THE JERSEY EXILE

JP Porcaro for ALA President

2015-05-01T06:41:00.002-05:00

My fellow librarians,

Have you voted in the ALA Elections yet? Well, you officially have until 11:59pm tonight (CDT, of course, because the ALA has its headquarters in Chicago) if you haven't. Be sure to vote- you pay more than enough for the privilege of belonging to our esteemed professional organization, so it would be a shame if you didn't exercise your right to vote as an official dues-paying ALA Member. Despite making it easy to do so online, only 20% of the ALA Membership actually vote, so for the love of Ranganathan, take some time out of your Friday, read up on the candidates in your section, and make your voice heard!

Also, there's something special going on this election season. If you're not aware of this fact already, there are four candidates running for ALA President, one of whom is the first Millennial ever to run for the office: his name is JP Porcaro, and even if you don't know him you probably know of him. One of ALA's Emerging Leaders in 2010 and named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2012, JP was also one of the founding members of the ALA Think Tank, a Facebook community with over 12,000 members which has been described as "social media's largest space for librarians." He is the Librarian for Acquisitions and Technological Discovery at the New Jersey City University Guarini Library.

I met JP when I was feeling particularly disillusioned about my career and my involvement with ALA as a whole. Although my employer at the time didn't actively discourage participation in ALA, like many large academic library systems they were always more inwardly-focused or more concerned with what was going on in our immediate peer group instead, so they didn't exactly encourage me to get more involved either.

Also, there was a certain amount of cynicism among our administrators about the value of ALA- in retrospect, I think this was more a function of where these librarians were in their own careers and not an objective assessment on their part of the potential energy and enthusiasm their entry-level librarians could find by meeting and interacting with other like-minded librarians in a conference setting... but that's a screed for another day.

So let's just say that I was feeling somewhat adrift when I attended the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston back in 2010. That's when I stumbled upon JP while he was doing publicity for 8 Bit Library at the LITA Happy Hour. 8 Bit Library was the brainchild of JP and Justin Hoenke, and I found myself pulled in immediately to help explore the intersection of gaming and librarians. JP and I went to PAX East that Spring as members of the press, and that's when I started to get to know him as a person and not just the legend which always seems to precede him.

JP is always working overtime to bring his unique energy into whatever it is he is doing at the moment. I've heard him speak recently at the Connecticut Library Association Conference about emotional contagion as a key component of leadership, and I think he's absolutely spot-on in that respect. Here I was, a jaded young librarian with a tendency towards introversion when left to my own devices, suddenly finding myself wanting to dive back into my profession headfirst.

My relationship with ALA changed fundamentally as a result of meeting JP. Instead of being about libraries, ALA became about librarians (i.e., about people and not things), about making connections and sharing enthusiasm. While I became more active along my own professional track, I also went out of my way and out of my comfort zone to become more active with the organization as a whole, volunteering whenever possible- such as this last Midwinter in Chicago, when I co-hosted Library Camp for Monday conference-goers to decompress and reflect.

(And yes, I also did some stumping for JP's campaign).

I'm voting for JP not because of the hype, but because he made me a better librarian. I believe that he can make the ALA a better organization as well- one that is more inclusive, more passionate and engaged with the issues that really matter to our profession, and (dare I say it?) more fun. I encourage you to make the same choice, but even if you don't, I encourage you to vote nevertheless. Help us get the organization we actually want, and not the one that is handed to us by default through apathy and inaction. And thanks for listening!

Me and JP at the 2015 Connecticut Library Association Conference

Through the Google Glass

2014-01-12T22:05:00.001-05:00

It started innocently enough. When Google announced that it was looking for a cohort of early adopters for its shiny new Google Glass device, I answered the call with a nod back to my undergraduate years at MIT, where the Wearable Computing project was just getting underway. I have fond memories of spotting Thad Starner wandering around the Porter Square Star Market looking like he'd been assimilated by the Borg, and although my education ended up taking me about as far away from computer science and electrical engineering as one could possibly go, I never stopped being enamored with technology and its convergence with everyday human life.

Oddly enough, I became a total Google fanboy at the same time that I'd become a librarian (or maybe this isn't so odd in retrospect, given that the digital revolution was fully underway in librarianship at the time I was finishing my LIS degree)- one of my professors had begun her seminar by exhorting us all to create Gmail accounts, as the service had just become available to the public earlier that year; and my final class in the program, the Literature of the Humanities, spend a great amount of time studying the Google Book Scan project and what such an initiative meant for our discipline, the academy, and the future of the written word.
Needless to say, as soon as I heard of Google Glass I knew I'd want to get my hands on one of them, so it was inevitable that I'd take part in Google's #ifihadglass competition.

It never occurred to me that I'd be selected as one of their 8,000 inaugural Glass Explorers, however, as although my desire to play with this new digital toy was surely as greater as the other gazillion people who Tweeted (or whatever the equivalent is called for Google+) their case to be included in the program. My answer was heartfelt, to be sure, but it was a little on the flip side, and more than a little lacking in specificity. So when I did get the nod from Google, I was flabbergasted to say the least... then I was sad when I realized that, with Child #2 on the way, there was no way I'd be able to justify ponying up the $1500 I'd need in order to get my very own Glass device.

At first I considered using a Kickstarter to obtain the necessary funds. I was going to call it The Glass Library, and the idea would be that each backer would be allowed to "borrow" the device for a certain amount of prorated time, to do with it as they will. The mechanics of shipping the item from borrower to borrower seemed somewhat challenging, but certainly I had enough colleagues out there in libraryland who might be willing to contribute in exchange for some quality time with Google Glass. At this point it occurred to me that other librarians may have also been chosen as Glass Explorers, so I reached out on social media to see what they were doing with their invitations. A few of colleagues responded that they'd approached their Powers That Be about funding their purchase, and that one or two of them had succeeded in getting approval to buy them for their library.

This was encouraging news, as at first it seemed that the Terms of Service for the Glass Explorers program precluded any such institutional purchasing. Emboldened by my colleagues' success, I asked my boss if he thought we might able to do the same for our undergraduate Bass Library, especially since it already had an ever-growing collection of circulating media equipment which could be checked out by Yale faculty, students, and staff. He liked the idea, but suggested that we bring our Instructional Technology Group and Student Technology Collaborative on board with the purchase as well, not just to share the cost, but to widen the pool of potential innovation and development as well. Fortunately everyone was just as excited as we were about exploring the new technology, so we agreed to move forward as equal partners.

(I'm going to leave out the part where, in the process of putting this coalition together, we unfortunately ran out the clock on my original Google Glass invite. Despite much begging and pleading, we had to resign ourselves to being waitlisted, and although everything turned out okay I still feel somewhat chastened by the near-miss and resolve to keep it fresh in mind so as not to sit on any future similar opportunities. Awesomeness waits for no one, indeed!)

I got to pick up our device this past Friday, at Google's NYC offices in Chelsea Market (where Major League Baseball and the Food Network also hang their hats). To say that I was nervous about my Google Glass experience was an understatement, but despite my initial fumblings with the new technology, my patient Google technician soon had me up and running with my "fitting" and out the door as a newly-minted Glass Explorer. Despite the fact that I opted to wear the device out, I quickly put it back away as soon as I got in the elevator, as I was deathly afraid of losing or breaking the Bass Media collection's latest acquisition. I was also somewhat self-conscious of being seen wearing Google Glass, which apparently is not an uncommon thing, even among Google employees. The good news is that it comes with a sunglasses attachment, which almost looks like a normal pair of shades and makes you feel much less like you're a walking, talking Borg drone as a result.

Glasshole

Glasshole... or just wearing cool shades?

Although it does seem rather fragile, Google Glass is actually surprisingly rugged. It's basically a big plastic headband built around a titanium frame. Because it's designed to be form-fitting, the device does not fold compact like a conventional pare of glasses, which makes it a bit awkward to carry around, but it does come with a nifty bag that protects the eyepiece display when you stow it away. Now about that eyepiece. I think one of the common misconceptions about Glass is that it's like looking through a computer screen, when in fact the display is only projected in the corner or your right eye. Even I was surprised at how easy it was to tune the image out when I didn't want to look at it, and the screen times out quickly as well so as not to waste the onboard battery.

Glass syncs either with your smartphone via Bluetooth, or any existing wi-fi network. Wi-fi syncing is a breeze- you look at a QR Code on your computer screen and voila, you're in.

(WAIT! Did I just say that Google Glass actually uses QR Codes? And that it actually makes sense? And it actually works? The Apocalypse may in fact be nigh...)

The interface takes a little getting used to at first, as it involves a combination of voice commands and swiping up and down and side-to-side along the rim of your device. I'm still getting lost when trying to visualize the right path in Glass' operating system, and find myself wishing that it recognized more natural-language commands. Still, it's pretty freaking cool to tell Google Glass to take a picture, and snap, there it is appearing in the upper right-hand corner of your eye as a thumbnail. Glass has a 5 megapixel camera, so you'll be taking snapshots similar to your current cameraphone. It is rather weird that you have to "point and shoot" by aiming your head at things, and I've yet to find a zoom function on the camera, but it is extremely liberating not to have to remove yourself from the moment by fumbling for your phone, activating the camera app, aiming and shooting.

I guess this is really the epiphany of wearable computing. After wearing the device for a while, you really do forget it's there. Think of Google Glass like a bluetooth earpiece for your eyes and you wouldn't be far off. In fact, I couldn't help but notice that knowing I was wearing Glass made me less conscious of my smartphone. I didn't want to fiddle and stare down at my screen compulsively because I knew I could get whatever information I needed out of Google Glass by cocking my head and asking it a question. ("What's the score of the Denver Broncos game?" I asked it as I was changing the baby this evening. "The Broncos are currently leading over the Chargers 17-0 in the third quarter," the device dutifully replied).

They see me rollin'...

Right now the list of available applications for Google Glass- called Glasswear (get it?) -is somewhat bare-bones, but the promise of the technology can be seen in an app like Strava Cycling, which in addition to tracking your trip like the smartphone app already does using GPS and the onboard accelerometer, also feeds you a real-time heads up display of your speed, time, and distance traveled as you bike. There is also a Glasswear version of Google's Field Trip app, which I've yet to try out, but I'm very curious to see how wearable technology takes advantage and makes sense of location-based data. This is one of the respects in which I think devices like Glass will work really well with libraries, as translating the oceans of metadata on our shelves in the library stacks could open up brand new ways of visualizing our physical collections. We've always romanticized the "serendipity of the stacks," but imagine how much more powerful happenstance discovery could be if a reader could see subject headings, citation rankings, and cross-references just by glancing at the spine of a book!

Our partnership with the ITG and STC means that we will have many different groups of interested parties playing with the potential of Google Glass, so I hope this increases the chances of our seeing these kinds of applications being developed in the long run. On a more utilitarian note, over this Spring I'd like to work on a proof of concept for using Glass as a vehicle for fulfilling electronic document delivery requests via Scan and Deliver. Although the device's price tag is quite hefty for a wearable computer or smartphone, for a mobile scanning unit it's actually quite cheap- add to that the time savings of not having to lug books around the library to be scanned (during which time they are unavailable to other patrons), and I feel like there might just be something there beyond the simple gee-whiz factor.

So that's my two cents after a weekend with Glass. Despite knowing that I'd be kindly disposed towards anything so new and shiny, I was nevertheless still pleasantly surprised by how natural and unobtrusive it felt while wearing and using it. But don't just take it from me- here's an assessment of Google Glass from my 10 year-old daughter Andriana, who naturally took to it like a fish to water.

To Boston, with love

2013-04-16T19:28:00.001-05:00

My heart has a home-sized hole in it right now.

I didn't just live in Boston, but I loved it as well. When MIT turned out to be The Wrong Place For Me it was Boston where I found safe haven, asked myself who I really wanted to be, and started to rebuild my life from scratch. It was Boston where I went back to school and finished my degree at Boston University. It was Boston where I met the woman who would be my wife. It was Boston where I realized that I wanted to be a librarian, and it was in Boston at Simmons College where I finally made that dream come true after many long years. It was Boston where my daughter, who was born with a rare metabolic disorder, was treated for years by kindly doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and phlebotomists- the most wonderfully gentle of all hospital employees- at Mass General.

(When my daughter was born, I skipped out of work on my lunch hour and walked to the pro shop on Yawkey Way so I could buy my little girl a tiny Red Sox outfit- she wore that outfit to a game against the Philadelphia Phillies during that unforgettable 2004 season. I remember that I was so proud that she stayed for all nine innings; the rest of that year, of course, was history...)

Boston, I have walked your streets- so much that I feel that I know every crooked cobblestone by heart. How I loved nothing more than an urban hike along miles and miles of your glorified cow paths until I couldn't feel my feet anymore. Some days all I would do is walk- from Beacon Hill to Southie, from the Back Bay to the Arboretum- and back again, much to the chagrin of the poor unsuspecting friends who would visit from more car-friendly locales! And as much as I loved to hate on your quasi-reliable system of public transportation, I was enchanted with the T ever since my first night at MIT, when a bunch of upperclassmen whisked us down to the Kendall Red Line station, pressing subway tokens into our hands, and took us out to dinner in the North End. I remember seeing your skyline from the Longfellow Bridge at night for the very first time, and the magical sight of the Custom House rising above Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. From that early moment on, you had me, Boston. I was yours.

I have closed down the Crossroads, bowled candlepin beneath Fenway Park (and peed in your legendary troughs at my first Red Sox game), and laughed as people got 86'ed for trying to dance at the Black Rose. I ate Chinese food for the first time in Boston's Chinatown. I went to my first concert in Boston, when I saw Howard Jones play at the Paradise. I remember camping out all day on the Esplanade for July 4th year after year to hear the Pops and catch the fireworks, and watching the man-made lightning storms and Laser Floyd shows at the Museum of Science. I have fond memories of going elbow to elbow with the tourists so that I could spend my last dollar on a gyro from Mykonos Fair at Quincy Market, getting lost in your museums- the MFA, the ICA, and the Gardner... oh, the Gardner!- for hours on end and wishing I could stay for days instead, and playing in the fountains with friends at the Christian Science Church headquarters on a boiling hot day and ignoring the rude looks from the Nieman Marcus staff when we wandered around their store dripping wet afterwards. Even when I moved further and further away from you- first to Cambridge, then to Somerville, Lynn, Peabody and finally on to Gloucester- you were always close to my heart, and my wife and I eagerly seized any opportunity to bring our daughter down to Boston and introduce her to this city that we'd both come to know so well and love.

And of course, I remember the Marathon. I had the great fortune to watch the marathoners run by on many a Patriots' Day, that peculiar local holiday which grew on me even as it confounded me every year when I tried to figure out whether or not I should come to work and how to commute through a sea of a million-odd runners, fans, and curious onlookers. Funny, before we decided to move to New Haven last year, I remember suggesting to my wife that we take our daughter down to Boston to see the Marathon, as she'd never yet beheld that grand spectacle and we felt strongly that she was missing out on something special. As it was, I had many friends and colleagues who were there yesterday- some of them at Mile 26. While the people I knew closely were all unharmed, I suspect that it will be quite some time before anyone who was in Boston that day will feel safe or whole. My heart breaks for the families who were injured or lost a loved one in this senseless act of terror on what has always been a day of celebration- of liberty, of sport, of the marathoners' courage, endurance, and triumph of mind over matter.

Yesterday I said that words failed, but I was wrong. The words are there, and there are many more words out there that are more eloquent than mine. Words from people who experienced things that no one should have to live through, words from everyday people who witnessed selfless acts of heroism, or became heroes themselves. Words from Boston, whether they are from Bostonians or from people who traveled from virtually every other nation on earth to share in the magic of this quintessentially Bostonian day. The person or persons who perpetrated this heinous act may have thought their actions would destroy that magic, but if so, they gravely miscalculated, as the darkness of their deeds was quickly subsumed by the goodness of humanity and the big-heartedness of a city like Boston, my adopted home. My words feel empty and cheap right now as I type them, but I know that millions of people who have known and loved Boston as I have are out there feeling exactly the same way that I do right now.

Thank you for everything that you've given me, Boston. Twenty-odd years ago you took this Jersey boy in, and I will always be grateful for the time I spent living in the Hub of the Universe. I grieve with you now, but that just means I will be all the more joyous when you come back even stronger than before, like I know you will.

See you next Patriots' Day.

So much for the extended warranty

2013-04-11T01:19:00.000-05:00

Almost ten years and we've never had to take Andriana to the emergency room... until yesterday. Ten days before her tenth birthday, our daughter ended up getting ten sutures after falling off a trampoline at a friend's house and cutting her upper thigh badly on a protruding bolt. I was home when it happened, as my wife works the reference desk on Tuesday evenings. One moment I'm sitting at home answering some work email and feeling rather satisfied about a hectic but productive morning of meetings, then all of a sudden I'm riding in the back seat of our neighbor's car to the hospital, holding my daughter's hand, reassuring her, and trying not to lose my shit when I look at the gash on her leg.

"Am I going to have to get stitches?" Andriana asks fearfully, already knowing the answer. The cut is almost six inches long and has split the skin on her thigh wide open. Fortunately my daughter's friend called for help immediately, and her father had a large clear trauma bandage on hand to stop the bleeding and protect the wound while he contacted me to tell me what had happened. I'm grateful that she is stable and not in shock, but whenever I see the blood and the exposed flesh under the plastic I feel nothing but panic. I want to look away, but I'm also afraid that Andriana will shift her leg and start bleeding again.

How deep was the cut, I wonder. Is it just the skin, or her muscle? Spring soccer had only just started. Was she going to have to sit the season out?

Rather than default to the standard parental prevarication "We'll see," I tell her the truth. "Yes, you're going to need stitches."

"Will it hurt?"

"Only when the doctor gives you a shot. After that, you won't feel a thing."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I squeeze her hand extra hard, look away for a moment, and call my wife. Maria answers the phone at the reference desk and I fill her in on what's happened. She's a good half hour away without traffic, and of course it's already rush hour here in Southwestern Connecticut, so even though her boss lets her leave immediately it'll be a while before she can join us. When we get to the hospital, our neighbor runs inside to get us a wheelchair, then asks me to write his phone number on my hand so I can call if I need a ride later. I know he feels terrible about the accident, but I'm simply glad that he's able to keep me moving forward right now.

I'm holding Andriana's shoes when we get to the emergency room, while we check her in at the triage desk, and during the process of registering her as a patient. Thank goodness it's a slow day in the ER, but sitting in a chair and filling out forms seems surreal when your daughter is also sitting there with a hole in her thigh. No, she doesn't have any allergies. Her religion is Greek Orthodox. No, she's not taking any medication right now, save for the protein formula she drinks for phenylketonuria. At this point I realize I'm still clutching her shoes because I'm fearful of putting them back on her feet at this point. She's been so composed through this whole ordeal, and I don't want to disturb that somehow.

We sit in the waiting room and wait. I tell Andriana jokes and try not to ask her if she's okay over and over again. She plays Subway Surfers on my phone until the receptionist- a kindly older man- brings her a big book of poetry, which she reads intently. I get her a blanket to keep her warm in the air-conditioned room and to cover up her leg from prying eyes, as my daughter is very self-conscious about her injury- I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of her leg and she simply fixed me with a death stare. The waiting room is starting to fill up, and I notice that Andriana is doing her best not to be freaked out by the other patients and their various ailments.

"Can you call Mommy and ask her to bring Waddles?"

Waddles is her beloved stuffed pig that she sleeps with every night. I feel stupid for leaving the house without it in the first place, but at the time I had had just enough presence of mind to grab my wallet and my phone. I call my wife, who is still stuck in traffic, and she agrees to stop by the house and pick up Waddles on her way to the hospital. A minute or two later and they're calling us in.

Everyone is beyond nice- the nurse with the almost-impenetrable Slavic accent and the avuncular attending physician are as gentle as they can be, and they praise Andriana for being so brave as they examine the cut, numb it with lidocaine and clean it, then stitch the wound back up. She was so worried about the shot that she didn't believe me when I told her that they'd already given it to her, and aside from the curious sensation of feeling her flesh being tugged taut by the doctor's needle and thread she felt nothing. We talk while the physician works. I tell her about the times I went to the emergency room as a kid. We joke and say that she's just like Sally the ragdoll from The Nightmare Before Christmas, who stitched her leg back on after jumping out of her tower prison.

Next thing I know, the doctor is showing me his handiwork, then asking me to put pressure on the freshly-sutured wound before they wrap it up with sterile gauze. My wife shows up now. I'm glad she's here, but I'm also happy that she never saw the untreated cut, which I won't be able to clear from my mind for the rest of the evening. The neighbor also appears to check up on us, for which I'm grateful. Then another nurse comes in to give us post-treatment instructions. Keep her off her feet with her leg elevated for two days. Change the dressing once per day and give her antibiotics two times a day. Watch for bruising and signs of infection. Make an appointment with your pediatrician to take out the sutures in ten days. We thank everyone profusely, then we're wheeling Andriana back out of the hospital and taking her home.

Considering that our daughter spent every Thursday morning of the first year and a half of her life in the pediatrics wing of Mass General Hospital to attend a weekly metabolic clinic, it seems almost incredible that I can count the amount of times on one hand when we've had to call Andriana's doctor over the years. I think a remember a bad fever once, a rattling cough when she was still a baby, and a bout of pink eye from daycare- otherwise, that was about it. Whenever my wife and I discussed our daughter's health I tried not to call undue attention to her good luck, but superstition aside my wife and I both knew that for all of our early trials with Andriana's PKU, we had been extraordinarily fortunate.

And we still are. Frightful as Andriana's cut was, it will heal. I have a boss and colleagues who were more than understanding when I told them that I'd need to stay home with my daughter for a couple of days until she was back on her feet, so that my wife wouldn't have to miss hours on the desk for which she wouldn't get paid. And as for Andriana herself? I wish I'd had such equanimity when I was her age. No tears, no complaints. She's simply delighted that she'll get her stitches taken out the day before her birthday, rather than on the big day itself, and that she'll only miss a couple of weeks of soccer at most. At the end of the day, we're home again as a family, for which we are thankful.

"Daddy, why do you keep looking at me like that?"

My daughter asks me this question when she catches me staring over at her later that evening with an expression that is equal parts relief and disbelief- relief that the day's ordeal is over, and disbelief both that it happened in the first place and that it wasn't something even worse. I tell Andriana that maybe she'll understand someday, if she chooses to have children of her own. But it's more than that. As rattled as I am, I'm proud to have a daughter like her. I tell her this and she makes a face, but I know that she's proud as well. Despite all of the panic and emotional exhaustion, on Tuesday I got to catch a glimpse of the strong woman that Andriana will be, and this makes me happy.

Do you even code, bro?*

2013-04-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

It's funny how ideas tend to percolate through the quintessence. After coming back from a fun and extremely knowledge-packed ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach last month, I was doing my best to digest all of the cool things that my resource sharing colleagues were up to and ruminating about coding, libraries, and how to foster a culture of innovation myself when I stumbled across Jenica Rodgers' excellent post "Considering the librarian tech skills gap."

In her keynote for the New Librarians' Symposium at the Queensland University of Technology**, Jenica said:

Or the best new idea requires skill sets we aren’t training for and don’t have, except for a dozen people who are all being hired by Google, and that one guy who can write his own ticket and you could never afford him anyway. Or even smaller scale: Griffey shows me his LibraryBox and enthuses about how straightforward it is, and I totally want to make one to take to every meeting I ever have and insist that people download the files we’re going to be working with instead of printing them out… and then my eyes glaze over when he starts talking about the code that you need in order to set one up. I, um, was hoping for a nice little point and click and stick the cord in the hole kind of interface and he’s talking about GitHub…

Oh, how much of this rings painfully true! As a librarian who openly embraces technological innovation, I am constantly running into examples of phenomenally bright people doing amazing things. For all of the hand-wringing about the future of libraries, there's an awful lot of inspiration to be found out there if you look for it. The tricky thing, as Jenica so rightly identifies, is taking that inspiration and transforming it into something actionable at your own library. In so many instances, the innovative spirit may be willing, but the coding flesh is just too weak.

When I got into the resource sharing business all those years ago, I don't think it ever occurred to me that interlibrary loan would be such fertile ground for the library hacker set. Never mind the fact that the predominant ILL management system, ILLiad, was the brainchild of a bunch of programmers in the Virginia Tech library system who were tired of doing things the hard way. In my mind, coding was something that vendors did. Even if you did manage to pick up some new and interesting stuff at a conference or elsewhere in the library blogopshere, your local IT department was usually too busy supporting all of the existing systems to commit resources to adding anything else to their plate.

Somewhere along the way, however, a tipping point was reached in the library world where frustration with waiting on vendors or systems staff to provide desperately-needed solutions met with a critical mass of programming skills in the latest crop of library school grads. This was nothing short of a revolution for librarians, but like all revolutions it has come with its share of turbulence, as disruptive technologies have pushed administrators, staff, and IT folks out of their comfort zones and into unexplored territory. And also like many revolutions, this one has not been equally distributed. While through the serendipity of fortuitous hirings and receptive management some libraries have transformed themselves into hotbeds of innovation, others find themselves scrambling just to keep the basic service points staffed and the library budget in the black.

Contrary to what many people might think, this isn't just about the money. I've seen library systems with deep pockets struggle to get themselves out of the 19th century, whereas libraries which have been financially challenged for years somehow find ways to cultivate and sustain a culture of innovation. In her subsequent blog post, Jenica explores the nature of this disconnect. Her conclusions, below, are of course spot-on:

We aren’t taught crunchy tech skills.
We don’t know how to learn crunchy tech skills.
It’s not our job to learn crunchy tech skills.
The technology headspace is openly hostile to most of the profession.

While all of these are true, I would submit that the following is also true: We don't know how to manage librarians with crunchy tech skills. And this is just as important as #1, 2, 3, and 4.

I will never have enough time or energy to learn how to code like a Mover and Shaker. And chances are, that if you're already a director, assistant/associate director, or department head, nor will you. But what we can do is focus on developing our skill sets so that we can effectively manage the innovators in our midst and create a work environment where future Movers and Shakers are not just happy accidents but an inevitable outcome.

How do we pull this off, exactly? Well, that's what I've been trying to figure out. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of suggestions, here's what I've managed to come up with so far...

Learn to code. But wait, didn't I just admit that I'm never going to be able to code like Matthew Reidsma?*** Well, yes, but you can't manage what you don't understand. I may never learn how to write a script in Lua, but I sure as hell will have an easier time asking other people to code one for me if I know what it is I'm asking for in the first place. Managers are interpreters between the people with the skills and the people with the budget lines - if you don't learn how to speak both languages, something is going to get lost in translation.
Cultivate your talent. This is rarely about hiring people from the outside, especially in these times of shrinking library budgets and hiring freezes, but finding out how to develop what you already have and don't even know it. For example, student labor used to be about staffing the circ desk or reshelving books, but chances are these days that you're employing student assistants who have some l33t skillz (grad students can be especially useful trainers in this regard). I've had the good fortune of managing some talented student employees, some of whom I've been able to successfully hire as library staff.
Challenge your staff to learn new things. At the same time, don't neglect the staff you already have. This one comes down to basic transformational leadership. If you want to foster an environment that is friendly to technological innovation, you need to encourage your staff to become managers of innovation themselves. Doing so means throwing out all of your assumptions about what your staff is or isn't capable of. This is often much harder than you think, but experience has taught me that it's almost always worth taking that leap of faith in empowering your staff to develop their own skills and tools to become the agents of their own continuous improvement.
See what other people are doing. Steal from them shamelessly. Share your successes with others so that they may see, steal, and share in return. My favorite example of what all librarians should aspire to be is the IDS Project in New York State. If you are not familiar with the work they've been doing over the past several years, it's nothing less than extraordinary. The IDS Project has fostered a statewide culture of innovation predicated on a collaborative model of training, support, and mentoring which consistently puts them on the bleeding edge of the resource sharing world. Somehow they've managed to find that magic balance between tech skills, strategic thinking, and good old-fashioned librarianship, and I've done my damnedest to replicate this magic in my own workplace.

I'll admit, it's still a work in progress. And there's a lot more going on here that I think Jenica does a brilliant job of deconstructing in her posts about this topic, especially insofar as coding culture is still a hostile space to women in general and not the most accessible subject matter to our profession. But I hope that I've been able to contribute one library manager's perspective to how we can start to bridge the tech skills gap and incorporate technological innovation into the DNA of the library workplace.

* Know Your Meme- "Do You Even Lift?"

** Note to self: I need to get my sorry librarian butt to Australia...

*** Sorry, Matt, but I couldn't resist (congrats again on being a 2013 Mover and Shaker!)

AL eh?

2013-02-07T13:13:00.000-05:00

This conversation actually happened:

"Hey!"

"How's it going? Great to see you at ALA."

"Great seeing you as well- thanks for sending that information, by the way."

"Sure, not a problem. Uh... what did I send again?"

"Umm... I don't remember off-hand... but I'm pretty sure it looked useful."

"Well, then- you're welcome?"

Resolutions resolved

2013-01-02T13:33:00.003-05:00

It's been quite a while since my last blog entry. If you're reading this post, however, you probably already know me either through Facebook or Twitter, so you're well aware that even though I may not have had the time to document the remainder of my 2012 in long-form blogging I've been busy sharing my transition from Harvard to Yale - not to mention all of the other life changes along the way, like losing weight:

Nevertheless it was always my intention to end the year with some kind of reflection about how my resolution to Make It Happen turned out. In the past I've always sucked at New Year's resolutions, and I think I finally understand why: they've either been too specific and/or numerous, so that they ended up seeming like a giant "To-Do" list which I would inevitably resent and never get around to completing. By opting for a thematic resolution this time around, I was able to avoid this trap. Rather than worry about specific goals, I changed my attitude towards change instead and the details fell into place as a result.

There's more to it, of course, but as I'll be making a presentation on this very topic at the upcoming ALA Midwinter Meeting I'm going to wait until I've finished gathering all of my thoughts on the topic before I share them, though I do promise to share it here as well. In the meantime, as December drew to a close I wondered what my next year's resolution should be. Since a theme seemed to work so dramatically over the past year, I decided to adopt another thematic resolution this time around for 2013:

Keep Moving Forward.

If you're a Disneyphile such as yours truly, you'll immediately recognize the source of this phrase: Walt Disney himself, who wasn't just an entertainer, but a passionate futurist. At the end of the 2007 animated movie Meet The Robinsons, Walt is quoted as having said the following:

Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Whether this is an apocryphal quote or not, I've always found it to be fairly inspirational stuff, but now that I've gone and successfully changed All The Things in my life this phrase feels even more appropriate.

(Okay, after having just returned from spending the holidays in Disney World I may still be a wee bit under the influence of pixie dust, as well!).

Changing my life was necessary, and I'm glad that I found the courage and motivation to do so, but how do I sustain this type of radical change? As happy as I am right now with what I've accomplished, I want to ensure that the past year of transformation was not the exception but the new normal for 2013 and beyond. So I'm going to Keep Moving Forward. Here's to the future! I look forward to sharing my progress here and elsewhere, and hope that resolutions or no resolutions, your new year is more awesome than the previous one.

What I got done offline this evening

2012-10-08T22:05:00.001-05:00

Cleaned the hermit crab tank
Played badminton with my daughter
Built a LEGO table
Created a weekly activity checklist for my daughter
Made giardiniera from some leftover celery
Built with my daughter using our nifty new LEGO table
Watched some postseason baseball
Played Bad Piggies

Okay, maybe I should spend less time on the laptop at night...

My Harvard Commencement

2012-06-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to a lot of college acapella music lately. Maybe it's because my job search has put me in something of a nostalgic mood, especially now that I know I'll be leaving Harvard in just a few short weeks. That's right, folks- I'm happy to announce that I've accepted the position of Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, starting this August! This means that my days here at the World's Greatest University are numbered.

Although I am thrilled about the new job and excited about the challenges ahead of me, now when I walk across Harvard Yard on my way to Widener Library in the morning I can't help but feel bittersweet about my impending departure. It always occurred to me that every time I swiped my ID card to enter the library there would come a time when I would no longer have the privilege of doing so, but I guess I didn't realize that that day would come sooner and not later.

Which brings me back to my recent acapella obsession. Right now my favorite track by far is a cover of Josh Groban's "Awake" by Northwestern University's Freshman Fifteen. Though the song is obviously about someone preparing to say goodbye to their loved one, the sentiment that the lyrics encapsulate is pretty much what I'm feeling at the moment:

And I know that only time will tell us how
To carry on without each other
So keep me awake to memorize you
Give me more time to feel this way
We can't stay like this forever
But I can have you next to me today

True story: it took me 13 years to get my Bachelor's degree. However much I'd like to credit this unusually long and circuitous path towards undergraduate completion to my Bluto Blutarskyesque lifestyle, it was less a function of partying hard and more a Socratic exercise in figuring out how little it was that I actually knew about myself (okay, there was some partying, a change of major or two, and a lot of acapella, but that's a completely different story!).

The white-hot intellectual fires of MIT very quickly melted away any pretense that my 18-year old self may have harbored about being an unappreciated genius; once I had cooled down and recovered enough to make what I assumed was an informed decision concerning what course my studies should take, how could I have known that when I transferred to Boston University to study Classics I was embarking on yet another painful process of elimination, mixed in with some difficult life lessons to boot?

When I finally did leave BU with my BA, however, I felt that I had finally learned enough about myself to know what I wasn't. So what if it took three and a quarter times longer than it should have for me to learn this lesson? To me it was thirteen years well spent. My parents and teachers always told me that I was stubborn- in retrospect I probably should have taken this observation to heart a lot earlier in life, but you see, I was too busy being stubborn to do so.

Therefore I find it fascinating, more than a little bit ironic, and of course totally thematically appropriate that after thirteen years of working for Harvard, I find myself leaving for a new job. When I committed myself to Making It Happen as my New Year's resolution for 2012, I should have suspected that it would lead to my departing Harvard at long last, but for as long as I could I allowed myself the luxury of pretending that I could somehow embrace radical change without changing everything.

But change has come, and it has been radical indeed. And just as surely as I've sloughed off upwards of sixty pounds since the beginning of the year, I seem to have wriggled free of Harvard's grasp as well. This is the haven I chanced upon when I decided that graduate school was not for me and I found that I was at a loss as to what to do next. This is the place where I discovered my passion for librarianship and had the good fortune to be mentored by wonderful librarians who saw my latent potential and nurtured my passion. This is the community that helped celebrate my wedding, the birth and christening of my daughter, and many of life's other milestones along the way- big and small.

If my time as an undergraduate was about learning who I wasn't, surely my time at Harvard was about discovering who I actually was. Even if the going here at the library has admittedly been rough of late, how could I ever dream of leaving this place? And yet now I find myself doing just that- not out of necessity, but by choice; not on a decision made angrily, but thoughtfully; looking back not with bitterness or regret, but with love and gratitude for the University that took me in, the community of artists, academics, and other adventurous and/or lost souls who sustained me and inspired me, and the colleagues who helped me become the library professional I was always meant to be.

That when I finally arrived at my Socratic destination I would find that my future lay elsewhere probably should not have come as much of a surprise to me as it did (after all, in true 8-bit fashion, isn't the Princess always in another castle?). I like to think of it as a testament to how formative an experience my time at Harvard has been that even when a great opportunity like the Yale job presented itself, I had to do some serious soul-searching before deciding even to apply for it, let alone accept it. I'm glad that I did, of course, but I am also sad to leave behind my friends and colleagues, our patrons, and the Harvard Library itself- and Widener Library in particular.

So don't mind me if I seem to linger a little and breathe deep when I walk through the Stacks, if I slow down to listen to the never-ending beeping of the barcode scanners at the Circulation Desk, if I stop to look up and admire the brilliant view through the skylights of the Phillips Reading Room- or if you catch me flipping through the card catalogs on the third floor, marveling over the wondrous machinery down in Preservation, or standing in the Widener Memorial Room engaged in a quiet conversation with Harry. I'm trying to soak in as much of this place as I can before I finally say goodbye.

Thank you, Harvard, for the past thirteen years. I will always treasure our time together, but it's time for me to move on...

New in the Kindle store!

2012-05-05T11:10:00.004-05:00

This is a short story that I wrote several years ago- it was published in the literary 'zine InkCollective (issue #4, 2007), and I'm now making it available as a Kindle edition. I think every writer who remembers the tragic events of 9/11 has tried to wrestle with the meaning of that dark day in some way. This was my attempt.

Imagine a world where it is September 10th, 2001 every day. David Nollett pretends to be a day trader in a futuristic theme park recreating pre-9/11 Manhattan, sleepwalking through his life until he meets Amber- a fellow employee of the Company portraying a hooker on 42nd Street. Or is she?

"Tomorrow Is Another Day" is a 7,000-word short story about history, memory, and the importance of letting go.

A writer's guide to Twitter

2012-05-05T10:49:00.003-05:00

This question came up on a thread in r/writing on Reddit from a writer trying to attract followers on Twitter. Although my answer is geared therefore towards authors who tweet, I think it's good advice in general for anyone seeking to establish a genuine online presence on Twitter that's worth following:

Don't just follow your friends/followers! Use a Twitter client that allows you to monitor multiple hashtags- follow tags like #writing, #amwriting, #abna (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards), #litchat, #pubwrite, #authors, etc. Hashtags are conversations. Don't be afraid to jump in, reply, and retweet, but don't go crazy and blow up peoples' tweetstreams with multiple serial RTs and replies all at once.
Tweet about a variety of topics. This might sound a little counterintuitive, but writers who tweet about nothing but writing are boring, and run the risk of coming off as shills. Tweet about other things that interest you- for example, I like to tweet about libraries (I'm a librarian), D&D and gaming in general, the Boston Red Sox, and how the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ruins my commute pretty much every other day. Not only will you pick up more followers this way, but it also helps your real personality shine through online and makes your tweetstream seem like less of a marketing gimmick.
Do not automate your tweets- this may work for larger organizations but it's never a good idea for an individual. Also be careful about overly clogging your tweetstream with third-party app tweets. No one will begrudge you the occasional Foursquare check-in binge, but if most of your tweets are coming from apps people are simply going to tune you out.
Direct Messaging strangers is creepy. Just don't do it!
Share links to interesting and informative content. Reddit may have seen it all already, but never underestimate the RT power of a quality cat meme. I follow a ton of RSS feeds in Google Reader, which makes it easy to share content out to social networks. If I found something worth reading, chances are someone else out there on Twitter will as well. The internet is such a wild and woolly place that people who help make sense of it for others are valued in social networks. If you establish yourself as a thoughtful digital curator, people will follow you.
Be authentic in your tweets. As much as it seems to be driven by celebrities and Trending Topics, Twitter does actually reward original expression and the clever turn of phrase. Think of a RT as an upvote here on Reddit and you'll get the idea. Have opinions. Make jokes. Show some genuine emotion. Provide running commentary to that morning's episode of The Price Is Right (helpful hint: people on Twitter LOOOOOOOVE Plinko).

So that's pretty much how I've built up a modest Twitter following. It won't happen overnight, but you'll be surprised how tweeting on a consistent basis on a wide range of topics will translate into a steady trickle of new followers. The key is engagement. If you don't put anything into Twitter, do not expect anything substantive out of it in return.

Enjoy! And happy tweeting...

Suitable for framing

2012-04-27T13:49:00.001-05:00

After a fairly rotten day, I received this notification in my email inbox:

I guess this makes it official now!

The Dogfood Chronicles: "Draykon" by Charlotte E. English

2012-04-25T23:19:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been almost four entire months and I have kept fast to my New Year's resolution to read only self-published fiction in 2012. As promised, I offer the next review in what I'm calling the Dogfood Chronicles: Draykon, a fantasy novel by Charlotte E. English.

Just as I explained how I came to be reading the first installment to this adventure in self-pub reading, I feel that it is useful to describe how I discovered each title in turn. This isn't just in the interest of declaring any predispositions or biases on my part regarding the author in question, but it also highlights the various different way in which people connect with self-published books. What I'm learning is that there is a strong social component at work here, arguably even more so than with traditionally published materials. In the case of Draykon, I had the good fortune of receiving a positive review of my own book Confessions of a Gourmand by Ms. English a couple of years ago. This lead to a friendly correspondence whereby I learned that she too had written and self-published several of her own fantasy novels.

Draykon is a work of high fantasy, set in a fictional realm which loosely suggests England and Continental Europe but is very much its own world, overlaid with an interesting cosmology consisting of Upper and Lower Realms (more about those later). When our heroine - a young jeweler named Llandry Sanfaer - stumbles upon a cache of a unique gemstone she names istore, Llandry finds her wares are suddenly in great demand throughout not just her always-sunny native Glinnery and its darkling counterpart Glour but elsewhere in the so-called Seven Realms and beyond. Being the center of attention is bad enough for Llandry, who is painfully shy by nature, but when people connected to her jewelry begin to turn up dead she must overcome her fears and embark on an adventure to discover the truth about her precious istore and uncover an ancient secret with world-shattering implications.

Interwoven with this plot is the tale of Lady Evastany Glostrum, one of Glour's most powerful and respected sorceresses, tasked with keeping her world safe from threats from the Upper and Lower Realms. On the verge of her own high society wedding, Lady Glostrum is also drawn into the novel's central mystery when a dear friend is murdered by a sinister otherworldly creature. Who is behind the recent intrusions between the Realms, and why will they stop at nothing to obtain every last piece of Miss Sanfaer's istore? To answer these questions, Lady Glostrum must leave her life of position and privilege and put her abilities to the test against unseen foes whose mastery of forbidden magics call into question everything she has been taught about the relationship between the Seven Realms, the Uppers, and the Lowers.

I found Draykon to be a well-crafted novel with two believable female protagonists at its heart. The author poses an interesting challenge for herself in portraying Llandry not just an introvert, but someone who struggles with full-blown agoraphobia and a pair of overprotective parents to boot; in a similar vein, Lady Glostrum, although a strong and capable woman, is shown nevertheless as chafing against both the humdrum of an administrator's career and society's expectations for a female of her station. To compensate for these constraints, Ms. English arranges Llandry and Lady Glostrum in counterpoint to one another- an ambitious choice, but one that effectively splits the narrative until the very end, a la Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire. Some may find this off-putting, but I thought it worked rather well.

If I have any real quibble with this book, however, it is that it is almost too polished for its own good. Writers are enjoined not to tell, but to show. While this is usually sound advice, I feel that in this case Ms. English has followed it at the expense of her own setting. Draykon is one of the more imaginative fantasy milieus I have encountered in my reading, but many of its exotic elements - such as the aforementioned Upper and Lower Realms, which end up figuring heavily into the plot - feel insufficiently explained. Being a writer of fantasy myself, I understand that it is always a delicate balancing act between fleshing out your universe and advancing the story, but I wish that the author had trusted herself with a little more world-building indulgence here and there.

That being said, Draykon is an excellent read- filled with intrigue, suspense, and action. It is also the first in a series of novels, so I look forward to many happy returns to this uniquely-imagined world!

Conversations with my mother

2012-04-15T23:08:00.000-05:00

My Mom: "You know, you could have been a doctor."

Me: "But Ma, I didn't want to be a doctor."

"Well, you should have been a scientist then at least."

"I *am* a scientist- a library scientist!"

Behold! My Trilogy of Terror

2012-04-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

To celebrate Friday the 13th, the Red Sox home opener, and a successful first 100 days of Making It Happen in 2012 (also to take my mind off the fact that I'll be spending the whole day in job interviews), I'm offering my three horror novellas for free in the Amazon Kindle Store:

Bambino

The Boston Red Sox may have finally reversed the Curse of the Bambino in 2004, but only a few know the true story of what actually happened that fateful season. When a grand piano is found at the bottom of a lake in Quincy, James Flynn -- hot dog vendor at Fenway Park and seventh son of a seventh son -- finds himself drawn into a world of demons, exorcists, and MIT's mysterious Department of Alchemy, where a group of secret paranormal researchers are preparing for a final showdown with one of baseball's most legendary players. "Bambino" is a 14,000 word novella about demons, exorcism, and America's Greatest Pastime.

Keeper

Farrell's Island is only a myth, they say- something that the old salts of Cape Ann whisper about in hushed tones after one too many drinks at the bar. But when two unlucky fishermen set out in search of this fabled isle, will their obsession land them a much more dangerous catch than they'd bargained for? "Keeper" is a 11,000 word New England fishing yarn in the style of H.P. Lovecraft about the one that should have gotten away.

High Tide

As the star reporter for Get Out Magazine, Gerald McKenna has traveled the world in search of adventure. When he is sent on assignment back to the Jersey Shore, however, he learns that going home can not only be a thrill... it can be downright deadly! "High Tide" is a 14,000 word horror novella about surfing with the sharks down at the Jersey Shore.

Download these three stories for free starting Friday (4/13) through this Sunday (4/15)!

Make It Happen 2012: The First 100 Days

2012-04-11T07:09:00.000-05:00

What a difference a few months can make!

When I jumped into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean on New Year's Day after deciding that it was time to change everything about my life that was frustrating me, I don't think I gave myself enough credit that I would have the courage of my convictions to see the process through. Well, here I am after 100 days of Making It Happen in 2012 and to say that I am pleasantly surprised to have confounded my own expectations in this regard would be the mother of all understatements.

Painting myself into a corner by taking my resolutions public was, in retrospect, a very good idea- one that began when I committed myself to the Rocky Neck Plunge with my fellow Gloucestermen (and women!) on Good Morning Gloucester. I may excel at letting myself down when left to my own devices, but the prospect of having to explain myself to my Facebook friends and Twitter followers proved to be an excellent form of motivation when all else failed.

The decision to Live Out Loud also tickled my obsessive-compulsive urge to document my progress, something which I know also helped keep me on track with my weight loss. If Weight Watchers Online provided the app for accurately gauging what went into my body, social media provided the wherewithal for measuring the output of my self-improvement efforts: pounds shed, words published, fears confronted, and future reimagined.

I thank the people who read this blog, who reply to my Tweets, and like my status reports on Facebook (and those of you who +1 me on Google+ as well). Whether you realized it or not, you have managed to help keep me on target over these past three months and ten days, and I am eternally grateful for your moral support- past, present, and future.

So... here are the numbers to date:

1. Pounds Lost: 43
2. Stories Self-Published on Amazon: 4 short stories, 1 novel
3. Jobs applied for: 3
4. Attitude improvement: 100%

Here's to another awesome 100 days! Rest assured that I will keep all of you updated as I continue along my path to a brand new me...

PAX: Bring Your Daughter to Play Day

2012-04-10T16:21:00.000-05:00

For those of you who were wondering why half the people riding the MBTA this past weekend were dressed up as costumed characters, Boston just hosted the Penny Arcade Expo, aka PAX East, one of the largest gaming conventions in the country (Anime Boston was also in town, which accounts for the other half!). Ever since this popular Seattle-based con established a beachhead here on the East Coast a few years ago PAX East has grown by leaps and bounds every year, such that its attendance actually now rivals its parent event, drawing gamers from all over New England and beyond for three days of video game demos, tabletop action, and general over-the-top geeky mayhem.

Last year I had planned on bringing my daughter to PAX for the Saturday of that expo, but when a kid from her class invited her to a roller-skating birthday party on the same day I naturally lost on the face-off- video games may be fun, but no eight-year old kid turns down an afternoon at the roller rink! This year there were no scheduling conflicts, however, so I was finally able to introduce my little girl to a glimpse of gaming Nirvana... and it was good!

Although I was really nervous as to whether my daughter would enjoy herself or run away screaming, she in fact had a blast, and is already looking forward to next year's PAX East. Just in case any other gamer parents out there are wondering how to bring their children to an event as big and overwhelming as PAX and actually have a positive experience, here are a few things that in retrospect I think I managed to do right:

1. Scout out the con beforehand. If you're planning on bringing the kids, don't take them on the first day that you go. Give yourself a day to get a lay of the land and gather as much intel as you can so you're not wandering around blindly with children in tow. Figure out where the concessions are, which bathrooms are closest/most convenient, and map the easiest ways to get from Point A to Point B so you don't wear out little gamer feet in the process of shlepping back and forth across a cavernous, crowded convention center. This is also your opportunity to do the things that you want to (e.g., play some ultraviolent video games, indulge in a marathon session of Settlers of Catan, get that obligatory picture with Lollipop Chainsaw), because when you come back with your kids you should

2. Do what your children want to do. This should be a no-brainer, but if you want your kids to have a positive con experience let them set the pace and call the shots. Especially if they've never been to something like PAX, expect them to spend a goodly deal of time walking around slack-jawed and in awe of the expo floor. Let them bounce around like pinballs, gathering swag and taking pictures of cosplayers. If they want to play Mario Kart 7 for hours on end, be a good sport and let them do just that. Remember that little gamers will not be nearly as interested as you are in standing in line for yet another exclusive preview demo, nor will they be happy about steep learning curves mastering unfamiliar platforms- look for short lines and familiar (or at least intuitive) games if you want to maximize your fun. That being said, be sure to

3. Keep a list of "kid-friendly" activities on hand. Although PAX doesn't really have kids events per se, there are a lot of things going on that will be just as entertaining to your children as it will be for you. For example, a friend of mine working the con told me about a free mini-painting event that was perfect for my craft-minded daughter. We also spent an inordinate amount of time at the LEGO vendor, who allowed you to assemble your own minifigs at the price of one dollar per part- as my daughter is absolutely obsessed with LEGO, this to me was well worth the price! I also knew that she would enjoy watching the PopCap zombies dance, so I made sure we caught one of their routines in the lobby. This may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but the more you plan in advance, the more serendipitous your kids' convention will seem, and the more rewarding everyone's time will be as a result.

4. Finally, HAVE FUN! This is about showing your kids all that is good about gaming. Play your cards right and you will have a delightfully absurd, geek-positive, and memorable family experience and lay the groundwork for many happy returns.

The Harvard Library Transition Diet

2012-04-01T12:56:00.001-05:00

As of this morning, I weighed in at 232 pounds- which means I've now lost more than forty pounds since January 1st.

What's my secret, you ask? The answer is simple: stress.

I tend to be a nervous eater. When I was a high school senior I remember polishing off an entire large tub of Goldfish crackers while waiting to hear back from MIT's Early Admissions. Food has always been my preferred method of self-medication; when I finally learned how to cook, however, it was like giving a junkie his own prescription pad.

Cooking and eating weren't just integral parts of courting my wife, but a way for the two of us to negotiate the existential angst of forsaking our plans to pursue careers in the academy and trying to find our footing in the so-called Real World. Life never seemed so bad when you sat down to a delicious home-cooked meal, or escaped for a weekend road trip with Jane and Michael Stern's Road Food as your guide.

Drawing my comfort from comfort food has always come naturally to me, so as my situation at work became more and more uncertain my diet became progressively worse. Having a sedentary job had already taken its toll on my already-oversized waistline, but three years of "library transition" was adding insult to injury as I relied on food as an escape. Feeling powerless in the office translated into extra indulgence, which of course only served to feed a vicious cycle of negative body image, constant heartburn, and sleep apnea at night.

My inability to get a decent night of shuteye was in turn affecting my attitude at work and made me an irritable zombie in the evenings and on the weekends. Whereas sleep had always come easy for me, I began to regard bedtime with a sense of dread - even worse, I feared falling asleep at the wheel during my early morning Thursday commutes or not being able to stay awake in traffic for the return trip.

Clearly, something had to give. And something did. Oddly enough, I have the Harvard Library Transition to thank for this radical shift to my lifestyle.

For the first time in years I was faced with the simple fact that the status quo would no longer be available to me as an option, and that there was nothing I could say or do to change this. Because of the structural changes taking place at the library, my job is going away. Even if it's true that there's a functionally similar job (albeit University-wide in scope) taking its place, it will be a new position with new responsibilities, a new boss, and a new mandate as our Library Transition proceeds into its implementation phase. Moreover, this is a job for which I would need to apply and interview. Taking no action was no longer an option - like it or not, I was being kicked out of my comfort zone once and for all.

Rather than surrender to my fear of the unknown, I have decided to leverage this necessity for change into an opportunity for transformation across the board. And so my vow to Make It Happen in 2012 was born. If one thing had to change, why not CHANGE ALL THE THINGS? Not just my job but my diet, my writing, my general attitude towards Life, the Universe, and Everything.

This is not meant to be a comment on the Harvard Library Transition or anyone else's personal experience of this tumultuous time as a librarian or library assistant here at the World's Greatest University - my feelings about the former are well known at this point; as for my colleagues, I feel only sympathy and solidarity. For whatever reason, repurposing the ludicrous amount of stress currently in my life as a catalyst for change has worked for me. While I wish everyone could make the same lemonade out of these bitter lemons we've been handed, I understand that everyone's circumstances are different.

We're now in the endgame of this transition, and things are getting weirder and even more stressful than before as my colleagues and I compete with one another for positions in the new organizational structure (like the Hunger Games, only a lot less entertaining). It is my hope that we make it through this awkward situation as soon as possible. Will I still have a job here when all is said and done? I'd like to believe that even if I don't get the position I applied for Harvard would not turn my talents and expertise away, but whatever happens, I am no longer afraid.

Also, I'm several belt notches thinner...

Problem solved!

2012-04-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

Breaking News: #MBTA counts loose change dropped onto subway tracks, announces $133.4 Billion surplus
— Tom Bruno (@oodja) April 1, 2012

The Dogfood Chronicles: "Speculation" by Edmund Jorgensen

2012-03-30T13:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote here about my pledge only to read self-published fiction in 2012, an experiment in what is known as "dogfooding," whereby an individual or company opts to use its own product in a vote of confidence. Since I have decided to make an honest attempt to self-publish my fiction (at Amazon, Smashwords, and elsewhere), I thought it was only fair that I should purchase and read the works of my self-pubbed peers, as otherwise I would be something of a hypocrite.

After announcing my intentions to eat nothing but self-publishing dogfood for an entire year, I was asked whether I was planning to review the books I read during my experiment. Fellow self-pubbed authors wished me well and wanted to follow my progress, and even people who regarded this idea as little more than a masochistic exercise in literary self-flagellation were nonetheless rather curious to see how it would turn out. Thus the Dogfood Chronicles were born.

My first review is Speculation, a literary thriller by Edmund Jorgensen. Before I proceed, however, I must confess that this book just so happens to be the self-published novel of a dear friend from college. He and I both decided to take the plunge in offering our books on Amazon around the same time. Lest I be accused of using this review to garner Edmund any undue sales advantage, however, I should point out that Speculation is currently blowing up the paid Kindle rankings in Amazon - right now he's #144 - entirely on the merits of his own storytelling.

Andrew, a struggling professor of philosophy at an unnamed Boston university, is presented with a conundrum when his best friend from college "Sothum" dies and wills him a choice between receiving ten million dollars or the contents of a sealed envelope. Does Andrew take the safe bet so that he never need worry about money again, or does he take the envelope, whose contents are a complete mystery?

While his wife Cheryl sees this as a simple decision - i.e., take the money and don't look back - she begrudgingly indulges Andrew's natural curiosity as he tries to figure out what could possibly be worth passing up a fortune. Is it even more money, or better yet the secret of Sothum's financial success, or is the envelope empty, a final cruel practical joke from beyond the grave? The fact that Sothum is implicated in the disappearance of a mutual friend (a writer named Buddy) only serves to complicate Andrew's choice.

The more that Andrew investigates into Sothum's weird and reclusive life, the deeper he finds himself drawn into a philosophical puzzle which threatens not just the stability of his marriage but his own mental health as well. Will he follow his best friend all the way down the rabbit hole to satisfy his need to know the truth at any cost, or will Andrew leave Sothum's final riddle unsolved and choose life, love, and sanity instead?

Author Edmund Jorgensen sets the bar high with his debut novel, but Speculation delivers on its promise. Jorgensen paces his story masterfully, interweaving bittersweet college reminiscences with a gradually unfolding mystery, all the while raising the emotional stakes with every chapter and new revelation. This progression is executed in such a subtle fashion that when Sothum's at-first almost sophomoric meditations on the meaning of life, chance, and fate suddenly take on a very real and truly terrifying aspect, the reader is blindsided by the transformation.

Despite these elements of suspense, Speculation is at its heart an Intellectual Bromance, in the grand tradition of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Indeed, Andrew, Sothum, and their third friend Buddy are as entertainingly clever and inextricably doomed as Eco's Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon were. The downward spiral of intense friendship also calls to mind the philosophically rich but emotionally damaged relationship between Louis and Lestat in Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire. In a less capable writer's hands, Speculation's choice would never have been a real head-scratcher, but the author's genius is that despite yourself you can't help but find that you have been seduced by Sothum's demented brilliance in perfect lockstep with Andrew's first-person narrator. Jorgensen not only captures the cerebral intoxication and Platonic intensity that so frequently occurs in one's heady years as a young impressionable college student, but he turns them against you so expertly that you can only admire the artfulness of the betrayal.

Is there any downside to this book at all? I'll be damned if I can find one. Not only is Speculation engaging and intellectually satisfying, it is also extraordinarily well-written, edited, and professionally polished. So why isn't this book already on the shelves of your local bookstore? In private conversation, the author confided that literary agents generally had high praise for his manuscript when he made the query rounds, but even the most kindly-disposed said they'd be at a loss to market it. Their loss, to be sure!

That a book of this quality would never see the light of day is the reason I decided to take a chance on self-publishing myself, and I'm heartened that my friend Edmund has also decided to make the leap. Even if you have been lukewarm on self-pubbed authors thus far, I strongly recommend that you give Speculation a chance. If this first review in the Dogfood Chronicles is any indication of just how much undiscovered literary talent there is out there in the so-called "digital slush pile," I'm in for a very rewarding year of reading...

How to debrief yourself

2012-03-26T15:07:00.000-05:00

So last week I went to the ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach to sequester myself by the sea along with a few hundred of my closest resource sharing colleagues to share ideas, compare best practices, and try our hardest to resist the siren call of the ocean. Despite ever-shrinking budgets, short staffs, and the (albeit painfully incremental) progress in virtual conference attendance I'm still a huge fan of the real deal, as I firmly believe that the physical experiences of travel, serendipitous conversations, and late-night bull and/or brainstorming sessions over a couple of drinks by the fire pit is an experience that the digital world can not yet fully replicate.

No offense intended to Second Life, but actually going somewhere else other than your office for several days also means that you may fully immerse yourself in an alternate reality so that your conference experience may be transformative as well as edifying. There's a certain magic at work at a good conference that makes you almost intoxicated with all of the new possibilities that are revealed by simply getting a glimpse of what other people in your field are doing, thinking, and aspiring towards. But how do you keep that magic alive, once you return to your daily grind? This is a challenge that I've struggled with over the years, but I think I've finally made a breakthrough in bottling up your conference magic and making it a renewable resource of inspiration.

When you do finally get back to work, before you do anything else of substance and definitely before you attempt to dig yourself out of your email, your inbox, or whatever it is that has piled up in your absence (trust me- a few more hours of accumulation won't harm anyone) go back over your conference notes in their entirety. I like to use Twitter as my preferred form of note-taking at conferences, as not only am I following the conference hashtag anyway, but by going back and cutting-and-pasting everything posted to that hashtag I can capture not just my own conference notes but everyone else's as well. This can be especially useful if you are at a conference with multiple tracks, many of which you may wanted to take but couldn't due to scheduling constraints.

So what I do is take the whole Tweetstream for the conference period, copy it into Word as text only, then paste that again into Notepad - actually I use Notepad++ because I like its additional editing functionality - so I can go through each individual Tweet line by line. Then I edit this text for content, deleting all of the interpersonal Tweets (and most of the jokes) until I've boiled it down to useful information for both myself and my colleagues at work.

While I'm going through this editing process, I will inevitably stumble across ideas I'd like to follow up on, interesting books I should read that were mentioned by other presenters, and colleagues whom I will remember to email to ask about X, Y, and Z. Assuming that most of these tasks are simple enough to do in a minute or two, I will do them as I edit, so that I don't table the thought and forget about it, as there's nothing worse than being inspired by a good idea at a conference and then completely failing to explore it once you get home.

While I'm making this pass through the Tweetstream, I can't help but recapture a lot of the enthusiasm and excitement of the conference itself - this is a huge shot in the arm for me, especially when I've just gotten back and am vulnerable to the post-conference blues - not to mention hashtag withdrawal! As I send out emails, Facebook notifications, and Tweets to follow up with other attendees I'm hoping that I'm sharing a little of the magic as well, and then when I organize my Tweet notes into a conference update for my colleagues here at work (I'm also planning to share my ILLiad 2012 notes online) I will keep the inspiration flowing in a positive feedback loop.

As luck would have it, I actually had a job interview here at Harvard today as well. While going to a library conference is generally a good way to get into the right frame of mind for an interview, I found that reviewing my conference notes this morning really energized me about the issues I ended up talking about. I'm curious to see if anyone else out there has any additional practical strategies for keeping the "conference buzz" going after the fun is over - if so, please feel free to share!

Morning shadows

2012-03-19T13:36:00.000-05:00

It's the little things that make this commute worth it...

Whoa, I'm halfway there

2012-03-19T07:34:00.001-05:00

This week I weighed in at 237 pounds, which means I've lost a total of 37 pounds so far on my 2012 Make It Happen Diet. It also means that I am officially halfway to my goal of getting down to 200 pounds!

I had a moment of panic last week when for the first time not only did I manage not to lose any weight, but I'd actually succeeded in gaining back a half pound. Granted, thanks to my tooth troubles I had a very unusual week, and despite the fact that you'd imagine an inability to chew would translate into even more weight loss I seem to have found a way to get all of the calories I needed and then some. Looking back on what I ate I'm pretty sure the sudden influx of carbs was to blame - Weight Watchers points or no points, I'm now convinced that pasta is more or less the Devil - but I'm sure it didn't exactly help that I was entirely sedentary for the better part of that week as well.

Whatever the reasons, I was genuinely worried that I'd reached some sort of plateau in my diet, so I was rather anxious about weighing in on Sunday. While I know I should be overjoyed that I've even lost as many pounds as I have at this point, I really want to reach my goal (and maybe then some), so needless to say I was quite happy to see that I am squarely back on track.

Now all I have to do is manage not to stuff myself silly during this week's ILLiad International Conference down in Virginia Beach - no easy task, mind you, as the host Atlas Systems is a firm believer in Southern hospitality! Wish me luck...

Eating the self-pub dogfood

2012-03-15T23:20:00.001-05:00

My name is Tom Bruno, and until this year I was a self-publishing hypocrite.

You see, although I had decided to take my fantasy novel Confessions of a Gourmand - which I had shopped around to prospective agents only to get a couple of encouraging words but nothing more - and offer it online as a Kindle edition through Amazon, up to that point I had only read one self-published book (which a friend had written a couple of years ago, way ahead of the self-pub revolution) and nothing else, always opting for traditionally-published fiction instead whenever it came time to decide on something new to read.

That I didn't see this for the hypocrisy that it was is testament to how deeply ingrained the bias against self-publication is among would-be authors such as myself. Even now many aspiring writers would still rather keep editing, workshopping, and re-writing their manuscripts and querying the ever-shrinking pool of literary agents or publishing houses in hopes of landing a contract rather than attach the stigma of self-publication to their books. To these defenders of the traditional publishing model, self-publication is nothing more than a vast digital slush pile that floods the market with writing that didn't deserve to be published in the first place and drowns out "legitimate" authors from getting more attention than they would have gotten otherwise.

Or so the argument goes. This post is not about debating whether or not this is in fact true, although my own personal belief is that quality will always find its way to the top, and that (in the words of a fellow self-published author) "I'd much rather have 10000 people write crap and enjoy doing what they're doing than 9999 people never let their work see the light of day". No, this is about practicing what I preach. If I truly feel that self-publishing has become as legitimate a path for writers as the traditional publication route, then shouldn't I be supporting self-published authors with my dollars and my reading time?

There's a term for this: Dogfooding. Eating your own dogfood is a concept that goes back to the 1980's, supposedly from the old ads for Alpo dog food featuring Lorne Greene, who made a point of saying in the commercial that he fed his own dogs Alpo. It was a Microsoft executive who coined the actual phrase, however, expanding the concept beyond actual dogfood into a general vote of confidence in one's product by promoting its use by your own employees. Dogfooding is therefore not just an exercise in public relations, but an active proof of concept.

I've decided to adopt this idea and apply it to self-publishing - to that end, I've resolved that I will only read self-published fiction in 2012. So far I have read three self-pubbed works this year: two novels and a novella. One was a literary thriller, another a fantasy offering, and the the third was a post-apocalyptic science fiction tale. All three were excellent, and each could just as easily have been published via traditional means, had the authors chosen to pursue that route.

While I'm sure that during my yearlong experiment in dogfooding I will no doubt find myself forced to wolf down an unappetizing clunker or two, I must say that I am encouraged by the quality of these initial readings. Perhaps there's more good stuff to be found out there than self-publishing's many detractors would have us believe...

Dens sanus in corpore sano

2012-03-07T08:37:00.001-05:00

A funny thing happened on my way to Making It Happen in 2012... I forgot that while focusing on externalities such as my weight was all well and good and entirely overdue, being thinner wasn't going to amount to a hill of beans if I didn't address other health problems that were perhaps less immediately visible but no less important to my overall well-being.

Take, for example, Tooth #19- or as I like to call it, the Root Canal of the Living Dead.

To say that I had had an unpleasant root canal experience would be an understatement. It was over ten years ago and I had woken up one morning to find myself in excruciating pain. When I could finally get to my dentist, he informed me that a lifetime of grinding my teeth had resulted in a cracked molar which had become infected and would require an emergency root canal in order to save the tooth.

A few hours later I am whisked away to the local endodontist, who begins work only to discover (SPOILERS: Do not continue reading if you wince at the sound of a dentist's drill!) that my aggrieved tooth is so "hot" that they can't actually get it numb without drilling until they hit the root and injecting it directly with anesthetic. This wasn't just as unpleasant as it sounds, but far, far worse, and was without a doubt the most pain I'd ever experienced in my life to date.

Until last Friday, that is. While I'd been warned by several dentists that my root canal was in danger of failing and that I would either need to make a return visit to the endodontist or have the tooth itself extracted, the combined fear of additional agony and the prospect of several additional bank-breaking copays meant that kept putting off the inevitable until... well, the inevitable happened.

Last week I found myself in an ever-increasing amount of discomfort until late Thursday night when the discomfort ramped up suddenly into blinding pain. Silly me, I actually thought for a moment that I'd be able to tough it out with ibuprofen, ice packs, and some Orajel, but sure enough I was back in the dentist's chair by Saturday, and walked out of the office with a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers, an emergency consult with my endodontist, and my tail tucked decidedly between my legs.

You see, folks, I dun goofed. Making It Happen is an all or nothing prospect. Either I commit myself to radical, transformative change on every front or I might as well not change anything at all. This includes tackling all of the problems that I've always allowed to fester (such as my wayward tooth) because I felt like I never had the time, the resources, or the psychic bandwidth to address. But there is always time for change, if you make time for it. My health does matter, and ensuring good health can only be money well spent in the long run.

As far as committing the psychic bandwidth, this is perhaps still the hardest part. I've struggled for so long on so many fronts that sometimes I let myself believe that it is my lot in life simply to struggle, when all the while success is right there within my grasp if only I can muster to courage to seize it with both hands and never let it go. Okay, Tooth #19, I get it now. It's time to be bold. Time to Make It Happen across the board - no exceptions, no excuses!

The lesson has been learned, thank you very much- now be a good little molar and stop bothering me for another 10-12 years...