Better than Google

Tonight I was a guest lecturer at Karen DeLoatch's Introduction to Public Services class in the Library Tech program at Capital Community College. I look forward to these annual visits because the community college students are always so interesting, an adjective that is never used to describe my presentation on the mysteries of library cooperation in CT. But tonight was different, because both I and the students became InfoAnytime customers. What I didn't know until tonight was how cool it is to get a serious question answered by a real librarian. Usually, when I have a question, I do like most people; I go to Google, the source of all knowledge. And, having logged many hours at various library reference desks, I am pretty good at coaxing information out of Google, but then I met Julia, and she is better than Google.
Julia, (which may not be her real name,) is one of many professional librarians employed by Tutor.com to answer questions in cyberspace chat sessions while they are sitting at their computers somewhere in America. At 8:21 pm, I clicked on the InfoAnytime logo and typed in Chris, (which may not be my real name,) and then a student's question: "What are the CT DEP regulations for the disposal of aqueous waste?" At 8:25 pm (as I was becoming impatient, accustomed as I am to Google's instant gratification,) Julia welcomed me to our online reference session. She did the whole reference interview thing that I learned in library school, but in chat mode, rather than across a desk. When I typed that I was just starting my search, she sent me the CT DEP website and typed, "Please take a look at it and tell me if it's complete enough, or if we should keep searching." After looking at the site, the student determined that she needed more specific information on the disposal problem. Julia then sent two more websites, which we scanned until the student determined that she had the info she needed. It was 8:38pm. The student was thrilled. The class was engaged, and I was in love.
The thrill of a question being asked and answered successfully shouldn't have come as such a shock to me, since I am the official shill for InfoAnytime. Until tonight, however, it was just another program to administer and promote. I know how much it costs ($175,000,) how many libraries contribute to its cost (180,) how many sessions have been completed since August (3220,) and which libraries' customers use it the most (Capital, Manchester Gateway, and Norwalk Community Colleges, CCSU, Post University, the University of New Haven, and the public libraries of Danbury, Hartford, Manchester, Milford, Stamford, Trumbull, Wethersfield, Hamden, and Glastonbury.) What I didn't know until tonight was how really valuable it is to chat with a real librarian, anywhere, anytime, 24/7. My relationship with Google will never be the same. I've met Julia, and she is better. She's a librarian.
Try it yourself. Go to http://www.infoanytime.org. Click on "Launch InfoAnytime" and ask your question. You may have to wait five minutes, and you may not get Julia, but you will get a librarian, and she will get you the answer.

What is it about Bond?

"James Bond." I've never missed one yet, and so on Sunday night I went to see the latest offering in this long line of twenty-one mediocre films based on a series of misogynistic Fifties spy novels. What is the attraction? It's not that Casino Royale was the best offering at the local multiplex, with Bobby, For Your Consideration, and The Queen also playing. (I already saw The Departed, which is the best.) Other than any movie produced by Woody Allen, even the most recent, not-up-to-his-usual standards fare, I can never pass up the latest Bond. Is it the quest for action-adventure after a dutiful weekend of household chores and family visiting? Is it curiosity about the new face of an old spy? Maybe it's the theme song, the gadgets, the clothes, the locations, and certainly the villains? It is most certainly not about the non-existent plots, the right-leaning political orientation, or the bodalicious babes.
It could be that in these times of constant change, an 007 movie is, well, constant. When you know what to expect, you cannot be disappointed. Nor are you expected to unravel the director's deeper meaning, discuss the plot points, or critique the production. It is what it is. Casino Royale, in its third re-make, delivers. The theme song accompanying the graphic opening credits is no Goldfinger, but the opening chase scene is one of the most tortuous and best, on foot through an African oil field into a shabby village, and ending with a shootout in an even shabbier third world embassy. Daniel Craig, the new Bond, is a dead-ringer, not for Sean Connery, but for Steve McQueen, a real step-up in any baby-boomer's book. I won't even try to unravel the plot. Instead of the quest for an earth-ending weapon (of mass destruction?) Casino Royale's villains fund terrorist groups by short-selling the stock market. This somehow works, proving that it is the chase, not the quarry that makes an impossible mission thrill. Casino Royale's only departure from the Fleming paradigm, however, doesn't. I'm not giving anything away, (and you know you're going to see it,) when I tell you that Bond unexpectedly falls for the babe, who has a secret which even the most gullible among us figures out too early on. But it is never about the plot, so we can forgive the unexpected and unwelcome lovey-dovey scenes in exchange for a wonderful, looking-her-age Judi Dench as M, the short-selling villain with a telltale bleeding eye, and Venice, Montenegro, the obligatory beautiful beach, and of course the tuxedos. And there is an unexpected plot twist that does work. When asked if he prefers "shaken or stirred," this Bond doesn't give a damn.

Hot Tips from CT Bookies

Missed out on Playstation 3? Credit cards already maxxed? Holiday specials lost their charm? Don't fear December. Put down that Sunday Styles section and pick up the December issue of Connecticut Libraries. Every year at this time, CL's editor, David Kapp, cajoles his colleagues in the CT Library Association to share their answers to his annual query, "If You Could Give Just One Book . . ." The result is a trifecta of gifts that are all easy to wrap, inexpensive, readily available, none of which will require you to stand in line at Wal-Mart. Even if you've long since given up on the whole gift-buying thing, the December CL offers a choice of boon companions with which to enjoy a piping hot TV dinner and your own company. When the solstice is over and the Long Dark sets in for its annual three month stay, you (and/or your gift recipients) can settle in with any of these hot tips.
First, there's fiction. The editor himself recommends Ken Bruen's books, with "lots of profanity of the Irish variety, and violence and sex of the universal variety." After too many re-runs of Christmas in Connecticut, escape with Kate Sheehan's tip, The Ruins by Scott Smith, "an engrossing and frightening tale of a trip (to a Mexican beach) gone awry." Ramona Harten promises that with Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, (historical fiction/time travel/romance,) "the fireplace won't be the only thing keeping you warm." Cynde Lahey guarantees that The Attack by Yasmina Khadra, set in the contemporary Middle East, will "keep you reading to the end." Finally, (not fiction, or is it?) Gail Thompson-Allen suggests Stephen King's My Year of the Memoir.
If you are not afraid of too much reality, there is Xiaomei Gong's Dealing with Difficult People by David Whitemyer, Bruce Johnson's Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel, and Vince Juliano's The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs. Not that I'm hard to buy for, but some of these non-fiction tips were already on my list. Peter Ciparelli's The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman, has been updated and expanded in 2006, (to enable the procrastinators among us?) My cousin Doug, as well as Henry Dutcher, was insistent that Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a must-read. The always-unpredictable Les Kozerowitz offers The Book of Ecclesiastes, illustrated by Depression-era artist Ben Shahn. Even if you've given over completely to take-out, and have maxxed not only credit cards but also vacation time, you can still read Betty Anne Reiter's tip, Biba's Italy by Biba Caggiano, which offers vicarious cooking and travel experiences. If you are lucky enough to still be receiving invitations to holiday parties, take Jacqueline's Toce's tip, The Cake Mix Doctor by Ann Byrn, with which you can impress hostesses with your gifts of delicious, and only half-homemade baked goods.
There are picture books aplenty for kids in the December CL, but, in addition, CLC's webmaster, Christine Sarrazin, has edited over 60 CT children's librarians' tips for CLC's annual booklist, "Best Books for Children & Teens: Lists for Holiday Gift Giving," available at http://www.ctlibrarians.org/#homeBooklists. The hottest tip of all is to forget Wal-Mart completely, and go to Barnes and Noble on December 1-3. Before you go, first print out a Love Your Library voucher at http://www.ctlibrarians.org/#homeLYL, so that 10-20% of your purchases will be donated to Connecticut's InfoAnytime, the 24/7 virtual reference service. Guilt-free giving, gifts for the giver, hot tips for a cold climate--Christmas in Connecticut is looking better already!

Home Alone? Not OK this Day!

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the proportion of households consisting of one person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2005. But what about Thanksgiving? One quarter of us may be living alone, but this Thursday, Americans are prohibited from actually being alone. This is the only thing I resent about Thanksgiving, (and New Year’s Eve, but that’s another story and another blog.) I have to hand it to my mother. Her Thanksgiving tradition is to respond with regrets to all of her invitations, telling each one that she will be dining elsewhere, only to spend the day home alone watching the Macy’s parade and the football games. She may be quirky, but she knows not to appear un-American.
At my house we always have a crowd since this only child married into a family, which, however long it’s been since they’ve spoken to each other, will always rally for this holiday. Even the seating chart must impose a patriotic togetherness. This is why I just spent hours creating a hodgepodge of tables and chairs in order to seat 16 people together in the dining room, rather than setting up small tables in different rooms as I would do for any other dinner party. Thanksgiving, however, may be dinner, but it is no party. We overeat. The food is white and preferably overcooked. The menu may not vary, (except for the occasional tofu turkey.) The choice of wine is cheap white, but thankfully lots of it, because the conversation is not even expected to sparkle.
I don’t mean to knock Thanksgiving. There are a lot of good things about it. Everyone helps with the dishes. The nieces usually bring a new boyfriend to grill. Even library employees get the day off, and maybe even two. There is no gift-giving, no anxiety about the menu or the guest list. It is not a religious holiday, so you can wish everyone a happy. There is great shopping the day after. Actually, it may be the perfect holiday, as long as you’re not home alone!

The Outlaw Jimmy Wales?

Hardly. Jimmy Wales was not at all what I expected when I went to hear the founder of Wikipedia tonight at the University of Hartford’s Lincoln Theater. He was too old, too corporate, and too confident, (but Wales’ lecture was sponsored by the Barney School of Business?) For those of you who have been in Shangri-la since 2001 when Wikipedia was created, it is “a freely licensed encyclopedia written by thousands of volunteers in many languages for every single person on the planet.” Wikipedia is the seventeenth most popular website on the Internet, the seventh most popular in Germany, and the thirtieth most popular in the United Arab Emirates. One million articles (30% of the total) are in English, (and 300 of those are about the Muppets!) Wikipedia’s “reach” last year was greater than the websites of CNN and the BBC combined. It’s no wonder that Wales was named one of the world’s top one hundred people in Time magazine‘s Scientists and Thinkers section in 2002.
How good is Wikipedia? Wales says that in December, 2005, Nature magazine gave a copy of similar science articles from both Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica to its reviewers to analyze. Wikipedia had an average of four errors per article, but Britannica had three! An even better contrast was what happened when the errors were revealed. The Wikipedia people asked Nature to give them a copy of all the errors, and then they fixed them. Britannica, however, issued a twenty page denunciation of the Nature reviewers’ work, and threatened to sue the magazine. Wales claims that neutrality and moderation are the criteria at which Wikipedia excels, (like public libraries?) He claims that Wikipedia’s value lies in its ability to generate a calm and reasoned debate, especially on controversial topics, because “the writing that survives is the writing that is fair. Trolls and Flamers are pushed to the margin.”
To counter claims that Wikipedia, as the BBC said this year, “is not as Wiki as it used to be,” Wales explained the progression of its open editing policies. The old time (before 2001?) Wikipedians’ philosophy was to keep everything open, assuming that an atmosphere of trust would encourage people to do good. An era of protection followed, however, (when the new Pope Benedict’s picture was replaced online with a picture of Darth Vader?) Articles which were subjected to a “flame war” were locked down immediately. An era of semi-protection was next, when only anonymous users and those with accounts of less than four days’ duration, were prohibited from editing. Presently, Wikiworld has become more open. Anyone is allowed to edit, but edits on controversial topics are flagged and must be approved before they are posted online. Wikipedia is managed by a tight knit group of volunteers. (Only 615 hard core users, one of whom was in the audience tonight, are responsible for half of all edits.)
Wales suggests that Wikipedia’s success has led to Creative Commons licenses’ becoming hugely popular, helping people to create a culture of sharing by using sites like Flickr. He closed by saying, “Other people talk about the democratization of knowledge. I say, ‘Let’s do it!’ Wikipedia will never compromise on censorship. People must have the right to share information freely.”
When Wales opened his lecture, he asked the audience, (which was older, better dressed, and shorter on students than I expected,) how many had used Wikipedia. Half the hands in the theater went up, (which I also didn’t expect,) so when I returned home I immediately became a first-time user. When I looked up"library," I thought, “Not bad.” Forget what you expect, go to en.wikipedia.org, and see for yourself what Jimmy Wales has wrought.

Who Knew?

The kid won. If you scroll down to the post of June 14, you will see a title which I must have subconsciously plagiarized for yesterday's post, "Tip was Right. All Politics Should be Local." That post was about another political party which was very different (if not in spirit, certainly in venue, cuisine, and cocktails,) from the one I attended on Election Night. That party was held in the living room of friends of mine, and it was in honor of the local boy who would dare to make good against some pretty impressive odds. "If he even makes a good showing against her, he will have a bright future," they said. And does he ever! Yesterday the kid from Wethersfield High beat Connecticut's longest serving Congressperson. There was nothing but joy in Wethersfield last night. All of our combined $25 checks helped launch the campaign that may just change the way many people, especially young people, look at party politics. Chris Murphy took on a popular incumbent on the issues, and with both his youth and those issues, he prevailed. And as I said in June, Chris did not arrive from somewhere else to seek national office. He worked his way up through local and state offices in the traditional party system, helped along the way by the traditional party faithful, as well as by his young friends, to become the Mr. Murphy who is going to Washington. (I still can't believe that my 29 year old daughter will have a childhood friend, or at least the big brother of her childhood friend, in Congress. She was overwhelmed by just seeing him on CNN, wait until she hears the election results!) I predict that Chris' story will have the same impact on state politics that Barack Obama's has had on the national scene. We've got our youth back. No baby boomer can help but look longingly at that poster portrait of an achingly young JFK in his shirt sleeves when he was first elected to Congress. We, who so loved politics in our youth, (although not necessarily the traditional party kind,) welcome this next generation to take charge of it. Their values are not ours, but neither are the times, and we know we need them to lead us forward into the future if we would have one. We need political leaders who are young, who have young families and friends, who will care for the America of the future (and take care of our own supernumerous, superannuated demographic?) Back in June, I asked, "Who knows? The kid just might win." I join the party faithful who were assembled in the Greenblatt's living room that summer evening in saying, "Thanks, Chris. You did it. You won one for us, and for the party."

Local Politics is all Good.

I don't yet know the results of the state and national races, but tonight in my hometown, it was a win, not only for my candidate, but also for what is all good about politics, and that is local. Tonight we had a victory party, but the party is always the same, win or lose. The venue never varies, the Solomon Welles House on the Wethersfield Cove for us, (the American Legion Hall on Main Street for them.) The entree is always cold cardboard pizza with an Italian cookie tray for dessert. The choice of cocktails is Bud or Bud Lite, White or Red, Coke or Sprite. The candidates can vary, but never the crowd. We are lawyers, (rarely doctors,) teachers, (rarely librarians,) sheriffs, realtors, accountants, octogenarians, high school kids, babies, young marrieds, (rarely singles,) state workers, (rarely municipal,) retirees, and those of us for whom tomorrow is another day of work. Some of us are well-educated, well-housed, and prosperous; others' income is fixed and living space tight. We don't always agree on (and therefore rarely discuss) the issues. But on election night, we are all together, and we all know the drill. The newsprint is spread out on the wall. The district captains stream in with their results. The party chairwoman reads the totals for each candidate. The votes are recorded with the same markers, always red for the Republicans, blue for the Dems, and green for everyone else. We know the results before the tally is official. We hug and kiss people whom we haven't seen since the last election, but whom we cherish on this night every year. Then we go home to our TVs to see what happened in the rest of the country, forgetting that those results are just the tally of all the other towns like ours. And those Senators, Representatives, and Governors were all elected because people like us registered voters, put signs on our lawns, walked with candidates, and called our neighbors on Election Day. So tonight we party, and it is all good, and, Tip was right, all politics is local, and that is all good too.

Missing Styron

We had a lot in common, Bill Styron and me. We both loved Vineyard Haven. We both lived in Connecticut. He was a Marine and my father was a Marine. And, on a spring evening in 1999, we were both on the steps of West Hartford’s Town Hall, where we had our first and only private conversation. The occasion was National Library Week, and this was my first big show for the West Hartford Public Library. You know how it is when you are the one in charge of getting an author for a library appearance? Everyone is expecting no less than Stephen King, (because we know that all authors are just dying to speak for free at a library,) but your budget would barely cover the local unpublished poet. But somehow that year we got Styron’s publicist to agree to considerably less than his usual speaking fee for him to be driven from his home to Roxbury down to West Hartford.

It was magical night. Styron, looking and sounding like all of the Virginia gentleman that he was, closed the evening by reading a long passage from his unpublished manuscript about his experiences as a young Marine Second Lieutenant in 1945, poised with his even younger men to invade Japan. His Chesty Puller-like commanding officer came to speak to his young officers who had just been through the hell of the Pacific campaign. He told them that what they had experienced in Okinawa, Peleliu, Tarawa, and Iwo was easy compared to what they would experience in the invasion of the mainland. They must be prepared for a house-to-house bloodletting beyond even their war weary imagination. And then we dropped the bomb. They didn’t have to go, be terrified, question their own manhood, or lose a limb, an eye, or a life. It is the story that has never been told, the story of these exhausted, spent young men who wouldn’t have to go because our nation did the unthinkable. We created an inferno for the people of two cities and their future generations, but we saved our own, and Styron was one of them. And who else but Styron to tell their story? That night in West Hartford, Styron told us that his book would be published the following fall. My father had been a grunt in the Pacific campaign, a kid from the streets of New York whose education was completed at Guadalcanal. I had just finished following his course of study through William Manchester’s remarkable (and now sadly out-of-print) Goodbye Darkness, an account of his own experiences as a Seond Lieutenant with my father’s First Marine Division. I couldn’t wait to read the story that Styron would tell, and which demanded no less a storyteller than he. I waited for it that fall, and the next, and now I know that we will never have it, the story of these young men who welcomed someone else’s atrocity because it saved them from their own. I hope that the reason we never got that book was not because Styron had once again descended into a darkness visible, but because, as Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times on Friday, “a writer’s career is not ‘a series of mountain peaks,’ but rather a ‘rolling landscape’ with vistas perhaps less spectacular, yet every bit as resonant as those ‘theatrical Wagnerian dramas with peak after peak.’”

In the Company of Teenagers

I had the occasion this week to facilitate a focus group of teenagers for a public library that is planning an expansion. It’s been a long time since I was the only adult in a room full of teens. (I remember my years as a high school librarian when I was always surrounded by teenaged faces, and would be startled by a mid-day glimpse of my own middle aged face in the ladies room mirror!) As I used to tell my students when they would complain about the shoddy treatment they received from shopkeepers and other adults in charge of their world, “People don’t like teenagers, and they especially don’t like them in groups,” teens’ preferred mode of travel.

You may not like them. They may not be attractive, or well-spoken, or even clean, but they are truly, unabashedly alive. Except for the few who are adept at manipulation, teens aren’t usually skilled at the pretense they will develop as adults, the pretense of caring about worlds outside their own. Holden Caulfield’s contempt for the phonies still resonates because being a teenager in the Fifties is not so different from being a teenager fifty years later. The same questions abound. Will I have friends, be invited, loved, listened to? Adults can’t do much about the first three because teens don’t want to be friends with us, be invited to our dance, or even care if we love them. They do, however, want us to listen, give them credibility, and try to know them. This we can do.

On behalf of the library, I listened. What these teens want in a new town library is very much like what the old people, the moms, and the businesspeople want—their own space, a Third Place that is neither work, (or school,) nor home. Teens want to IM, to use the best technology, to sit on comfortable furniture, to have quiet areas, to be able to talk, to get new books and DVDs, to have unrestricted Internet access, and unrestricted (meaning with carbonation, salt, sugar, and trans fats) after-school snacks. Only phonies would tell us what they know we want to hear. When kids do tell us what they really want, it’s not that they expect us to do it all, but they do expect us to listen, and that we can do.

Place Matters

I admit it. I’m the only semi-literate American who hasn’t actually read Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. I have, however, read about it, and so I was feeling pretty comfortable with the topic, “Can the New Haven Region compete in Tom Friedman’s Flat World?”, the subject of a community discussion at New Haven Public Library’s new Wilson branch in The Hill neighborhood, subtitled “Action-Oriented Dialogue on Economic Development.” (I was actually more comfortable with the topic than I was with my ability to actually find the Wilson branch at 5:30 pm post daylight savings, but who can refuse an invitation from New Haven’s courtly City Librarian Jim Welbourne? And New Haven does have the best signage of anyplace in Connecticut in which I’ve been lost.)
What struck me was the last point that the speaker made about Freidman’s take on the global economy--place matters. It doesn’t matter in the sense that one has to be close to where one works, as it did before the flattening. In this global economy with its virtual highways, cities like New Haven don’t have to worry so much about attracting business and industry as they do about attracting people who want to live there. (In my breakout group I made the astute observation that I had to agree with one of my twenty-something students that New Haven is much cooler than Hartford, a fact signaled by its proliferation of downtown women’s clothing stores. One of the other participants, also a woman of a certain age, although less so than I, said that when I said "cooler," she thought I was talking about the climate, until I mentioned the shopping. This could be another blog, but I’ll spare you.)
The follow-up discussion of the importance of place led to some radical talk about one of this country’s most sacred cows, and the source of much of its workforce’s inflexibility and subsequent inability to compete in the global economy. That would be the public school system, and the places that matter are the very expensive buildings paid for by the taxpayers and presided over by very proprietary local boards of education. As Jim Welbourne said, “Why can’t we transform these wonderful school buildings at 3:00 to serve other community needs?” He and others called for people to make some big changes in the opportunities that Americans have to educate themselves outside the K-12 system. Take back the schools? When I heard that K-12 students in Connecticut have an average of 3.6 computers per student, I was ready to enlist a gang of librarians to liberate some of those computers for the lifelong learners in the public library who make due with an average of one computer for every 1911 people, (and that is in the Fairfield County public libraries!) Place does matter, and beautiful places, especially like some of the magnet schools in cities like New Haven, should be places for everyone in the community.