Currently reading...and a rant

Currently reading _The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable_ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and also Neil Postman's classic _Teaching as a Subversive Activity_. There's a nice confluence between where I am in Taleb's book and where I am in Postman's book, especially on issues about perception, knowledge and language.

Very cool stuff.

Been very busy, sorry for the long silence and dearth of recent postings.

Finally renewed my ALA, TLA, and PLG memberships, in that order.

Looking forward to TLA at the end of March/start of April. It's down in Houston this year, which means I can stay at Mom & Dad's place for free. Nice.

There's also an local workshop on RDA being done by UNT-SLIS on Monday. TWU has decided to let most of our small Tech Services Department attend as well.

I went out to UNT's Discovery Park to familiarize myself with the territory, as I'd never before driven out there before. The property used to belong to TI but was recently bought by UNT. Basically it is the home for the College of Engineering, but SLIS is now out there, too, evacuating their former home in the old ISB in the heart of the main campus.

The hype, of course, is to symbolize SLIS's growing technological and scientific acumen. Walking on the actual grounds you can see it for the sham it really is. While all the other departments in the building are clearly delineated and defined, with appropriate signage on their front doors, declaring their identity, the School of Library and Information Sciences, while it is identifiable (albeit spread out) on the building floor plan, is not at all readily identifiable just walking around on the 2nd floor. Especially amid all the impressive mechanical engineering equipment in and around the building, visible through Plexiglas walls, exposed pipes, etc, the SLIS department seems woefully out of place, seemingly stuck there as an afterthought. The "Information Scientists" rubbing shoulders with all those, ahem, real scientists, must get kind of embarrassing; maybe that's why SLIS doesn't label their front door like everybody else.

UNT SLIS, which exists to produce ALA-accredited Masters of Library Science (MLS) to become working professional librarians, and trains teachers to become state-certified School librarians...whose students are frequently non-traditional age students, even by grad school standards...who frequently work full time and attend classes in the evening, on weekends and online...many of the Library science books of the former SciTech collection have now proudly been moved out to Discovery Park, which has its own Library (curiously divided into two unconnected sections inside the same building)...that is closed on weekends. Way to foster that information access there, guys...at least OUR library science collection IS available on weekends in Denton, so teachers needing to come to check out books on weekends can at least come to our library with their TexShare cards and not be totally hosed. The callous stupidity of this just really infuriated me today. The image is more important than reality...the hallmark of the recently concluded G.W. Bush era, I should note in passing. Yes, yes, I know more and more information is available online, yada yada; Things were bad enough when I was in UNT-SLIS from 2002-2004. If I were just now beginning my MLS instead of working as a librarian, the current farcical situation resulting from SLIS's recent move to Discovery Park would have definitely helped me overcome my male ego issues and today I would be enrolling at TWU instead to get my MLS. I've always long had a preference for the way TWU-SLIS was organized, in its recognition of the humanistic aspects of librarianship, even going so far as to offer a longer degree program specifically called "Master of Arts, Librarianship" (MALS) that I think truly captures what is essential in becoming a librarian. UNT was already techno-fetish crazy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but now...now they're plumb off the deep end into delusional fantasy land. I didn't think they could get much worse in the early 2000s, but boy was I wrong. The poverty of my imagination at that point, being unable to conceive how much more pretentious and silly UNT-SLIS could become is really unforgivable. I should definitely have known better.

Although I wish sometimes that I worked for a larger university, in a larger metro area with more culture, an abundance of foreign language departments, etc, I still love that I can walk to work. I still love that I work in a beautiful building that actually looks like a library is supposed to look. I love that every day I'm working to make its collections more accessible not just to its students on campus but to the world at large through WorldCat. I love that I sometimes get to tackle reference questions, especially surrounding cataloging & classification issues.

Hard to believe the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival will soon be upon us again, and after that the Texas Scottish Festival in Arlington, and Scarborough Faire down in Waxahachie. I enjoyed these last year and look forward to going back to these events again this year. Denton's a pretty neat little place, I have to say. I plan to stay put for awhile.