a hundred visions and revisions

Clueless Student 1: *rushing up to me* What's the word for, like, when the government doesn't let you say something?
Me: Uh...you mean censorship?

Clueless Student 2: So, what's the deal with this library? Where are all the books and how do you find one?
Me: *facepalm*

(To be fair, it is somewhat confusing to try and find books in our library if you're just walking in and looking around. Our reference books are all on the first floor, but mostly it's computers and media centers. All of the circulating books are on the floors above. Still, this was a graduate student, who apparently hadn't entered the library before. Which is pretty pitiful, in my book.

Check out my dad's new website, courtesy of yours truly! It's not finished yet - I've still got to add some pictures and put some finishing touches on it. It's due next week as my final project for Information Architecture for the Web, and I presented on it today in class. It seemed to go really well, and my professor and the other students liked it a lot. I'm certainly no expert web designer now, but I'm still really thrilled with what I've learned in this class.

UGH. After seven hours of alternately staring at a computer screen and pulling my hair out in frustration, I've finally completed my first CSS markup assignment for my web design course. Here it is, if anyone's interested. And check out that code! (If anyone is wondering why it took me seven hours to get through this, just take a look at that.) Oh, and the silly "return to top" icons and Ghost World picture are there because we had to include a certain amount of images in the page. So I just threw them up there. This isn't necessarily the design I would do if I didn't have to meet all the requirements for my assignment - I think it's awkward in a couple of places because of that - but I'm still pretty proud of it. Now, on to my term project!

The other day I picked up a copy of Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn at a used bookstore here in Bloomington. It's a strange little novel about a fictional tiny island country that worships the creator of the classic typing test pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." They've erected a monument to this guy with the phrase written on it, but when the letters start falling off one by one, the island leaders take it as a sign and, as each letter falls off, they ban the people from using each letter in writing and conversation. Anyway, reading this got me curious about other pangrams, so during a boring reference desk shift I wandered over to the Wikipedia entry on pangrams and wasted a good hour or so. Among my discoveries was this incredible Finnish pangram, "Törkylempijä vongahdus," which Wikipedia helpfully translates as "Muckysnogger booty-call." Now, I have no idea what a muckysnogger booty-call is, exactly, but the fact that it exists and is a perfect pangram in the Finnish language just makes me unreasonably happy, and I intend to proudly use this beautiful phrase at every possible chance I get.

Other great pangrams in other languages and their translations, as mentioned on Wikipedia:

Bulgarian: За миг бях в чужд плюшен скърцащ фотьойл: "For a moment, I was in someone else's plush squeaking armchair."

Lojban: o'i mu xagji sofybakni cu zvati le purdi: "Watch out! Five hungry Soviet cows are in the garden!"

Dutch: Sexy qua lijf, doch bang voor 't zwempak: "Sexy of body, though scared of the swimsuit."

Korean: 키스의 고유조건은 입술끼리 만나야 하고 특별한 기술은 필요치 않다: "The essential condition for kiss is that lips meet and there is no special technique required."

Go here and fight against other people for refrigerator magnet letters and have very slow conversations!

Today while working at the reference desk I had a Chinese student come up and ask for information on drug trafficking and American teenagers - specifically how teens obtain marijuana. He wasn't a very clear English speaker, and my coworker David, who overheard parts of the conversation, thought that he was asking me where he could get some pot for himself. This led another coworker to mention the time someone asked him how to find information on freebasing cocaine. All this to say: apparently librarians are your go-to people when it comes to getting your hands on drugs.

Just to give you an idea of the kinds of questions we get here at the reference desk in Wells Library at IU, here's some sample questions from today:

"I looked up a book earlier and you guys had it, but now I forget the title."

"I need to find stuff about sex trafficking in Romania"

"Is there a fax machine nearby?"

"I need to borrow a pair of scissors. Oh, and tape if you've got it. And do you have a stapler?"

"We need to find information on public opinion of Patrick Henry during the Revolutionary war period. Especially about the press' reaction to his speeches."

"I need to find circulation statistics and business information for the top three men's magazines, but I don't know which ones they are."

"Do you have headphones?"

"I'm looking for information on bulimia. You know, like how bulimia got started."

"I'd like to find letters to the editor about the Challenger explosion and Reagan's reaction to it."

"I'm looking for an advertisement of a product or service around the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks. I have to photocopy the ad and give it to my teacher."

"Where can I watch a DVD?"

"I'm a law student and I spend all of my time in the Law Lib. How do I find a book here? This place is huge!"

"Are there group study rooms anywhere?"

"What's the shuttle bus schedule?"

"Where do I print at?"

"I need to find information on IU's Slavic Singing Group and slavic music traditions."

"I need information on Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), and the black power movement."

"Do you guys have a scanner?"

"I need to find out stuff about Oprah Winfrey, especially about her work in Africa and being a feminist."

"I have to look up information on heart disease in Finland during the early 20th century."

"Is there free parking at the metered lot?"

From a guy on his cellphone:

"Yeah, man, I'm at the library. This place is awesome, chicks everywhere!"

Holy crap, I haven't posted in half of forever!

So far this semester has really gotten away with me. I can't believe it's already half over. I LOVE my classes this semester, though. Let me tell my faithful readers (all three of them) all about them!

First, I've got Information Architecture for the Web, which is a fancy way to say that it's a class teaching basic XHTML and CSS for web design, as well as a bit of PHP and Javascript. It's been a lot of fun, although it's frustrating to want to be able to implement a lot of techniques that I'm just not capable of yet. Our final project involves creating a site from scratch for a client of our choice. I'm designing a new site for my dad's insurance company, Cates and Associates. On the whole, this class involves a lot of work and a lot of coding that has to be written just right. I think it's definitely worth it, though, and hopefully I'm learning skills that will be useful to a future employer somewhere down the line!

Next, I'm taking a reader's advisory course, which is focused on the work of facilitating readers in a public library. Basically, we're discussing and reading from all the various genres and subgenres of fiction, as well as some nonfiction, putting together mock book club sessions and readalike suggestions, doing reviews, making signage and bookmarks - all kinds of fun stuff. What other graduate level course requires you to read a romance novel as an assignment? It's not all fun and games, though, because we do a lot of somewhat heavier reading on the differences between genres and how they're treated in a library setting, as well as writing up reviews and recommendations and practicing our skills as readers' advisors. But still, another class that is overall lots of fun.

And finally, my last class: children's and young adult literature. This is basically reader's advisory for the younger crowd. Again, lots of work, but it's fun work, so I don't mind it. Over the course of the semester, we have to keep a reading log of at least forty picture books and at least thirty children's and young adult novels that we've read and reviewed. We're also doing projects on the history and development of children's lit, children's illustrators, various awards, giving booktalks, folktales and fairytales, and how librarians deal with censorship and book challenges in the context of children's and YA lit. The teacher is an adjunct who's worked for years as a children's librarian, and she's very passionate about what she does - thus, a lot of fun to learn from. I look forward to this class every week, even though it requires a lot of reading and projects.

So that's what I'm doing this semester. After my first semester in grad school, which concentrated on a lot of the required core subjects (and thus was a lot more boring), I declared this my fun semester, and so it has been, so far. The children's lit class especially has made me consider the possibility of being a children's or YA librarian. Oh! I've got exciting news on that front, by the way. I've gotten an internship for this summer! I'll be working in the brand new, incredible main library building of the Allen County Public Library system in Fort Wayne. And I'll be in the young adult department. It's a great opportunity to work in a large, well-respected library system, plus I'll get to really get my hands dirty with programming and events and all kinds of stuff aimed at teenagers. Hopefully it'll help me decide that I either love YA librarianship, or I never want to be around snotty teens again. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, plus my parents live in Fort Wayne so I've got a place to stay for free. I'm trying to decide right now whether I should sublet my apartment, or whether it's worth it for just two months. I may want to come back down here to Bloomington on weekends, anyway, since most of my friends will be here taking classes. Anyway, that's my big news right now, and I'm really excited about it - I didn't want to end up just doing my internship at the library here (even though it's a really great library), since that's what everyone seems to end up doing.

Well, I think that's about it for my big update. Oh yeah, and I finally got rid of that faulty template, too. It never did show up right for me in Firefox, even though I kept tweaking it. So now I'm back to one of the basic blogger templates. Maybe I'll pick up enough stuff from my web design class to build my own template, who knows.

Well, the holidays are all over and I'm back in Bloomington now. Bleh. I love living by myself and it was nice to come back to my apartment, but after spending three weeks away with family and friends, it's been kind of lonely and boring for me to be back here. Classes and work start on Monday, though, so I'll soon be really busy again. And I'm looking forward to getting together with all of my library friends down here. So all in all, it's good to be back. I just want things to get started again now that I'm here.