day two hundred forty-nine.

on friday afternoon, i visited the convervation lab's open house:

annie, sewin'

(intake)

photographs in need of de-curvafication

(a familiar poster)

we made little books!

worms just want to read too.

today i had a really nice experience volunteering at the library, accented by the purchase of apples and lovely weather on the way home.
now i'm working on spanish homework, eating my co-op cookie, and listening to my neighbors fight in the yard (one of them just yelled at a dog too?). ah, open windows.



(the heart of autumn is on its way)

day two hundred thirty-two.

the fridge in the GSLIS basement

sending emails, eating granola, organizing. all night long.

day two hundred twenty-eight.

at gslis

law-abiding printer

our bathrooms are dramatic.


and out in the world:

mmmm, sandy

in chicagoland for the daytime hours, as there is an engagement to celebrate, food to eat, and family to see.

day two hundred twenty-seven.

happy dance friday from the bowels of the GSLIS building.

thus far, i recruited new students at orientation to be volunteers at the library and drank free diet coca-cola.
it was refreshing to see everyone so excited about the start of the semester.
friends, pridefest, and more free wi-fi to come...

day two hundred twenty-five.

my drive back to champaign involved listening to coverage of the blagojevich verdict and reading miranda july.

after a trip to the grocery store and light dinner, friend jamie picked me up for my reintroduction into high society.

tabletop at the pig.


i needed french fries and the fellas played pool.
we listened to david bowie and elvis costello on the jukebox.


this morning i performed errands and got CDs at the library

sunny quad

espresso royale at the undergrad, for lunch and a reunion with the newly bespectacled emma

time to organize my books!

day one hundred seventy-five.

ALA: day three

(sunday)

hello, seth meyers.

i had a, let's say, low impact sunday at the conference.
i showed up after lunch and took a break to go to the grocery store.

but i did make it my business to go see this man:

enigmatologist and nyt crossword editor, the legendary will shortz.

he split the room into two teams to play puzzle games with plays on presidential names, american cities, and tom swifties: fiction v. non-fiction (fiction won)

he revealed that the youngest submitter to have a puzzle published is only 14, and the oldest 95 (and creating puzzles since 1955!).

he also said that sometimes when editing, he changes things just because they "aren't important enough for you to know" rather than inaccurate, like that UCLA was jim morrison's alma mater.


a few examples from the cities game:

1. The Playboy Club is putting out a movie with an ___________ cast.


2. Of all the fruits grown in Asia, residents of Bombay think the ___________ the best.


and from the Tom Swifty game:

3. "Get rid of all the conservative party in England," Tom said _________.


(leave a correct and non-cheating answer in the comments and i will send you a postcard!)

after my grocery field trip, i loitered for a while with GSLISers whitney and katherine

this happened:

then we were off to the GSLIS alumni reception at the renaissance hotel down the street

swanky.

post-reception, dairy-free chocolate noir sorbet from pitango, which tasted like the best chocolate ice cream you could imagine eating on a humid summer sidewalk in chinatown surrounded by transplanted illinoisans (as in, delicious)

day one hundred seventy-four.

ALA: day two
(saturday)

"my job is holding the bowl."

vegan cooking demonstration, with black bean salad eating and free cookbooks at the end.

i heard a librarian whisper, "i could never eat at outback again!"

cookie marketing!

chilling with sir salman rushdie.
he is such a natural speaker; even his tangents have smooth transitions.
we enjoyed hearing about the many ways j.m. barrie looked nothing like johnny depp.

librarians are obsessed with twitter.
people were tweeting about seeing their tweets on the giant tweet screen
(tweet)

madam toni morrison, our speaker for the evening.
i was sitting with GSLISers whitney and aaisha and we have a (quiet) cheer when she name checked the u of i and its massive collection.

we had thai food in chinatown afterwards, and whitney and i walked around for a bit

we had dessert on the brain.

conference shoulder looking less debilitating

off to day three!

day one hundred seventy-three.

ALA: night one
(friday)

jamie surveys the tote bag damage

this is the line to exit the exhibits (aka, swag carnival)
i was scolded by a security guard for taking a picture, and a man coming off the escalator near-shouted, "WHY? this is crazy, she should take a picture!"

jamie and i ran into GSLIS friend yasmeen on the way out, so the three of us, along with interns scott and jeremy, dropped heavy bags off at yasmeen's hotel and walked to dupont circle for dinner.

we ran into more GSLIS folks on the street (we are magnetic, i am telling you)

le pain quotidien, quinoa party
(home to this equally delicious former meal)
at that point, exhaustion was settling in on all sides.

the following number of books (22) were spread out in 2 bags that i somehow got home on the metro.

i am most excited for nicole krauss' new title, having read and loved her previous novels.

i also got a copy of mary roach's forthcoming book about space/astronauts and so far it is filled with her usual hefty combination of hilarity and fascination.

there was a price for all of this complimentary literature (nothing comes free):

i have developed a case of what jamie calls "conference shoulder"
(i reverted back to most of my usual pale overnight)

today was packed with friends, $3 diet coke, authors, and good food aplenty, but more on that later. my body is rebelling against remaining upright at this time.

day one hundred twenty-four.

we talk frequently in class about the usefulness of tagging systems. some libraries choose to have them integrated into their catalogs, to allow users to tag items with keywords, making searching even easier. like librarything, it then provides tag clouds for browsing.

there is a lot of value in this sort of user-supported system: it gets people interacting with their material and it provides extra points of access in natural language- library of congress subject headings are often not as specific as one wants, or use very formal terms that don't get at the thing's "aboutness" (boom, library school vocab).

however, sometimes the usefulness of tags are overshadowed by their humor and/or the fact that only one person is inputting them.
remember this post?
well, we're here today for round two.

hulu.com: a second love affair with tags

first, tags can be used to differentiate between alternate trailers for the same movie:





it can be just as important to assert what a movie is not about:



expectations of nudity can be clarified, to diminish disappointment in films featuring "sex" as a title word:



remember, spelling only counts if you liked it:



structured subject headings really don't allow anyone to convey their feelings about turtles:



and sometimes, an expression of a movie's content is much less important than how terrible it is:

day thirty.

today i attended my first professional conference. there was swag, and hot tea.

i could go tomorrow too, but i think i'll get caught up on homework. i start my new job on monday, so productivity is a must!

tonight i'm having a fancy lady dinner (and it's thai food, to boot), followed by making valentines. snow, don't stop me now.

day seven.

the first library science classroom at the u of i, circa 1900.
boy that's a lot of hair pins.

via gslis website