Tag Archives: Good reads

Murder-mysteries just got a whole lot more adorable.

Posted on January 30, 2011 | 2 Comments

Did you ever find Nancy Drew obnoxiously perfect? I hated Nancy Drew. Always so blond and pleasant and smart. George resonated with me so much more: tomboy, dark hair, and to-the-point. Just like my 8 year old self!

Despite this initial distaste, I’ve had a renewed love for girl-detective mysteries lately. One book series that piqued my interest revolves around Miss Flavia de Luce, and she is a million time more nerdy and lovable than Nancy Drew. Flavia lives in a small English village in the 1950s with her widower father and two treacherous older sisters. She is not only a crime-fighter, but also an icon for women in science, and youth community engagement! If she weren’t 11 years old, she’d be my role model.

I inhaled read the first two books in the series, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, and I’m pretty stoked to get my paws on the third book in the series, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

She reminds me an awful lot of  another beloved girl-detective character,Veronica Mars, and I’d like to think that if the two were to meet, they would get along swimmingly.

Ostracized by those close to them? Check (Veronica’s struggle against high school meanies, and Flavia’s awful sisters).

Lovable father-like character? Check (Veronica’s Dad, Keith Mars, and the de Luce’s grounds keeper, Dogger).

Absentee mother? Check (Flavia’s mother died while mountain-climbing in a far-off country, and Veronica’s mom deserted them after Keith lost his job as sheriff).

Trusted, beat-up transportation? Check (Veronica’s Le Baron car and Gladys, Flavia’s bicycle).  Suburban California and rural England would have the lowest crime rates in the Western world.

Anyway, check out the books! And hey, now that I think of it, go rent season one of Veronica Mars. She’s blond like Nancy Drew, but much, much cooler.

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I read fun things too, sometimes.

Posted on January 7, 2011 | 2 Comments

 

For the record, I want you all to know that I have finally started a book I’ve been dying to read for over a year now, and it’s called The Golden Mean, and it’s a fabulous book and you should all read it.

It’s a fictional story of the life of Aristotle — a writer I was forced to read throughout my undergraduate degree and never really appreciated. My interest was piqued when Michael Enright interviewed the author of the book, Annabel Lyon last year, around the time the book was nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, oh, and the Giller Prize. And the G.G. That’s all.  You can listen to the full interview here (Under The Socratic Method and 9/11). It’s a fabulous interview and it made me go out and buy the book. Eventually. About a year later.

As a complete aside, the CBC has really upped it’s game with the new layout for radio shows that have a podcast version. Bravo, CBC.

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We know things!

Posted on May 20, 2010 | 4 Comments

The latest article from the Library Networking Group just popped into my inbox, and it really resonated with me. The article is by Catherine Baird (who I’ve blogged about in the past), the Marketing, Communications and Outreach Librarian at McMaster University. The article discusses librarians’ need to “Exert Your Inner Expert“, and how librarians are seldom alongside the doctors, lawyers, journalists and media experts who are in the public eye, sharing expert opinions on key issues within our field.

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I can haz a lie-berry educashun?

Posted on January 4, 2010 | 6 Comments

Image from the Library Juice Press website, libraryjuicepress.com.

An interesting read awaits me! Once I figure out how to buy a book that I am QUITE CERTAIN will not be at Chapters anytime soon I am buying The Politics of Professionalism: A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship by Juris Dilevko. He is a professor at the Faculty of Information (and from whom I took a fantastic class called “Literature of the Social Sciences and Humanities”), and has published a most controversial book on the shortcomings of library education. A shortcoming, he argues, that has resulted in a profession distracted by fleeting technologies, preoccupied with professional advancement,and unconcerned with “the possession of meaningful knowledge that can be turned toward social good.”

WELL.

The first chapter is online (Merci a Monica for sharing that information), and is an enticing read for those among us who care about library education. Which is me. Why? I dunno. But I’ve blogged about the issue before. And I’m NOT EVEN IN LIBRARY SCHOOL ANYMORE.

I think I agree with some of what he says regarding subject knowledge, and the need for more reflective thinking in our profession. But I wonder about where many of my colleagues fit into his vision of librarianship, i.e. Librarians who work with eLearning, or digital initiatives, or information systems. I’ve seen what happens when those arenas are left to non-librarian technical teams, and it ain’t pretty. Or those who manage the libraries, and worry about glamorous things like who’s going to cover the desk when everyone is on vacation, or where we’re going to get the money for more computers. I wonder about where they fit in. But perhaps those questioned will be answered in Chapters 2 through 6.

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I’m an investigative journalist.

Posted on January 8, 2009 | 2 Comments

Back in November, I conducted an interview for the Special Libraries Association’s Toronto Student Group. I met up with Sophia Apostle, an MLIS graduate currently working as the Knowledge Resources Manager for Coutts Information Services to discuss her professional experiences and to gain some insights from her about how students can get into the job market. It was lots of fun, and we had a great time chatting. You can read the interview on the SLA-TSG blog here.

It’s always nice meeting new people in the field – yay libraryland!

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Posted in Professional Associations

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KM and the Tipping Point

Posted on June 1, 2008 | 2 Comments

I’m in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s, “The Tipping Point.” It’s a very interesting read, in which Gladwell attempts to put his finger on how certain social behaviours or events go from being a blip on society’s radar, to being a full-blown social phenomenon. Gladwell argues that these success stories got to a tipping point, and then exploded into popular culture.

The particular section I’m reading is an anecdote about a company called Gore – as in GoreTex, though they also make tons of stuff for the electronics industry, health care and the military (and here I thought they only made rain jackets). Gore never has more than 150 people at a single plant; if a plant grows beyond that, they buy a new plant and split the group in half. The founder, Bill Gore, noticed that things get clumsy at a hundred and fifty, and that in small plants every part of the process for designing and making and marketing a given product is subject to the same group scrutiny to ensure a constant climate of innovation and sharing, and a holistic understanding of production. There is a common relationship among workers so that they are constantly moving forward and a sort of “peer-pressure” develops which ensures everyone is working toward a unified goal.

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Wikis – Some thoughts on usability

Posted on October 18, 2007 | 2 Comments

This is an article review I wrote for our Information Technology class. This article is drawn from Ariadne, which is a great online magazine: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/. It’s a UK magazine which is nice – I find everything I read from the library world is North American, so it’s good to get off the continent once in awhile. The language is a bit technical, but not too much; certain articles will push you out of your comfort zone, but since the content is entirely focused on technology in libraries and information centres, it’s never too far from home.

I can’t remember what the original assignment told us to do, but I basically turned it into a literature review of how people interact with wikis (a sparse topic, to be sure). This is a topic that is near and dear to me – people always get excited about implementing new technologies, but of course you have to win over people’s hearts and minds if you ever want that technology to be used. I’m facing this challenge in my work at the Library of Parliament this summer. I am creating a large e-resource that will be used by all the parliamentary librarians, and hopefully by the public as well. I’m acutely aware however, that I must conscientiously ensure that the technology is usable, but also that I show people how to use it and why they should use it. I’ll have to draw on information literacy principles to ensure that my work doesn’t go to waste simply because I ignored the most important part of it: The people using it!!

Guy, M. (2006). Wiki or won’t he? A tale of public sector wikis. [Electronic version]. Ariadne, October (49). Retrieved October 17 2007, from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue49/guy/

In the article, “Wiki or Won’t He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis”, author Marieke Guy discusses wiki technology and its applicability in the public sector. As a member of the Interoperability Focus team at UKOLN, a centre for digital information management, Guy has written many articles concerning issues of web services in the library environment for online periodicals such as Adriane and d-lib. The aim of this article is to assess wiki use in the public sector, and suggest the means to extend and improve its application.

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Posted in School, Technologies

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