Generations

I'm a mother now.

The fact that I have a daughter keeps surprising me. Seeing the start of a new generation in my family has also made me reflect on the generations that have gone before me and what legacies they have left. And that makes me wonder what I will leave for the generations that come after me.

I worry sometimes that I am like the servant who burried his tallent in Jesus' parable and was reprimanded when his master returned. So many people have poured tremendous amounts of energy, education, guidence, and love into my life and yet I don't have much to show for it. I occationally help my husband prepare questions to lead a small group bible study. I work at an entry level position in a library. And now I am caring for my daughter. I pray that the many ways my family, friends, and teachers have blessed my life will now bless my daughter's life through me.

"To my great-great-great-granddaughter, live in peace." - Sara Groves in her song "Generations."

Books left the building long ago

I'm trying to overcome a ridiculous urge to make everything here perfect; I need to just post some stuff already.

I subscribe to OCLC's Research feed, which you can find with other OCLC RSS Feeds here. Just recently, recorded presentations, papers, and slide shows from the 2010 Annual RLG Partnership Symposium: "When the Books Leave the Building: The Future of Research Libraries, Collections and Services" showed up in my reader.

While a number of presentations are interesting, I was especially fascinated by Adrian Johns' paper As our Readers Go Digital. (I only read the paper; I didn't watch the recorded presentation.) Johns pointed out, among other things, that some of the content he is now able to read outside the library (thanks to digital copies and his e-book reader), like political pamphlets from the 1670s, were originally meant to be read outside the library in coffee houses and other active locations. It's not new that books are leaving the building; they left long ago. From that perspective on books and information already belonging outside the library, Johns presented some possibilities for how librarians can support reading and academic culture. I really enjoyed his essay and added his book, The nature of the book : print and knowledge in the making, to my "to-read" list.

Open Access Journals

I have been thinking about what will happen to my ability to do library science research if there is a period of time where I am not an employee at a major university, since I have come to rely upon journal access that the library purchases. I have started paying attention to which journals are open access and which require paid subscriptions.

There are already several open access library science journals I know of, but I just recently discovered DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals. When I checked the Library and Information Science subject heading, I found those journals I already knew about and several more that look really interesting.

Theological Librarianship is only in its third year, but has some content I really enjoyed. The first issue of the first volume has a nice note to authors, some interesting articles, and an explanation of how to write a Bibliographic Essay. I have found at least one interesting article or essay in every issue that has been published so far. I will definitely be checking in with this journal in June and December when it's two issues become available.

I just recently learned about Library Philosophy and Practice from my professor, Mary Bolin, who taught my Spring 2010 seminar in Metadata and who is one of the editors for this journal. I intend to keep up with this journal, and not just because I just submitted an article to it. (I'm hoping to hear back about it by August.) This journal has a very wide scope and some of the articles are pretty interesting.

The journal of Collaborative Librarianship hasn't had very many articles I have found especially exciting, but over all, its content seems like it could be very useful if I am ever in a position where I need to look for or build partnerships for a library.

DAOJ has many more journals besides these and I am hoping to find time to explore some more of them in the near future.

Considering blogging

I created this blog two years ago for a class assignment. Now that I have finished school, I am considering taking up blogging. I'm still not sure how well that will work out. For one thing, I'm not exactly sure what I want to say, espcially to such an indefinate audience. I am considering writing about the books I read. I know there may be better places to post informaiton about reading interests, but I don't feel like making any definate commitments to websites designed for that sort of thing.

Anyway, this is an experiment. I'll see if I come up with anything to blog about over the next few weeks.