRIS Posted on by

I hope you’re familiar with Strong Bad, the funniest cartoon character in a helmet ever. He and his friends live over at the Homestar Runner site. (For way more fan information than you ever needed, here’s the Wikipedia entry.)

Anyway, periodically Strong Bad answers email from fans, and my co-worker just found his answer to this email:

Hey Strong Bad-
You should have trading cards … with a stick of gum in them.
Nerdly Yours,
Daniel, N.S. Canada (which Strong Bad narrates as “Not Safe in Canada”)

For his answer, click here.

p.s. In completely unrelated news… Our new trading cards are great! They’re way more superhero-ish than they were last year. They aren’t up online yet, but they’re coming SOON.

Here Come the Trading Cards

By IRIS Posted on by

I had my photo-shoot for this year’s trading cards. We got a couple of good pictures (I promise I’ll let you know when we’ve decided on one), and I had a blast tapping my inner super-hero… until I found out that the entire shoot had been held during the normal staff break time right outside of the windows to the break room. Apparently our metadata librarian turned to my supervisor and asked, “Why is half your team out there posing for each other.” Oh well. At least we had it better than my co-worker who had the president of the college walk past her while she did the same thing yesterday. (Although, I gotta say, to all of the prospective students and their parents who were in that college tour that walked past us today as we tried to figure out the super-est super-hero poses possible, we really aren’t insane. Really, we aren’t. Please keep Carleton on your radar even if it’s librarians are a little out there.)

Good Day

By IRIS Posted on by

After weeks of working and working all day every day and not feeling like I was making any progress on any projects, to day was great. It felt like every few minutes I could stand up and put a big red line through another item on my white board’s To Do list. I was on such a roll that I ended up staying an hour late! With another hour tomorrow morning, I should be able to catch up to where I wanted to be by tomorrow.

Oh, and tomorrow is the day I get my picture taken for my 2006-2007 trading card. Wish me luck!

So Culturally Illiterate

By IRIS Posted on by

Ok, so it’s that time of the year again: time to come up with the information we put on the backs of our trading cards. This time of the year is fun, exciting, and MORTIFYING. Suddenly all the years I didn’t spend reading comic books rise up to whip me in the face. How should I know what characteristics go on the backs of these things?

So far I’ve come up with my Arch-Nemesis: Bad Puns. (Or should those be my vulnerability?) But I’d like something else cool and witty on there to make me seem hip and down with these millennials (though I suspect using “hip” and “down” would probably alert any college freshman to my un-hip-ness and my un-down-ness).

My other co-workers have already come up with things like “secret hideouts” and “sidekicks” and “catch phrases.” And then there’s me. I don’t really want a vehicle, and I’m not in need of a weapon (after all I have super powers, remember). Help me out here. What other characteristics do anime/super-hero types have?