Well, I haven’t blogged for an entire semester. I took the Graphic Novels class (excellent), did costumes and crewed our Community Theatre’s entry in the MS Theater Competition (won that competition, won the regional competition, and headed to nationals in June), and appeared on a panel at a national conference among other things. But I’m back to blogging, largely as a result of giving up on peer-reviewed publications on social networking topics. I’ve moved on to the much simpler Virtual Reference topics for which I have copious data. With that in full swing, I don’t have to feel like I’m cheating on my research by blogging. Or that is what I currently believe.

So I’ve been bottling up tons of ideas hoping to turn one magically into a paper, and now I need to get them out. So here they come…ready or not.

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.

I think we’re done…but probably not. Kris and I are doing props and costumes for the latest Starkville Community Theater production, Postmortem. Thomas is starring and Paula Mabry is directing. The 1922 covers of Vanity have not arrived. That’s one stressor. I’m sure there are more. There’s a dress rehearsal tonight, but I can’t go because I’m working. For some reason I’m working every Sunday for the foreseeable future. It’s a good time to get projects done.

Anyway, Postmortem is a murder mystery set at the Gillette mansion in 1922 (obviously). Gillette himself is hunting a murderer during a weekend party on the estate. There’s a seance, a storm and broken panes of glass. Lots of fun! Tickets are going fast…