Ice, Ice Baby

Unless this is a rare cold snap, we Alabamians are setting up for a very cold winter. I say this because I know for a fact that it was not this cold last year at this time. I was living in my new old apartment, and I hadn't moved my furniture up from Dothan yet. So I was sleeping on an air mattress and had the bare minimums. I would remember if it had gotten this cold, because my apartment was not well insulated, and I would have been freezing my little rear off :). I did eventually do that (freeze my rear off) in that apartment, but not until January. However, I knew last night would be cold... It was predicted to drop to 28 or 29. So Stefanie and turned on the heater for the first time, and I'm glad we did! I went outside this morning to leave for work, and my whole car (every available window included) was iced over... with THICK ice. So, I don't have an ice-scraper yet, and so I improvised and used one of my CD cases. So, thank you Janice Kapp Perry CD case, for allowing me to have visual observation on my way to work this morning :). Of course, having to scrape off every window on my car made me a good 10 minutes late for work. But that's what happens in Alabama with the first ice of winter. I think it's just expected :). So, ice, ice, baby, ride on down to "[Detroit] Avenue" and check out the song. (Please note that this song doesn't actually have anything to do with this post, other than the word "ice" -- but for a few of you, it might be a fun visit to the past :) ).

Okay, this is totally unrelated to my post, but I saw the link while watching the video for Ice Ice Baby (does he have the moves or what (haha)). But how can you mention Vanilla Ice to my generation and not pay homage to the great moment in time that was the Ninja Rap??? (You should definitely watch the end of this video for great grammar and hilarious commentary from Vanilla Ice himself). And all of you parents (Mom) whose children loved the (original) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and owned all three of the original movies (and some of them might still own all three), you should recognize it also!! And that link to the Ninja Turtles will school you in all things turtles if you happen to be unfamiliar. I was amazed at the detail -- you will come away a turtle-connoisseur.

In other news -- there really isn't any :). I had class last night, in which we did more group work. We do group work in almost every class. We are pretty much always broken into the same two groups (split right down the physical middle of the classroom). And at the end of class, we all come back and present our proposals for things. What I find most intriguing and fascinating is that our two groups always come at the problem in two completely different ways. And based on the ways in which we approach the problem, I wonder if the class isn't split down the middle (in the ironic way in which we seated ourselves on the first day of class) with one half - the other half - planning to go into a more academic environment, and the half of the class I sit on planning to go to public libraries. Here's my example: last night we had to choose a "library director" from our group (go April - you mean library-director!). Our problem was that this director (April) takes over the directorship and discovers that the main library of Oompa Loompa University (no joke, this is what he named it) has serious issues. The building is 60 years old, it has heating and cooling issues, humidity issues, and rodent and insect problems. There is reason to believe that the collection (of books) has been damaged and needs to be examined and checked over to see what needs to be replaced, what needs to be discarded, and what can be kept. So we had to have a plan for all of this. Anyway, we all come back, we present ours first. We were very proactive. We dealt first with fixing the underlying issues (like getting pest control in there to take care of the pests, like replacing the a/c unit, like getting humidifiers). We planned on closing the library for a week while the equipment was being installed, but using that week to have staff work on looking at the books in the most-affected areas. Once we re-opened, there would be a continuation of this project, but student workers would get involved and pull books based on physical problems alone, and then a professional librarian would look over those books pulled by the student workers and make a decision on the physical condition of the book as well as the relevance of it (is it outdated, etc). Okay, I know that's a long explanation... So, then the other group goes. They decided to form a committee first and spend until the beginning of Spring semester (from this point in the year) examining the problem. Then they would spend all of spring semester fixing the problems (like a/c, pests). Then they would start looking at their collection in May 2008. So, as I sat there thinking about the differences in our two groups' presentations, I was amazed. And it suddenly occurred to me: my group had at least 4 people (out of 9) who have worked or currently work in public libraries. Two people of those 9 have never worked in any library before. The others I don't know about. However, I can tell you that we approached this issue from a public-librarian standpoint. You don't form committees in public libraries. You deal with the issue. The other group, I'm not sure what everyone is planning to go into. I know that 3 of their 7 people currently work at one of the libraries here on campus. And yes, I know I work in an academic library right now, and I have worked in one since 2004. But my heart is definitely in public libraries. But academic libraries are MUCH more bureaucratic than public libraries. I have commented MANY times that I have had more meetings in this job (and I've only been here a year) than I have had in all my other jobs combined. It was just funny to me to watch how our half of the class jumped right into the problem and the other half of the class formed a committee first. So, naturally the question was raised (from our group to the other group): well, how bad is your rodent problem... how is this something you can put off for 2 months in order to form a committee to look at the issue and make a decision? Their group responded that it wasn't really a bad problem. They were just starting to see evidence of some possible pests in some areas. It wasn't like they pulled a book off a shelf and there was a rat. And our whole side of the classroom busted out laughing, because even in this, we came at the project so differently. Our group started off our discussion when we were planning our 'plan' with real-life scenarios that actually happened (from a public libray, I might add) in which a patron returned a book and when they opened the book, roaches crawled out. I might add that, while I was a branch librarian, I had a woman and her grown daughter come in and the daughter put her purse on the counter to pay a fine and roaches crawled out of her wallet when she opened it. She threw the wallet on the floor and screamed to her mom that roaches had crawled out of the wallet. Her mom was like, "Well, where was your purse?" And the daughter said, "Under the bed." I'm sure I must have had a look of horror on my face, and I know I've never moved so fast at grabbing scratch paper and smooshing the roaches (they were not the huge brown ones, but still) --- ewwww... I hate squishing bugs. But I had to... They would infest my library otherwise. Still makes my skin crawl. Needless to say, I disinfected every book they returned that day, and those that got returned to me after they checked them out then. They never came back to my library after that, and I just got the books returned in the bookdrop. Ick. Anyway, so keep in mind that my group is approaching this "scenario" from the perspective of roaches crawling out of books. My group took the worst-case scenario where there were visible rodents and droppings and roaches all over the place, along with moldy books. Our side of the classroom seriously laughed at how differently we set up our fictitious scene. And maybe that made all the difference in how we went about it. We had unsanitary conditions X 100!!! We didn't have time to form a committee, even if we'd wanted to! Public vs. academic... There's a BIG difference there, people. Trust me. Not that I'm down on academic librarians, either. I just know that it's vastly different from the public library.

Well, I really didn't mean to bore you with that long story. But April and I stood and discussed it after class last night and it was so funny. So I thought I would share. And now you know what I do in my classes :). And after that story, you're probably wondering why I actually WANT to go back to public libraries. I can't answer it, other than to say they just feel more like my fit. Because in spite of the yucky patrons, and the mean ones, there are some really sweet ones, and serving them - recommending books to them - it's a neat thing. Alright, I'll stop my long post about librarianship. But now you know :). Consider yourselves informed (by me :)) -- this is 'passive voice', by the way :).