Okkervil River are in your backyard, maybe.
Well… heat wave…. enough said. At least work has AC. So I’m happy to be here and cool in my cubicle. Here’s what has been in my ears this week.
Cults (easily a front runner for my Album of Summer 2011)
Okkervil River (an exciting return)
Phoenix (Album of Summer 2009)
Have a great weekend. Try and stay cool. (Hints: Visit your public library! Or get thee to the beach!)
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: giver of cuts or promises of cuts or promises of cuts then paying more.
The Toronto Public Library (Canada’s largest library system) has recently been threatened with cuts. Having already seen one branch take a hit, the city’s library workers and supporters are taking a hard line. In brash awesomeness, they’ve issued a warning to city councillors looking to wield a heavy knife.
The Toronto Public Library Workers Union has a message for city councillors: If you want to keep your seat, support your local libraries.
Results of a survey commissioned by the union and released Wednesday found that half of Toronto residents said it would affect their vote “a great deal” if they knew a candidate had supported closing a library branch.
The survey sends “very clear” message, union president Maureen O’Reilly said. Of more than 1,000 respondents, about three-quarters said they disagreed with closing branches to save money. The library board recently approved a $184 million budget that led to a decision to close the Metro Hall branch. “We have no reason to believe this trend won’t continue,” O’Reilly said, adding that shutting branches adversely affects seniors and kids.[source]
The numbers seem to be in the TPL’s favour:
This message emerges from a Forum Research poll conducted on July 4, 2011 which found that three-quarters of Toronto residents disagree with the idea of closing local library branches as a way of solving the city’s deficit (74%), and more than one half disagree “strongly” (54%). When it is their own local branch which is threatened, the proportion of those who “strongly disagree” increases to two-thirds (64%).
Not only are library branch closures off the table as far as Toronto residents are concerned, more than half disagree with privatizing the delivery of any city services (55%), and more than one third disagree “strongly” (38%). When the Toronto Public Library is mentioned as a privatization target, seven-in-ten Torontonians disagree (71%), more than one half “strongly” (55%).[source]
Hopefully, this sort of information will make the budget hounds think twice.
Torontonians can take action by contacting their city councillors and/or by signing the online petition.
Lousie Burns is of the forest.
Friday’s here! My workday soundtrack has been filled with a couple epic moments. For instance, my geeky prog-punk-metal heart as obliged me to attempt Coheed and Cambria’s space epic, which I didn’t not get all the way through (… it’s like 5 albums! And really cheesy…). Here are a few of my less serialized (maybe less epic) pics form this week.
Louise Burns(a great new find via the Polaris Long List.)
Have a great weekend, everyone!
The Globe and Mail had an article yesterday about the Canadian Federal Government upgrading the “Working in Canada” website to “let Canadians know what jobs will be required in the long term so students who are planning their education can look ahead and plan their careers.”
The good database-friendly librarian that I am, I went to take it for a test spin using an obvious keyword. Here is the result for “librarian“:
Librarians (NOC 5111-A)
Librarians select, develop, organize and maintain library collections and provide advisory services for users. They are employed in libraries or in a department within a library.
Included job titles: bibliographer, cataloguer – library, cybrarian, librarian, library consultant, library
supervisor.
There is related result for library managers, too. It is possible to think that this description is a little lacking. To be fair the description of essential skills is not too bad, but it’s a little sterile in my opinion. As a Data-fixer, the closest (non-librarian) job description is Database Analysts and Data Administrators. Right now, I’d say I’m somewhere between librarian and that.
This has me thinking about how I describe what I do to people I meet and potential employees.
What librarians do is important and relevant, but there is a sense that the name is still left in the dusty book shelves of old preconceptions. And, the job description the Feds are using doesn’t look like it’ll help break down those stereotypes. Moreover, for people looking to sell themselves to employers or for employers looking to find people that can do what LIS people do, it’s really not that helpful.
There is something to the “Librarian” brand that we can and do capitalize on. I’ve watched the on-going dialogue about the librarian term and new terms that are creeping into our job titles. I am totally fine with this.
If you think about it, I could just as well be a “Database Analyst”, but I prefer “Librarian.” This is perhaps because it signifies something greater, perhaps a commitment to values or a connection to a tradition of practice. Other job titles just don’t seem to carry the same weight.
Hey Rossetta, eat up.
Canada Day is tomorrow, so my week is ending a day early (whereas our American neighbours are starting their next week a little late.). I’m going to do the predictable thing and be “all Canadian”, which would be a thing if I wasn’t sort of mostly Canadian in these posts already. Anyways, here are some “all Canadian” songs that I liked and listened to this week.
Hey Rosetta
Have a great long weekend (at some point, wherever you are)! Oh, Canada.
From the Guardian UK:
They are a long way from the iconic pop art for which he is best known but a set of illustrations for a children’s book series by Andy Warhol are set to go up for auction in New York next month.
Warhol’s pictures illustrate the story of the little red hen, a folk tale about the value of team work, and show a perky little red hen happily sowing her grains of wheat, as a lazy cat, mouse and dog – who is reading the paper – look on. They were drawn by Warhol early in his career, between 1957 and 1959, for the Doubleday Book Club’s popular series Best in Children’s Books.
The Warhol illustrations will be auctioned on 9 December as part of Bloomsbury Auctions’s sale of 365 original illustrations and books, alongside a host of pictures and letters from 19th-century fairytale illustrator Arthur Rackham, a privately printed edition of Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester, rare Oz books by L Frank Baum and the artistic estate of award-winning African American children’s illustrator Tom Feelings.[source]
Cool, right? I love when artists chip in for children’s lit., even if it’s just for the cover. Anyways, here’s some info on the A. Warhol kid’s book opus.
Also, I’m jealous and want to break my watercolours out!
The database I work with was down for a bit this morning, so I had little bit of time to peruse the ALA’s new Confronting the Future: Strategic Visions for the 21st Century Public Library.
I am intrigued by their notion of the Four Dimensions (see the illustration above). Besides being awesomely impossible to graph on a 2D chart, it’s a decent representation of the winds driving library evolution right now.
It’s also about strategic decision making. There is a certain amount of push-and-pull embedded in the 4D concept. A move on one spectrum will impact a library’s a place on one of the others. Can a “Creation” driven library also function well with an “Archive” and “Individual” focus?
The suggestion being: public libraries must choose what they want to be good at, since they cannot be good at everything. Read the rest of this entry »
Again! A week done! Personally, I have my fingers crossed for some sun and some ribs! But right now, it means Library Sound Track day. This week, I have for you a couple new Canadian finds and a slightly older, more New Jerseyier fav.
Have a great weekend!
We tend to see social media companies as perpetually growing, people getting machines. But, this isn’t really case. In actuality they’re something a little more tidal. For instance, in Canada there seems to be a plateau for Facebook users.
From the Toronto Star
The head of Facebook Canada believes there’s still plenty of room for the social networking giant to grow north of the border, but some new numbers suggest that may not be the case.
A report from Inside Facebook, which tracks usage and trends on Facebook, suggests the website is nearing another big user milestone, and is just 13 million users shy of hitting 700 million monthly active users.
But the report also says it’s growth outside of North America that’s fuelling the latest surge of Facebook use.
The number of Canadians using Facebook has recently dropped by about 1.52 million to 16.6 million, according to Inside Facebook.
The number of active Canadian Facebook users has fluctuated in the 16- to 18-million range over the past year, the report notes.
Canada’s numbers reflect a global trend suggesting that the number of Facebook users in a country seems to plateau when 50 per cent of the population is signed up.[source]
Despite Facebook’s perceived ubiquity, it seems like achieving a 100% user rate has to be damned near impossible. Google has come pretty close, but that’s after years of marketing and carving out its turf among a smaller batch of competitors.
There is some thought that social media is primed to peak over the next few years – there is a finite number of users after all. And, there is a lot of competition from rising stars, fading giants, and other stable fiefdoms. If Canada’s Facebook plateau is an indicator, after meteoric growth, sowing up a market is going to be a tough slog for companies seeking universal power over our free time.
