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Pegasus Librarian Posts

And We’re Off…

Published by Iris on Monday, September 11th, 2006

School started today at Carleton. This was notable for four reasons. First, I got to start a school year where I was less confused by and anxious than the new freshmen. (This year, I already know where the bathrooms are and which keys will get me into which rooms… except for one room that I’ve never been able to figure out, so I’ve decided not to wonder about it any more.) Second, I was able to skip my very first reference desk shift of the year in order to attend the Opening Convocation (though I didn’t know that I could have processed with everyone else of importance, so next year I’ll have to decide whether or not to resurrect my academic robes). Third, I got to work and promptly spent three hours working through my inbox, which was my first clue that school had started. (Last year nobody knew who I was, nor did they care, so my inbox was quite a bit more manageable.) And fourth, it was September 11th, so it was kind of weird to celebrate the opening of a new school year while working in moments of silence to remember the tragedy. On the other hand, perhaps we were remembering September 11th while working in moments of celebration… I’ll have to decide.

I wish I’d taken my camera to Opening Convo. It’s a Carleton tradition that lots of students sit up in the balcony of the old chapel and shower the processing faculty and staff with bubbles while cheering and generally having a good time. These same students also belted out a boisterous but entirely tone-deaf rendition of “Happy Birthday” to the president of the college just when he thought he’d be starting his speech. I’ve never seen him blush before. What fun.

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GoogleNews Archive Search

Published by Iris on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

Google has unveiled a new service (which they seem to be doing with amazing regularity). Now you can search 200 years of newspaper articles using the Google News Archive. The Search Engine Watch article is here, and Resource Shelf has another article on the new service here. I haven’t had much of a chance to explore this new thing today (having only had 20 minutes at my desk all day, yikes), but here are some preliminary thoughts on the features of this new search:

  • Like Google Scholar, not everything you find will be freely available online. Some libraries are contacting Google to ask about adding their link resolvers to this new service, but I don’t know yet what the answer has been so far.
  • There’s limited faceting available on the left-hand sidebar so that you can limit your search results to a specific time period or a specific publication. Yay!
  • You can elect to have your results returned chronologically by using the “Timeline” button. Cool.
  • There is no list of sources. This is terrible. That means that you’re searching blind, though you can be pretty sure the major papers will be represented. (Resource Shelf points out in their article that searching “Source:[source name]” works.)

Those are the main points that interest me about the features. But when I think of how this new service relates to my life in the library I’m left with mixed feelings. I look forward to having another “back up” search interface. (I often use Google Scholar as a last-ditch search when all normal avenues have failed. And sometimes this less specific searches return what I’ve been looking for. Now I can do the same for news sources, including advertisements, btw.)

But I’m worried that this will be yet another “easy” service that isn’t as powerful as would be useful to my students, but that will seduce them with its familiarity and immediate results. I also wish I didn’t have yet another service to add to the list of places you can search as long as you’re careful not to pay for anything because we offer the same content FOR FREE.

And finally, I’m beginning to worry about Google offering new services so regularly. My first thought when I heard about the archive search was that this new thing was sapping development time from about a million other projects that I consider only half done. The book search isn’t perfect (and isn’t done), blogger is anything but done, Google Calendar doesn’t do everything it could or should, and the list goes on. I wish they’d spend some time completing a few of their other useful services rather than pushing out something new every month. But that’s just me. I could never operate if I just kept adding projects to my cue rather than finishing a few here and there.

Of course, these niggling worries didn’t stop me from checking the new service out in between editing a Writely document, blogging, adding appointments to my Google Calendar, and generally relying heavily on all things Google.

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Reading in the Rain

Reading in the Rain

Published by Iris on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

I spent the most enjoyable day today. From late morning until evening, I sat out on my porch, surrounded by my potted plants, and read and read and read and read. This would have been enjoyable any day, but today was particularly peaceful. Today it was cool and rainy.

My porch is only about four feet by four feet, but it has its own little roof. So if there isn’t any wind, I can sit out there even in the rain and not get wet. Today was just such a day. I took a pillow and blanket and mug of hot tea out with me and read for hours, breaking only for lunch. I got most of two books read (Carleton’s Common Reading books, which the campus will be discussing this week), plus several issues of Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights.

Persepolis and Persepolis II are proving me wrong once again. I must admit: I was skeptical. I’ve never read a graphic novel before, and I was worried tha the nature of the medium might simultaneously overpower and undermine the message of the books. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stories are engrossing, and the medium heightens the sense that these are one individual’s stories rather than some mass-produced, stereotypical rendition of Iranian existence.

It’s this same “personal touch” (to say nothing of insightful content) that drew me into Cites & Insights. I commend the last issue (6:11) and issue 6:9 to your attention especially. (This is not because issue 10 is less remarkable, but because it has received more “press” recently.) In this age of polarization, when people are often more concerned with demarcation and difference than with similarity and cooperation, when politicians struggle to distance themselves from their opponents rather than learn from them, and when librarians often either cling to or shun the past rather than carry the best of the past forward and re-mix it into the future, in such an environment of “either/or,” Walt’s call for balance is both timely and appreciated.

The reading hours would have flown by even faster than they did if Pippin (my cat) hadn’t insisted on throwing himself against the porch screens in a vain attempt to join me (an action which, in turn, forced me to keep a screwdriver handy so that I could re-attach the screens to the frame every half-hour or so).

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