Porta Brace CS-DC2R

I thought you all might enjoy, or, laugh at my video review for this camera bag. Cosby comes in about halfway through. Ha!

Thoughts on the Square Image

Jen and I are back from our vacation in Maine. We had a lovely time, and I am sure we will write more than you might want to read about the trip. As you might suspect, we took our cameras with us and made many photographs (360 to be exact) on the trip. We are waiting on the film to be developed and scanned so we can share our images with you. In the course of photographing (and thinking about cameras, in general) I thought a great deal about photography, as well as the choices that I make in my hobby. What originally started out as an homage to the square image has now become some hybrid of a homage and a narrative about how I feel about photography now.

A friend loaned me the book that has the perfect quote in it, describing the square in a bit more objective manner:

Authors, Recent and Favorite

Every night, Jen and I usually retire to the bedroom about 8:30 or 9. Now, before you make inappropriate jokes about this little phrase, we go get in bed, prop our pillows up, and tuck into whatever book we are reading at the time. This has grown to be not only something we look forward to, but part of our nightly routine. It has reminded me of why I “fell in love” with reading in the first place - and it has also given me a new opportunity to think about what I like and who my favorite authors are. So, rather than giving some exhaustive list of what I like reading, I would like to focus on authors, something Jen and I discussed as we were walking into the Fayetteville Public Library on Saturday. So here they are, in no particular order:

On the Impossibility of Classification

Last week was an exciting week for me, cataloging-wise, as the library where I work just received our subscriptions to Cataloger’s Desktop and Classification Web. In addition, we wrapped up training on our integrated library system, Millennium. I also finished up the new book of Alberto Manguel’s compiling his writings, A Reader on Reading. I don’t think there is a more erudite and pleasant author who writes on books and libraries than Manguel. Of course, little did I know that the Classification Web subscription and finishing the Manguel book would end up in the same busy week, prompting me to write this short discourse.

A Cataloging Education

As seen on p. 12 May/June 2011 American Libraries:

Periodically there is a post on Autocat, the cataloger discussion list, with some variation on “as a single professional in a (fill in type of library), I am faced with having to catalog. I did not take a cataloging course in library school. How can I…?”

I’ve just been corresponding with one librarian with that problem, who did not even know that the Library of Congress Classification existed as a print publication. Fortunately, she is writing her library school to express her dissatisfaction at being placed in this situation.

Apart from knowing something about cataloging making one a better reference librarian or administrator, cataloging is a basic skill of librarianship, which every holder of an MLS or an MLIS should have.

Isn’t it past time the American Library Association made providing a basic introduction to cataloging a required course, as part of accreditation requirements?

-J. McRee (Mac) Elrod
Vancouver, British Columbia

ArLiS: Closing Thoughts

The past several posts here at The Dean Files have been about my experiences and thoughts on the content presented and shared at ArLiS/NA’s annual conference (2011) in Minneapolis. I focused primarily on the content of the conference, and not on the conference itself. In reflecting on the content, I gave a great deal of thought to the presentation and the format of the content, and I have some constructive criticism in four points I would like to share with you, reader.

ArLiS: Sunday, March 27

Well, readers, here it is: my final post about ArLiS in Minneapolis. I think this was my favorite day, as it had two sessions of great interest to me - the Museum Libraries division meeting, as well as the RDA Test Kitchen presentation in the Cataloging Section meeting. I only thought it appropriate to include a photo of the art cataloging godfather, Sherman Clarke: