Little Things Here and There

School starts back today and I'm feeling the same thing I always do; a little sad that summer is ending and real work has to begin, but excited about all the things the fall brings, new classes, meeting new people, and of course football season. This semester I'm also feeling a little nostalgic because it's my last semester of school. (That is if I don't get my Ph.D. or a second masters.) I've been in school for 18 years straight and I'm not entirely certain what to do without it. It's one of the most constant things in my life. But maybe it's time to move on and grow up.

I haven't been blogging regularly because there hasn't been all that much going on, but I did come across two interesting postings on other blogs that I wanted to share.

I follow Library Journal on Twitter to stay up-to-date on library news and I came across this interesting article on the importance of academic libraries. Several quotes really stood out to me.

Talking about students' use of the library, "They may not want to be there, they may not have any real curiosity about the topic they are researching, but the library is a gateway to the kinds of sources they need, and for at least some students the librarians are "saviors" who help them take an assignment and locate sources that will match."

"...libraries embody principles that go beyond collections and beyond local needs. We stand for the importance of knowledge: not just information, but what we do with information. We stand for access: not just getting stuff conveniently, but making sure that information isn't censored or suppressed or distributed selectively so that only the elite have it."

"We stand for the individual's right to ask their own questions, no matter how dangerous or disruptive they may seem. And we stand for the idea that pursuing questions is a valuable human endeavor...Fortunately for academic libraries, they tend to be entirely consistent with the academic enterprise and its core beliefs."

These quotes really stuck out to me and helped remind me that academic libraries do matter. It's not just the books that are important, or our digital collections, or even the new coffee shop and "meeting area" that matter; it's the students and their ability to find and access the information they need. We are not here to judge or to question, but to provide information to enhance the learning opportunities of students enrolled in higher education. I'm glad to see that there are librarians out there who remember their students and just how important they are to the library and how important the library is to the students.

I've talked a good deal about Twitter, but I've never really discussed it as a type of mini-blog. It seems that plenty of librarians are using Twitter not just to give news bites but to share valuable information to other librarians. This article lists the 100 Best Twitter Feeds for Librarians of the Future. If you use Twitter, check out some of these librarians. Also listed are job listings, library news, and librarian resources, all good sources for the library student or the librarian looking to stay connected in today's rapidly changing digital world.

Do you have any library news you would like to see featured? Leave me a comment or send me an email!

More About Social Networking

I know I talk about social networking all the time, but it's literally everywhere I turn. More and more people are turning to Twitter for news, Facebook for weekend plans, and blogs for commentary that used to only be available in the newspaper. I spend a huge chunk of my first hour at work checking all of my social networking sites and catching up on my blogs that I subscribe to in my Google Reader. The more I use these new types of media, the more comfortable I am with the idea of sharing personal details and I find that I am actually more aware of what is going on around me. For example, I follow CNN on Twitter. CNN is always on in the reading room for those who like to stay abreast of current events; however, the past few days the only thing that has been reported in any kind of substantial form is healthcare reform. I'm just as interested in healthcare reform as the next person, but if I hadn't checked my Twitter this morning, I wouldn't have known that a plane is missing, that Michael Schumacher isn't going to return to Formula 1 racing (yes I care, don't judge me), or that Eunice Kenndey Shriver died. I enjoying being able to find out all of these things very quickly without turning on the t.v. or going to their webpage. Without blogs I would have missed an entire trend of frugality that is going on around me. If I didn't read The Frugal Girl or The Non-Consumer Advocate every day, I would probably be wasting money on using the dryer and would not have started making my own bread. By browsing blogs that I find interesting I'm learning how many people out there have similar interests and I'm able to connect with them on a whole other level.

It's really fun, keeping up with all this new stuff. I've found that it's become a huge part of my life and when I can't check facebook or read my blogs, I feel deprived! Do you think social networking and this new media outlet is good for society?

How Well Read Are You?

In 2003 the BBC went in search of Britain's best loved novel. They later released a statement saying that the average person has only read about 6 of the 100 books on the list. I was tagged in a note on facebook about this and instead of responding there I decided to respond here. I have listed the books and put an "x" by the ones I have read. So how well-read am I?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (do parts count?)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 1984 - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Total: 6
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 3
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 4
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 5
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 1
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 2
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zol
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Total: 2
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 4
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X
Total: 5

Grand Total: 35/100

I guess that's not too terrible. At least I'm better than the average person! This list seems a little odd to me though; why count the Complete Works of Shakespeare as one entry, but then later list Hamlet? Why are the Harry Potter books counted as one book, but Jane Austen's works aren't? Same with the Chronicles of Narnia. Although a good number of these books are considered classics, and I read a good number of them in school, I'm not sure that one should base how well read he or she is based on this list. This would be, however, a great place to start if you are looking to read more or branch out into a different genre.

How did you do?

Social Networking Continued

I have to admit, I've been thinking a lot about social networking over the past few days. Two news events have continued this interest and my thoughts on the consequences of social networking, Jon and Kate Gosslin's divorce announcement and the continuing election crisis in Iran. For those of you who don't watch TLC (or the news) Jon and Kate Gosslin are the parents of 8 children, a set of twin girls and a set of sextuplets. They have their own show, Jon and Kate Plus 8, on TLC. Over the past few months they have been making headlines because of their marriage problems and on Monday, the announced they are divorcing. This doesn't have a whole lot to do with social networking, but has to do with what social networking causes, an excess of information and the need to share excessively. The paparazzi have been clamoring for news concerning the Gosslins, and as it always is, the more pictures, the more stories, the more speculation grows. I'm not saying this couple is divorcing because of the press and society's zest to know their intimate private details. A good marriage could survive something like this and it should only bring their family closer. However, a marriage that was already struggling (and it appears theirs was) could easily be broken when faced with this oppressive demand for information. So what can be learned from Jon and Kate? Stay out of other people's business; why should it be news that yet another couple is divorcing? Over 50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, so this marriage-in-crisis should not be news. Leave this family alone to heal.

The other story that has peaked my interest has a little bit more to do with social networking rather than the excessive need for private information. Every since Iran held its elections and launched a world-wide protest against the oppressive regime, social networking has been away for Iranian citizens to communicate with the world. They've had to, with journalists being barred from the country, social networking sites like Twitter and YouTube have been the only way for people to get the news of what was really happening out there. Without social networking, there is a really good chance that we would know nothing about what was going on. We wouldn't have the dramatic pictures of silent protests and people being beaten in the streets. These are powerful images and have prompted global leaders to speak out in defense of justice. Without social networking, this never could have happened.

So where does this leave us? Social networking has taken society by storm and has launched some excellent tools, but it has also conditioned us to not respect people's privacy in our thirst for information. Lessons can be learned from all of this. Use social networking; connect with friends and family, keep up with the news, etc. But also know when enough is enough.

Is Social Networking All That We Think It Is?

Today, while driving to work, I was listening to Ryan Seacrest's radio show. Usually, I change the channel if no music is playing, but what he was talking about caught my attention. He mentioned that Perez Hilton (a celebrity blogger for all of you who live under a rock) is claiming that will.i.am of the Black Eye Peas assaulted him outside of a club. He claimed this is a Twitter post. Will.i.am, who had already shared his version on his social networking site DipDive, issued another video post responding to Hilton's allegations. (For more info on this story check out Rolling Stone's article).

I rarely pay very much attention to the goings on of celebrities and their drama-filled lives, because, frankly, there are a whole host of things I'd rather be doing. But I found this very interesting, not for the subject matter, but because of the way it was communicated through social networking. We love to talk about how great social networking is, how it lets us connect with people we rarely see and share our lives with the world. Some of it is really great. I love staying in touch with old friends and my family who don't live close by via Facebook. I use Twitter for myself, not because I want a lot of followers and become pseudo-famous. I blog for class, but also because it's a good outlet. Again, I really don't care how many people read this; this is something I do for me, sort of like journaling, but not so personal.

But social networking is getting out of control. So much information is being shared 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and most of it is superfluous. I could really care less about what you had for dinner or whose birthday party you got drunk at and then posted a bunch of pictures. I also don't need to know that you had some sort of altercation at a club with another person. For centuries, we have survived without knowing all these insignificant details about how other people live. Now suddenly, the world has access to everything. Nothing is private anymore, and what's worse is people seem to enjoy sharing personal details with the world. So I'm giving you something to ponder. Knowing that we can survive just fine without the knowledge that two minor celebrities had an argument, is it really necessary to share this sort of information with the world? How necessary is social networking, really? What kind of consequences will this excessive need to know and share have on society?