Let’s evaluate the situation shall we:
Did I write the article I said I was going to? No
Did I write reviews like I said I was going to? No
So on it’s face, it looks like a run of the mill FAIL but I contend that it is not! I actually learned quite a bit and something productive did come out of it. Let me explain…
Train Travel to ALA 2011 will be all the more exciting if a gaggle of Librarians across the Mid-West could take the trip from Chicago to New Orleans. So far Lisa, Rob and Steve seem to favor the idea which would be great! Four passengers means Euchre in the Dining Car and the two dudes can share a Roomette, which will be cheaper.
The Roomette is the smallest class of Sleeping Car accommodations with Amtrak. Basically its an enclosed area with a window, two facing seats, a closet and a table in between. At night, the porter comes by and converts the room into a bedroom by taking the seats down and pulling down the above compartment to make bunk beds. The appeal of a Roomette, as opposed to just being in a regular seat the whole time has multiple layers:
First you get the privacy of your own space on the train. While you can stake out a couple of seats for yourself in coach, you’re still out there with the public which can be a bit noisy or just off putting if you want to sleep. And you can change your clothes in your room, instead of in the bathroom. If you plan on taking a shower, this can be a nice convenience.
Secondly, you can sleep in an actual bed. The trip from Chicago to New Orleans on the “City of New Orleans” route is about 19 hours, this does not include the inevitable delays that come with Amtrak travel. A good chunk of your trip will be sleepy time and I don’t want to spend it sitting up in a seat, with my head against a window with a bunch of other people. I can sleep lying down, in my pajamas, with the train rocking me to beddy bye.
Thirdly, with a Roomette all of your standard meals aboard the train are included in your ticket, that’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can make a reservation with the Sleeping Car Attendant and enjoy a fine meal in the Dining Car OR you can even order with the Attendant and they’ll bring your food to your room! The New Orleans route dining car has Southern Style food to match your destination and reviews have been good.
Fourthly, You can booze it up in the Roomettes! Amtrak lets you bring two carry-ons and if you stay in a sleeper you can bring booze on board! Not that I’m advocating getting hammered on the train but if you want to turn Information Express into Party Train, the Roomette is the way to go!
Here are some helpful links:
For ALA 2011 in New Orleans, I’ve been planning to take The Train!
My love of The Train is pretty strong, though I’m no ferroequinologist I can get pretty illogically excited about riding The Train. I mean, there is plenty to NOT like about the train. It’s always late, the departure times aren’t always convenient, it usually costs more than other travel and of course, it takes longer than flying. I had to use Amtrak to commute from Detroit to Ann Arbor when my car was in the shop and while I was SUPER excited to do so, it started to wear on me after a couple of days.
What I did love was: Not having to drive so I could take a nap or watch Star Trek DVDs all the way home/ to work, big comfy seat and a dining car which can be nice for coffee in the morning or a snack after work. The benefits increase as the trip lengthens.
While flying is the faster and sometimes cheaper route, you get treated like cattle. Long security lines, parking nightmare, crowds, no liquids or makeup in your carry on, taking off shoes for scanning, charging for checked bags, crowded into a small metal tube, etc. I’m fat and every time I fly I am crippled with anxiety. What if my neighbor is in a bad mood and complains that I’m taking up his/ her space? What if they make me buy another seat? What if the seat I do have crushes me the whole time? What if the seatbelt doesn’t fit? Will I be “found out”? Amtrak seats are pretty large and usually the car isn’t crowded so everybody can have two seats to themselves. You can check multiple bags and they are much more lenient with your carry-ons. If you have a Sleeper you can even bring and drink booze!
Other than the practicalities, there is always the “romance” of a train trip. Something Old Timey. Amtrak conductors and workers still wear the uniforms with those cool hats and the sleeper cars have porters. I’m sure repeated viewings of the movie “White Christmas” where they’re all on the train singing “Snow” has warped my brain towards train loving a bit. Obviously there will be MURRRRDERRR that will need to be solved before we get to New Orleans. Instead of sitting cramped in a seat for three hours I can walk around, go to the dining car, play some cards, read, watch entire television series, eat a sammitch, and take a nap. Instead of getting to ALA 2011, cranky and annoyed from flying I can be there rested and relaxed (hopefully).
This past week, Lisa and I presented our Summer Research in a poster session at the 2010 Michigan Library Association conference. Our session titled, “Critical Error: The Need for Michigan Public Libraries to Represent Themselves Online”, displayed our independent research we accomplished over the summer. Basically, we collected contact and URL information about all 383 public libraries in Michigan from the Library of Michigan database. From that 383 we created a random sample of about 20 percent (80 libraries) and evaluated their online presence on several platforms.
What we looked for:
For all of the social media services, we also checked to see if the library using the services also had a link to their accounts on their homepage. We also checked to see the frequency, currentness and relevance of their account’s updates. If a library was using Twitter, were they only using it to broadcast news and events or were they engaging in conversation with other users? Were the Facebook posts the same as the Twitter posts?
We noticed several trends but the general conclusion was that the current state of Michigan Public Libraries online was generally poor. Many libraries in our sample showed a true understanding of the purpose of social media & a coherent web presence and it was obvious that these libraries had a cohesive “web strategy” or at least seamlessly integrated their web presence into their overall strategic plan. These were not all “Class 6″ libraries (Population 50,000 and larger) either, which illustrated to us that you didn’t have to be a “Big Fish” to have a well executed online presence.
Some of the libraries we encountered, however, were shocking in their poor online services quality. Around 4% of libraries in our sample did not have a website at all, which meant no online public access catalog (OPAC) for patrons to search. Some had a website but no OPAC. Some had a website but it was inoperable. Some haven’t updated their website in years, still advertising for events that have long passed. A lot of these websites were the online equivalent of a shady dollar store with boarded up windows, just one look and you decide that there is nothing in there you want and everything is probably old anyway, so you leave.
Many of these libraries are not connecting their physical presence with their online presence. I would venture to guess that most of the libraries with fug websites don’t have only old books, blown out windows and ugly, outdated interiors but their website is saying something different entirely. When I see a store or library with a well designed, easy to operate website I assume that the physical library itself is a pleasant place to be.
What can you assume about THIS LIBRARY? The website itself isn’t TERRIBLE but it is certainly not very slick looking. I see nothing remarkable about the Elk Rapids District Library on their website. Nothing about it makes me scream, “I want to go to there!” I might use this site only to get to the catalog, that’s it.
We actually visited this library after the MLA conference was over, just because we wanted to tour local Traverse area libraries and this is what we found:
The Library is as cute as a BUTTON! We didn’t want to leave! They had free Wi-Fi, an impressive updated collection and a very comfortable, beautiful building. The cognitive dissidence Elk Rapids’ online personality and their IRL personality is startling. They are two completely different libraries. One is bleh while the other took my breath away. If I had not made the trip to the library (and based on the website I was not looking forward to it) my opinion of the library would be between bad or apathetic. It could make the difference between my moving to the area or not, visiting the library or not, voting on the millage or not, etc. Your website is not doing your library justice and that can be a KILLER these days.
So yeah, basically that was our presentation. We were worried people would be angry with us if they were defensive about their website, but we made sure not to name any names and everyone was actually very receptive to our findings. A lot of people had great questions and we had some enlightening conversations with different people, usually about how they would like to do several things but for one reason or another were not given permission. A couple of librarians mentioned that our research would help them craft an argument to bring to their directors/ board/ city, etc as to why they should be using Social Media. All in all it was a very good conference.
If you want to see our research, we have it posted up on our Project Blog, blog.deweydistrictlibrary.org, which includes a Powerpoint of our poster sections on Slideshare and a Bibliography for relevant data.
If you want to see pictures from our Library Tour we put them all up on Flickr.
My favorite thing in the world, non-fiction about strangely specific topics!! Bargain books I picked up during the MLA conference in Traverse City.
These were purchased at Horizon Books in Downtown Traverse City when the weather was BEAUTIFUL! The store looks a little Barnes and Noblesy when you get inside. We also noticed that there were an inordinate amount of Conservative books. The REAL history of the United States! Not the one those LIBERULS told you about! Needless to say I was a little leery about the bargain collection they had down in the basement but I went anyway. There were groups of old ladies playing Mahjong down there in a little cafe area and lots of discount books. We combed through them and I found several that looked interesting…
The Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft by Daniel Carter Beard
Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World by Brian Fagan
The Housewife’s Handbook by Rachel Simhon
Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America by Leonard B. Glick
As you may know, I work as librarian for an Arab American organization so it isn’t news to learn that I have a particular interest in the image of Arabs in the media. If you’re interested in reading more in depth analysis of Arabs in the media, I’d recommend looking up the author/ scholar Jack Shaheen. For November, instead of NaNoWriMo, I will be writing an article about the image of Arabs but instead of Film and Television, I will be looking at the image of Arabs in literature, particularly Romance Literature known as Sheikh books or Desert Romance.
Why Romance? Many people will argue that Romance novels shouldn’t be analyzed academically because you shouldn’t “over think” something as “silly” or “obviously trashy” as a Romance Novel. The genre has its critics to be sure but no one can deny its popularity. The genre is a billion dollar industry so it is obvious that people are buying the hell out of these books. Like Film or Television, Romances can reveal a good amount of our society’s attitude towards several things. How a “foreign culture” is portrayed within a book, particularly within a genre such as a Romance, can reveal a lot about the society that book was written in. Bottom Line: Romances can and should be analyzed like any other product of our society. Orientalism is alive and well within the pages of “Desert Romance” and it would be a disservice to ignore the contributions of Romance to America’s collective sub-conscious towards Arabs (and those perceived to be Arab).
I’ll be looking at a series of common tropes, themes and character traits found in a specified collection of “Desert Romances”. I’ll be keeping an eye out for bald face racism as well, which we can all enjoy. For this particular study (as it is) I decided to look specifically at Harlequins since they are the Mega-Gigundo Publishing House for Romances and they publish a good amount of the Sheikh lit.
I’m on the fence about my time range. I’d like to to all of 2010 but obviously they haven’t all been released yet and I couldn’t find them all via the library, which means I’d have to buy them. Do I want to spend all that money on something I really don’t want to keep? I may just try and find all of the ones Harlequin published in 2009 and ILL them. If anyone has an opinion about this, please let me know.
I’ll also be posting reviews of the books as I read them. They won’t be completely “academic” because truthfully, I’m easily offended about this kind of thing and I’ll probably be mocking the hell out of them in the reviews. Keep an eye out!
The McRib is back! All of you heretics doubted its return but what say ye now!!??
I was in the gym the other day and I saw this hot chick working out and I could like see her ribs and everything…..and all I could think of was I hadn’t had a McRib in like forever… – Jim Gaffigan