Library Gazette

Several folks have asked me for a report on my trip to Austin, so here goes.Last

week, I enjoyed Mimi’s belated gift for my 40^th birthday-I spent four days and nights at the South By Southwest Music Festival with my brother and a couple of old friends.South By Southwest (abbreviated SXSW) is an enormous event, it includes a music conference (which I didn’t attend), and has spawned precursor conferences/festivals for film and technology.But the music festival remains the big one.

The local news in Austin said that there were about 2,000 bands at the festival, but I actually think that’s a bit of a low-ball estimate.There are about 80 official venues for the festival, each hosting 5 or 6 acts per night for four nights, and that doesn’t even include the unofficial day parties, and the Austin venues that are unaffiliated with the festival that host live music. With live music available at about a hundred places simultaneously, going to SXSW requires a lot of pre-planning, and studying schedules available on the web to come up with a plan of attack.And even then, you have to be pretty flexible, and resign yourself to missing acts you might want to see.Cell phones and texting are also absolutely vital to coordinate with other people, as it makes it possible to split up and re-unite later.

While in Austin, I’d start my day watching bands by about 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and would go till 2 in the morning.I saw 51 acts over the four days.Most of the acts I saw for about 30 or 40 minutes, but it ranged from as little as a song or two to around an hour.The diversity of venues was amazing.I saw bands indoors, outdoors, in bars, in night clubs, in restaurants, on patios, under tents, on a roof, at a pizza parlor, at a barbecue joint, in a fancy hotel bar, in a convention center, in a Presbyterian church, and even in the lobby of a Hilton.The styles of music I heard included country rock, singer-songwriters, blues rock, modern Appalachian folk, psychedelic, punk, post-punk, twee pop, noise rock, dance music, art rock, power pop, garage rock, glitter rock and Detroit rock (Lynn and Mary Beth may be surprised to hear that there is an influential sub-genre of punk rock named after their home town, that doesn’t necessarily have to do with being from Michigan).

If pressed, I guess I’d say the best band I saw was the Hold Steady.The funniest band name I heard was We Were Promised Jetpacks, and the funniest song title I heard — well, I actually probably shouldn’t repeat it in a public forum, but ask me privately if you’re interested.Some of the acts I saw whose names some of you might possibly recognize were the Decemberists, Camera Obscura, Grant Hart, the Avett Brothers, the Heartless Bastards, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, Frank Turner, Bishop Allen, the Sonics, Radio 4, Lisa Hannigan, the New York Dolls, Laura Marling, Echo & the Bunnymen, and the Duke Spirit (who Carol should like just based on the name alone).Needless to say, I had a great time.

It occured to me that with the passing of spring break we’ve crossed the halfway point with our Teaching Teaching class! For those who are interested in what we’ve been doing, you can read up on it with our blog. If you’re interested in coming, feel free to drop in any Friday at 9:00 in 476. You can attend as many or as few as you’d like, and we try to make it relevant to everyone, even if they’ve missed prior classes.

Here’s some of what we’ve covered:

Let Roz or me know if you have any questions!

Person Recognized

Patrick Ferrell

Given By

Mary Beth

Reason

Patrick, along with his students, moved a mountain of pieces of shelving from the Gov Docs area into a vacant office to help create a more pleasant and safer area to study. Thanks, Patrick!

Person Recognized

Scott Adair

Given By

Linda Early

Reason

Scott is always willing to take on new challenges as he has done with getting the new fax in Resource Services up and running.

Person Recognized

Erik Mitchell

Given By

Giz Womack

Reason

On two different occasions and for two different reasons printing crashed while I was working the Reference Desk. Both times I called Erik on his cell and was able to resolve the issue in a timely manner thanks to his speedy troubleshooting of the issues!

Person Recognized

Kevin Gilbertson

Given By

Linda Early

Reason

Kevin even works off-site when he is at a conference. He remotely solved my EOCR import problem in Feb. Thanks Kevin!!!

Person Recognized

Mary Scanlon

Given By

Elise Anderson

Reason

Mary has repeatedly helped me with selecting environmental studies materials that focus on sustainable development, green businesses, and eco-design.

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for rescuing me when my clicker slides were seemingly failing on me 5 minutes before my LIB100 class.

Person Recognized

Craig

Given By

Lauren

Reason

Thanks to Craig for teaching our LIB100 students about displays and helping our students out with their projects!

Person Recognized

Susan Erik Tim

Given By

Lynn Sutton

Reason

For keeping the library open all night on the snow day. They worked a 21 hour shift!

Person Recognized

Kaeley

Given By

Lauren P.

Reason

Thanks for helping me with the technical aspects of ordering!

Person Recognized

Lauren Pressley

Given By

Kaeley Mcmahan

Reason

A big thanks to Lauren for helping me set up filters in my email! I am so organized now!

Person Recognized

Patrick Ferrell Dedicated Deacon Winner

Given By

Mary Reeves

Reason

Thank you for all your successes with "Search" requests for Course Reserves.

Person Recognized

Susan Smith

Given By

Anonymous

Reason

Thank you Susan for canceling your meeting March 20th for a University Function. Renate

Person Recognized

Craig Fansler

Given By

Bobbie L. Collins

Reason

Craig assisted me in locating an archival box to house my books for the peer review process. He also created a great label for the box. Many thanks, Craig.

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Cristina

Reason

Giz came just in time to help set up the conference phone for an ILL software demo. Thanks. Cristina

Person Recognized

Renate Evans

Given By

Cristina

Reason

I came out of a meeting after 5 last Friday and realized I forgot my keys. I was very happy to see Renate still hanging around. She was very helpful and patient. Thanks, Renate. Cristina

Person Recognized

Mary Beth Lock

Given By

Cristina

Reason

Thank you, Mary Beth for driving to the LAUNC-CH conference in Chapel Hill on Monday, March 9. Cristina

Person Recognized

Renate Evams

Given By

Bobbie L. Collins

Reason

Renate took the leadership in finding out where buses can park on campus when high school groups come to visit. Thanks, Renate. You are great!!

Person Recognized

Lauren Pressley

Given By

Kaeley, Leslie, Sharon, And Ellen

Reason

Thanks so much to Lauren for taking time to show us how to do screenshots and edit them in adobe for our poster presentation! It was greatly appreciated!

Sorry all! I was demoing embedded videos for a podcasting class and accidentally used this blog instead of my normal demonstration site. Too many blogs, I guess! Heather emailed me about the 404 error and reminded me that we had a Wednesday with TED lunch yesterday, and hadn’t posted about it, so I’ll do that to make up for the blank post earlier today.

We started this informally last week, and it was so much fun, we did it again! In case you didn’t see it (from the post): TED Talks are great. The Technology Education and Design conference occurs every year. This invite-only conference brings in world leaders in various areas, and gives them 18 minutes to present. 18 minutes is about perfect. It’s long enough that they can cover content with depth and content, but short enough that they don’t drag on and you can make time to watch them. Most speakers, as world leaders, tend to be very effective presenters as well. You can see talks on the TED website. Kevin and I like them, and we both have learned a lot from them. However, as you know, it’s hard to find 18 minutes most of the time….

Yesterday Kaeley, Mary Beth, Heather, Craig, Kevin, and I watched two. Here’s the (now more formal) idea:

1. Reliably have a TED Talk video play each Wednesday lunchtime starting at noon and ending by 1:00.
2. Let people know that they’re welcome to come by. (Please come by!)
3. Watch TED Talk (we picked the first one, and folks voted on yesterday’s).
4. Chat about possible applications for the library.

Good stuff! Here’s what it was like yesterday:

We watched 2 shorter ones. The first was Pattie Maes on the sixth sense:

And the second was Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data

Good future-of-libraries/information stuff! And now we know that as library professionals we need to know more about linked data (look for something on this in the near future)! And it was a very fun time… I’m looking forward to next week’s. If you’re interested, put it on your calendar and just come up to the room outside Kevin’s and my office at noon on Wednesday. We’ll be voting on the next one to watch then!

ZSR Team 2 vs. Provost’s Office

Last night the two ZSR teams went 4-0 in their matches in the faculty/staff QuizBowl tournament! The teams were: ZSR I (Giz, Mary Beth, Heather, Roz) and ZSR II (Beth, Lauren C., Chris and Carol). In their first match, ZSR II went up against a formidable Provost’s team consisting of the Provost, Rick Matthews, Jacque Fetrow and Kline Harrison (nothing like playing your boss in the first round). They shined through and answered amazing questions seemingly without thinking. Their second match was against a mixed team of Political Science, Biology, Math and Communication faculty. Again - they amazed us all! With amazing answers like ‘Borneo’ and ‘Tobit’ ZSR II stormed through the rounds and lived to play again on Monday.

ZSR Team 1 vs. Computer Science

ZSR I then took their seats against a Computer Science team and the match was much closer. A bonus set of questions all on computer coding terms didn’t help us much. But we were tied going into the last question which began ‘Portia disguises herself as a judge…’ and I rang in to answer “Merchant of Venice.” Once again, Shakespeare saves the day! We got the bonus questions, too and moved on to face a team from Campus Ministry. I have to say they were some of the funniest people in the world and we had a blast playing against them. We came out on top again, and now the great irony is that ZSR I will face ZSR II in a match at 6pm Monday night in DeTamble Auditorium in Tribble Hall. If the loser of that game then wins its next match, we’ll face each other in the final game on Wednesday night! The winner of that game will go up against the winning student team for fun (if you call getting your tail kicked fun!)

It was a fun time and we loved hearing from the other teams how much they dreaded playing the librarians! We found that funny because we were saying the same thing about the faculty. Just goes to show that a broad knowledge base, lots of reading, NPR listening and a good sense of curiosity really pays off when it counts!

Hope you will come out and see us play!

A few weeks ago the local office of the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure issued an invitation to all breast cancer survivors in the area to go to a Twin City Cyclones hockey game for free. Two tickets per person were given for “Pink in the Rink” where the Cyclones all wore bright pink jerseys!! All survivors and their guests were seated in one section.

My pal Annie and I went, my first and her second ice hockey opportunity. Bundled for the cold, we watched the Cyclones lose to the Columbus Blue Jackets but we had a blast - - a cold one for sure! At one of the “intermissions,” a red carpet was rolled onto the ice and all survivors and their guests were called on to the carpet, with our names called out one- by- one on the loud speakers. It was tremendous to see rows of survivors in pink walking out onto that ice.I was so happy to join so many women who had survived the disease - -some for 2 years, some for many more, and me for 7 years!

TED Talks are great. The Technology Education and Design conference occurs every year. This invite-only conference brings in world leaders in various areas, and gives them 18 minutes to present. 18 minutes is about perfect. It’s long enough that they can cover content with depth and content, but short enough that they don’t drag on and you can make time to watch them. Most speakers, as world leaders, tend to be very effective presenters as well. You can see talks on the TED website.

Kevin and I like them, and we both have learned a lot from them. However, as you know, it’s hard to find 18 minutes most of the time. So yesterday, during lunch in the space outside of our offices, we watched a TED talk with Craig, Erik, and Kaeley and then followed up with some casual conversation about how some of the ideas might apply to the library.

We watched Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) talk about spaghetti sauce. His talk focused on a study of people’s spaghetti sauce preference, and how instead of there being one best average sauce, there were people that clustered along different types. Further, many people didn’t say that their favorite was their favorite. One of his examples was that nearly everyone says they like a dark, rich cup of coffee, but really, less than 1/3 of people do. More people prefer a weak, milky cup of coffee:

Our conversations focused on what “clusters” our users might belong to, and that they might not necessarily shake out by the traditional student/faculty/staff/community member lines we typically draw. We talked about different data that we already collect that might be useful, and how information about clustering could inform our services.

If this sounds interesting to you, bring a bag lunch next Wednesday, and we’ll watch another!