Library school, Quotidian 3 comments

Greetings from allergy land, and a trip to New Jersey

By on May 15th, 2007

The only consolation for the fact that the air is full of pollen right now, making me sneeze and curse every time I go outside to enjoy the gorgeous weather, is that everyone else is suffering too. It’s like a constant Greek chorus of sneezes.

In other news, the History of the Book project continues apace. I went for what turned out to be a terrific research trip to Princeton’s special collections library this past Friday. People had told me that they’re legendarily unwilling to let non-Princetonians look at their collections, but I had no trouble, probably because I’d e-mailed them in advance about what I was doing. I had to have a photo ID made and surrender my notebook in favor of special orange notepaper with a hole in the middle, but once I’d cleared the security hurdles, the reading room proved to be a very calming place: a big light-filled hexagon with really high ceilings. The reference librarian even brought out a big box of Gehenna Press book prospectuses and let me look through it.

Other highlights of the day: meeting up with friends who live in Princeton for lunch at an Italian restaurant called Teresa’s, which serves a stellar pizza with prosciutto and figs; having Paul Muldoon pointed out to me on the street; and walking past the spot where they film some of the hospital exterior shots for House (alas, I think Hugh Laurie lives in Hollywood, not New Jersey). It’s a very pretty campus to walk around, though rather overwhelming in its old-moneyed Ivy-ness.

But really, I was there for the library, and the great thing about using special collections is that there are no distractions. For as long as you’re in there, you’re entirely focused on whatever you’re looking at. If it weren’t for the prospect of excellent Italian food, I’d have lost track of time completely.

Music 1 comment

Falstaff mini-review

By on May 10th, 2007

I’m posting this from the iSchool’s main computing lab, in the interval between finishing a statistics midterm and whisking off for a night out. (I still don’t have access to teh internets at home. I miss you, internets.) This is just to say that I really enjoyed Falstaff, and if anyone reading this is still trying to decide whether to see it, then consider this a thumbs-up. Lovely singing all around, and an engagingly funny production, despite what seemed like the world’s longest scene changes (I all but exchanged life histories with the people in the next seats, not that that was a hardship).

I’ve been trying to formulate a thought about how some of the characters perceive themselves as taking part in very different types of dramas — Ford (briefly) channels Othello, though fortunately without any of the tragic consequences, while Falstaff in the last act gets dropped into what seems like an eerier version of the forest from A Midsummer Night’s Dream — and even though we, and all the female characters (who mastermind the whole plot), know much better, it’s still all there in the music nonetheless. But that’s about as far as the formulation has gotten.

I’m thinking of getting a season subscription next year. Question is, am I really going to want to see Cyrano and Hansel and Gretel? Must ponder.

Library, Weblogs 2 comments

Niceness in libraryland: some scattered thoughts

By on May 8th, 2007

According to Steven Bell in Inside Higher Ed a few weeks ago, "academic librarians are the nice guys of higher education." We agree with each other too much. Instead of engaging in any kind of intellectually rigorous back-and-forth exchange on controversies in our profession, we avoid sounding like we disagree.

I’m of multiple minds on this. I’m all in favor of intellectual rigor, especially if it means fewer dull articles to read and more excitement in the biblioblogosphere. But I agree with Rochelle Mazar: there’s a certain set of gender issues at work here, namely that women are socialized to be non-aggressive, and people react much more negatively to an aggressive woman than to an aggressive man. And I think her question — "Why must we be aggressive in order to be seen as rigorous?" — is completely on target. Indeed: why? (Go read the whole thing. It’s a great post. Oh dear, I’m being too nice.)

I’m not sure contentiousness is the answer to the problem of uninspired professional discourse. I’ve seen contentiousness for its own sake back when I was planning on becoming a faculty member. I don’t think it’s productive. Probably because I saw so much of the kind of disagreement-for-the-sake-of-disagreement that comes from knowing that you have to contribute something new to the conversation (or you won’t get tenured), and there are only so many positions to take, so you’d better make sure you distinguish yourself from the other people who write about your little subfield, and the easiest way to do that is to rip into the other people. I don’t think that’s what Steven Bell means, but I’d still hate to see librarians adopt the "must … say … something … combative …" mindset. And I don’t think intellectual rigor necessarily means constant disagreement.

In the end, "niceness" is kind of a slippery concept: I’m having a hard time, even in my own head, keeping track of whether it means politeness or stifling one’s potentially dissenting opinion or agreeing with other people. I think Bell’s overall point is that librarians shouldn’t feel obligated to hide their disagreement, which is fine by me — as long as we don’t feel compelled to disagree, either.

Next up: I have some not very nice things to say about that Vanishing Shakespeare report.

Grab bag 3 comments

BORC, special wi-fi outage edition

By on May 3rd, 2007

  • The reason I haven’t been posting very much lately is that Earthlink’s wi-fi
    network in my area has been down for over two weeks, and all they’ll tell me
    over the phone is "They’re working on it," and that it’ll be fixed in a
    few hours or a few days, which it never is. Dear Earthlink: If your
    plan is to drive your customers away in droves, you’re succeeding
    admirably.
    Also, please stop lying to us.
  • While I’m writing cranky
    open letters: Dear parents who let your children wear those inline shoe-skates and skate around crowded places like SEPTA stations and grocery
    stores on busy weekend afternoons: Whatever were you thinking?
  • In much less annoying news, I’m writing my History of the Book
    paper on Leonard Baskin’s work with the Gehenna Press. Check out Cornell’s online exhibit for an overview.
  • I may blog about the research I’m doing for this paper. Other
    topics I’ve got on the back burner, if Earthlink gets its act
    back together: this report on the "disappearance" of Shakespeare from
    English major requirements     (of which I’m rather skeptical, to put it
    mildly); this article on "niceness" among librarian bloggers; and the return
    of the TV-watching classics geek (I’ve just discovered Rome on DVD, and was thrilled to see one of the characters writing out curse tablets).
  • Anyone in the area up for the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s production of Falstaff? I’m planning on going either tomorrow night or next Friday, the 11th.
Memes Comments turned off

I’m not really a coloratura soprano.

By on April 24th, 2007

I couldn’t resist this meme any more than Jane Dark could…

Your life as an Opera by ladivinabionda
Name
Voice type Coloratura Soprano
Your character type The evil monarch who has potential lovers executed
Your Opera will be: A tragedy based on Greek or Roman mythology with a glorious deus ex machina ending.
Composer Beethoven
Your Operatic Death You are executed for being a witch.
Where will your opera premier? At the San Francisco Opera, in a gawd-awful avant garde German production which gets good reviews not because it is good, but because it isn’t traditional.

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart! Comments turned off

Every city needs a Knitting Map.

By on April 21st, 2007

Commissioned by Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture, The Knitting Map drew its inspiration from Cork City, celebrating its place at the cultural heart of Europe. The Knitting Map is not a literal map; instead of a single still image, it is a moving, evolving translation of the busy-ness of Patrick Street; the wetness of May or the frostiness of November. The Knitting Map took the pulse of the city throughout 2005.

Different technologies observed and measured aspects of the city centre: the movement of people, as well as the weather – how rainy, warm or windy it was. The Knitting Map translated this information into a vast knitting pattern which was updated daily. In the Crypt of St Luke’s Church overlooking the city of Cork, up to twenty knitters were knitting every day, and the Knitting Map grew into a vast, textured, colourful textile, that documents what happened in Cork in 2005.

(from the Knitting Map’s about page)

The Knitting Map is on display not far from here, but I probably won’t have a chance to go see it. I love the idea of translating information into knitting patterns and recording a year in the life of a city as an enormous swath of fabric. I think Philadelphia needs its own knitting map, don’t you?

Uncategorized Comments turned off

On the shootings at Virginia Tech

By on April 19th, 2007

On Monday morning I got to work only to find that the power was out, not just at the library but all over
campus. Swarthmore was one of many places in the region whose electricity was knocked out by the nor’easter. We all figured it would come back on before long, but it didn’t.
We stayed open, and a couple of us took turns sitting at
the reference desk with a laptop running on
battery power.

The day already had that surreal feeling that blackouts bring — a sort of uneasy detachment from the 21st
century. Then at midday at the desk, I pulled up the New York Times
online to check the headlines and saw the front-page story about the
shooting at Virginia Tech, just as someone came in and
asked if we’d heard the news.

I can’t stop thinking about how many people I knew at UVa who
knew people at Tech, how many students’ families and friends there must
have been, in Virginia and elsewhere, who spent Monday waiting to
find out if their sons and daughters and friends were among the ones
killed, how many today know someone who died in those classrooms.

Years ago, when I was teaching composition, I had a student I thought might be crazy. He didn’t seem violent, and he dropped the class partway through the semester; even so, I wondered if I should call student counseling, and what, if anything, they could do for him. I suspect a lot of colleges and universities will be scrambling for new policies for monitoring students’ mental health. It seems like there’s no way to anticipate something as awful as what happened at Virginia Tech. But I still find myself thinking, what sets someone off on a mass-murdering rampage? Isn’t there any way to spot it before it happens? I have no policy recommendations, no conclusions; in the end, it’s all but impossible to wrap one’s head around it.

Drexel has already sent around a rather ghastly "What to do in
the event of a shooting" bulletin to all the students. I hope to God we
never need it.

Commonplaces Comments turned off

Personal anthology: W. S. Merwin

By on April 12th, 2007

I have a scintillating weekend ahead of me. Taxes. Statistics homework. That’s pretty much the shape of it, though there may be some Blackadder as a reward for getting the taxes done, if I have time.

So, until I return, have a poem:

Rain Travel

I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness

— W. S. Merwin, from Travels

Library school 2 comments

Reconnecting with my inner medievalist

By on April 11th, 2007

The most beautiful thing I’ve seen this week: this page from the Stockholm Codex Aureus. We looked at a slide of it in History of the Book last night. You can’t quite tell from the image, but the vellum it’s written on is dyed purple. Aren’t the letters just amazing?

(We looked at slides of pages from the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, too. I’ve never been much of a medievalist, but it’s entirely possible I could change my mind.)

Television 2 comments

The danger of letting classicists watch sci-fi TV

By on April 7th, 2007

I’ve now watched the entirety of the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. (I don’t have cable, so nobody spoil me for season 3 in the comments, please?) And the other night, watching the two parts of "Lay Down Your Burdens," the S2 finale, I suddenly said to myself "Hey, wow, it’s the Aeneid in space!"

Because, think about it: BSG starts with the unexpected destruction of the humans’ settlement after the Cylons infiltrate them (instead of a wooden horse full of Greeks, it’s Number Six getting into the military database), and then follows the survivors as they run for their lives. Their goal is a far-distant place, and there are prophecies about their leaders getting them there. The New Caprica storyline reminds me of the end of Book 5, when the Trojan refugees who don’t want to keep traveling settle in Sicily. I don’t really see one-to-one parallels with specific characters, though you could make a case for Adama as Aeneas; but the Greco-Roman names (Apollo, Valerii, Gaeta, Thrace, Agathon, Pegasus), which I found distracting at first, seem less random if you think of the whole thing as a riff on Vergil.

Of course, the "half-Cylon baby secretly raised by an adoptive mother who knows nothing of its parentage" storyline is straight out of the Greek myths. Ronald Moore’s DVD commentary mentions Moses as a parallel, but Oedipus was the first analogue I thought of. Though Paris might be more apt.

I spent way too much time studying Latin in my younger years, didn’t I?