Arbor Day

I never thought I'd be one of 'those' people, who bemoan the death of the English Language. Or who complain about declining standards of literacy or dumbing down of society, after all I live in Australia. But it turns out I am.
What the hell happened to Arbor Day, and why the hell do we have Tree Day.
As a kiddie I had lots of fun on Arbor Day planting trees. There are a couple of nice big Gum Trees on Ham Common which I can still identify as ones I planted. Now however (and for the last few years) Australia has tree day. Why?
Now I know it isn't dumbing down the English language, because Tree is English but Arbor isn't. Still it is (at the very least) aiming for the lowest common denominator. And I hate that!

Research part the second: The hard cases

Most of what I get asked in my day to day working life is simple stuff that you can answer of the top of your head.
The earth has five moons
Our solar system has eight planets (or ten depending on your definition of planet)
But other questions are more troubling and the ADHD research method described earlier can look like it is coming unstuck. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is where the ADHD librarian launches into his own. Now if you are using my methodology, ensure that you are not tempted at this stage by fancy subscription databases or the mouldy old reference collection. After all if you were to go to your library's reference collection you'd probably find the books saying outdated things like "Earth has one moon" or "there are nine planets in the solar system" and subscription databases aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on in most public library situations.
No the question to ask now is who does what you're asking about?
So if you are looking up details on heavy machinery model numbers used in open cut mines so someone can write in there resume that they know how to drive them, you need to search for a company who runs an open cut mine. What are you looking for? Surprisingly enough, you're not looking for the answer to your question. What you are looking for is a bit of the jargon of open cut mining folk. You're not going to have much luck in your search until you know a few brand names of heavy machinery and what they are called.
Caterpillar, Komatsu, Dynapac, Ingersol Rand, Hitachi do any of these sound like devices you want to claim to drive?
(like someone who could really drive one would be asking a librarian to help them find information for their resume)
Search for very very big truck? No, search for: Dump Truck Tracked, Skid Steer Loaders, Excavator to 12ton, Articulated Trucks, Off Highway Trucks.

Forget blindly ploughing on with the web if you (or your patrons) don't have enough information because you can open an infinite number of tabs to no avail.
The fancy pants folk who write books on retailing will insist on telling you the customer is always right.
Well in the library the customer is always a moron should be your maxim. They come in and tell you all sorts of things about what it is they think they want to know and when you hand it to them they say "no that's not it".
It's what you bloodywell said you wanted you stupid oxygen thief.
But that is the art of the reference interview, which is the mystical craft of trying to work out that someone wants a biography of Peter Lalor when they come in and ask for a book about gold.

How I cured my ADHD

or meet my electronic brain
Six months ago I launched myself into the world of portable computing. Not that I'm the most tech savvy guy you're going to meet. But I had a purpose, I was planning on relacing my frontal lobe with an new electronic version. I got myself a Dell Axim X51v running windows mobile. It's quite nice and it fits in my pocket. (as I mentioned once before on this blog).
So how do I use it to cure my ADHD? Well, it is a fantastic little device for keeping track of my appointments and tasks I need to do. Sure, before this I had a vert nice leather diary/filofax/planner which was a gift from a previous workplace. The diary however didn't fit in my pocket and didn't go 'bing bong' when I had to do something.
That is the fantastic thing about this little computer, but it isn't everything. I plug it into my work PC when I get in in the morning and the two calendars sync their different information. Then when I get home of an evening I do the same with the home PC. So now instead of having a work PC with some of my appointments, a home PC with a few others and a diary I completely forgot to write anything in, I have three places all telling me the same thing.
Sure I still need to put the information in, but only once. And as work uses the calendar function to organise meetings a lot of them arrive automatically and all I have to do is click YES. Plus my (long suffering) wife can put things onto the home PC and they're going to 'bing bong' me without her having to remind me too often (although she will, because doing my remembering for me is a habit entrenched by years of frustration).
It is more than that however, because I can still forget things (like when I turn the alarm off because I'm doing a radio interview and then I don't turn it back on for a week). So when I had a clash and had to go to a Scout camp with one of my kiddies but I had some uni work due, I put the PDA in my pocket and while the kiddies slept tucked up in their swags, I was writing 500 words on management styles while leaning on a gum tree next to an open fire.
But there is a third function that the ADHD prone will love. Games, yes, no longer do I have to wiggle my fingers or tap my feet when I'm watching TV. I can now watch TV and play solitaire, without having to remember where I put the cards. Or I can watch TV and surf the net at the same time, compose email and generally do all those things that I'd be doing if it wasn't for the fact that I often forget to move when the TV is on.

Ref desk Trolls

OK, it is from ask Dr Eldritch which isn't always about librarians. I have always pictured people phoning up to ask crossword questions as trolls.

two and two is wibble, wibble and wibble is...

wibblydy wibble?
1. I have no concept of maths.
2. I last attempted to do any in 1988.
These two facts do not mesh up with the fact that I am currently the ADHD accounting student.
Yes, my attempt to get management qualifications (in order to prevent some bloody accountant from being my boss) has resulted in my reaching the semester where the only option available to me was accounting. It had to happen (compulsory subject) but I still feel the need to say "Damn Bugger Poo Knickers".
The first thing about the ADHD accounting student is that I made it up to page 7 (of 1125) before I stopped and asked myself where it was that I stopped understanding.
But I did however have a lot of fun laughing at accountants. The text starts by selling the concept of how cool accountants are and gives the example of an accountant who works for a motor racing team. Then (one page later) it discusses decision making "We make many decisions every day. For example we decide when to get out of bed each morning (sometimes prompted by our parents!)..." (Hoggett, Edwards, Medlin. Accounting 6th ed. Wiley. p.5).
Yes, it only took one page to change from 'We're so cool' to admitting that all accountants still live at home with their mum.
So it is good to know that even if I can't understand accountancy, I still have the power to ridicule those who do.

Silent library

Just watch it and you'll see what I liked about this video.

You never forget your first.

I feel the need to say this now because I just ran across a website for the ORIC 1 (my first PC) and it took me back to the 80s in a haze of pure nostalgia. I was however struck by the difference between my old ORIC and the DELL sitting in my pocket!
My ORIC had a 1 MHz processor, 48KB of RAM (it was the top of the line model) and 16 KB of ROM. Plus you could add a tape drive.
My new AXIM has 416 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM and 128 MB of flash ROM. But it has no tape drive, sure it has wi-fi and blue tooth and SD card slot, but where is the tape drive?
While Dell try to sell their machine based on the fact that it would fit in your pocket, my old ORIC could do that, if I was wearing very big cargo pants. Sure the lack of monitor on the ORIC was a problem (unless I put a TV in my other pocket), but I could plug it into any TV (and any tape player) when I got to my destination.
The computer that came after the ORIC (for me) was an apple IIe Hong Kong knockoff and there was no way that would have fit in my pocket. It failed in one big area over the ORIC, colour. The ORIC had 8 colours the apple had black and amber, but then it had two (count them, two) floppy drives. And the disks were floppy!
But, as they say you never forget your first and no matter how fancy computers get I'll still be sitting in my (futuristic, laser guided) rocking char trying to explain to the great grandkids what it was like to use a 1 MHz processor and how fantastic life was when we had 8 colours and how we would write circular programs that looped with goto commands.
Ahh how we laughed.

ADHD guide to online research. part one

As a librarian I spend a lot of time doing (what we in the business call) reference work. Now this is something which I do quite well, but it is entirely possible that had I attempted to become a librarian forty years ago I would have been unsuccessful due to being an unfertilised egg.

Although, had I been born and qualified and a librarian in that time (lets call it the 60s) I may well have had a much harder time. As the ADHD librarian I am well suited to the current crop of reference resources. Some (all) of my co-workers might not quite understand my methodology, but I'm going to give it to you.
Firstly, it important for you to realise that many, many people come into the library looking for a book on Penguin Farming. I then suggest they try the Net and am shot down in flames, because they "have the internets at home" and have "already tried it and there is nothing".

My instinct then is to abuse them and scream incoherently about the superiority of librarians and how I went to uni to study this and you think that just because you can boot up Google you can do my freeking job. But there's no point, because they think my job is to stamp date due dates onto books and the abuse that I'd have to muster in order to point out that my job is about information in any form, well it's just too hard. But I soldier on and tell them that their query is too specialised for our small library and I might give the Net another try.

Now these folk have tried Google and failed, so where would I start looking? Google, it isn't the best research tool but it's the best for me and you in most situations. And if it isn't the best, but you get the information you wanted, do you care?
It is quick and dirty and at first so are my search results, but if you add a bit of Boolean Logic (which for you playing at home means you use the advanced search) then you soon find something. Now that something may not be what they want, but it might give me a clue. What people want and what I hear are two different things and while people will swear till they are blue in the face that theirs is the only spelling or only name for the think they want it often turns out that they know a lot less than they wanted to admit.

So, to get this 'quick and dirty' search happening I use Firefox as my browser. It isn't about hating Microsoft (although that's a pretty good reason) it is about how I can set up Firefox. Tabbed browsing and a customisable search box built in to the browser means I'm not spending all my time pressing the back button. I have Google, Wikipedia, Google AU, Google UK, Google images, IMDB, Amazon... all ready to go.
Having a mouse with the ability to middle click is fantastic too. I set this up to open in new tab and so from my first search page I can get results loading and come back to them. Keep searching, change your search terms or your search engine then see what you've got in your tabs.

how to die in a ditch

pick your debates
who will care if you are wrong
do you care?
Are you tying your point onto someone else's wagon? What if they fall, how does your point stand?

Why the adhd librarian should be a guest on Rove Live.

Caution, this post is only for Australians!
Non-Australians should not read any further, but rather should move as quickly as possible to an Australian Consulate and begin filling out an application to emigrate.

Before I start on any claims that I myself am funny, let me set a scene.

Rove McManus has been the new Daryl Somers for some time now. A crown he has managed to hold on despite the actual Daryl Somers returning like some sort of reanimated light entertainment zombie.
Daryl seems to be working to be the new Don Lane or perhaps a male Kerry-Anne?
So, what has this to do with me getting a national TV gig? Well, who remembers Daryl? the patrons of a Public Library, that's who. The very people who are asking my help choosing their large print Barbara Cartland novels because they dropped their bifocals in their colostomy bag.
Well, I can talk their language (why did you think it took so long to qualify as a librarian, all we do is read books all day). I am perfectly positioned to pass on the secrets of Hey Hey's continued high ratings even after it jumped the shark (perhaps 'Hired the Molly' could be the Australian jumped the shark).
You can't tell me Peter Hellier couldn't improve the show by going home and whipping up an ostrich puppet. And if Corrinne Grant isn't Denise Drysdale for the metrosexuals then I'm a chocolate teapot.
You know what I'm talking about Rove.
After writing this I wondered if anyone else thought this way. I discovered the SMH considerer Rove to be the new Mike Walsh. If only the frail aged (soiling themselves in comfort at the Public Library) remember Daryl, it would be fair to say there are only three people other than me remember who Mike Walsh was. Sadly, that includes Mike. Oh, he's not dead he just hasn't the foggiest idea who he is.
As for Kerry-Anne, I think it is about time we petitioned those who control the Matrix to reload our memories without her in them. After all, there is a difference between Light Entertainment and Vapidbrainliquefying Entertainment.

It seems that being the alternate to someone is the Aussie way. Steve Vizard tried to be the Australian Letterman and when that failed attempted to be our Michael Milken.
It's not all one way traffic though. I'm fairly sure Bill Clinton was trying to be the American Bob Hawke. He just failed to translate the jokes into American. Australians loved being governed by a lecherous drunk but Americans just couldn't see all the good things about having a leader who knows how to let go of stress. And there is Rupert Murdoch, who did a good job of becoming the American Rupert Murdoch.
Now, I'm not sure that this is enough to convince anyone that I deserve a TV gig. But if you know Rove, let him know I'm interested. I'd send it to him myself but I don't know his address. And who can find someone to do that sort of research for free. It'd take some sort of Government sponsored 'Public' Librarian and with The Australian Margaret Thatcher in office, there is unlikely to be enough money for both that and tax cuts.

Come Downunder

I've just come across a post I put up on LIS News almost exactly one year ago and just to make sure that it is in my archive as well as theirs I am posting it here.
It was a response to a query from A merkin about what they could expect their life to be like if they did a job exchange with an Aussie.

Well the first thing you should know is that Aussie is pronounced Ozzy (as in Ozzy Osbourne). From there we can move on to more serious difference (keeping in mind that I haven't been to your part of the world, but I probably get more American culture force fed to my society than you get Aussie culture). We have no patriot act, indeed to American eyes we have no patriotism. However, that is just culture shock. Most Australians are proud of the fact that we're not proud. Aussie libraries don't tend to have titles challenged. I'm not saying it never happens, but I've never worked in a library where we had a set procedure for what to do with a complaint of that sort. My usual method is tell them to put their complaint in writing after which point I'll never hear anything about it. On exchange you might notice your spell-check starts underlining words you thought were correct. You probably need to let us Aussies (remember the pronunciation, we won't be offended but we will laugh at you. Besides how can America expect to deal with the complexities of a vastly different culture like Iraq when you can't even make the effort to pronounce Melbourne correctly - Mell Bun) know if you are planning to sojourn to a specific type of library. No point me going on about the public system when you are a specialist in presidential libraries (oh, and we don't have presidential libraries due to a lack of presidents. This lack should not be taken as a sign we are not a democracy, we're quite happy without any and don't need liberating. We even got to vote a little while ago and we voted not to have one.). And while I'm on the topic, if the American president is the leader of The Free World, why don't I get to vote? I'm part of the free work damn it! Oh, and land of the free, HA, I refer you back to my point on the patriot act.
You will hear people talking about cricket like it is important. This is very prevalent with male librarians. If you begin to find this difficult, you could do worse than remember that some of your own countrymen think that baseball is a sport. Oh and don't get us started about American football. We have constant battles to keep up the level of funding, same as y'all (see, I can make the effort to use your language). Aussie libraries are currently trying to update their image, and the image of librarians. So bun wearing shushers need to be aware we will force them to be cataloguers and stick them in the basement where they will see nothing of Australia that isn't on the dust jacket of a book. So what is the new image for librarians? Well we realise that all that is successful about Australia involves khaki clothing and crocodiles, so we're spicing up the libraries with live reptiles and Linda Kozlowski look alikes (see we do welcome Americans). Despite years of work by American cola companies and fast food chains Aussies still get most of their calories from food. Despite years of work by American drug companies Aussies still get most of their vitamins from food. Combining these two facts, if you let your Aussie co-workers know that you consider pop tarts a food, you will discover that this voids any chance people will listen to you. Yes, if you dare suggest that a big bowl of frosted anything (let alone with cola on the side) is a breakfast for anyone other than a seven year old with no parental supervision (or someone with ADHD) you will find that no one cares about your wealth of experience with ephemera collections. You will be forever known as the American Pop Tart. As in "Does anyone know if the American Pop Tart finished the shelving?" Oh and, you won't understand our sense of humour. This entire reply has been funny and if you haven't noticed (or if you were offended) then a trip down under will probably be more fun for you than a visit to Australia would be. No, I could go on, but I won't.

I'm disappointed to say that I only had one offended American reply to this, so perhaps I should try harder. That said there are currently two Americans on staff in my library, so perhaps I'm going soft in my attempt to point out the rest of the world to Americans online.
Although, it probably has more to do with the fact that American Librarians (due to working in libraries) may have if fact come across the existence of the 900s and guessed that some of these places mentioned may still exist.
The response from the Defender of America was all together too funny because when he played with every stereotype of Australia, I was able to ignore it as I was in fact born in the UK.

While on the American teasing exercise, I did post an article on a 'gun totin' librarian to LIS news recently. One reply I got from that, was the wonderful "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line. Which I loved on so many levels.
Firstly- I hadn't said anything about disarming librarians.
Secondly- I quite enjoy playing with firearms. I hunt on occasion (I even spent some time in the Australian Army). Although I never saw the need for an AK47 to go rabbit hunting.
Thirdly- based on my time in the Army, I can say that they did seem to focus on the guns during our 'how to kill the enemy' training. In fact I notice that most nations prefer to send their soldiers out armed with guns. This suggests that while the guns may not kill people, they certainly help.
Fourthly- There is something retarded about this automatic 'knee jerk' right to arm bears. It has all the passion (and logic) of a UFO cult.

Let us all bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.

ADD Attorney points me to about.com which in turn tells me about a study in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics which suggests that I have ADHD because of TV and other modern 'stuff' (I may have paraphrased).
While I know that claiming something isn't true based only on my own life is poor science, I have to chime in and say. I lived without a TV up until the age of 15. Yet somehow I still caught ADHD, perhaps I caught it from the radio or it is possible that the TV beamed its evil waves at me from the electronics section of department stores (I never could resist the flashy lights, which made it hard for my parents to shop for furniture).
Based on my wide experience of being me, I think it is possible that ADHD folk find the TV hard to resist. Ohhh shiny, but that is a far cry from being a cause. Perhaps it is an effect, I always get those two confused.
So it is possible that I managed to have a decent childhood because there was no TV to waylay me with its flashy light and I lived in a rural area with trees to climb and rivers which I wasn't allowed to swim in (I was in fact an appalling swimmer, constantly gasping to stay afloat. But to admit that would be to remind my Australian friends that I was in fact a Pommy, born in that dark cold land where you don't learn to swim at birth. And being as in that town the English were as close to Ethnic as anyone could imagine I didn't want to remind "me mates, bonzer, okker, crikey and G'day" that I wasn't Dinky Di.
"No Mum, I'm wet because I fell into a bucket of muddy water."
"Yes I went to school today, I'd never even consider spending a day on a rope swing when school and education are so important."
"I don't know how I got so sunburned."

Now, the fact that this was published in 2004 and I hadn't come across it before (Did I mention I'm a librarian) may suggest that it isn't sweeping the medical treatment for ADHD aside. So perhaps I'm not the only one who has come across this cause/effect dichotomy in the research.


oh, and look the attorney found by blog before I found his
I don't know if I should blame my spam filter or my brain but I have no memory of his email to me.

Just to prove I can do the librarian gig, the study mentioned is:
Christakis, D.A. et other guys and perhaps also Mr ibid Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children in Pediatrics Vol. 113 No. 4 April 2004, pp. 708-713

Who am I to talk?

I've had a few emails about my post on smelly black people. Good god, I honestly didn't think anyone (other than an automated spambot) would bother emailing me. Or at least not about my blog.
Yes I may have said that some black people are smelly, that is not racist abuse. Racist abuse would be if I had said that they were smelly because they were black.
But people are also wondering what that has to do with ADHD or Librarians,
good point,
to which I say, bugger off it is my blog I can post about what I like. Report me to the Advertising Standards Board if you don't like it.

Well, OK. There is a connection.
The library in which I currently work services a large indigenous population and I spend a lot of my time with indigenous kids. For the most part it is just like any other public library, except here all the kids who are cutting school are genetically distinguishable. Now I don't want to bag out the local people because their kids don't go to school. I myself forgot to turn up to school when I was about 14, I managed to survive the Department of Education contacting my father because he had just met the woman who would become my step-mother and as such was feeling in a happy mood.
So, have I been clear that these kids aren't skipping school because they are black? they are black and they are skipping school. No big deal to me, there are always kids skipping school in the library and I'm happy to spend my work day with them. Better here with me than out in the car park with a plastic bag full of chrome paint.
But
There are some things that people let indigenous kids get away with because they suffer from white middle class guilt about the stolen generation or the Coniston Massacre or their own passive racism. What we end up with in return in a reverse racism, not like positive discrimination, but where I see kids still in nappies coming to the library on their own. Or even worse (for our cleaners) kids who are so young they should be in nappies, but aren't.
I see kids who are about nine, who are spending their day in the library because they are looking after three or four younger brothers, sisters and cousins. I see kids who haven't eaten in a couple of days because the older members of the family have drunk their dole money.
And what is done about this? Nothing, because the Australian government once had a stupid racist policy where they took aboriginal children away from their parents by force (and we alone did this, no other nation on earth has ever been so evil woe woe woe, and so on). So now, rather than deal with the past wrongs (by doing something like offering an official apology) we ignore the problems it has caused and don't let the people from welfare take these children away from their substance abusing parents.
We'll let the welfare folk take away white children, Indian children, Vietnamese children, Children of African decent, children of any ethnicity (and Australia has a few) but not aboriginal kids.

So I sit at my library desk, turning around kids under seven and telling them they can't come in without an adult. I send them off to do what ever the hell they want to do in town, go play in the traffic, go watch mum get drunk and fight but don't come into my safe library because I don't have the ability to deal with your problems and the folk who should be helping you, won't be either because they need more money, more people and a complete change in the whole social structure of Australia before they can do anything to help a child who has only been neglected. they need their resources for the actively abused and even then they are dealing with only a fraction of what people suspect is going on.

I'm a celebrity

Yes, I've been whoring myself out to the local media outlets again.
I had a couple of radio gigs last week and a kids TV show I filmed earlier went to air. I'm on the radio again tomorrow morning. This time around however, I'm a little less hopeful that someone is going to see my star potential and whisk me away for a life of luxury.
That said, I am being recognised. Sure some of that is the usual stuff, whereby friends and workmates say "heard you on the radio yesterday". However, someone I didn't know before saw me on the box and said hi, it was like this....

A game of rugby has just finished, the players (tough rugged men) are shaking hands with their opponents and saying such things as "good game Wukka" "nice tackling Donk" and so on. My moment of macho zen is broken when one players says "were you on (name of kids TV show) last week?"
"I thought it was you, I recognised your voice"
Suddenly I don't feel so tough, I'm a librarian playing at being masculine and I've been found out. That is until I realise that this guy was at home at 10am watching kids TV.

Aboriginals are smelly

I have small children,
I'm not sure how many as they tend to move around a lot, which makes it hard to count them.
One of them though, recently said to me "Daddy I don't like Aboriginals". This concerned me because we live in a town with a large number of Indigenous Australian and that sort of comment could well be seen as racist. So I had a little talk with said child about why this was so, and pointed out to her several of her friends are in fact Aboriginal. "No they're not!" she replied. And when I asked her why she was sure that they weren't, it turned out that they couldn't be because they "aren't smelly".
Thinking on this I was able to take some comfort from the fact that one of my kids was not in fact racist. She was unaware that being Aboriginal had anything to do with being dark skinned. She assumed it was a name for the drunken itinerants who sleep in the parks around town.
This has come to mind again because of a recent report on abuse and violence in the Aboriginal community. Something most white Australians living on the east coast had forgotten about, because the last report on this (which appalled everyone and lead to all the Chardonnay socialists weeping into their morning lattes was two years ago, so they'd all forgotten that Australia still had black people). My problem though is that Australians are suffering the same problems as my daughter. They've lost sight of what it means for people to be aboriginal, so when they talk about Aboriginal men being violent they are tarring them all with the same brush. The problem is however not a problem with Aboriginal culture. What this is, is a social problem in Australia where a section of our community are living in a cycle of poverty and lack of education. Anyone who looks at world history, be it the Deep South of America, the Slums of Glasgow or the suburbs of Housing Commission homes in Western Sydney can see that substance abuse and violence go hand in hand with a lack of hope. As long as we keep identifying this as an aboriginal problem we'll be failing to do what it takes to repair this rift in our society. We'll also be heaping shame about their aboriginality on the heads of young aboriginals, in particular young boys who will be given the message that this is all they have to look forward to.
So, perhaps this 'shocking' report, might better be used to inform people that...
homeless people may be smelly
drunk people my be violent
unemployed people may be depressed
uneducated people may be unemployed
and that while an Aboriginal person may be violent, it does not follow that violent people are aboriginal.