You may have noticed that this blog, like so many fashion magazines, has slowed to a halt in the middle of summer. As for me, I’m in the midst of a cross-country move, a career-track change, (more later) and some fun times visiting friends abroad. (I write this from a cafe in Istanbul. No joke!)
But I can earnestly say I’ve missed this, and great stuff around:
- Sara Piasecki of Historical Notes from OHSU posted a bit about this year’s RBMS preconference, including a post about a session on Minimal Processing . For those unfamiliar with the divide, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL covers a lot of the same ground as archival organizations, but there are precious few who are truly active in both spheres- thus, transparency and communication is, in my opinion, so necessary.
- archivematica has a post about ICA-Atom’s GoogleMaps mashup. So cool. This isn’t the first foray into integrating geographic data with finding aids- I seem to recall a UNC project that integrated GIS data with finding aid indexes. Moreover, I’d look for more work in the near future that does this sort of thing- linking physical spaces and places with related archival materials.
- And not really related but long overdue, check out Jeanne’s post on (and Google Code page for) ArchivesZ, a tool for visualizing collections.
And, I hate to even bring this up, Hip shushers. Sheesh! I’m not going to try to track the wide and varied, over-serious and goofy reactions to this. But I’m gonna give in and spill mine. The article seemed to deal first and foremost with NYC area LIS grad students, and not working librarians. I bristle at the idea of trying to live anywhere in America, much less in gentrified Brooklyn, on what NYPL and BPL pay their entry-level librarians. But what I haven’t seen addressed is that the newfound preciousness of going to library school isn’t about anything job or education related- it’s about a mass of college graduates, mostly female, with both real and percieved lack of career options casting their lot onto an arcanely feminized public serivice sector with a lot of inherent problems. I think that any enthusiasm or momentum coming to libraries and archives is ultimately good, but I also think that we should be talking about these things really critically.
booktruck.org 
Yeah, I agree that the NYT Style article, while fluffy, wasn’t really anything to get into a huff about. It is nice to get people talking and thinking about librarians as someone other than just the person who checks out your books at the circulation desk. And although talking about librarian style is fun and fine, I don’t think that problems with low pay, poor benefits, and stagnant institutional cultures have much to do with a public perception of librarians as dowdy gals with buns and glasses. Nor do I think people are going to rush into the profession based solely on the fact that some of us like to drink and have tattoos. Of course, that wasn’t really the intent of the Style article, but I agree that it should be critically talked about somewhere. Like here.
And I love the idea of dewey decimal-named drinks.