Renovations at Hazeldean Branch

On my day off last week, in some pretty impressive heat, I gave up plans to head to the beach so I could check out the renovations at our Hazeldean Branch.

Check them out here!

Upcoming local events of interest

I won't be able to make it to all of these myself, but I wish I could!

• Saturday, March 25th: Concerto Della Donna in a concert entitled: "Of Love and Nature." My friend Kaya used to be in this choir, and my first choir director (age 5) was Iwan, so I will be there with bells on!
  
• Friday, March 30th: Ultramarathon Runner & Adventurer Ray Zahab at the Library: I'm really sorry I won't be able to make this, but I am giving a tour to a community partner at 1:30 at Carlingwood... boo!
  
• Saturday, March 31st and Sunday, April 1st: Unity for Action presents Wonderland, an urban musical: a fundraiser to support scholarships for secondary school students from the Mathare slum of Nairobi (via the Canada-Mathare Education Trust). The musical promises to incorporate various artistic styles including modern dance, hip hop, Bollywood, boogie, dub step, slam poetry, beatboxing, stomping, and singing.
  

That's all for now, kids! More news from me later.... Don't forget to go buy some books at Nicholas Hoare before everyone else gets the good stuff!

FUNDRAISER: Censored Out Loud! *

Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 10 p.m. to midnight
Tickets: $10 at the door (or pay what you can)

I'm finally ready to announce the details of this pet project!

Part of Freedom to Read Week and a fundraiser for PEN Canada, Censored out loud 2012 will consist of readings from censored/banned/challenged writing, musical performances of censored/banned/challenged songs and scenes from censored/banned/challenged plays. This event builds on four years of local events for Freedom to Read Week, including “Censored Out Loud 2011,” a “Freedom to Read Week debate,” “Dangerous Words,” and a “Freedom to read trivia night.” Organisers of this year's event include librarians, writers, media, and local arts patrons.

Confirmed participants include local writers and poets Nichole McGill, Brendan McNally, Alan Cumyn, and Max Middle, Ottawa Public Library children's programmer extraordinaire Sarah Campbell, librarian Dorothy Jeffreys and former City Librarian Barbara Clubb, Don Monet from the CUBE Gallery and Marie-Camille Lalande from the Ottawa Art Gallery, a variety of actors, and musicians Andrea Simms-Karp, Colin Wylie, Marc Nelson, and Brian Simms - plus many more local celebrities and special guests (stay tuned!)

The event is presented by Ottawa Tonite in collaboration with the Library Association of the National Capital Region, Ottawa Public Library staff (thanks, guys!), local writers, singer-songwriters, VerseFest Ottawa, The Gladstone Theatre and the Ottawa theatre community.

*This will be a night of variety and potential profanity, so bring your open mind and prepare to exercise your FREEDOM.

Peter Behrens @ the Ottawa Public Library

I wish authors visited my library every day to do readings on my lunch hour.....

I was at my Bookmobile office this morning, but had to scurry back to Main Library for a meeting this afternoon. When I realised that if I left a bit early, I could get to Main in time for Peter Behrens' reading, I was thrilled. My office at Main is just on the other side of the back wall of the auditorium, by the way; knock in Morse code next time you're visiting.

With my crazy week last week (I am working on a couple of posts about it, including hearing Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull talk about the social determinants of health, RA in a day, as well as the International Festival of Authors!), I was happy to catch not one but two Writer's Fest events here in Ottawa on the last day of the Festival (right by the skin of my teeth, eh?). As this post auto-publishes, I will be on my way down the street for the Ottawa Book Awards Non-Fiction Roundtable with Tim Cook, Charlotte Gray, Roy MacGregor, Lawrence Martin and Eric Enno Tamm.

But Behrens... First, what can I say, he is completely captivating. Two lovely colleagues from Westmount Library had been trying to convince me to attend his talks there, and I couldn't quite grasp what the fuss was about, but he's a great, great speaker... and I say that as someone who has heard about a million introverted librarians and authors speak (badly) before! He's self-depracating (buy this book, and if my kid doesn't get into a Canadian university and we have to pay for an American one, the money will send him to university for one minute!), warm, thoughtful (to the point of being, frankly, intense) and has a wonderful deep voice.

Behrens explained that his desire to delve into family history was sparked when he thought about his relationship with his grandfather, and his relationship with his grandfather (upon whose life The O'Briens is based). As Behrens phrased it, that's only "two handclasps" away from history. He spoke about the tradition among earlier generations to keep their feelings and emotions private (they weren't "the Oprah generation"). As they understod it, your truest feelings were the ones you keep inside. Observed Behrens, "now, we hink we have found this new way of being warmly human," and that this privacy is unhealthy, when it is "more complicated than that."

Behrens spoke about the first time he saw the Black Rock in Montreal (I remember the first time I saw it, too: like Behrens, I was in a car, driven by my father, who explained what it was; Behrens observed his grandfather make a gesture to protect himself from the "juju" of the Rock). Behrens described how the "Irish established the template for how immigrants are received" in 20th century North America. The most interesting part of his talk, I felt, was his discussion of how history is treated in art (he talked about either books or films). "What bugs me about historical movies and books," he said, is how sometimes it seems as though "time happened with a different light around it." Artists portray the past in a fuzzy, rose-coloured light, as though it was "unclear," a sort of foreign country. Speaking about people in the past, he said, "I believe they were like us." He hopes historical novels, instead of placing the past at a distance, "take you by the hand and pull you into the world."

"A ride-along with Ottawa's Bookmobile"

I had a great time last week hanging out with Katherine Dunn, a student in Carleton's School of Journalism and Communication. She's a big fan of Murakami and Hornby, and we both had issues with One Day, so we got along well!

Check out her interview with France and I for CKCU's Week's End radio show here.

I really, really, hate my recorded voice. I sound, um, 12.

OPL @ the Power of Words breakfast

This morning, I attended the Power of Words breakfast organised by the amazing People, Words & Change. We met and spoke with many of the 90+ people attending the event, including literacy tutors, adult students, PWC staff and Board members, Mayor Watson (at left*), Councillor Fleury, and Councillor Hobbs.

The line for food snaked by our Ottawa Public Library display table (at right), which was a great strategic advantage; I was able to call out “While you’re waiting, have a free bookmark ... And can we interest you in some information about the library?” We had a nice chat with Mayor Watson when he was waiting in line, and he mentioned OPL in his speech. He said that he is proud of the work the library does, of its “dynamic staff,” and our “passionate” Board Chair (the always-spectacular Jan Harder). He also alluded to Toronto (“unlike that city down the road, we know the importance of the library...”).

I answered one or two reference questions, promoted our collections (some lists: Golden Oak Award Finalists, Quick Reads series, Good Reads series, and the Open Door series) and services. We brought material from our collections to display, membership forms, information about programs, some OPL swag (bookmarks, pencils, magnets), branch and location information, and we also raffled off two free books!

The speeches given by the students themselves were hands-down the best part of the morning: one student mentioned every tutor he had at PWC - and many of the administrative staff - by name and thanked them; another mentioned how, now that she was more comfortable using her English, she went out more and was more sociable because she wasn’t embarrassed to speak to people... and she could negotiate a better rate on her travel insurance! Another stressed the importance of reading, specifically, and said that she never realised how important it was to read a lot until she began working with her tutor to improve her grammar. A few made some pretty cute jokes about idiosyncrasies of the English language: one remarked how important it was for him to learn the difference between "affect" and "effect." Another described her trouble with the complex uses of the word "up:" you can say "it's clouding up," or "it's clearing up," but really, she should be "finishing up" her speech and she should really "shut up." There were some really moving stories of people overcoming great adversity; two students who spoke are now Carleton students; one student said that he and his wife agree that calling PWC was the best thing he ever did.

It was a really rewarding experience to be there. FYI, though, networking at 7 am is pretty exhausting.

*Photo at top left: David Barbour, http://www.davidbarbour.com

On the road with Homebound Services

The image on our Homebound delivery bags.

So, I know I've been writing more about Bookmobile than about any of my other areas. FYI, my department, "Diversity and Accessibility Services," includes Homebound Services, Bookmobile, Library Volunteers, Services to Older Adults, Accessibility, Diversity and Literacy. My position as coordinator of the department includes direct involvement in Homebound, Bookmobile and Volunteers, and marginal involvement in the other areas. However, we have two vacancies in our department, an Outreach Librarian (the "Diversity" area) and an Accesibility Librarian (both were recently posted ... are you a librarian looking for work? I hope you applied!). The vacancies mean that I have also spent some time recently dealing with seniors stuff, accessibility questions, and services for new Canadians (Diversity), including coordinating the work of the library settlement workers.

After spending the first four months as Acting Coordinator focusing mostly on Bookmobile, I am now turning more attention to Homebound Services (Volunteer stuff is mostly status: maintain, for now...). Basically, to crib from our website, Homebound "staff and volunteers regularly select library materials and deliver them to [borrowers'] doors every month." The service is available to individuals of "any age who are confined to their home or residence for more than three months" - or the winter months! - "because of age, illness, frailty or caregiver responsibilities."

So, Homebound staff use their amazing readers' advisory skills to select materials for Homebound borrowers (some computer-literate Homebound borrowers also request online via our website), and staff and volunteers deliver materials every month to them (borrowers get longer loan periods and other extended privileges). We visit people in their homes, and also in continuing care centres, auxiliary hospitals and senior residences.

Recently, I did selection for 4 hours. We keep records for each Homebound borrower that include all their past loans (this is a special module in our ILS, specifically for libraries with Homebound departments), as well as a "profile" of the borrower: their likes, dislikes, etc. Most of our staff rely heavily on their own knowledge of (and expertise with) the collection to select for patrons; they also use tools such as Novelist (free to all OPL cardholders!) and in-house booklists for further ideas. I selected a total of 75 items for four patrons in my four hours (so about 19 items/hour, and remember, Homebound serves hundreds of borrowers a month!). For a patron who enjoys the contemorary historical "blockbusters" of Leon Uris, I chose Edward Rutherford's Dublin Saga, Sandra Brown's Rainwater, as well as titles by Beverly Swerling, Barbara Wood, and James Michener. For a Peter Robinson fan, I went with some Ann Granger, Kate Atkinson, Elizabeth Adler, Beverly Cleverly, and Ann Granger. A "certain type of" biography fan will be unpacking a bag filled with The Bride of Science : Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter by Benjamin Woolley, Letters of a woman homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart, The Great Western Beach : A Memoir of A Cornish Childhood Between the Wars by Emma Smith, and The illustrated Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. For someone who enjoys the romantic suspense of Barbara Taylor Bradford (with a side order of historical fiction and family sagas), I chose Jayne Krentz's All Night, as well as titles by Karen Robards, Jo Ann Ross, and Suzanne Brockman. I had one patron who wanted some "coffee table books," so for that I . I also threw in some curve balls (read: literary "stretches" that also happen to be titles I have read and enjoyed), including Nicole Krauss's The history of love for a romance/family saga lover, and Kate Mosse's Sepulchre for a mystery / women's lit reader. There were many other treasures in there... I really should have taken pictures.

Selecting was an excellent way to exercise my readers' advisory muscles, get to know the collection at Main Library much better (I rarely browse there), and, of course, become more familiar with the work performed by the employees I supervise.

I also went out on two recent visits made by Homebound Services staff: one was to a long-term care facility, where we delivered new material, and picked up old material, to several residents, and one was to what we call a mini-library. A mini-library is pretty self-explanatory: we set up large boxes with a selection of our collection (see at right: novels, romans, nonfic, large print, PBs, A/V) in a seniors' care facility. It was really interesting for me to visit one of these: aside from the nerdy librarian "that's so cool!" factor, it was fun in a way I had trouble pinning down at first. Here it is: with all the other library "busy work" removed from the equation: staffing, equipment, managing patrons, Internet usage, facilities, etc., it was so lovely just to do checkout and readers' advisory. It was our service stripped to bare bones, with one meagre laptop (offline) and just our own wits to guide us. That probably sounds really lame, but it was a blast just chatting with the patrons about books and rummaging through the bins to help them find something to read. Extra points to the colleague I went with: since she helps select the material in the boxes, she knows the material like the back of her hand (and it's pretty diverse - although we can definitely say that some things are popular, like political biographies and romance novels). Working with her I observed probably some of the best readers' advisory transactions I have seen in a long time.

More on Homebound in the coming weeks....

Renovated Cumberland Branch

I was fortunate enough to benefit from Cumberland's closure during the past few months, in that the "library-less" Cumberland library staff were taken in by many other library branches. We welcomed Rebekah and Marthe at Rideau's Information desk, and they were wonderfully helpful and I miss them already.

That being said, I am thrilled that their library is now open, and looks so spectacular. Join me on a virtual tour...

The adult department reading area.

The computer lab (art, as at Rideau, from the city art vaults; this one is called "Smoke signals")


The archway to the Children's department (I love it!)

Early literacy stations, to promote the six pre-literacy skills.

Looking out to the garden.

I'm sad to say I never saw Cumberland pre-renos (hey! it's far!) but it does look lovely now, and I am told it is much more open and airy. Some of the computer terminals are on a curve, so not everything is on a straight line, which is very refreshingly different. Little internal windows between children's and teens also make the space feel more breathable.

Plus, you know, purple carpet tiles and door and window frames will always win me over.

Thanks to the two Cs for accompanying me on this trip!

Plus ça change...

Le Droit, vendredi 26 janvier 1934

Step into 1934 with me

In the margins of my regular workday (wait, my workday has margins? And I fill them? That explains why I don't have time to pee) I've been collecting and organising material for Doors Open Ottawa, which Rideau Library is participating in.

I can get really caught up in this historical stuff (I came in at 8 and stayed until 7:30 almost every day for two months when researching local authors in another community for an international event), so I am reeeeeally trying to keep the work to a minimum. Details forthcoming, but as a teaser, I thought you might enjoy this, from the Citizen on Wednesday, January 24, 1934. Still holds true, you know: "the maximum of whatever is possible ought to be done."


This also made me realise why people think we're a Carnegie: because the library system in Ottawa (such as it was) was called the Carnegie Public Library for a short while, in honour of Andrew himself. That being said, Carnegie funded only Main and Rosemount; the 27, 500$ for Rideau was raised by the library board in Ottawa.

Serendipitious read: Sue Gee's Reading in bed

Now, how could I not pick this up, even with its chick-lit appeal cover, given that the quote on the back was, "People say life is the thing but I prefer reading" (attributed to Logan Pearsall Smith)? Ah, a sentiment at once sort of dreadful and yet strangely true.

Reading in bed was a serendipitous pick from the Friends booksale at the Rockcliffe Park Library (by the way, best booksale ever! Not just the annual giant one, but the small shelf of "for sale" books in the branch is always well stocked... This week, I told Philip I only help out there - one of the permanent staff members is recovering from surgery - because I can check out the booksale; I was half-joking).

Reading in bed follows a period of change in the lives of two old friends, Dido and Georgia. Friends since university, the two have been lucky to marry two friends as well, and companionably enter their late middle age together, watching their children, in turn, find mates and settle down (or not). When the novel opens, they are on their way back from the Hay Festival (see? My kind of people) and have recently experienced the unexpectedly sudden loss of Georgia's husband, Henry (In a case of, well, I guess "art following life," Gee's own husband died quite suddenly). This loss for all of them, coupled with Dido's increasing suspicion that her husband is hiding something, ultimately changes the way all the characters in the novel relate to and interact with one another. Georgia muses often during the novel about all the simple and wonderful plans she and Henry had made for their coming twilight years; unfortunately, peaceful retirement this is not.

Sue Gee has a lovely way with dialogue and with internal monologues (this might sound blasphemous, but Gee's way with internal monologue was vaguely reminiscent of Woolf to me). She is equally able to carry off social Dido's sudden withdrawal from friendship with Georgia as she is able to make us sympathise with Georgia's stylist daughter, Chloe, whose grief at losing her father is coupled with a sense of feeling somehow inadequate to her mother, whose bookish ways are alien to a girl who struggled through school with a learning disability. This is a rich book filled with characters (granted, mostly women, although Dido's son, Nick, is also given sensitive attention) at various stages of life, facing turning points they had certainly not expected.

Ultimately, though, this is Dido and Georgia's story, about finding, maybe losing, and finding again, a friend, all through the course of a life. It's about loneliness, in many ways, too: the loneliness of being really alone, and of being alone while somehow surrounded by people.

I was quite touched by Dido's struggles with her husband's dishonesty. Dido's coping mechanisms reminded me a lot of those being used by the character of Alicia on the TV show The Good Wife. I've become quite hooked on The Good Wife, and Alicia's almost unshakable stoicism in the face of disturbing revelations about her husband. I think we've seen her cry once; not that this is admirable, but in the age of TV characters who whine endlessly, soap-opera style, it was a refreshing change to have to maybe guess what someone was thinking based on some inscrutable facial expressions; you know, something resembling real acting. Anyway, there is this heartbreaking section about Dido contemplating her options: she has been angry, and vengeful, but she is essentially a realist, a concilator, "and pretty strong. There is also the question of forgiveness, not a word you hear a huge amount these days - like guilt, which you never hear at all, except to be told you must not feel it." And so she decides to stick it out, as it were, or at least so far (I still have 40 pages left). I found that decision an interesting one, given the times, given the situation, given everything, really.

I really identified with both the more guarded Georgia and the outgoing, now more quiet, Dido, and I kept thinking of a good friend of mine, much closer to Dido and Georgia's age than me, who would likely have been quite surprised to see me reading and enjoying this book. She often recommends titles to me, but then qualifies it with "but people your age might not enjoy or understand that type of ...." (be it situation, problem, humour, etc.). She once did this with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, too (aging parents being something I couldn't relate to, in her mind). Now, perhaps in some ways I've had some unique life experience for my "age," but that type of readers' advisory really annoys me: as though everyone must "read their age." It's almost the same to me as saying I can't be friends with someone older or younger than me.

[Digression: last night we watched Love that boy, a lovely romantic comedy about an over-achieving King's student who falls in love with her 14-year old neighbour. Speaking of "inappropriate" relationships... Also, the film includes a minor character played by a very young Ellen Page!]

OK. So, I refuse to read my age. And I would refuse, also, to only recommend based on age. If someone in their 60s comes into Rideau, I am as likely to recommend something with a 20-year old protagonist as with a 60-year old protagonist. To me, unless the patron states the age of a character, or a life stage, as a personal preference during a readers' advisory conversation, I wouldn't make it a priority at all. It would be as offensive as saying you can't read something because you don't have children, or live in London, or whatever. Dido and Georgia's very unique situations touched me in a personal way; perhaps a different way than they would another reader (and doesn't every reader reading the same title read a different book?), but I was certainly not bored by them!

Hmm. Read-alikes. I don't read a lot of books "like" this, actually, not in the sense of the story but more the tone and the emphasis on family life. Maybe The children's book? Similar notalgic tone, sense of internal lives of characters, different generations and ages. Or even The rain before it falls?

Data migrated, 27 boxes + 9 bins checked in, author visited, packed for Hamilton!

Ya, that was my week.

Our upgraded ILS finally went live late yesterday afternoon, and the massive check-ins of 2010 began! I hear Main Library checked in over 10, 000 items in a 3.5 hour period last night. We got through our 27 boxes and 9 bins by mid-day today, and then started on some other stuff (damaged, withdrawals, expired holds, etc.) I know my staff did an amazing job dealing with the massive backlog of material, checking in, dealing with problem items, sorting and re-shelving; I know this in part because I was right there beside them, checking in stuff too! It really was "all hands on deck" and it was kind of fun, in a crazy, chaotic, exhausting kind of way. So just don't read the comments here, because that might make you lose the will to live if you work for the library.

We did have to cancel one group visit today, because all of us were swamped with check-ins and shelving, but we did host our author visit yesterday afternoon. Local author Paul Glennon (whose adult book, Decameron, was a finalist for the GG, and his children's novel, Bookweird, which I loved, is the first of a planned trilogy) visited fair Rideau Library yesterday at 1 pm to talk to two local school classes. He was great; a little bit nervous at first, I think, but the kids in those two classes can be alternatively a handful or utterly uncommunicative, so I suppose I could have given him more warning about that. Paul talked about the plot of Bookweird, then read a bit from the opening scene where the main character, 11 year old Norman, wakes up inside the novel he was reading. The kids really loved when he did the accents for the animals in the book-inside-the-book. That was wonderful. Then Paul asked the kids about what they think would happen if they got stuck inside the book they were reading:

Kid: "Um, well, in class right now we're reading Oliver Twist, and, um, it's about this boy who's an orphan, and, um, I forgot his name..."

Paul: "Oliver Twist?"

Kid: "Yeah, that's it! Anyway, he ...." etc.

Best. Quote. Of. The. Day.

Actually, Oliver Twist made for a fertile discussion about what would happen if you got stuck inside a book. Paul also talked to the kids about what a writer does, and then read another passage from Bookweird and took questions from the kids. One particularly thoughtful question was, if Paul had this power of bookweird, would he use it? And what book would he like to travel into? Paul responded that he thinks he would be unable to resist using the power if he had it, and that he would most like to travel inside The Golden Compass, in part because he is interested to find out what his daemon would be (incidentally, did you know there is an online test you can take to find out? It's linked to a dating website, but is still kind of interesting).

So, yeah. Paul's visit was fun. He seems like a really nice, thoughtful, and interesting guy.

Then a kid threw up on the way out of the library, luckily not on the (new-ish) carpet, and luckily too, at least, not while the library was open (the only thing more gross than chunky vomit is chunky vomit that your library patrons have unwittingly tracked throughout the library).

Staff also rocked their creativity yesterday making some felts for me, before the system came online again - hooray! See you tomorrow - don't forget it's FELT FRIDAY! New felts unfinished and therefore not to be featured... yet.

Tomorrow: Hamilton. Flying Porter. Looking forward to that almost as much as the talk. Am psyched to meet some cool library techs.

OPL + IMPAC

This month's City Librarian's Monthly Report has a snippet about our IMPAC submissions. You might not know that...

"Every year for as long as the award has been given ([since] 1996), the Ottawa Public Library has participated by submitting 3 novels published in the previous year. One year we nominated Alistair MacLeod's Some Great Mischief, which won the IMPAC for 2001! Our reading committee includes David Staines of the University of Ottawa, Randall Ware, formerly of Library and Archives Canada, Linda Sherlow-Lowdon formerly of the OPL, and chief librarian of Kanata Public Library, as well as library staff from Collection Management and branches. We read, judge and nominate what we think will be of international calibre to compete for such a prestigious literary prize. OPL sent in our nominees for this year:

Galore by Michael Crummey...."vividly imagines life in Newfoundland’s early permanent fishing settlements established around the beginning of the 19th century. It is a poetic and powerful rendering of an intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries, where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to distinguish"

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre ......"is perhaps as close as we will get to eavesdropping on the private conversations we were never meant to hear among clergy or between clergy and "complainers". It is an unforgettable and complex character study of a deeply conflicted man at the precipice of his life. It poses the question can any act of contrition redeem our own complicity?"

The Disappeared by Kim Echlin...... "is a love story which penetrates to the chilly core of the Cambodian tragedy of the 1970's in a love story between a young Montrealer and a Cambodian foreign student to the rampages of the Khmer Rouge and evokes questions about our very human need to revisit the past.""

On not working with the public

Well, well, well. The theme of this week could be Preparing.

We are in the thick of our ILS upgrade. A few surprising things happened:

Returns, sorted by collections, waiting for check-in

During our "offline" days, when we were open but using our backup (not live) system, to do check outs only, we had fewer returns than expected (see above).

It has also taken our system longer to upload data from our offline days; today and yesterday, branches were supposed to be starting to check in everything from our offline days, but we can't start until the data from the offline check outs is properly uploaded. Complicated, no? Well, not that complicated, but hard to plan for in some ways.

Since we can't start check ins, or frankly do anything on the new ILS, we've been a bit at a loss. We can't really open, since we can't do check outs now either while data is being uploaded (it would create a bit of a vicious circle, with data every day having to be newly uploaded, sort of the old "shoveling the walk while it's still snowing" adage...).

Transfers to other branches? Can't do it. Withdrawals of damaged items? Can't do it. Sending overflow of paperbacks via our "shared" collections? Can't do it.

My own work: placing requests to plan out class visits and displays for summer 2010? Can't do it. Zero circ: can pull it off the shelves, but can't withdraw it. Argh.

We've shelf-read the whole library, I've re-filled every display to perfection, the stacks are all dusted (this aft, our lovely Julio even VACUUMED THE TOPS OF THE STACKS - now that, my friends, is dedication).... The thing is, too, we can't go through too much and put aside a lot of damaged items, because that's just creating another shelf/box/book truck of stuff to deal with when we go live again. We have 9 trucks already, not to mention those 27 boxes, plus "grey bins" of material delivered from other branches prior to the migration not yet processed. Gah.

You know me, though - I can entertain myself no matter what. So yesterday, I cleaned up e-mail (mailbox approaching limit - nope, not Inbox, my Personal Folders! So I have to archive that stuff). In the afternoon, I had a moment of inspiration and decided to focus on new shelf-talkers. I keep meaning to get to them, and just run out of time (see the originals here). So I went through Fiction and Mysteries, and Teen and Juv and Adult Nonfic, jotted down titles I want to shelf-talk, and got started. Today, I am finishing up those, and I might even get creative with some new felts if I have time. I also prepared my Leo Lionni centennial birthday display, at right.

The other thing that I blissfully had uninterrupted time to work on this week was my big talk for Friday. I am presenting at the Ontario Association of Library Technicians (OALT) conference in Hamilton this coming Friday (programme). The talk is done, the notes are DONE, and I even had time to print, upload to this blog (R-hand menu bar on homepage), and save to USB.

By far, the best thing about this unexpected "down(-ish) time" has been being able to hang out with everyone else who works at Rideau branch. The irony of working with the public, and interacting with many, many people every day, is you have little time to interact with your colleagues. We rarely have a proper conversation, unless between 9-10 am before we open, and we never all sit down together and eat lunch. We also rarely work on a specific project as an entire team: yesterday, just taking all the labels off expired holds on the holds shelf was fun, because 3 of us were working on it together (I know, I know: how many library employees does it take...?) It's nice to hang out with your colleagues. I guess this is how employees who don't work with the public feel.

We all still miss the public, though. Seriously. It's too quiet. Especially since I turned off the Internet PCs. But there is something to be said for sitting in the kiddie chairs in the library, eating pizza with your friends.

This is the way the ILS migration begins...

R: divided by collection code; L: to be filled later

Not with a bang, but with a lot of boxes

(and yes, some whimpering!)

Counting down to Freedom to read week 2010

I made this list recently for my Acquisitions students (we were talking about Collection development/Materials policies this week, and got into discussions about book challenges), and I thought I would re-post it in full here.

Here are some recent book challenges that made news, and some related literature about book banning and censorship:

• Statements: OLA Statement on the Intellectual Rights of the Individual, CLA Statement on Intellectual Freedom, ALA Freedom to Read Statement
, CILIP statement on intellectual freedom, access to information and censorship 

• Another excellent resource: Freedom to Read (Canada’s Book and Periodical Council)

  Also publishes the List of Challenged Books and Magazines: This selective list provides information on more than 100 books and magazines that have been challenged in the past decades. Each challenge sought to limit public access to the books in schools, libraries, or bookstores. Some challenges were upheld; others were rejected.
• Backlash: Annoyed Librarian: "Celebrate 'Banned' Book Week"
  Excerpt: "it's not like we're in any danger of censorship in any meaningful sense. As a comparison, think about the stupid suicide book in Australia. It seems that book was actually censored, and that kind of thing just doesn't happen in America. To defend the presence of some stupid kid's book in a classroom against some rube in Bumflap, GA is one thing, but to claim that by doing so you're fighting "censorship" for our freedom is just sad. [...] [The ALA's definition of censorship] is designed to support the ALA's skewed meaning of terms. This definition doesn't even account for the definition of censorship as "government's prior restraint on publication," which is a basic meaning of censorship that everyone but the ALA understands. "Change in the access status of material," in addition to sounding like it was written by a tone deaf committee, does not cover cases of the government refusing to allow a book's publication. In other words, it doesn't cover cases of actual censorship. A state censoring a book doesn't "change its access status." It keeps the "access status" exactly as it had always been."
• School media specialist self-censoring their acquisitions (School Library Journal): SLJ Self-censorship survey; Interpretation of survey results
• Various Canadian schools pull To Kill a Mockingbird
• Scholastic Censors Myracle’s ‘Luv Ya Bunches’ from Book Fairs
• Oral sex? Not in my dictionary!
  
• Robert Munsch’s latest grounded by terrorist threats
• Ottawa and the sex manuals!... Original links to Citizen articles no longer work: some stuff here, here, here and here.
  
• Even the library’s board members want something pulled from the collection...
• Christian group sues for right to burn YA book about gay teen
• Book banning for idiots: Whaddya mean, there are two Bill Martins?
• [edited] Whoops, forgot one: Texans like their Romeo and Juliet with less, um, sexuality.
  

The Daughters of Wisdom

Every day, I get off the bus and walk down rue De L'Eglise (Google Maps calls it Church St.) and I pass by the "Maison Accueil - Sagesse" (or "Welcome House," as I'm sure Google would prefer) for the religious order of the Filles de Sagesse.

In Vanier, where I now work (once called Janeville, so it has a special place in my heart!), there is a long history of religious orders living in the neighbourhood. In fact, Vanier Branch of OPL is located on land once belonging to the Pères Blancs d'Afrique, so called because of the white robes they wore while carrying out their missionary work in North Africa. The Vanier Branch itself is even housed in the former home of the Soeurs Antonines de Marie, a sister order of the White Fathers (my boss's office is even located on the former altar, which is a source of endless amusement - if you wish, you can kneel - the altar rail is long gone - to petition him!) A dark-skinned Virgin still presides over the land and welcomes you into the cul-de-sac where the library and the Vanier Muséopark are now located.

As I walk down De L'Eglise every morning, I always take a moment to glance over at the lovely gardens of the Filles de Sagesse. I occassionally run into one of the nuns walking outside the walls, but most often I see them inside, beyond the walls, walking slowly along the small, narrow paths bathed in sunlight, from one statue to another.

What a lovely way to pray.

IMPAC Dublin surprise! + quick update from Ottawa

Man Gone Down, by first-time American novelist, Michael Thomas, has catapulted ahead of Philip Roth, Doris Lessing, Junot Diaz, Joyce Carol Oates and others to win the IMPAC Dublin prize. Yes, that's €100,000 (£85,000). The Guardian reports he is "currently a professor at Hunter College in New York," and that "he said he'd use his winnings to pay some bills."

I love it when the underdog wins!

Meanwhile, in Alex-land, today was my first day back at my branch after a 2-week hiatus (CLA, vacay, meeting in Toronto, training). It's been wild, which I expected, but also a pleasure to be back, which I didn't expect. Unfortunately, I have a splitting headache, which is probably due to the wild part.

Yesterday, I amused myself at a press conference for the annoucement of the site of the new Central Library for Ottawa. My own report from the morning is here; other (real) news reports are here (Citizen), here (Metro news), here (CBC) and ici (Le Droit).

I wasn't too impressed with the CBC article, which quotes a patron outside Main Library as saying "he'd be sad to see the old building go." I think it's not by any means "fine as it is." Of course, some people will always say they don't see the importance of a new library branch, Central or otherwise, but this is a long-time library user. Argh.

I think part of this sentiment involves the mentality that, despite being a national capital, Ottawa is seen by Ottawans as a very "fine as it is" city. Our urban design doesn't strive for greatness, or even uniqueness. We seem to throw buildings up willy-nilly, letting development companies get away with whatever (ahem), and only ever asking for adequate spaces.

Let's take a chance or two with the new Central Library, and help set the tone for Ottawa as an awe-inspiring national capital!