Are all Education faculties insane?

In my academic librarian life I had a great relationship with the head of our Education faculty. He was insane (but in a good way, you know, like I am). But, now that I am actually working towards my own dip ed (actually a graduate diploma of teaching and learning) I am coming to realise that many people working educating our educators are the less happy kind of insane. The, brain damaged from breathing the rarefied air high in my ivory tower, kind of insane.

I mentioned in my last post, that I had a textbook tell me that ALL aboriginal parents wanted their children to learn. ALL? Seriously, you couldn't say ALL about any group of parents. Some parents have been known to chain their kids in basements, some parents have been known to leave their kids in hot cars outside Casinos. It strikes me as a bizarre form of racism (with a heavy helping of white guilt?) to suggest that indigenous Australians are immune from being shitty parents.

The other wonderful quote that really set my head to spinning was on the subject of 'socio-economic differences'. To paraphrase, our textbook explained that; at one time people thought they could judge the outcomes of schools based on their socio-economic mix, but now we no longer blame the victim. Seriously? Lets look at NAPLAN scores (if we may). Now, if we overlay a graph of median income over a graph of school NAPLAN scores, what will we find?
We will find that they are damned close to identical! Why do we need to deny the bleeding obvious? How is acknowledging that the kids of Doctors and Barristers living in Woollahra will perform better by many measures than the kids of truck drivers and factory workers from Elizabeth 'blaming the victim'?
Surely, what it is doing is showing us where additional resources need to be provided? The Gonski Report (put out in the last day or two) certainly seems to think that school funding should be higher in areas of social disadvantage.

Seriously, this seems like political correctness for the sake of political correctness. No one is being protected by this view, so why not admit the truth? And, how is acknowledging facts in any fashion laying blame?

If I was only dealing with ivory tower idiots who have wonderful 'theories' about education, well I would ignore their silly diagrams (which claim to represent education) and just get on with acting like the echo chamber they want to hear, but it is not just that
(as further blog introspection may reveal).

A new rambling diatribe (and a new reason to blog?)

Where have I been? Well...
I have been being a librarian, working out how a school library works and how I think I could make one work better. I have been finding out about the variations on office politics you get in an environment where post-grad qualifications are the norm and everyone values their independence. Not to mention, the fact that schools are one of the last bastions of management by seniority (not that I am a fan of management as a separate discipline - as I have mentioned before (and some time later I may search for it and link to it here)).

But, that isn't the point of this post. This post is to announce the resumption of posting (I hope) because, work is paying for me to get a Dip Ed. Yep, my old management masters is still on the back burner (no need for that in this role) . And, while I have no real intention of being a classroom teacher, I think the Dip Ed will improve my skills for this job.

I am half way through subject one (summer school) and as such I decided it was time to be medicated again. ADHD meds do not cross state lines, nor do Psychiatrist reports, prescriptions, or government authority numbers. So, when I got to Darwin (two years ago) I sought out a doctor with authority to prescribe and a psychiatrist to oversee the process. I failed. I saw several doctors and a psychiatrist but...
no one was willing. The psychiatrist said he didn't like ADHD meds, the doctors all said they didn't want the government authority as it was too much work (and once word got out they were inundated by druggies with dodgy diagnosis). So, for two years I have been unmedicated, it has certainly affected me at work. I am still good at my job, but (ignoring false humility) when I am properly focused I am brilliant. It hasn't been too bad though, exercise really helps and I have been keeping up the rugby. I was managing to train all year, first 15s, then 7s, then back to 15s. This year however I managed to destroy my knee in our grand final win. So, no 7s in the off season (in fact no exercise since August)
Well, having started the study, I decided to pop in and see educational support. They told me (what I already knew), being unmedicated at this point was not the best plan. They gave me a lead to the one psychiatrist in Darwin who deals with us adult ADHD folks, so I popped into the medical centre across the road at work and got an appointment for a random medico. I was only looking for a referral but, as luck would have it, stumbled upon a doctor who was willing to prescribe (and had the required government authority to do so).
Wow, right?

Anyway, it was all good timing. Admittedly by the time I got to see the psych I had already had to do 50% of my assessments but I just used the traditional ADHD hyperfocused last minute (all nighter) writing method and I pulled it off. Not great marks, but hey I am not looking for anything better than a pass. The real good timing though, is that we have a new senior staff this year. New principal and 3 new assistant principals, so as of today I am on day 3 of remedication and feeling great. When I started at the school, I wrote a 3 year plan for the library, began a collection development policy, wrote a budget bid, gathered all the stats I could find on the system and started keeping records of library usage. No one looked at it, no one cared. No one wanted a budged bid, they told me what I was getting. No one cared how I spent it, there was only one budget line.

The new principal, seems to be interested in my plans and ideas. I have been asked for budget bids, I have been asked for a business plan, I have been asked how he can improve the library, I have been told "if the library works the school will work"
Wow!
So, day 1 of my new meds I was up until 4am writing a business plan. A very detailed one, giving him background information, my vision, my ethos, my ideas for building the library, for improving space, building new collections.

So, it may be time to blog again to:

• give me a way to focus my ideas (I do that better with an audience)
• give me somewhere to express my frustration with the academic world of school education. The jargon (which hides reality from parents)
  The political correctness (one text was so politically correct it said "all Aboriginal parents want their children to learn" really? All? I am aware some people dismiss Aboriginal parents and student too easily, but NOT ALL parents give a shit about their kids' education be they aboriginal or otherwise).

But, now it is time to get back to uni texts before printing and re-reading my business plan (after all, I was writing it at 4am so I may have been hallucinating and writing complete dross.

unsubscribing from OZTL_NET : a complex 37 part process?

It must be weeks since I have offended anyone on the oztl_net list by trying to be funny in a format without subtlety or a sarcasm font, so when I sent this email off I prefaced it with "please remember I am trying to be funny but, that many a true word has been said in jest".

I am scared,
scared about what those of us working in school libraries seem incapable of doing and this constant inability to unsubscribe from a basic e-list is one of the things which scares me. We are working in a field chock full of technological bells and whistles. We are the gatekeepers (or perhaps keymasters) of information retrieval. We should be guiding young people in strategies to help them find information hidden in the deep web.

Yet some of us can't manage to type oztl_net unsubscribe into Google?
Hell, this isn't the deep web, nor the hidden web. oztl_net is not hidden behind a pay wall. And as people on the list were discussing just a week or so ago, it is using very old (in web terms) technology.

Why is it then, that people who are supposed to be able to find information for a living are unable, or unwilling, to type 20 characters into a google search box? Seriously, that is 120 characters less than a tweet. Some of you (judging by an earlier topic) are keying in call numbers longer than that.

So, those of you thinking of unsubscribing from this list plese note, it isn't hard BUT if you can't work out how to do it for yourself, then you probably need the people on this list because I doubt your ability to deal with the IT component of a school library without the regular contributors here to help you.
I mean, you obviously need help not just in web searching, but also some help in managing that complex new technology 'email'.
(how difficult is it to set up a separate folder for all your oztl_net emails to drop into? Not very - really. Want to know how? Then use Google and do a search. If you can't work out how to find that information on Google then, please consider another career path because if the year three kids in your school are better at one of your key competencies that you are... well (do I need to finish that thought?)

So, the last person who emailed "please unsubscribe me from the list" to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE LIST! Well, I unsubscribed them. No, I am not a mod, or an admin (nor even a modmin). I am just; capable of using Google, capable of reading comprehension and then capable of following a 2 step process. And before I berated people for their inability to do such a simple task, I wanted to make sure it was really as simple as I had imagined every time I have read identical requests.

you go to;
http://listserv.csu.edu.au/mailman/options/oztl_net/technophobe@library.school.edu.au
(where the email address at the end is yours rather than one I invented in order to mock you).
then you press 'unsubscribe'

Seriously
That is it.

You shouldn't need 2 degrees and a grad cert to be able to manage this.
And, if you are working in a school library and the process of finding this out is too hard for you, please, do me a favour. Don't ever accept a job at my kids' schools.

My (first) library camp reflections

OK,
no preabmble, no preperation and no first draft. I am about to write out what I am thinking now, a few days after the camp in a conf. Then I will press 'publish post' and go do some shelving.

The library camp was the most fun I have had in a conference, and I think it was very productive too. We were not completely full (unlike some rooms on day 1) but we had a good core of participants and a significant number of other folk who were dropping in when there was nothing in the other streams which called to them. In fact, a drop in space for those who found a gap in their personal program was a big part of our original plan.

Did I mention I had fun? I like to think that some other folk did too, there certainly seemed to be a buzz in the room almost all the time. I think that the participatory nature of a lot of what we decided to do helped with that. There was, most of the time, an opportunity to interrupt, interject and ask for clarification or re-direction. It was great having a lot of people willing to speak. Sure there were plenty sitting quietly, perhaps because that was what they wanted to do, perhaps because there were a few big personalities in the room (well, big for librarians anyway).
Still, the way things went, I believe that some of the less vocal audience members had the opportunity to speak. Certainly I tried during the sessions I facilitated to get everyone involved (even if it was just my obsession with getting people to divide themselves up into statistical groupings - who had a library job pre-graduation, pre-enrolment, not until after cap and gown...)

There was always the opportunity for the breakout groups to come back to the whole camp and give a summary of their conversations. We also had a scanner set up to scan any notes they took, however that didn't happen (no one volunteered their notes) so I do feel like we lost a lot of what was done. I know it lives on in the brains of those who were there and some of them may well use the ideas generated for; succession planning, library training, environmental advocacy and other stuff which I will remember 30 seconds after I publish this post (but I am not coming back to edit it).

Anyway, I hope some of the campers decide to turn their notes into blog posts or even a series of tweets as I would like to read more of what others got out of the time (and also what happened in the breakouts I couldn't attend due to my inability to perfect my cloning machine).

The day the way ran was fantastic, live updates on the program wiki as we adapted and changed the program when topics came up (or died). The stream committee were a wonderfully fluid crew (and it was an absolute pleasure to work with them). We ducked, we weaved and we proved what we had been saying all along "it will work perfectly on the day". That said, for all that Snail and I are duck and weave on the day kinds of people, the whole planning and lead up work was held together admirably by Kate Davis, while Elizabeth Caplice and Michelle DuBroy proved a wonderful support crew. Adapting themselves to everything from chasing speakers and writing bios to taking photos, leading discussions and playing bouncer on the door.

I won't mention any of the wonderful people who did lightning talks for us, nor those who sat on our pannel (their names are available on the conference program). I will also neglect to mention the names of the people who stood up and joined in to facilitate conversations, move furniture, direct traffic. I won't mention anyone by name because I wouldn't want to single out those I know when there were more than a few people whose names I didn't catch who were a big part of a successful day. Plus, I wouldn't want to forget someone's name.

I think, I need to read someone else's view on how #aliaaccess #camp went, because as I sit here trying to write about it, I realise I was too far into the rabbit hole. Perhaps I need to think a while then try to write this again.
Still, in the meantime I will put this out for your reading pleasure (and with luck, some feedback of what Snail and I could do better next time. Because a mere day after the camp, we found ourselves both using the words 'next time' when talking about how we could have done things better).

(photo: Breakout discussion at library camp by Katie Wiese)

Day one - after lunch

Having fun online, first conf for me where I have been twittering and on-site.
But, now I am looking at all the stuff I am going to have to sort through to find the librarycamp session 'hot' topics.

Just sent out a tweet asking folk to add the #camp hash tag as well as the #aliaaccess and your session tag. But where else should I be looking for content? Is it all twitter this time round or are others liveblogging?

ALIA Access day one part one session one part one one one

Woke up to slightly hazy views of the river feeling relaxed and happy. A couple of ciders last night followed by an early night meant I bounded out of bed while Disney style forest creatures frolicked around me. Together we sang a little song as I had my shower. Then it was onto the notebook to check the ALIAAccess hashtag and feel the community waking up.
However, no disney movie is without drama and just as Bambi watched his mother die from the hunter's bullet...
Well, you see my notebook is still on Darwin time.

Oh well,
I arrived at the venue a touch later than I had intended and decided to sneak into the first session.

Conference people,
organisers
committee types

Why, would the door to a session open up NEXT TO THE LECTURN?
Now, before anyone suggests that this is a problem for ADHD boy alone, let me assure you that I was not a lone soldier in this. As I was walking toward the room I saw others sliding into the doors of the different rooms. (edit, most of the rooms enter at the back and the one I went into did have a back door, just the signage was on the front door)

As luck would have it, I arrived just as the speaker was asking questions of the audience so the attention of those in the room was not directed forward with the gaze of 100 disapproving suns. However, as it turned out the session was full. Every seat was taken and the latecomers were lined up along a 'wall of shame'. I decided I did not need to be on a wall of shame (and did not want to stand until morning tea time). So slunk straight back out to go buy myself some poached eggs and a latte.

Then it was a bit of networking, some time with the co-op folk seeing what they can do for me in terms of acquisitions and into the next session. Where I sat for a while wondering why the hell I chose that session. Realisation dawned, someone had mentioned errors in our personalised timetables on our ID badges. Once again I slipped out of a session and off to the secretariat to get an accurate printout. Feeling quite happy that I was supposed to be in a session with a back door.

Had some good sessions then, listening to TAFE things which will trickle down to secondary while simultaneously following the new grads' session via twitter. Wireless (free) and twitter are improving my conference experience significantly.

ALIA Access tour day

The day dawned with the reminder of the tweetup the night before. A night which had ended mere hours earlier with the last of us (including my room mate and myself) leaving the bar at 1:30 (meaning we arrived back at our room at 2am, before checking the hashtag and reading the tweets until 3am).

Yet somehow it was now morning and I had awoken before my alarm, stood, showered, had several glasses of water before wandering off to return my hire car. So, a slow breakfast in Brunswick Mall, followed by a bus ride back to town and a nice chewy disprin and I was all set to hit the tours.

Theoretically I was supposed to go the the convention center and register first in order to get my tickets for the tours. But I was on the same side of the river as my first tour and the conference venue was across the bridge. So, I took a risk and decided that the likelihood of being refused entry to a library tour because I had a lack of ticket was approaching nil. I mean, other than librarians who is going to try and crash a library tour?

(spoiler alert) I was right, no one asked for my ticket.

My first tour was QUT and this was the highlight of the tours for me in terms of finding things I could adapt to my own library. Albeit I would need to increase my budget by several orders of magnitude in order to approach the right budget for the quality of the furnishings and quantity of hardware they have provided for their students. The librarian giving me my tour had worked in a school library herself so was wonderfully helpful in pointing out the pertinent parts of their recent renovations.
Plus, there was some very good information about their Study Well web service, which will be quite useful for some of my students (the assignment timeline calculator for example and citewrite)

Oh, side note: I was the only person to turn up for this tour. I was standing near the circ desk about to announce I was here for the tour (while looking around for people who looked like librarians) when I was approached by the campus library manager who suspected I was not one of her students and was therefore here for the tour.
Which means, I obviously look like a libraryman. (beards seem quite popular with librarymans this conference. More so than I have noticed at previous library events.)

Next up was the Public Library in Brisbane Square. It is certainly a fancy place. Book returns via conveyer belt (albeit by barcode not RFID). The big lightbulb moment here was a vending machine full of pens, pencils, notebooks and earbuds. That would go down very well in my library. Almost everything else they did though was too big and too bright to work in a small school library which is dsperately trying to escape the gravitational pull of the early 80s.

My last port of call was the State Library of QLD, this was basically just library porn for me. especially as our tour guide added a stacks tour on top of the official tour of reading rooms and nice new architecture. To top it off, they had a small exhibit on the Lindsays so after the tour I went back into the library to look at etchings of naked ladies consorting with fauns and cartoon drawings of angry koalas wearing hats.
This done, it was off to the welcome drinks, some socialising around the trades hall and then at the new grads' dinner.

ALIA Access - filling fast

I have just found out that the ALIA Access conference is getting close to capacity. All that wonderful 'elf n safety' (thanks Boris) means that we are not allowed to shoe horn people into the venue on the off chance it may, at some point, catch fire.

But, at time of writing I believe we have room for 65 more delegates. So folks, if you are reading this and feel like you would like to come along and hear the ADHD librarian adlibbing like mad up front for the library camp (un-conference like, off Broadway component of the programme), then it is time for you to pony up the reddies.

But, if I am promoting the Camp, I should tell you what it is. Well, it is all things to all people. It is everything and anything, it is to conferences what Concorde was to air travel. (Fast, futuristic and potentially so dangerous you will never see it again).

Loosely Snail and myself had a bit of an idea for some adlib sessions throughout the conference. Somewhere people could drop in when none of the set programme appealed to them. A place where you could carry on the Q&A session from the end of the last session or where you could leap up, grab a microphone and expound on your wonderful revelation from the particularly lucid dream you had during the morning session.

It has moved on somewhat from that original (and may I say brilliant) idea. In part because the main committee (after having accepted our idea) recoiled in horror at the thought of what they may have unleashed. So, now we can tell you that we do have some scheduled speakers. Some live, some via the interwebs but we still have space for you to drop in and write your name on a piece of butcher's paper un-conf style.

So, if you fancy being part of ALIA conference history and making this new pleb on the floor driven camp a success jump up now and register for Brisbane in September.

School hours

Yesterday I closed the library early and went home.
Well, the library isn't usually open after school on a Friday, and yesterday was the last day of school for our students so I figured I'd be sitting in an empty library as all the students ran, jumped and danced their way home.

Ordinarily I would have stayed anyway and done some shelving on the off chance anyone wanted a library. (oh, yes to answer an earlier question. I don't have to be here whenever the library is open. But there are only 2 of us working here and I do the after school gig).
Anyway...

I decided to duck out early as it was school sports day for 2 of my kids. It is a strange thing that working in a school can make it difficult to find the time to attend things at the kids' schools. Not that I have always been able to do that, the flexibility has varied from job to job. But, unfortunately with only a small staff in the library here, if I decide to go see my kids get an award it can bugger up the day for a whole class of kids.

Perhaps asking for a 3rd library staff member is the next logical step?

Anyway,
I am in PD all day so forget you saw me here.

The ADHD philosophy of jingly jangly

Well, a philosophy or something like that.

In my last post I spoke about my plans to go walking for a few days these holidays and alluded to the fact that it has been a while since I did much in the way of overnight walking. There was a time when every weekend was an orgy of bushwalking, caving, rock-climbing and canyoning. When I loaded up my pack with food and whatever equipment was needed for my particular task.

In fact (for those librarians reading this) Snail and I were chatting online about canyoning years before we met as librarians.

But that is taking us away from my unifly theory of jingly jangly. My theory, theory the first by me Anne Elk...

You can tell a lot about someone by the equipment they use in their outdoor pursuit.
Perhaps this is true in other areas of life, do we assess other librarians by their use of open source software (for example).
But outdoors it is so much more noticeable.

I first became aware of this fact as a teenager wandering through Bluegum Forest with friends. I carried my mother's old Karrimor pack (a gift from her father in 1979, I believe) and wore a pair of KT 26 (the high top hiking style they made briefly). All my gear (and the gear of my friends) was old, beaten up and cheep. Our raincoats were $2 ponchos and any gear we couldn't borrow had been bought from disposal stores. We cooked over hexie stoves in aluminium dixies, we drank out of army canteens.

I loved it out in the bush, but I did start to notice that there were increasing numbers of people out there who had different equipment to us. Their packs were in wonderful pastel colours (well, it was the 80s). Their raincoats had hoods and zips, their boots (oh how I coveted their boots) were leather and had fancy Italian names written on them.

Still, as we moved into our final years of high school we were still happy with our clapped out gear. We had begun caving and rock climbing by this stage. We had taught ourselves from books and trialled our skills by buying ourselves some rope, some carabiners and some 2 inch webbing to tie into harnesses. When caving we wore old overalls, bought for the most part from op-shops and wore hardhats scavenged from building sites.

Then we hit Uni, we began to join the Spelio society trips, we met the people who owned more gear than we could imagine. Their overalls were waterproof (rather than water absorbent) but the cavers were a practical bunch. Their fancy gear was well used, I looked at rappel racks where 50% of the aluminium had been worn away by the constant passage of a rope covered in rough cave mud.

It was the rock climbers who put the icing on my cake of jingly jangly theory. They walked around in fancy French harnesses, wearing fitted climbing slippers. They had huge quantities of ironmongery attached to their gear loops. And, their gear was new, oh so new. Always new, always shiny, always expensive.

So, it turns out I have no real theory. Just vague observations and lots of recollections of the purity of being outdoors with the bare minimum of gear needed to do the job. With luck I can instil the idea into my kids that there is something fantastic in spending a few days with just the gear on your back. With not carrying anything unnecessary, with not buying a $230 bedroll, when a $20 will work.

So, perhaps I do have a theory.
My theory is that, people who have all the latest new gear are not my kind of people. I like the latest new gear, but as I sat last night putting seam seal over tears in my rucksack (a nice pastel blue and pink one, just like the ones I coveted in the 80s and eventually bought) I realised, I like new gear for what it will one day become and for the memories I will one day have as I sit replacing buckles, repairing holes and working out if it will survive one more trip before I need to replace it.

When you have noting but new gear, you have missed out on something and (sadly) are probably unaware off what you have missed out on and of why that group of 14 year olds camping under a tarp held together with duct tape are having much more fun than you are.

(oh, and jingly jangly became our name for gear, because of the jingly jangly noise our climbing gear made as it banged together when we walked)

Falling behind

At the beginning of the little 30 posts in 30 days challenge, I said I was only going to blog on workdays. So, the fact that it is the 16th and this is my 14th post is actually better than I expected I would be able to do.

However, I do suspect I am about to fall by the wayside.

Today is the last school day of the term, tomorrow and Friday will be professional development days (which with luck will give me something good to write about), but then on Saturday morning I load the kids in the car along with our rucksacks and drive 1500km to the Larapinta Trail and spend a few days walking.

For my youngest, this will be his first overnight hike. Although he has been a bushwalker for as long as he can walk. I recall, when he was about 3, a well meaning gent saw him walking with me at Kings Canyon. By well meaning, I mean nosy blowhard. He was shocked that I had this little 3 year old with me (and he has always been small for his age) and came over to talk to me about how foolish I would be if I thought about taking him on the rim walk (about 6 km, with a fair bit of up and down). I smiled, and reassured him we were just doing the shorter walk along the flat. Then (because I am that sort of guy) I added, "because we did the rim walk yesterday" In fact, we had done the 6km plus a couple of side trips and the 3 year old boy had happily run ahead and found each track marker for us. That was his usual method for many years, he would wait for the group at the next track marker or the next fork in the path.

Actually, while I am writing non-library stuff, I may add another amusing Kings Canyon anecdote. I took my mother to see the canyon a few years ago. My eldest would have been about 9 and she did the rim walk in a pair of strappy sandals because she had left her bag in Alice Springs and we didn't realise until we got to Hermensberg, at which point I was not turning back. We looked for a pair of sneakers at the Hermensberg shop but there were none in her size, so she spent 3 days in the clothes she was wearing with the addition of an expensive tourist t-shirt from the service station at the resort.

Anyway, this walk will be the youngest's first overnight walk. Middle child has done one overnighter with scouts, but it was a short trial hike to see how they coped with the idea. So I am looking forward to the fun of the walk and seeing how the kids cope with sleeping out under the stars at -2 Celsius and carrying everything you need on your back. And by everything I mean a sleeping bag and some water, I imagine I will be a pack mule for their food and plates and other stuff. After all I don't want them to hate the experience. It is fantastic that all 3 of my kids are now old enough to do this stuff, so I can get back out there myself. Although, the other thing is that the kids are now also old enough that I can ignore them and go off and do things by myself sometimes too. So, this walk is a warmup for the overland track in January. And for that walk only miss 14 will be joining me. Not that we are walking alone, but she is the only one of the kids who is coming along.

So, the short version of that story is...
I am probably nearing the end of my posts for June, but I will be quite a few posts shy of the magic number 30.

no ritalin = no regular updates?

It has been a long weekend here, and Friday before the long weekend was a school day at the beach. As such I have had 4 days ritalin free and am feeling damned depressed about how much I have come to depend on my magic tablets. The funny thing (ha ha) is that I am probably more productive sans ritalin that I was pre ritalin but (as I have bemoaned here on the blog before) having seen the matrix, I can't go back to the life I once lived. I am aware that it is all just a computer program. No, mean I am aware that I am not the same person without the drug.

But, I am at work ritalin free today anyway. Why? Well, there are only 2 days of 'work' this week followed by 2 days of PD. So, being as it is the end of term, I think I can manage to check in the piles of returning textbooks without the brain firing on the frontal lobe, so rather than have a couple of days of ritalin followed by 2 weeks 'straight edge' I will make it 3 weeks without the junk and then with luck I can kick the mild depression that comes with the drug free world for me these days.

Oh, and because of the vagaries of the English language, that is a different depression to the one I mentioned earlier. Sure, I get 'depressed' when I realise I am not functioning as I could be. But that is probably more a mild annoyance. But when I don't take the ritalin I get a bit of actual depression. Nothing major, no need for people to remove sharp objects from my house or anything, but I do find that I can come to depend (ever so slightly) on the boost that ritalin gives me.

There is no punch line at the end of this post.

Some music, just because...

and some more.



listening to these tracks after having spent a day at the beach with a group of kids. Something I never got paid to do as an academic librarian.
Not sure what that has to do with my taste in music. But I do quite like these tracks (no idea why I went looking for them)

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the Dead Eyes Opened part of the first track comes from the transcript of a real murder case. While much of the second comes from a John Waters film.

This isn't the style of music I usually listen to, but these two tracks are very well done.

Slightly longer than a twitter update

The lesson for school librarians today is...

When a student with behavioural issues tells you that if you tell them to get off the computer they will "punch you in the balls".

Believe them.

That said, this sort of behaviour is noting new for a librarian. I remember a homeless man pulling a knife on one of the security guards one night when were were kicking everyone out of the state library.

I also remember a tiny little woman walking into Alice Springs library holding a large branch, walking up behind her husband (who was watching a video) and belting him across the head. When I ran over to stop her going for a second swing she looked at me and said "but he hits me" in such a sweet old lady voice.

Or, there was a patron once who refused to get off the computer (a backpacker) so I flicked the power switch off with my toe and guided him (bitching and moaning) to the exit with my hand on his back giving him a gentle shove. 5 minutes later a police officer turned up to investigate the report of a librarian assaulting a tourist. (at this point all the ladies in the large print section came over and explained to the officer that the nice librarian was; 1 a librarian and 2 nice, while the tourist was neither.)

Looking back on the library jobs I have had...
I do note that I did not see any violence during my 2 years in a theological library, nor during the 2 years I worked in cataloguing.
But the school seems to have better policies in place to deal with these things than any other library I have worked in. Not only did I know who to report the incident to, but I was kept informed about what they were doing/saying. Yep I think I like that about schools (well, that and students with behavioural issues tend to be smaller and less psychotic than the homeless).

The post which never was

I started writing a post entitled The Lazy Librarian with the idea that there was a slow food version of the librarian. But today is not the day for that post. I know this because I have written and deleted the first paragraph multiple times. So, today is a flag, a reminder to myself to write this post some other time. It also stands as a reminder to you, that if you want to read that post, you could give me a nudge in the right direction. So, unfortunately today's blog is more of an exploration of what happens when you have committed to writing but can not get your thoughts in order.

But, without having a coherent post on the topic, here are a few spoilers...

Do you want a librarian who can't be distracted by an interesting book when they are shelving?
Did you study for a McJob, but with books instead of burgers?