Meetings, meetings, meetings!

Meetings can be the bane of our existence! I try not to have meetings unless they are needed -- the one exception being a weekly meeting recently instituted among the top administrators in my library. That's helpful as I have seen in other meeting venues, just to make sure everybody has heard about what is happening.

When meetings are inevitable, I used to know a lot about running them -- from having a stated time limit, to using an agenda, to managing speakers. I have to say that I have gotten sloppy about meetings, but I certainly have fewer than I used to, so maybe it balances out some. Mea culpa.

And when meetings are inevitable, but I am not the chair, I try to adopt the Zen Meeting-Goer persona. This attitude carries me through some long meetings, and some irritating or upsetting discussions. I try to focus on process and not the outcome. I try to just go with the flow.

And most important, I try to have pen and paper and draw all my emotions and thoughts about the meeting! My meeting notes are a lot less useful (actually, I still note major decisions) after a few months, but much more helpful in surviving the meeting!

Happy Halloween!

Modern-day witches, also known as Wiccans, have a website, and it's full of info today! They call this day Samhain, after the ancient Celtic holy day. Here in Massachusetts, thinking of Halloween automatically makes you think of Salem, site of the infamous witch trials. Click on the Salem link to visit the website of the Salem Witch Museum. In Salem, Halloween is a BIG celebration! Of course, it's a favorite holiday now, all over!

At my alma mater, Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky, you can imagine what a big event Halloween has become. When I was a student, we had a tradition that the school was cursed by a former professor, Constantine Samuel Rafinsque. He allegedly had an affair with the wife of the then university president. When the affair became common knowledge, Rafinesque was fired. He left, cursing the university. Supposedly, each decade, one person has to die on the campus because of the curse. Here is what Wikipedia reports:

In 1819 he became professor of botany at Transylvania University, Lexington (Kentucky), giving private lessons in French and Italian as well. He started at once describing all the new species of plants and animals he encountered in travels throughout the state. In 1817 his book Florula Ludoviciana, had drawn much criticism from fellow botanists, causing his writings to be ignored. He was considered as the most erratic student of higher plants. In the spring of 1826 he left the university, after quarreling with its president. A legend later developed that Rafinesque placed a curse on the university when departing. Shortly afterwards, the university's president, Horace Holley, died from yellow fever and the original main building of the university (in present-day Gratz Park) was destroyed by fire.

Besides being a famous curser, Rafinesque was quite a good scientist and his name is attached to many plants and a few animals of North America.

Lastly, I would like to share the trick or treating tradition in St. Louis, Missouri. When I moved there, people took care to clue me in. On Halloween there, children are expected to perform a trick to get the treat. You mostly get jokes (lots of repeats, too!), but a few kids come up with a song or a gymnastic move or even a dance. It's pretty darn cool, and the kids really work at it. The littlest ones, just coming up the steps to a porch is a big enough trick. But I remember helping my children pick out and practice their jokes for trick or treat. My son used the same joke each year for nearly 10 years:

Q: How do you keep your dog out of the street?

A: Put him in a barking lot.

It's cute, and at least it's not about skeletons, ghosts or pumpkins!

Well, Happy Halloween!

NY Times on changes in law school teaching

Click on the link to this post to read an article from the New York Times on preparing law students for real life law practice. It's refreshing in that it looks (at least briefly) at changes in lesser-known schools as well as at the Ivies.

Anger from unemployed law grads

If you want to get in touch with the bitterness that some law grads (and current, anxious students) feel, check out the comments following the Wall Street Journal Law Blog post of October 3, 2007 (link in title to this post). I was really taken aback (though I shouldn't have been). The post is actually about one alternate career for JD holders, regardless of bar passage, in this case, financial planning. There are lots of business placements for folks with JDs and of course, the fabulous career of law librarian!

But the amount of debt that students are carrying at graduation is staggering. I think potential law students need to take a reality check. Partial relief has come to people in school now with the new loan forgiveness package from Congress (link)

Previous posts at OOTJ about student debt on Managing debt here and here

The partnership between writer and reader

Since at least library school (1983-84 -- yikes!), I have been thinking about this issue. When I write - letters, e-mails, blog entries, poems or scholarly articles, I try to be as clear as possible. But I have absolutely no control over how (or whether) YOU, dear reader, receive and interpret the writing.

The issue first came up for me in the context of arguing over librarians' commitment to avoid censorship. The more I learned about reading studies, the less viable seemed the wonderful, idealistic approach that truth will win in the market place of ideas. Reading studies consistently find that readers will choose to read materials that they agree with. If they are given material to read that challenges their beliefs, most readers will misinterpret the material, or at least fail to absorb the challenging comments. These reading studies were looking at such extreme cases as neo-Nazis being given material that criticizes and debunks the Protocols of Zion, or other such extreme biases. So, librarians optimistically stocking up on material on both sides of issues can't really expect the readers who have strong opinions on one side or the other to either choose or absorb opposing views. (To be fair, you may reach debate students or people sitting on a fence when you offer materials on both sides of controversial issues.)

This is a rather extreme situation, and most of what I write certainly does not fall that far to either side of an ideological divide. But the point is certainly worth considering -- I send out my words into the void of space and time. You, at the other end, decode and read what I write. But you bring to the reading your own life experience. How well you understand or remember what I write is partly a function of how well and clearly I write it. But part of that is outside my control. It's a partnership, between reader and writer. I record these words, with no guarantee that anybody will read them. Until your eyes and brain begin to partner with me and my words, nothing happens. No knowledge or opinion is passed along. But the magic of writing is that my words persist -- long after my spoken words, and potentially much farther away. It is as if we were trying to touch and communicate through a glass barrier -- some gets through, but some is filtered out.

And librarians work with that magic every day. Wow!

(image of Texas prisoner Kenneth Foster, Jr., at the time awaiting execution & now paroled into the general prison population, visited by his new wife, Tasha Narez-Foster, about Aug. 30, 2007 from ABC news.com. I chose the image -- gut-wrenching backstory -- because it was the best illustration I could find of the unbreachable barrier between people)

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

To promote awareness of domestic violence, the New York Court system has sponsored programs throughout the system, many of them available to the public.

In Brooklyn, I took advantage of the Family Court’s outreach program to learn about its daily efforts to protect victims and to hold offenders accountable. The New York City Family Court http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/family/index.shtml has an excellent faq.

Another excellent outreach effort is The Lawyer’s Manual on Domestic Violence: Representing the Victim, 5th ed., edited by Jill Laurie Goodman and Dorchen A. Leidholdt, published by the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department. A version of the manual can be downloaded at www.nycourts.gov/ip/womeninthecourts/publications.shtml and www.probono.net/ny/family/library.cfm. A print version can be ordered from womeninthecourts@courts.state.ny.us. Law libraries with a New York domestic violence practice area should purchase this book. After comparing its coverage of family offenses to West and Matthew Bender publications, I was amazed to realize how infrequently the major publishers updated this area and how little guidance was provided. This manual pulls together the hard-won knowledge of advocates and practitioners.

Amy E. Schwartz and Sharon Stapel’s chapter “Public Assistance and Housing: Helping Survivors Navigate Difficult Systems” is a goldmine for librarians trying to understand public benefits complaints in New York. Non-profits have done impressive work in making available the directives and policy bulletins of government benefit agencies. Government document librarians will want to review these sites and consider issues of access and accountability.

City of the Living Dead!

Wow! It's very interesting being in Boston while the Red Sox are in the World Series. The pennant race and now two late games have left the citizens of Boston wandering hollow-eyed and exhausted. I'll bet the number of absences from work, errors at work and traffic accidents have all gone up. Watch those paper cutters out there!

The image is actually from the film, Night of the Living Dead, image credited to Columbia Pictures, found at Houston Chronicle site, here.

AALL hosting a blog with news on Southern Cal. fires

Click on the link to this post to visit the AALL blog that is tracking the effects of the Southern California wildfires on libraries and staffers. Good job, AALL! Southern Californians are in our thoughts and prayers as we watch the news.

New NISO standard developing around shared e-resources

Click on the title to this post to visit the NISO standards page with a note on the new SERU (Shared Electronic Resources Understanding). NISO explains itself:

National Information Standards Organization, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation.

The text of the latest draft of the SERU is here at NISO's website. The new "understanding" seeks to replace the vendor/library bilaterally negotiated licenses with a standard arrangement. It's not really a standard or model license (for an example, see Yale's Model License), but it deals with the issues licenses have covered. AALL developed principles for licensing electronic resources, posted here. The SERU is different from either effort. Interesting development!

Perfect Delight

How long has it been since you had a moment of Perfect Delight, either at work or in your personal life? I started thinking about Perfect Delight and how important it is, when I looked at a photo of our new Dean at Suffolk in the student paper. They caught a picture of Dean Aman drumming (he is a jazz percussionist). He looks absolutely delighted – having so much fun and just grooving on what he’s doing and being in the moment.

That’s Perfect Delight. So, how long since you had a moment of Perfect Delight? If it’s been too long, let’s look for opportunities!

(the wonderful image of a delighted child is actually from the Florida Poison Information Center Network at http://fpicn.org) Maybe bubbles is the answer!