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I am part of the university library faculty. My areas of research and development include, Computer Science, Political Science, Military Science, Geography, Religion. Philosophy, and History. Before that I was Head of the University Web Development Office, and Assistant Director of archives and special collections. I have a Masters of Library and Information Science and A Master of Arts and Sciences in History, focusing on 19th Century Communal Societies in The United States. I was inducted into Beta Phi Mu the Honorary Society of Library Science, and Phi Alpha Theta the Honorary Society for History.

4:45 AM the Last Night

There is one group. Up on the fourth floor. Being loud playing music (quietly) talking and having a good time. I have had to talk to this same group all week. Tonight it is to darn late, and I am to darn tired to get into a confrontation or scene on the last night. If there is anybody else on that floor and they don’t like the noise the can move to one of the three other empty floors in the building.

Now, I know that some of you librarians are wondering if you will chicken out under fire. Don’t you worry about that, I can assure you that you will all do your duty in a confrontation. That when you put your hand in a pile of confetti that a moment before was the third volume of the Oxford English Dictionary! (Cham – Creeky) You’ll know what to do.

Now it will be my pleasure and my privilege to serve with all of you anywhere anytime.

That’ll be all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDecLiA_Qbw

R Philip Reynolds

Librarian

Where will I be Working in Twenty Years?

I think it is like the title of the slide show suggested. The all nighter at the library turns the library into an extension of the dorm room. They study they sleep, they talk with friends, they surf the web, they play games and they do other things best not mentioned. I think this concept good or bad, useful or not, may be an important one. I have just not quite wrapped my mind around why it is yet. I think it is bound up in the academic commons idea, but I think now more than ever that there is an even wider disconnect between our thoughts and ideas as a profession about the library, and information, than I earlier suspected and mentioned in one of our Friday meetings.

I worry that we are not able to think radically enough or far enough outside of the box (and the library is a big brick box, our offices our smaller sheetrock boxes, our books and journals paper boxes and our computer monitors electrified boxes) to breach this gap. If we do I fear that the programs and solutions would so far beyond the pale that the faculty and administration and many of us would not be able to accept them. We need to search the journals, the web, the blogs and list-servs and compile the ideas that are really out there, especially in RIS. We need to be careful with all our vendors and their products. Careful that the features the vendors sell us are driven by our program and not have our program driven by their features. I have been thinking a lot about our RIS home page all week and the more I think about it the more unsure I become about what it and we should be.

Another observation; almost every student, and I mean 95 -99 % are wired to something. A laptop, MP3 player, cell phone, something. I know that we know this and see it every day, but as you may have noticed in some of the pictures it is a little more pronounced these last few nights. We need to be there as well. That is where they are at. This special deal that was recently announced by ITS on cell phones with Cingular, could an arrangement be made to have the info desk preloaded into those phones? It could be called InfoDesk, SFA Library or The Library or whatever, but what if we were already there? What if before every class, we had everyone get out their phone and enter the info desk number? I know that some do already but what if we all did, IL, SI, everyone. What if we had every student worker do this the day they were hired? What if we suggested that when they heard someone with a question that needed answered that they dial the number and hand over their phone? That is viral marketing. How many student workers do we have and how much of the student population do they interact with when they are not working? What do the numbers become when we add all our classes? This is what makes fortunes on the web now. Not big add accounts but people telling other people how great something is or inviting their friends (Facebook, MySpace, Gmail) to participate. I’m afraid we may just be taking old paradigms, giving them new euphemisms and then sticking it on the web or in the classroom and thinking we are making progress. I haven’t seen a suggested professional reading list of journals for librarians. I’m sure there are some. I wonder though if they include Wired, The Register, Salon, SearchEngineWatch, or the continual stream of reports from the Pew Charitable Trust. Our efforts should be research guided. I’m not sure that our profession’s literature is serving us well in this area right now. I may be wrong and feel free to tell me if I am. I think that maybe the research at: The Pew Charitable Trust Society and the Internet http://www.pewtrusts.com/ideas/index.cfm?issue=10 may serve us better and may be the place we should be looking to first.

I could be way off. There are a lot of people a lot smarter than me thinking about this, but when I attend conferences I hear us (librarians) talking about ourselves a lot. When I read and look in other places I hear no one talking about us. The discussion of the Google digitization project is discussed one way by librarians and in a totally different way by everyone else. I know I am paranoid about this. I think it is because I spent eight years working with the web (at SFA which would make anyone paranoid), and have been using the Internet at least 11 years since the old UNIX command line days. When I came to this library there were three people who had worked in the SFA library longer than I had been alive. That is a career path that I don’t believe will be open for you Cassandra, or me, or for many others. I don’t see the library twenty years from now. Very few if any science fiction writers see us twenty years from now. Should we really be working to improve “library services”? Or is that the equivalent of the Soviets patching up the Mir station year after year to keep it going? Mir is at the bottom of the pacific now.

For today, tomorrow, next year and the next when there is a question to be asked I will answer it, a book to be found I will find it, and a class to be taught I will teach it. But, in the back of my mind I sense that something is wrong, the Library Profession is somehow on the wrong track, and that someway the needed change of course or transformation must occur from the bottom up, one librarian at a time, a grass roots effort, or maybe just a lot of rats abandoning a sinking ship. Many here are at a point in their careers that none of this matters, others of us are not. I wish I had the answers or at least knew how to begin looking for them. This feeling of watching a train wreck and not being able to help stop it is the worst part of it all.

I hope we can find the answers, and for the most part SFA library has been a place where we have been allowed to look for them and to try new things out.

On that happy note, I will go see if there is anyone in the library.

R Philip Reynolds

Librarian

Well its 4:00. Yup that’s what time it is. Don’t know what else to say. Some people are sleeping and some are studying and some are chatting away like it is the middle of the day. The woman’s bathroom sign is now gone off the third floor in the back. I think guys are stealing them for their dorms or apartments. I think physical plant ought to get a stencil and some spray paint and paint those suckers on their be (oh wait inside words outside words) on there and then just have a little plastic Braille tag underneath. I doubt the tag would be much of a prize for a dorm room, and it would not be a big deal to repaint it each semester if it was just a stencil. Of course if their were to many forms and the cost of the painter was to high I could just got to Wal-Mart get a can of Spray Paint and take care of it. Just give me the word. While I’m at it I could paint some additional signs. Let’s make this a group effort. Everyone think of a good sign to put up in the library and email it to me. Then we will just see where this goes. Ok, nobody tell Tiffany. We don’t want me to get in trouble or something.

Where Wise Men Fear to Tread

Fourth floor Steen Library, encyclopedias, philosophy, religion, history, law, education, music, and a party between the elevators. I have made two trips up there in the last half hour. At least they are on the right floor “HX Socialism; Communism; Anarchism.” I think they have settled down. Some I think I just chased off and some got the idea that either UPD or my self were going to keep coming up there, and some got to hear my speech. I tell them about the vandalism and how if it keeps up they won’t have 24/7 hours anymore, then I tell them that I really don’t care what they do just as long as they 1) Don’t tear anything up, 2) Don’t bother anybody else, 3) Try to keep you clothes on. I don’t know why but there is something about peoples’ pants and being in the library in the middle of the night that just doesn’t work out. I’m not talking about some guy hiding in a corner somewhere. I’m talking about guys and girls of all races out in the open, changing pants, having their pants fall down, getting tears in their pants, I don’t know what is going on but I think we are missing out on some great money making opportunities. We need a stand that sells purple sweat pants with “Steen Library Sweeps Week” on them the library logo. These pants would only be available during dead week and finals. Fleece blankets and purple U shaped airplane pillows should be sold, insulated mugs for cold drinks. Wade and I had this idea of building a deck on the roof or maybe just clearing out the fourth floor adding some lights a DJ a cover charge and some drinks and we would have the hottest club outside of Dallas or Houston. We would just call it The Library and have lights streaming up from the roof. My younger brother Will said that a library in one of his home towns had the local strip club have a “librarian night” where all the girls at the club (not the librarians) dressed up as librarians (or at least started dressed that way) and then gave a portion of the proceeds to the library. They made a fortune. We could do that with that club down by the river. I bet I could take my camera and get a poster session at ALA for that! (I wonder what my travel request should say? I could also get comp time for it and Linda couldn’t complain about me working harder to further my career.) That would also go along with that have a librarian on your desktop ad campaign I keep talking about. I’m telling you it is a winner. We would get lots of attention. Anyway things are quieting down. I should be able to cut my trips around the building back a bit.

Well I think I’ll see if Netflix has a copy of “The Full Monty”

R Philip Reynolds

“I’m to sexy for my shirt”

Librarian

Day Three

Or night three, at this point does it really matter. The natives are restless tonight I cold tell things were edgier when I walked in. It’s more crowded and louder on every floor. The worst being the lobby then the 4^th, 3^rd. and lastly the 2^nd . in front of the elevators especially. Maybe we could move the first row of chairs and tables from around the front bank of elevators? People are more belligerent. It is hard asking one table to be quite when there are 5 or 6 other noisy tables within site. I have to go to each one separately and they usually have a sullen attitude about the ones I haven’t talked to yet. I need a bull horn so I can tell entire sections to shut the xxx (no wait, inside words, outside words) to please keep their voices down. I still have not seen an unreasonable amount of trash considering that the building is completely full. I have pictures but I can’t find my USB cable to connect my memory card drive. No vandalism and no I am not going to check up on people in the bathrooms! The guys will get the wrong idea and the women nowadays are dangerous. They all have tattoos, piercings, pepper spray, or they can just kick my butt. Linda isn’t here to protect me. If someone knows an area to watch let me know. I chased a couple of guys out of a stairwell I saw them go into that I knew led nowhere, but no real trouble just a lot of chatting. I think the stress and the caffeine are building up and it may get worse tomorrow. I may have to look for some library camouflage or wear a ball cap and go under cover as a student. Things could start to get a bit dicey. I’ll have to watch my 6’s. Only a few more klicks to go tonight and I can hit the sack.

This is Ref Base One signing off.

Semper Scholaris Librorum

Anything, Anytime, Anywhere

I answered my first 4:45 AM reference question of my career today. When did Gutenberg invent movable type? Unfortunately there does not appear to be a good answer for that question. I checked a couple of sources and Britannica Online seemed to summarize it the best. Sometime in 1436 Gutenberg borrowed money for some type of project he was working on. He was farther along and borrowed more in 1448 then by 1450 his press was farther along and by 1455 he had printed his famous Forty-Two-Line Bible. So Gutenberg’s movable type printing press was invented sometime between 1436 and 1455. That is a stinky answer, but pretty darn good standing at a table with someone else’s laptop at 4:45 AM. If we had instant messaging and we each had a laptop and an alarm we could provide that kind of service year round.

Kinda makes yah go hmmmmmmmmmm.



Only a few diehards left. I had to quiet some people down. Trying to pick my subject databases but the text keeps moving on the screen. Or maybe the desk is moving? I am sick of those little red and green squiggley lines in my email. I think I’ll just start adding words to my dictionary. How come Chaucer got away with writing the way he wrote, and I got hassled for it all through school? I think that maybe the public school system deprived the world of a 21st century Chaucer. Or maybe I should have just done my homework? Who Knows?

2:14 and still awake

I had my second can of full throttle. The library would probably double its investment if they just had a stocked fridge of that stuff and some Freetos in my office all the time. Don’t let Tina or ME near it or it will be like Hammy the squirrel in Over the Hedge.

Mach 6 Drink http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFUGMkpnJrU

The building has cleared out a lot. But I see no sleeping or signs of those that are left slowing down. I noticed that a lot more trash has been picked up and put in the garbage instead of being left out. I think I have begun to make some sort of bond with the natives. They appear more docile and cooperative. I brought my camera with me this time around the building. Some were shy and had to be coaxed out of their hiding places while other strutted and thumped their chests demanding that their primitive nobility be recorded for the ages. I quickly made new friends and passed the word about the vandals and damage, and recruited their help in watching for trouble. I don’t know if this will help but I suspect that it has. Word is spreading of the strange silent pale one who stalks the stacks at night.

经册府明皇

Jing Ce Fu Minghuang



Emperor of Clear Bright Understanding of the Classics, Sacred Books, and the Library

I am way to tired for Midnight

The building is packed. I have never seen it so full before. There were some noise and water gun fights on the second floor but apparently UPD was called and it was taken care of. Its times like these that try librarians’ souls. I wonder why I became a librarian. I figured that since I needed to start writing every day, that I would start a couple of Blogs. The serious professional one is not ready yet. The other one you can find at:

http://himynameisphil.blogspot.com/

Hi my name is Phil and I am a Biblioholic.

I really had no choice. Yeah I know we all have a choice, but the odds were stacked against me from the beginning. My mother was already addicted when I was born. She's a real mess now. She doesn't just read Lincoln biographies, or three volume series' on the the Civil War anymore, she's gone on to harder stuff, like train spotting, bird watching, and even genealogy. We tried talking to her, getting her to see a doctor, even just to watch a little TV but none of it worked. We finally had an intervention, but she's going to have to hit bottom and start scrap booking before she can get the help she needs.

For me it started with my mom. I remember her taking me on my bike when I was five years old to the local Carnegie franchise. Yeah, "Free Public Library" the first hit is always free. They even had a special room down in the basement for kids. It had it's own full time pusher, reading to you, smiling, and being nice. How is a kid supposed to resist something like that that?

Then came school. They actually started teaching us to read?! What were they thinking? I remember Dick and Jane. Poor Dick and Jane, I wonder if they knew what they were being used for? Where are they now? Some dusty boiler room living out their last days all alone in the dark, or worse yet in a landfill with all rest of humanity's waste?

I can remember wanting to live like Dick and Jane. They were always having a good time, always happy, smiling, holding hands and running together, we never did see them the day after, when they crashed. I don't see Dick and Jane running and jumping anymore. I'm just glad that the authorities finally took this meth problem seriously.

But none of that is an excuse for me. Why do I have library of over 1000 books and a garage full of countless unknown others. Why can't I park my car in the garage like normal people instead of searching through boxes for my next book fix. I should never have picked up that first book, with its brightly colored cover and all those pictures on the pages. That seems so long ago now that I sit here 30 some odd years later, a Librarian.

Just give me a minute.

I need to get this out.

I need to tell the story of how a once happy innocent child who loved to ride his purple bike and once walked to the corner grocery totally naked and was sent home wearing a grocery sack, while his mother read Tolstoy. How I came from that innocent begging to now embody the plague that has spawned the billion dollar publishing industry and clogged our networks with pointless ramblings and blogs.

You've seen how the journey began, but can you follow it to its end?


My name is Phil and I am a biblioholic.