Last week we heard the good news that my niece, Britta, got engaged. Her fiancé’s name is Roger, and he comes from England. They plan to get married next May (2005) and afterward, they will settle down here in the U.S., at least for a few years. Britta is my oldest niece and the first of my many nieces and nephews to get engaged, so this is quite exciting!
Monthly Archives: November 2004
Laptop getting repaired
Good news! We recently came into a bit of extra money, which will really help with paying off certain bills. We’ve also decided to get the PowerBook repaired. I can’t wait to use it again.
Professional discouragement
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Ever wish you had chosen a different profession? Ever feel burned out and feel like you’ve beaten your head against a brick wall one too many times? That’s how I’m currently feeling about librarianship in general and my job in particular. I’m just not that excited anymore about things; instead, I feel weighed down by too many things to do, too much opposition, and too many failures on my part, especially when it comes to missed deadlines. Who was it, Voltaire in Candide? who basically said that when all is said and done, the only thing one can do is to till one’s own garden? I don’t even have the energy or desire right now to do that.
Just one example: A few weeks ago, I had cleaned out my email inbox. In the process, I had successfully dealt with or deleted several hundred emails that had sat there for months. It is now two weeks later and my inbox is full yet again, so full as to be overwhelming. Ah, the tyranny of electronic communication…
Perhaps the best way to communicate my current mood is by quoting from one of my favorite books and one of my favorite literary characters, Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, who mentions to Gandalf: “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”
Open Source Software and Libraries: A Bibliography
I was pleased to see reference to an extensive bibliography of sources of information about open source software and libraries, posted to the oss4lib-l discussion list last week. It is written and maintained by Brenda Chawner of the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. It even includes a reference to one of my own articles. Yeah!
P.S. Michele and I have (somewhat jokingly) thought about applying to this school in NZ for my PhD and moving to that country, my favorite place in the whole world. That way we’d be relatively close to my sister, Becky, and her family in Christchurch, which would be great!
The Election
I am generally relieved with the results of the recent U.S. election. Conservative and evangelical Christian perspectives were resoundingly heard. The results have caused a violent revulsion among liberals. That isn’t a good thing, necessarily. I don’t agree with a lot of President Bush’s agenda (especially on issues like the environment and other things) and I particularly hope that he will maneuver carefully and diplomatically in the post-election landscape. I am still of the opinion that the future of this country is very cloudy and unlike some in the evangelical Christian community, I do not view this country as Christian at all and I do not place any hope or certainty in the Bush government — or any government — for the long term.
Google Scholar
Like many others, I have been astounded by the recent introduction of the Google Scholar search service. This service will have enormous ramifications for libraries and I am already thinking of how we can harness it and present it to users. Some in my profession are running around like Chicken Little, crying out that the sky is falling. I have a different view, one that is more positive. For one thing, this is good news for things I feel passionately about, especially open access publishing. For another, my hope is that the Google Scholar service will help to finally break us out of longstanding mold of being locked into pricey subscriptions to proprietary library databases. I have a lot of questions about the service but I am really pleased to see it develop.
When it rains, it pours
I have found that “when it rains, it pours.” Well, sometimes, anyway. We have had an appliance crisis lately, with the washing machine and dishwasher both down and out. After struggling with what we should do, pay for repairs or buy new, we decided yesterday afternoon to go ahead and buy a new washing machine from Fisher & Paykel. It is an excellent machine, the most energy efficient and largest capacity of any on the market here in the U.S. Although it is pricey, the energy savings in one or two years will more than make up the difference in price if we had purchased a cheaper machine. Fisher & Paykel is based in New Zealand or Australia, I believe. My sister and her husband in New Zealand say they are excellent. We are still unsure about the dishwasher but figure the washing machine was more important to have in operation again. The new one will be delivered this afternoon and we can then start washing clothes again!