I’m hanging out in Bryn Mawr’s library waiting to see a panel discussion on "New Frontiers in Cartooning and Graphic Novels". On the roster of speakers: Jessica Abel (a fellow U of Chicago alum, though I don’t think we ever met), Gabrielle Bell, Lauren Weinstein, and my favorite cartoonist of all time, Alison Bechdel. I’m […]
I’ve wondered before about how one might measure the spread of memes across blogland, and now Scott Eric Kaufman is doing exactly that in preparation for a panel on academic blogging at the MLA. Here’s the post explaining his project in full; here’s the basic explanation: Most memes, I’d wager, are only superficially organic: beginning […]
… is one of these reading chairs with built-in bookshelves. (Via Librarian Avengers.) Just kidding. I don’t actually have space for a big armchair (or even the narrower rocking chair) in my current apartment. A girl can always dream, though, can’t she?
I was at the reference desk this afternoon when I heard one student say to another, "Oh no, did you hear? Robert Altman just died." Then one of my colleagues stopped by the desk and asked if I’d heard. We both said words to the effect of "He’s one of my favorite directors ever." I […]
For my Information Resources and Services class, our final project is an annotated bibliography of research into the information-seeking behavior of a particular group. My initial idea was to choose voters as the group I’d research; I figured that, since information about candidates and ballot initiatives comes from such a variety of sources, and since […]
And, while I’m on a roll: Happy Children’s Books Week! I read so many books as a kid that it’s sometimes hard to remember which ones I liked best. But my favorite author was Joan Aiken, who wrote a whole series of novels set in a kind of alternate-history England in the 18th century. Years […]
My second systems analysis project is done, and now I have a bit of breathing space (next week, thanks to Thanksgiving, is a no-classes week). So here, a bit belatedly, are my notes from the ACRL-DVC Future of the Catalog conference on the 3rd. Thom Hickey, OCLC: OCLC and the Future of the Catalog I […]
I saw the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s production of Rossini’s Cinderella (or La Cenerentola if you use the Italian version of the title) with a friend last Friday, and she remarked, as we descended from the terrifying heights of the Amphitheatre level at the Academy of Music,* that she hadn’t seen anything as inventive at […]
Wow. Google is now letting people make their own search engines. Just a few days ago I was trying unsuccessfully to find a specialized search engine only for opera companies and performers and performances; now I can make my own. I wonder if I can get extra credit for my Information Resources and Services class […]
I wish I had a dramatic election-day story, but mine was pretty anticlimactic: I went to my local polling place at 7:15 in the morning. There was already a line, but the poll workers said it had been longer at 7, when the doors opened. I cast my vote, jumped on the bus to Suburban […]