just in time for valentine’s day

check this out:

http://consumating.com.

it’s a dating site with a folksonomy. creepy? does it work? dunno, but it seems perfect for librarians. tag away, my friends.

and if anyone knows who librariana is, send her my way.

card games

I’m sure tons of people have been posting about this, but I just think this is too cool. I’m also currently in class, but obviously I have screwy priorities, and I just want to post this before I forget. Superpatron led me to this post from this guy. Virtual catalog cards? That we can write on? Every library that has, ahem, disposed of their card catalogs should jump on this! Also, I haven’t been able to explore Ann Arbor District Library’s site, but I’ve heard good things.

The Professional

Who is a professional? Are librarians professionals? Is Léon a professional?

Personally, I haven’t decided whether librarians are or not, and I mostly don’t care. But wouldn’t you rather be a considered a professional then the reverse? Most people here at the iSchool seem to feel that librarians are not professionals because 1) they don’t have a standard core of knowledge and 2) because we don’t have a governing body. Huh.

Do other people outside of the field consider librarians to be professionals? I guess probably not in the sense that a doctor or a lawyer is a professional. But, hopefully, most librarians (and information specialists/scientists/superheros) act professionally, and maybe that’s what’s important anyway.

This is just came up again in my information ethics class. I think it’s been discussed in the bibliosphere before, although I can’t seem to find any posts about it, but I kind of wonder what other people on the “outside” think. Unfortunately, I don’t have any readers that I’m aware of, so this question will probably just be put to my friends sometime when I’ve drunk enough wine to have intelligent conversation.

but perhaps librarians (I keep wanting to write “we”, but I’m trying not to be clique-y) do have a core of knowledge. After all, there is a OKCupid test! (I’m aspiring, how ’bout you?)

Making lists

Things I’m planning on posting or posting about:

1) Ultimate frisbee pictures
2) Ultimate frisbee news, especially from the Northwest and especially about women
3) Library school/library stuff
4) Cool things I find on the ‘net
5) Future career ideas for the information professional

Things I think are cool, but you probably won’t see here:
1) pictures of food
2) pictures of my cat (it was a one time thing, i swear)
3) crazy Russian cartoons

and so on. stay tuned!

New Year’s re-solutions

solution: eat only free-range meat.
didn’t happen; hello dick’s hamburgers
re-solution: become a vegetarian again (except for sushi; i love sushi)

solution: save money
didn’t happen; i love my ibook!
re-solution: pay off the credit cards (work-study job raise, hurrah!)

solution: go to library school
this one did happen and still is, but my original goals have changed and i’m learning a lot.
re-solution: put some of what i’ve learned and am learning to good use; sharpen my somewhat dull blog skills, volunteer, get some job experience, etc.

happy new year!  and good luck with your own resolutions.

winner

Bouche de Noel

Originally uploaded by UltimateLibrarian.

My youngest sister’s creation. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

About as far from the A-list as you can get…

This is a brand new blog, created because I wanted to see what I could do with wordpress.com. I’m a new blogger in general, started at Blogger a couple months ago (see http://ultimatelibrarian.blogspot.com), and still haven’t decided what I want to do with my blog (either one). It will probably become a livejournal type thing, where it’s mostly my thoughts and opinions and things on the web that I find (through other blogs, del.ic.ious, random searches, whatever) and that I think are cool and hip and fun etcetera etcetera. I don’t know who will read this, probably just friends and family, if that, and one of my more selfish motivators is the “portfolio” that MLIS students at the University of Washington are required to create. One of the 5 experiences we’re supposed to be able to write about is a “significant technological” one. Learning how to blog shall hopefully be mine, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have fun doing it and learn more about HTML, XHTML, and CSS as I go.

A tiny bit about me: I’m working on my MLIS at the University of Washington (in case you missed that above). I play ultimate frisbee, hence my name and the title of the blog. I love it, end of story. This blog will not be limited to my interests in these two areas, but it will probably be weighted towards them (blog about what you love and understand, seems intuitive, and it’s the advice given by smart people out there in the blog world). I’m also pretty young (almost 23…one of those crazies who knew she wanted to become a librarian right after undergrad), so forgive any naïveté and/or immaturity. I was a Russian/Mathematics double major at Grinnell College (loved the school, happy to answer any questions), so those interests might sneak in, too. Oh Russia…Did I mention I’m totally into Russian libraries and their crazy classification system? Well, that’s a future post.

So, the title of my (first! wordpress.com, at least) post was inspired by this one over at LibraryStuff. I don’t know Steven, but this post seems like one of those calls for help and vindication. My comments echo those posted over there, and I can’t articulate myself as well as those lovely ladies did (yes, I already read their blogs and recognized their names), but all this talk about the clique of librarian bloggers is just amusing to me. Um, I may be a future librarian, but last time I checked none of my friends are, and I’m constantly sending them links (sadly, none of them have really discovered blogs and aggregators for themselves, despite being cool Seattlites, but I’m working on it) to all of ya’ll’s posts. It’s a tiny step, but, hate to break it to ya, your stuff is getting out there. And as an otherwise outside observer, it looks like outside stuff is getting in. Steven’s not the only one blogging about new Web2.0 toys (although, as an avid reader of Go Flock Yourself, I think that’s all overrated anyway), and there are loads of “librarian” blogs that I go to for news, links for other good blogs outside of the “biblioblogosphere”, and to get a smile (how many non-librarian readers go to The Well-Dressed Librarian? I’d say more then a few; it appeals to other interest groups). Maybe I don’t understand exactly what this “clique” is and what Steven means by it, but I really don’t see it. The whole blog community clique is the bigger worry for me. Worry about who reads your blog and who reads whose blog and then links to them and then maybe recognizes them at a conference, but I’m going to worry about those who aren’t reading blogs, who may also be librarians who could learn a lot about what’s going on in their field, or may not be librarians who don’t even realize that Web2.0 exists (whether it does or not is a question I’m really not interested in, but you know what I mean). Just for example. So get off your soapbox, do something, and don’t post things that make you look egotistical and lonely.

So that’s my first post. Now I get to give it categories! It’s the little things, people.

Happy Holidays.