Category: Random Thoughts

Every year there’s one day in August when Summer work ends and Fall insanity begins. There’s no way to predict when this day will happen, and the transition takes place over the space of a few hours or even a few minutes.

Yesterday was that day.

And so today I set my alarm back and got to work extra early, packed a lunch that I could eat at my desk, prioritized my day so that I could spend the day working on things that can’t travel home and then pack the rest to bring home with me, took my first break at 4:15 to go see the new dorms on campus, took my second break to drive home when they locked up the library on me, and then spent the rest of the evening with papers spread around me on the couch.

On the up-side, I used InDesign for the first time today, and I can already tell that it’s far more powerful than I’d anticipated. I felt almost guilty for being so pressed for time that I only explored the few features that were most important to my project. I kind of want to take a graphic design/layout class, actually.

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A researcher on campus asked if I could help him track down an obscure database, “The Bronson Database” compiled by a Berkeley professor in 1982.

It sounded to me like the kind of thing that would live in a pile of floppy disks in somebody’s desk drawer (since it wasn’t listed in WorldCat at all), so today I started tracking down exactly whose desk drawer might have such a thing.

After a full day of exchanges with everyone from a SUNY librarian to an English Prof at Berkeley, a Berkeley archivist finally came through for me. As it turns out, one copy of the database does exist…

… in a file folder…

… in an archive…

… IN PUNCH-CARD FORMAT!

The archivist noted that while they do offer a photocopy service, it would probably be impractical in this instance, but that my researcher could travel out to look at the cards if he wanted to.

I love archivists. And I love the idea of a punch-card database (though I’m sure that will disappoint my researcher).

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As I do every Monday during the summer, I opened up my Depressingly Long List Of Summer Projects (hereafter referred to as the DLLOSP). I keep a running list of things to do, major or minor in an Evernote notebook creatively named “tasks.” It has one “note” for each committee or major project, and one for everything else. It is this Everything Else note that holds the DLLOSP.

I wish there were a way to burn Evernote Notes.

Anyway, I opened this list to do my Monday routine of glancing over it, making priorities for the week, and developing my “do right now or as soon as humanly possible” task list at the top of the note. And today, with many of my librarian friends reporting the return of students or the start of classes, I realized that I’ve only checked off a miniscule portion of my big projects for the summer. Like, maybe 10%. WHERE DID THE TIME GO???

More importantly, what will I do to whittle down the DLLOSP in the next couple of weeks? Honestly, I think finishing the projects listed there will be impossible, and that’s coming from one who’s usually optimistic to a fault. So the question becomes, which tasks will have the least dire consequences if they don’t get done?

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I love the MLA style. It’s my “home” citation style, the one I use if not required to use something else, the one I can produce without a manual the vast majority of the time.  But it’s always had its quirks. For one thing, it took it until just a couple of years ago to recognize that it needed some way to deal with digital things of any kind, or to acknowledge that people are no longer composing on typewriters and can therefore italicize things.

I’m sure everyone’s already familiar with the general flap about the 7th edition’s new online presence.* So I was braced for annoyance when our copies arrived and I had to decide what to do with our three access codes. What I hadn’t realized is that each book had its code hidden under silver scratch-off material (yes, like lottery tickets), and that once used to create a personal account, the code would be useless. I’m not sure why that surprised me, considering the rather draconian Terms of Service,** but it did.

So here’s the thing, people. When your shiny new copies of the 7th edition arrive, snag them before a random student does if you want access to that online version.

Oh, and never link to a page other than the home page. (Sheesh… you’d think nobody at the MLA had ever seen the Internet.)

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