Lower East Side Librarian

At first accidentally and then with deliberation I ended up spending the first half of July reading only librarian literature--that is books and zines by and/or about librarians.

Look ma, I'm on tv. As I wrote to Michael Spelman, who interviewed and taped me for the ALA Emerging Leaders video Leadership Lessons, "well, i didn't hate it, which says a lot.
"that is no reflection of you or your filmmaking or interviewing skills, of course, just my being appalled by how i look, sound, and talk."

Yesterday I attended a Free and Open Source Software for Librarians program by Scott Dexter and Samir Chopra, based on their book Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software. Before you read my report back, you should know that the content is familiar territory to me. My spouse, Eric Goldhagen, gives a similar talk in his half of our "Radical Reference: Community Librarianship and Free/Open Source Technology" (and other talks) road show.

Chuck0 Facebooked me the link to this LOLcats/God mash-up, "If God Were a Cat."

I didn't go to the ALA Annual Conference this year, a decision I made based on its location in Anaheim. I wasn't going to bother making a whole blog post complaining about it, but then I saw the Annoyed Librarian's post, and thought at the very least I'd do a "What she said."

Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly Lists 24 and 25

The other day after ogling cats on I Can Has Cheezburger, I decided to check out the other links. LOLdogs, ho hum, but the political humor one, called Pundit Kitchen had some good stuff.

As I wrote in an earlier post, my plan was to donate my "economic stimulus payment" on fighting government aggression. Eric and I ended up supporting National War Tax Resistance, and thanks to Miriam's suggestion to fund reproductive rights. We chose the Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Probably one or two librarians were excited to see one of our ranks in the White House, even as the spouse of the president. In fact, American Libraries had her on its cover, calling her the First Librarian, and featured a mostly apolitical interview with her a few months ago. Me, not so excited.