A Few Quick Notes 100

-Today is another less than stellar Spring day in St. John’s. This morning started with flurries and temperatures in the range of zero. Gradually the day warmed up a little, though still stay well away from double digits. At one point the clouds actually left and we had something approaching sun. Maybe in a few weeks we will actually have leaves.

-While moving some boxes at work today I managed to do something that I have never done before, which is to catch my back pocket on a door handle. Somehow as I was backing through the door I managed to have to handle enter my back left pocket. As I continued to move backwards I managed to have the handle punch a hole in my pants and allow me to be hooked to the door. Classy moves.

-As the Frisbee season approaches the number of Frisbee related emails have started to once again increase. While I seem to be getting a few this year it comes no where near the record that was set in my first year.

The process of selecting the team name sparked a flurry of emails. An early suggestion of ‘Nth Team’ gain early support but failed to maintain several of its original supporters. After several non-starters Combustible Huckstables was agreed upon. Fortunately I did not enter this debate to the extent I was thinking about at one early stage.

-Trivia seems to be taking up a pretty large part of my social life. On Tuesdays I have been going to the Rose and Thistle while Thursdays are for Bitters. Unfortunately all of this practice has not been paying off in recent weeks. For two weeks in a row at Bitters my team has mis-trumped and at the Rose and Thistle we keep getting the fifty-fifties wrong. Clearly more practice is needed.

-It seems that we are just about out of that batch of bread I made a few days ago. Hopefully I will get a chance to make a replacement batch on either Saturday or Sunday. Maybe this time I will up the batch size with hopes of the resulting bread sticking around a little longer.

-Last night I played an almost wheat-less five player game of Settlers. This resource scarcity really slowed down game play. At one part in the game I felt as though I did not get any production for about 20-30 min. My game wasn’t helped by the fact that I doubled up on 4s and 5s, an ill-advised move at the best of time (unless the 4s are due).

-If memory serves me correctly, I think that I spent a few hours looking through press releases today. The goal of the exercise was to locate press releases indicating the release of the report of a judicial inquiry. Fortunately most of these reports are accompanied by such press releases. The unfortunate side of things is that the collection of press releases that I was manually browsing is not complete, and it must be browsed manually with the assistance of a comprehensive index. Hopefully I only have a few volumes at the most to look through tomorrow.

-While at the CLA conference a few days ago I noticed that one of my main roles was not the provision of information, but to direct people to other who could do a better job of providing accurate information. This status was somewhat confirmed by the presence of an “Ask Me” ribbon that was attached to my volunteer badge.

To me this seemed pretty much like the traditional ‘See’ reference from the library world. Maybe next year they might be able to introduce a little bit of library humour and convert the ‘Ask Me’ ribbon into a ‘See Reference’ ribbon.

Comments on CLA Conference 2007

For a few days this week the Canadian Library Association (CLA) held their annual conference in St. John’s. While I was not fortunate enough to attend the event as a full-fledged I was able to be a volunteer, a position that allowed me to get a pretty broad sense of the conference (though there were certainly elements that I missed out on, namely the socials and receptions). As I was kicking around the conference facilities a few things struck me:

-So far it has been my experience that many library students wear cardigans, both males and females. It was not my experience than conference-attending librarians wear cardigans.

-Librarians are attracted to what they perceive as free food. The trade show was seemingly stormed each time lunch or snacks were made available to delegates. It was nice to see that many of these food eaters were responsible and wanted to properly dispose of all of their garbage.

-Free trade show giveaways are greatly appreciated. While acting as a trade show greeter (AKA badge checker) I saw people walk out with bags full of items though they had only been collecting these items for a few minutes. I myself picked up about a bag and a half of items and I was less aggressive than some individuals.

-Of all the demographic groups that would reasonably be represented at this conference it seemed to me that the young male group was the most underrepresented. During the conference I saw only a handful of males who looked to be under thirty.

-The quality of presentation really ranged. One that I saw was great, while another completely failed to keep my attention. The amount of time given to these presenters also ranged, and unfortunately the best presentation had only an hour while one of the more painful ones had an hour and a half.

-For some reason many of the presentations were done in a pseudo-panel form. I was never quite able to figure this out. To me it seemed that just having individuals, or people working on a particular project, might have made more sense. This combining of related, but not directly related, presentations just did not work for me.

-While a few library students did attend the conference, the number seemed quite small. This issue was to be dealt with by a resolution that was to be presented at CLA AGM on Saturday (obviously I did not attend).

-On the whole I would recommend that library students attend this or an equivalent conference at some point during their library school period of time.