On the second day I started work at this school, I told one of the first students I met that I was in school to become a school librarian. “You’d make a fun librarian,” she told me. “Not like those boring ones.” I was pleased, but also a little puzzled–we’d only just met, and she knew little more about me than the way I dressed and that I at least knew how to log into the BPL databases.

Earlier today, a teacher at that same school told me in a stage whisper that the way I was sitting at the circulation desk was “not so professional-looking.”

So how do I balance being the Fun Librarian with being A Professional Librarian? (more…)

I’ve been thinking lately about books that make the jump to the big screen, spurred most recently by a discussion over at Feministing about Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. The comments there have brought up issues of who makes certain decisions about a film (was Norah’s flannel left out by the screenwriter, the costume designers, or the director?), the sacrifices screenmakers make in order to make a book more “filmic,” and what it means when films deviate significantly from their source text.

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I’m extremely lucky to have just started (part-time, but it works out with my finally-finishing-library-school schedule) at an awesome high school library where we have a lot of administrative and faculty support, amazing and creative students, and a team of librarians with different backgrounds all bouncing ideas off each other.

So I didn’t have anything to be nervous about this morning when I asked one of my coworkers if they’d ever considered holding a gaming event in the library.

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I’ve been hemming and hawing over whether I wanted to write a review of Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World here, and ultimately I decided to publish it on my blog instead. But the process has made me think more about where YA literature and “adult” literature do and don’t cross over. (more…)

Well, here we are, a week later and none the worse for wear. I met a lot of people whose names I promptly forgot, stocked up on advanced reader copies, and did more blogging in a weekend than I sometimes do in a month.

A few nagging thoughts have been, well, nagging me since I left Anaheim, and I wasn’t sure how to string them together coherently. (I suppose the jury will still be out after this post…) Nonetheless, I thought it might be helpful for other folks thinking of going to their first big conference if I shared some tips that might have made Anaheim run a little more smoothly for me. (more…)

I had done another stenographer-on-too-much-coffee stint at this session (see Millennial Leadership), but luckily for me (and for you, dear reader) a lot of the material from Beyond Gaming Tournaments is online at the ALA Conference Materials Archive. So instead of duplicating a lot of content, allow me to direct you that-a-way and just summarize a few bits from the program for those of y’all who couldn’t attend. (more…)

I more or less live-blogged this, but of course now that I’m posting a day late the term “live” doesn’t really apply. I impressed myself with my stenography skillz, but then I realized I had created an extremely long blog post. Not for the faint of heart! I promise in the future I’ll be more brief, but I’m hoping some folks might find this “full transcript” (I did edit a little) useful.

Oh, and if anyone was in the audience and asked a question, feel free to leave a note with your name in comments–I’d love to attribute your wonderful questions to you!

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After one of the most miserable travel experiences to date (and I swear, I had a zen-like calm about me through the thunderstorm that soaked all of my clothing, the sardine-like gate area at Logan, and even the ground stop in Baltimore that left us sipping half-cups of warm VitaminWater on the tarmac; it was that two hour drive from LAX to my hotel that pushed me over the edge) I’ve finally made it to Anaheim and the grandeur that is ALA. And by “grandeur,” I mean “gigantic sea of orange tote bags.”

(Earlier the Sig Fig asked, “Are there a lot of glasses? And buns?” She’s allowed to ask this question because she’s an archivist. Sadly, I reported, there are very few buns.) (more…)

June is finally in full swing, and with Pride out of the way (in Boston, at least) it’s time for me to gear up for my other big event this month: Anaheim! The cat-sitter has been arranged, my discount park-hoppers are (hopefully) in the mail, and I’m now painfully aware of Travelocity’s double-billing policy for debit cards.

But with all my preparations, I don’t really have much of an idea of what to expect from the actual conference. (more…)

Via RH Reality Check, I’ve learned about the awesome SexInfo. Launched in San Francisco by Internet Sexuality Infomartion Services (ISIS), SexInfo lets teens receive health information via text message when they send numerical codes for common questions–1 for a broken condom, 6 if you’re not sure you want to have sex, and so on. While the texts require minimal effort on the part of teens, the messages they receive in response fully utilize the character limit. Responses include clinic addresses, hours and phone numbers, and a brief (often empowering) message to the teen, like “It’s ur choice 2 have sex or not.” (more…)