Wrapping Up

As the year nears its close, I thought I'd get a head start on the posts one tends to see in bookish and library-related circles detailing the books that were read over the year. (My last year's note is here.)

I'm not going to list all the titles, because that would be a lot of copying and pasting, but I can say that so far I have read 106 books in the course of 2011. This is precisely twice as many as in 2010!

I can't really say why that is, since I haven't been working extra hard to double up on my reading, nor have I intentionally cut back on my consumption of other media such as blogs, magazines, newspapers and video games.

I think I have watched somewhat fewer movies recently than in the past, since I don't seem to be in the free screenings loop quite as often, and we switched to the streaming-only package from Netflix, meaning that we don't get regular DVDs in the mail that then sit around all brightly in their red wrappers waiting for us to play them. Still, most of my reading is done on the train during my commute, so I'm not sure how huge an impact that has.

Anyway, of these 106 books, 56 were fiction, and 50 were non-fiction, so I'm keeping things fairly balanced in that department.

Of the total, 38 were by male writers, 65 were by female writers, and three were collections featuring both male and female writers (all three with female editors).

I went on a pretty serious Brontë/Austen kick over the summer, catching up on some classics I hadn't gotten around to reading before, and that increases the count for both women and fiction. This is clearly reflected in the numbers when I break it down by fiction/nonfiction and male/female: 41 fiction books by women (or with a woman editor in two cases), compared to only 15 by men.

In nonfiction, 27 books were authored (or edited in one case) by women, and 23 by men, so apparently this year I prefer tall tales from women, but am willing to accept my facts more or less equally from writers of either gender.

I would like to thank my iPod Touch, on which I read a number of these as ebooks (tiny screen is a bit squint-inducing, but super convenient for travel), and of course my local public library, from which I checked out the majority of the remainder.

In conclusion...mmm...I dunno. I read a fair amount, I guess, and moderately broadly. I'm not sure there's anything of broad interest to be discovered here.

In conclusion, write better fiction, guys!

Ha, just kidding. It's not your fault you're not a Brontë or Jane Austen. Maybe 2012 will be all Mark Twain.

Piiiiiieeeee...

Oog. I ate too much pie.

Well, actually not quite enough pie, since the USDA recommends 8-12 servings of pie daily during the holiday season (the USDA on the street in my mind), but plenty of pie.

Prepare Yourselves! MLA is Coming!

The Krafty Librarian advises us on a primary means of keeping up with MLA 2012: the already-functional official blog.

Check it out! Put it on your feed reader! It has a few posts so far, with deadlines and tips on visiting Seattle, and I'm sure additional useful information will be forthcoming.

Sadly, I am unlikely to make it to Seattle myself, since if all goes well I will have some sort of infant human to look after right about that time, but I encourage everyone who does go to have an exciting time for me. Be sure to request Lady Gaga at the Bearded Pigs concert.

Warm Fuzzy of the Day

I'm back, briefly! Working hard to catch up on the important things that have been going on in my absence.

I recommend this nice story on the Library of Congress Blog explaining how the LC stored the first draft of the 1918 Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence--obviously a document of some historical importance--until it could be safely returned.

Vaclav Havel, then president of Czechoslovakia, received it in 1991 and took it back to be archived in Prague.

Priceless historical material carefully saved and then returned to its logical home! It warms the heart.

Mmm, Salad

Must pack, off to the Southwest tomorrow. Everyone behave in my absence. Don't have too much fun at the parties I can't attend.

Meanwhile, enjoy this post on Sociological Images about vintage ads for vegetable-flavored Jell-O and Jell-O salads full of exciting things like olives and celery. Yum.

It's interesting that these days we (speaking from my own experience and naturally assuming I speak for us all) associate Jell-O with dessert, so it's usually teamed up with fruit and whipped cream and stuff, not vegetables, while apparently it was totally a legitimate veggie side dish back in the day.

Or at least someone hoped that advertising would make it a legitimate veggie side dish.

My grandmother used to make a salad with lime Jell-O and shredded cabbage. I found it revolting as a child, and something about the pictured salads in these old ads, with bits of vegetable suspended in translucent molded blobs, similarly turns my stomach. Eww.

I've enjoyed a good wiggly dessert, but somehow a wiggly salad is just not cool.

But of course gelatin is derived from cow's hooves, making it more of a meat product, which means there's no real reason it shouldn't be linked to vegetables as well as, or instead of, fruit. As with so many things, it's all what you're used to.

Sitting Home Every Night

I am not lucking out on the holiday parties this year. The big organization-wide work party is scheduled for the day I'm leaving for New Mexico, and the small office party is the day before I get back. Some friends are having one while I'm gone.

The apartment complex usually has one, but doesn't seem to have anything set up for this year. Although they'll probably do something at the last minute while I'm out of town. I'm beginning to think people are avoiding my festive company.

What do they say? "Lucky in love, unlucky with parties?"

They do now.

The thing is, with no rounds of parties to attend and remind me how busy things are, I'm not keeping good mental track of how much time has passed this month. It turns out quite a bit. I should have done much more shopping by now.

Always Use Correct Terminology

MeSH updates for 2012 have been out for a while, so it's time to correct all the subject headings in our OPAC records. Yes! New terms!

We've heard rumors that there may be some way, in some system, to make this happen automatically, but we don't know what it is, in my library, so what this really means is that it's time for me to ask someone else to search for all the old, changed or deleted descriptors (like Indigotindisulfonate Sodium) one by one, and replace them with the shiny new descriptors (like Indigo Carmine).

Someone else will really enjoy that project.

While we're not sure about the existence of a way to have our OPAC talk to MeSH and update the 650 x2 fields automatically, we know there is actually a way to do a sort of 'find and replace' within the catalog that would at least correct multiple records at once, but to be honest we're kind of afraid of it.

What if we changed something in 50 records and then it was the wrong thing? And what if we couldn't just change it back? We could conceivably spend hours disentangling things. And we'd have to figure this out ourselves, because no one else knows how to do it either.

So it's kind of easier to have someone else do it the long way. Sometimes the thing that's technically more efficient is not actually the thing that makes the best use of available resources, that's what I tell myself.

Besides, we're getting a whole new ILS next year, so figuring out the cool tricks in Millennium at this late date isn't really going to help us in the long term. Therefore, heck with 'em.