Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive How to Annoy People Using Instant Messaging «

I’ve been working on an IM staff training class, and I just found out I got the go ahead to do it. While (foolishly) wending my way through a fascinating discussion on whether Library 2.0 bloggers are being polite ( in which I felt a little like a child watching her parents fight), I found a wonderful string starting up on whether gen-y’ers are into Library 2.0 or not, that then moved to another blog. And from there, somehow I found this rant about IM, which I loved.

AND I’m just back from the Mississippi Theater Association’s annual festival in Oxford, MS, where Starkville Community Theater triumphed absolutely with their version of Smoke on the Mountain. Pattye Archer and her marvellous cast and crew won Best Production, along with:

Best Director, Pattye Archer
Best Actress, Madeline Golden
Best Actor, Kary Rogers
Best Supporting Actor, Bruce Lesley
All Star Cast Member, Marcus Vowell
and Best Overall Technical Excellence

It was quite a weekend, and I cried for no reason when the awards were announced. It was absolutely and terribly wonderful. Plus Oxford is super-cute and has lots of shops and restaurants, including a Greek restaurant, Petra, which I will never forget. The dance club downtown is called “The Library,” so we had to go, of course. I’d visit Oxford again in a heartbeat.

Then we roadtripped up to Memphis to see a friend that has just started grad school up there. Meeting his friends was wonderful (and I got to have Pad Thai, visiting Friend Ty!) and eventually ended up at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated. The line was long and it was very cold, but Kris persisted. I was so glad we stayed–we talked civil rights all the way home. Well, most of the way. I think we talked about cloning too.

And then there was chicken & dumplings at Cracker Barrel. Which is never a bad thing.

Back at work, dutifully filling out my annual review…which is more like an autobiography than anything else. Sigh.

I’m in the middle of the party season and completely done with it. The theater had two parties over the weekend, and if I never see another glass of Andre ‘champagne,’ it will be too soon. We did spend a lovely evening on Sunday with Verna Ramsey, a local theater patron and octogenarian. I really have a thing for Delta women in their eighties. She went to Mississippi State College for Women (now MUW) with one of my cousins. Absolutley and completely and devastatingly charming.

I have had a comment on the blog–I’ve been neglecting my gmail account and missed it entirely–along with an email from my best friend from high school in Little Rock and another from my best friend from Boston wishing me a happy birthday. I’m going to recommit myself to gmail–it’s just that the American Library Association has it, and I am deluged with nonsensical emails from them. Librarians love a listserv and they love to send email. I get enough from the librarians on my bloglines account. Lord love ‘em. Me. Etc.

Speaking of blogs, aggregators, etc., I’ve been playing around with Flock. It’s a browser that works seemlessly with Flickr and blogs, etc. I’ve got an easy plug-in on my links menu now that lets me blog any webpage page easily. And I can drag and drop pix from my Flickr toolbar into a blog easily. And by playing around with it, in part I mean turning my friend Thomas (Instructional Media guru) onto it. Thomas is the sort of person that can attract a zefrank humanbaton to Starkville, Mississippi on his way across the country. See Luke (aka humanbaton) and Kris having fun downtown:

Thomas is somehow able to go farther with the technologies I find…he’s actually figured out how to get around in Second Life, when I’ve barely gotten dressed. [Yes, I know I said I'd sworn it off forever, but people keep planning press conferences and training sessions there--I'm just afraid of being left out, I guess. Ha!] We’re having a Flock tutorial today to catch me up on what he’s learned (I hope).

Today’s our last day in the office until January 3rd, but I’m going to be working through the break, of course. I’ve got two research projects going, but neither have to do with Library 2.0, alas. I’ve got to publish, however, and I’ve got co-authors for both of these. And they both have to do with using JCR ratings. One in Agronomy and one in Education. Hopefully the synergy will keep me going. I’m planning to blog it after I get back from Christmas travels on the 27th. First Jackson for Dad’s family, then Little Rock to visit with my mom. Lots of time with beautiful nephew Hank, brother Mitchell and sister Liberty… (she’s taking the pictures…)

Happy holidays and cheer wherever you are….

The last collaborator is your audience … when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.
–STEPHEN SONDHEIM, interview, July 5, 2005

In a departure (brief, I’m sure) from my Library 2.0 obsession, I want to put in an appeal out to any struggling (or even successful) poets, playwrights, or screenwriters in Mississippi. Kris Lee (a much loved local playwright, poet, actor, and cabaret artist) and I are building a new program at the Starkville Community Theater (SCT) to provide a venue for unrehearsed, script-in-hand readings of works under development on the fourth Friday of each month. We will provide the theater to stage it, arrange for the actors to do the reading, and make any necessary copies of the script. The goal is not to produce the work, but instead to provide an opportunity for writers to include an audience in the writing process and to get feedback. We’ve had two successful trial runs so far, and the official launch is scheduled for January 26, 2007.

If you are interested and/or want more information about Fourth Fridays, please email me.

Tomorrow is our deadline for turning in half of our orders for our departmental allocations. This means I am putting in orders for several thousand dollars worth of books over the next 24 hours for the first time since I’ve been a librarian. (With Katrina and The Serials Crisis, we didn’t have book money last FY.) Why the last minute crunch? I am just having trouble communicating with one of my departments, actually. And that matters because our system is set up to “give” them the money and authority over it (unless they don’t respond, and then I spend it for them). In this present climate, I just wonder why they feel so disconnected from this process. How I could have applied my “Library 2.0″ kung fu to the situation to avoid this last minute crunch? How could I have gotten more buy-in? What communication tools are they using that I could have tapped into? Why won’t they answer my emails? How could I find out “where they are”? That seems so basic, really, yet somehow impenetrable right now. Really, the question is–what do I have to offer them? There must be some way for me to think outside the box in this process that could have made it more successful. Is there a wiki or blog-shaped killer ap here? Maybe everything in librarianship can’t be made better with Library 2.0 tools…

On other fronts, another department (who has actually had lots of input in their collection decisions) has agreed to let me set up a wiki to start working on a research guide with them. And I had lunch with their newest faculty member, who is coming out of industry and back into academia after a long break, and she was very excited about hearing about the new ways the library is trying to be involved in their research lives. So that’s actually a major victory. Now I just have to set up the wiki (seed it!), make documentation, and then market it through training them in some way, (thank you Meredith Farkas!) and then see what happens. I’ll be thinking about this when I’m ordering all those “unwanted” books today! Any advice is always welcome. This is my first real experiment with my departments and socical networking tools, and I’m feeling a bit like I’m about to jump out into the void of space without any protective outer gear…. A product of last night’s 2am chicken wings with my roommate, along with too much Battlestar Galactica in general, I’m afraid. (But isn’t that cat wonderful? I laughed so hard I cried a little when I found it on boing boing yesterday… And can you really have too much Battlestar Galactica???)

Postmortem continues for five more nights! Thomas is brilliant, of course.

I spent the morning running around with Paula looking for rugs for the Postmortem stage. And for very large candles. And for a black or tan lace handkerchief. I can’t imagine I’ll do props or costumes again. My gift is very much for organizing and not sourcing. I was dying to be the one running the rehearsal and giving cues last night, and not so much wishing I was the one noting that Thomas had a sticker on the bottom of his shoe and his coat was frayed at the shoulder. Although, frankly, I brushed Kris’ coat before every show. So, I like to obsess about details while controlling everything. How’s that?

Working with Paula is very collaborative, anyway. I looked up at the cast last night and could barely tell I’d had any influence on the costuming at all. We ended up renting much of it, and last night was the first night I’d seen it. Paula taught high school theater here for 30+ years and I think she must be used to doing everything herself. But I’ve loved working with her. She’s such a dear woman and was my cousin’s first love in junior high. I absolutely love being back here in Mississippi sometimes.

Tonight I work until 9pm and then I’m heading back to the theater for any last last minute emergencies before the opening tomorrow. I’m so happy to still be involved with SCT. They are such a gifted community, and I never cease to be amazed at the caliber of performance/costuming/set design they manage to pull off. I’m certainly no theater critic–but I’ve seen Broadway shows and things on tour in Boston, and there is real theater happening in Starkville.

I’ve told this story ad nauseum, but once again, my father and his wife started a community theater in Hattiesburg, Mississippi–Just Over the Rainbow. It’s still going, though I have a feeling it’s not quite as good as SCT. So, it’s possibly in my blood. My maternal grandmother was a theater and speech teacher at Louisville (MS) High for years and years. And I did theater in high school–even stage managing. Maybe I’m just coming back to something I’ve been missing all this time.

More on Library 2.0 after I kill off my CV tonight. I’ve had an idea that I’ve proposed to my department (I’m the liaison to an ag department here at MSU) for their grad students to work with me on a wiki to develop an “agriculture portal.” We’ll see what he says. It turns out my colleague Brad (as far as work goes, we think almost exactly alike on many things–it’s scary) had already proposed something similar to his supervisor. I, of course, am forging ahead and I’ll apologize later if someone gets upset. It’s just that I really want to have a collaborative Research Guide, and I can’t do it on our website right now. So…if I develop it off the website, then I could present it to the PTB as a fait accompli. (That was for you.) So that’s my latest brainstorm. We’ll see what happens.