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New librarian tip #3: Visit your competition

As a new librarian, I thought it might be interesting to share things that are helping me to get acclimated to the working world. This is the third in an occasional series.

This option is more relevant if you’re starting a job in a new town that you’re not familiar with. If you work in an academic library, check out the public. If you work in public, check the local academic.

There are things each will provide better than the other. For example, we don’t maintain a stock of leisure movies. Someone asked if we did the other day, and I was able to answer “No, but the public library has a really good selection you can try.” Its just nice to know what’s out there, and I learned a bit about my new community in the process.

I have yet to visit the other local academic libraries, but they’re on my to-do list.

Previous tips:
#1: Do someone else’s homework
#2: Work a weekend

E-reading Update

I’ve been discovering a bunch of quality net-published fiction recently. Here’s a couple worthy of your time.

David Wellington’s Monster Planet is on track to wrap up this Friday. Wellington started the ambitious blog-based trilogy in April of ’04 with Monster Island, a story of a zombie-infected Manhattan a few months after the outbreak.

He followed it up with Monster Nation, the prequel of just how the zombie outbreak progressed across the United States.

Monster Planet brings everything to a head – grand fantasy, horror and characterization on a global scale. The pentultimate chapter hits on Wednesday, and the finale on Friday.

You might think that zombie stories = mindless crap. And in some cases, you’re right. But Wellington wisely focuses on his characters, and just how the situation affects the ensemble cast. He’s got a couple of “big ideas” that play with the genre conventions too, which I won’t spoil.

Half of the fun has been following the comments readers leave after each chapter. In some cases Wellington has subtlely shifted his story arc thanks to audience input. Not an entirely collaborative story, but there are elements. In perhaps the most obvious one, the main villain of Planet is named after a very frequent and loyal commenter. Elsewhere, when fans felt that it was left up in the air whether a particular character survivied, the author made sure to spell out in a later chapter just what fate had befallen the man. One reader was having a rough time with his relationship, and Wellington obliged him in a cathartic bit of fun by making the girl a zombie-ized background character. The list goes on.

The serialized, ‘cliffhangerized’ format is addictive. I plowed through the first two novels in just a few days after discovering them. And hey, its free!

In other options, there’s Cory Doctorow. I’m a bit of a latecomer to the BoingBoing founder’s fiction, but he’s got a pretty decent archive up on Salon.com.

Currently, Themepunks updates with a new chapter every Monday. This is a story of Doctorow’s vision of the 21st century economy, and where collaborative technologies and abundance of raw tech materials will eventually take us. There’s a thousand and one points in here where I paused to think about the implications of the astonishingly realistic setting.

If you’re at all interested in the development of societies in massively multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft, 2004’s Anda’s Game is fascinating. You have to trudge through Salon’s somewhat clunky ‘sitepass’ system to read these stories without subscribing, but the result is worth it.

In other news, Harvey Danger released their newest album (for free!) in MP3 format today.

Library Journal Bloggers’ Roundtable

The roundtable discussion/article I took part in at ALA in June is now up on Library Journal’s website!

Here’s what I wrote immediately after the event itself.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the print edition (October 1st issue) and see what it looks like. Especially anxious to see if there’s any pictures. Extra thanks to Michael Stephens and Brian Kenney for putting it all together.

10/3/05 update: We made the cover! I didn’t expect this at all, and am thrilled! (I’m the head just to the right of ‘talkin’) Must find print copy now!

I’d also like to echo what Meredith said, in that there was oodles of insight from the discussion that didn’t make it into the article. Going to ALA was worth it for that conversation alone.

New librarian tip #2: Work a weekend

As a new librarian, I thought it might be interesting to share things that are helping me to get acclimated to the working world. This is the second in an occasional series.

One of my first weeks of working at UAH, I came in as a ‘backup’ librarian on Saturday. There’s a thousand and one things to be done on a Saturday that don’t pop up during the week.

On weekdays, our building opens before the reference desk does. So by the time I come in, all the “setting up” tasks for the day are already done. But on a weekend, I was forced to learn how to do them myself.

There were doors to unlock and gates to raise. I learned where lightswitches are, how to check to make sure the print server is up, passwords for the desk PCs, and plenty of other smaller items. These are the things I’ll need to know at some point, but might not be covered in the standard procedure of starting a new job.

Now of course I wouldn’t recommend stumbling through this process by yourself the first time. Being there as an extra librarian worked out well – I had someone to bounce questions off of and show me the ropes. Thanks, Linda!

Previous tips:
#1: Do someone else’s homework

Serenity! Go! Now!

If you’re a sci-fi fan at all, you owe it to yourself to see Serenity. My mouth was on the floor the whole time! Part of this is probably due to my love for Firefly, the cancelled TV on which Serenity is based. I’d be genuinely interested in how a movie viewer who never saw the show perceives it.

I’ll write up a full review eventually, but I don’t want to spoil anything right off the bat.

Dead man’s hand

I never thought I’d give in and start playing online poker.

Now don’t write me off yet! It isn’t quite what it seems…

LastCallPoker.com is more than just a poker site. It is in fact a newly launching Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. If you haven’t heard of this before, think of it as a completely immersive world, in this case created through clever web sites and voice mails (so far). I was fortunate enough to take part in the ILoveBees ARG last year, a leadup to the release of Halo 2. Great fun, and I’m looking forward to another experience. Here’s the relevant wikipedia for more background information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

Yes, you can play poker on the site. Its all for fake money, so no pressure. And a bunch of people are doing just that, seemingly oblivious to the deeper gameplay. (Their flash-based poker client is actually pretty nice) There’s also a mystery involving the dead owner, a valuable gun, murder, betrayal, gang conflicts, a crashed cell phone network, and more!

The game is still in its early stages, so feel free to jump aboard! A bunch of players congregate and discuss in the Unforums.

I’m playing the game under a pseudonym – here’s my profile. Add me to your quicklinks list if you join up! And no, the picture isn’t of me. There’s a preselected set to choose from.

ARGs are still a relatively young genre, the first major one being a promo for the movie A.I. So here’s your chance to be a part of something emerging. And at the very least, you’ll pick up some poker skills.

update: fixed Unforums link as per comments

Gaming can’t get no respect

During my morning news rounds, I ran into Clive Thompson’s most recent Games Without Frontiers column on Wired.com.

This guy truly Gets It. This installment focuses on the portrayal of video games in movies. He makes an excellent point that a recent rise in realistic portrayal of gaming on the silver screen can help to normalize the public’s perception of gaming. It isn’t all Hot Coffee mods in Grand Theft Auto and spastic antisocial teenagers, you know 🙂

Thompson’s previous columns are worth a read as well.

Google Remove

This morning I was doing a bit of Google searching, as is common. I noticed in my results that there’s a new option: “Remove Result”. Click the thumbnail for a larger screenshot.

I can remove a page from a single list of results, from all future searches I do, or remove everything on the domain entirely. Once a site has been removed from search results, an easy-to-overlook blurb at the bottom of the page informs that “Results have been omitted”, and offers a link to restore them.

I did a bit of searching on the topic, and discovered that “a small percentage” of users currently have the option.

I’m still trying to decide if this is a good idea or not. I have nightmare visions of the system being beaten (as greasemonkey gets around Google Print viewing restrictions), and companies removing their competitors from Average Joe’s search results.

That’s probably over-reacting. But something deep down inside of me cringes at the idea of users having censored searches, self-controlled or not. On the other hand, spam-site blocking does seem like a useful application.

General

Top 10 multiplayer video game countdown: #10