Newspapers

There has to be a better option for newspapers in Australia.

Either you read a News Ltd paper, which is basically a tawdry magazine masquerading as news, or you read a Fairfax Newspaper, which is usually a better standard of journalism but somewhat south-east centric.

Is it too much to ask for a) A paper that is well written and topical, b) a paper that assumes we aren't completely vapid, and c) a paper that doesn't devote more than half it's content to stories that bore the socks of anyone who isn't in Sydney or Melbourne?

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

(Reblogged from http://http://aliapdliteratureblog2010.blogspot.com)

Some time ago I borrowed The sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, gent, by Washington Irving, specifically to read "Rip van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". These stories have been floating around the cultural psyche for some time, and I've always been aware of them - but I've never actually read them in their "original" form.

Having borrowed the book, it took me an awfully long time to get around to reading the stories. In spite of the fact that I am a fan of both short stories and essays (both of which are in the book), I simply never got around to sitting down and reading this work. I had briefly glanced at the opening paragraph for "Rip Van Winkle", but at times when I didn't have an hour to spend on reading a short story properly.

Having renewed the book several times (and, because I'm a staff member, I have longer loan periods than "normal" patrons), I decided I should return the thing and release it into its natural environment. Having decided to return it on Monday, on Saturday I actually made the effort to read the two stories that had interested me in the first place.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) has what I like to think of as a travel-writer's style of writing. The stories he tells are rather short, when you boil them down to the plots, and could easily be conveyed in a couple of paragraphs, but he takes the time to introduce you to the place and people involved in the tale. He touches on the little, quirky details that add character to a place. He tends to write around the details - giving you a raft of impressions from which to construct the picture, rather than simply telling you what you need to know.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" has slipped a little in the public psyche from its original position. These days, many people just know it for the "headless horseman", and then get a bit fuzzy on the details. The story is actually a very intriguing character study of Ichabod Crane - a man who is rather fond of food, and rather easy to frighten with ghost stories.

As a self-confessed "Disney kid", I remember the 1949 film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which I saw many long years ago as a small child. I think I would have been under ten years old the last time I saw it - young enough to forget all but a handful of scenes and the echo of Bing Crosby's voice singing "Ichabod Crane..."

Reading the story was an interesting experience in half-recalled images from the Disney film. It felt like I could remember aspects of Ichabod Crane's character being quite effectively captured by the Disney version - flashes of Crane patting a child on the head to impress a mother who was giving him dinner, the way he would see happy autumnal scenes converted into veritable banquets...

I remember Brom Bones being more of an out-and-out bully in the film, while in the story he was a bit more likable - and certainly more understandable. In the story, Ichabod comes across as being a little more obnoxious and, quite frankly, I think I'd probably play a few pranks on him myself, given half the chance.

There's an extent to which "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (and another story in the same book, "The Spectre Bridegroom") is more of a Scooby Doo episode than anything else. You get the feeling, as you are reading the tale, that Irving could have written a ghost story using the same basic plot, but instead he wrote a story about people who listen to ghost stories. He weasels out of the scare factor - you always feel "above" the ghost story - separated from it. Irving writes with something of a "but of course, we both know there's no such thing as ghosts" tone, and as such you never get the full depth of suspense the story could have if he just threw himself into it.

It's the way the story ends that kills its chances of working as a ghost story. Without directly telling you what happened, it makes the "truth" rather obvious, completely throwing away whatever unanswered questions might allow the tension to remain.

But then, the few other Irving stories I've read indicate he has a habit of easing people out of his tales. Perhaps this is part of the travel-writer's style as well - letting you travel comfortably in your own armchair, and leaving you sitting comfortably in the end.

Viscocity

And that's what it's all about, baby!

Some desperate soul comes to the reference desk and says:

"I need to find the dynamic viscosity of seawater. I've looked everywhere in books and online, and I just can't find it."

I have no idea what the dynamic viscosity of seawater is. Heck, I can only hazard a guess at what those words might mean in that particular order. But five minutes later she's walking away with a smile on her face because I tracked down an article that gives her the information she wants.

That's the power of a librarian - we find stuff we didn't even know existed without even knowing what we're looking for.

Too Many Books

Every now and then I can't shake the feeling that there are too many books in my life.

Let us, for a moment, forget the books I actually own. Let us forget that I currently do not have enough shelf-space to store the books I have. Let us forget that I deliberately chose to take a small bag with me when I went on holidays, determined to have a vacation where (for once in my life), I did not add two kilos of books to my baggage weight for the return journey. Let as forget that, due to a series of no-doubt-entirely-avoidable events, I had to buy a new bag - and had to make sure it was big enough to fit the books I bought in spite of myself.

Let us, instead, focus on the fact that I live in a library. Sorry, that should have been: "work in a library". I may spend more time at work than I do in my own house, but that's another problem.

The trouble with working in a library is that you are in a position to borrow books whenever you feel like it. A passing thought runs through your mind... you feel strangely compelled to see if the library holds a book about the thing you thought of... next thing you know you've just checked out another four books.

Do I read all of the books I check out of libraries? Heck no. I've barely even scratched the surface of the books I own.

So what do I do with these books? They fill up space in my life as I think about reading them. I think "I should return that, but I haven't read it yet" and renew them when I should just be releasing them back to the wild. I find them buried under who-knows-what other reading material on my desk and next to my chair months down the track and think "Oh, yeah, I wanted to read that", and promptly put it back on the pile so that I can "get around to it".

I know I'm not going to get around to it. I know I should just clear the decks, forget I borrowed the book in the first place and wait to see if I actually do want it enough to find it again. But...

But I borrowed it because it looked interesting, and every time I look at it, it still looks interesting.

No good can come of this.

The Author in my Head

Isn't it odd, the way you get a picture in your head of what a particular author would look like... right up until you see a picture online or on a book jacket or something?

For some reason, and I have no idea why, I had this image in my head that Geoff Johns would be some guy in his late thirties, balding slightly, with large glasses and a moustache.

I think my interpretation of what comic book writers/illustrators look like must have been formed in the 80s, and it just hasn't changed since then. Mind you, if you've ever seen a recent picture of Mark Waid, it's kind of hard to think that there's been much change...

He's actually much young, better looking, hairier (on his head) and more clean shaven than the image in my head. That doesn't make him less annoying, though.

Geoff Johns would happily ret-conn the Bible, the Koran and the Tipitaka, if you let him. And Dan DiDio would encourage him.

Finish What You Started: Riddle of the Sands

Some months ago, as part of my "Finish What You Started" project, I decided to finish reading The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers.

I had stalled on this book about three chapters from the end, and thought that was just a bit stupid. So I sat down one weekend and finished it.

I bought this book last year whilst on vacation in Estonia. I had just finished something exceptionally light and trashy, and thought I'd go for a "genre classic". Riddle of the Sands was one of those books I knew by title alone. Well, I knew it was a spy book - espionage of some sort - which is a genre I don't usually read. I had a fling with James Bond a couple of years ago (hasn't everybody), but after reading three or four of Fleming's books (slightly out of sequence) I stalled about two chapters into Live and Let Die and never got back to the series.

Live and Let Die would be included in the "Finish What you Started" project, but I can't find it. I lost the book when I moved house, and I just can't be bothered borrowing it from a library when I have so many books in my house I haven't finished.

Anyway, I knew Riddle was a "classic" spy book and I knew it had something to do with sand. For some reason, I had imagined that to involve deserts and the foreign legion, or something. Not so much. It's actually about a couple of guys mucking about in boats off the coast of Germany at the turn of the 20th Century. A lot of the book involves a government desk-jockey discovering the joys of yachting in amongst the sand-banks of the Frisian Islands. Oh, and we think there may be a plot to invade England, but it could just be a salvage company trying to find treasure.

I have to admit that the reason I stalled so close to the end was because the book is actually kind of boring. On the one hand, you do get a real sense of what it must be like to be on a little, ramshackle boat piloted through the sand banks by a boating savant, but on the other hand nothing much happens. We slowly gather hints, which slowly turn into ideas, which slowly suggest action which slowly unfolds. I never felt any real tension or danger in the whole thing. Plot "twists" were rather predictable. The only real surprise was that there was no surprise. For some reason I was expecting something unexpected to happen in the end.

I quite enjoyed bits of the book on-and-off, and I was impressed with the verisimility of the book - the boating scenes seemed entirely real, and the simplicity of the plot lent it believability. However, I think it says something about a book if you can stop reading it three-chapters from the end and not really feel as if you're missing out on anything.

A Tale of Two Christies

In the past couple of weeks I've read two Agatha Christie books featuring Poirot: The ABC Murders and The Murder of Roger Ackeroyd.

It was an interesting comparison as I didn't have any advanced knowledge of the plot for ABC, but I knew what the 'trick' to Ackeroyd was before reading it.

I've always maintained that I don't care about spoilers - I get great pleasure out of seeing how things are done, so my enjoyment is not diminished by knowing the twists ahead of time.

This was more or less a chance to prove that theory: two books in the same series by the same author, one which was a complete surprise and the other with "spoilers".

Hard to say what my conclusions are. On the one hand, I did spend a large amount of ABC second guessing my assumptions, which was fun. I didn't pick the killer until a few pages before the reveal - I had actually formulated a completely different "clever-pants" twist, that seemed perfectly reasonable until the last couple of chapters.

On the other hand, Ackeroyd had always been on my list of things to read precisely because I knew what the twist was, and I wanted to see how Christie pulled it off. I was very impressed. Knowing what the twist was, I accurately picked the point were the "tell" occurred, but spent the rest of the book wondering if I had been misinformed. Christie did such a brilliant job with her treatment of the characters that I started second guessing my conclusions even when I knew they were correct. I kept watching to see when Poirot would figure it out, and if he would give us some indication. It really felt like he had made the wrong call regarding the killer and, when everything came together in the end, I still managed to feel somehow surprised.

So I can honestly say I did enjoy the book I read "with spoilers" more than the book I read without them, but then it was also the better book of the two. And I did enjoy the book I read "without spoilers", for completely different reasons.

As experiments go, it didn't really give me any viable data. I did get a couple of good reads out of it, though, so I guess there was no time wasted.

Oh, and you should read The Murder of Roger Ackeroyd. You can skip the other book without really losing anything from your complete reading experience, but Ackeroyd is a must.

Studies

I think I can safely say that linguists make terrible scientists. Also, on the other hand, scientists make terrible linguists.

“How dare you!” I hear you cry, “Besides, you have shown your ignorance, for linguistics is a form of science!”

Whatever. You try reading a few dozen 'scientific studies' conducted on language classes and see if tell me that with a straight face. That's what I say.

For some reason, the linguists I've read can't seem to bring themselves to create a study that isn't completely riddled with holes. Blind Freddy* could see that the methodology is unsound - or, at worst, completely ridiculous - the numbers involved are not statistically significant, the data collected is barely qualitative and hardly quantitative and the controls are almost entirely uncontrolled. I've yet to read a study that doesn't qualify itself in its own conclusions by saying something like “this study doesn't really show anything conclusively, so more people should study this stuff and try to avoid the following sixteen mistakes we think we made...”

On top of that, the closer the researchers come to trying to make a proper, scientific, controlled study, the worse it is for the students involved in the darn thing.

Half the studies I read involved exposing language learners to completely made up words just so the researchers could make sure they weren't learning this vocabulary through some other means. Sure, it means you have a better understanding of the efficacy of that method of vocabulary acquisition (assuming the rest of the study isn't completely daft)... But what about the poor students who have now wasted valuable time learning words that don't exist? These words have been learnt and associated with meanings. They are now sitting in the students' synapses, ready to be pulled out and used “correctly” in term papers and job interviews.

As someone who often finds herself accidentally pulling out an Indonesian or French word when trying to remember a German or Estonian one, I can assure you that words previously learnt do stick around in the brain and reassert themselves at inopportune moments. And now these “scientists” have essentially graffitied the brains of well-intentioned language learners. It's negligent, from a language teaching perspective.

It's almost like those “scientists” who genetically modified a mouse to grow a human ear on it's back. Sure, the results are interesting, but the treatment of the subject boarders on the unethical.

Stop it. Stick with anecdotal evidence. It usually filters out the good from the bad over time.



*One day I'd like to meet Blind Freddy. He seems to be a very observant fellow, and would probably be an interesting conversation partner.

PDFs and the New Way

There are days I would love to have all of my readings and “papers” in an entirely electronic format. Surely it's time to leave actual paper to purely enjoyable pursuits? I should be able to download a journal article into a reader of some sort, highlight it and annotate it just like I would with a paper copy. I should be able to copy-and-paste the quotes I want to keep into my citation manager (can we adapt one to work on eReaders, please?), attach the whole file for later use and then use the citation manager to shuffle through the journal articles in order to find the one I was looking for.

Is that too much to ask for?

I have double-ups of everything because I can't highlight PDFs and I can't copy-and-paste print. Then you get the occasional PDF where you can't highlight OR copy-and-paste the text because it's either a scanned document (little better than a snapshot of the original) or it's been locked so the copy function is disabled. What, on God's good, green earth, is the point of that? What am I going to do with your precious document that would make you think copying a sentence is something that must be disabled? I'm talking to you, ELT Journal. If I can save a copy of the PDF, I've already copied the entire text. Just thought I'd point that out. Having to physically re-type every quote I want to use for no good reason whatsoever achieves nothing except my personal annoyance.

It's bad enough when, in this day and age, you still get databases and eJournals which don't have a 'download citation' feature. Hello! It's the Twenty-First Century! Offering journal articles without downloadable citation files is like offering scones without jam. It makes you seem uncultured or miserly.

We're almost there, people. The technology already exists, but hasn't been put together yet. Come on: an eReader that can allow me to do the same things with electronic Journal articles that I can do with the paper copies, a citation manager that works on eReaders, and databases and journals that understand what people actually do with their texts and offer the right kind of files to play with. Then we can all sit down for a nice Devonshire tea with scones and jam.

Also, I want an iLiad, but someone at iRex needs to realise that I can buy two computers for the same price as one iLiad, which isn't good. Kind of hard to justify that, even if the whole eReader-meets-jotting-paper thing is a little bit brilliant.

Shorter

It's 20:30 on a Friday night, and I'm at work. I'm so bored that I'm actually glad when someone asks me to print something for them. I've almost completely run out of "I could be bothered staying up", and I'm mildly convinced my arms are shorter than they were a couple of days ago.

Either that, or the computer screens have moved further away. At this point, either could be possible, for all I care.

The way it works

Phase 1: We've discovered this wonderful new thing that well let you do the old things in new and exciting ways. You can abandon the current way you do things which are bogged down in a structure that doesn't allow new innovations and creativities. Your hands will no longer be tied, and you will be able to experiment until you find the Right Fit, rather than forcing everything into a Stifling Mould.

Phase 2: You can include These Things, which would make your New and Improved Thing so much more Vibrant and Interesting.

Phase 3: You should do These Things, to make your New and Improved Thing look Exciting and Individual

Phase 4: Okay, actually all of the New and Improved Things must do These Things, to make sure we are fully utilising them

Phase 5: And your New and Improved Thing should also include the same things that were on the other fellow's New and Improved Thing, or people won't be getting the same level of service.

Phase 6: Also, stop doing those things that everyone else isn't doing

Phase 7: And make sure the things you are doing are in exactly the same order as the things on everyone else's New and Improved Thing. No, this isn't a New Stifling Mould, it's a branded image.

Phase 8: Why aren't your New and Improved Things bursting with creativity and attracting admiring throngs? You must be doing it wrong. Let's try something else.

The Story of the Little Mole

Like most people who have read the book, I find The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was None of his Business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch, utterly hilarious.

Yes, okay, it's a "poo book", and I know many librarians are totally over poo books, but this is a good one. A classic, you could say. And so very informative, in a scatological way. One could actually identify dung in the "wild" (if one lived on a farm in Europe) from reading this book.

Turns out the book is equally hilarious in German. I went looking for German children's books the other day to get some reading practise, and when I noticed this book was available I simply had to buy it.

Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat is perfect for a reading activity at the "slightly past complete beginner" level. You can get the 'gist' without quite knowing all the words for an initial read through, and then you can go back over it with a dictionary to see if you guessed correctly, or pick up on the details you missed.

Details which are somehow worth knowing, even if they aren't. Who doesn't need the word Pferdapfel in their vocabulary?

Anyway, I found myself a tad confused. One of the other books I bought was a German translation of Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram (also really good for reading at a beginners German level), and it clearly mentioned on the verso that it was a translation. Vom Kleinen Maulwurf doesn't, which made me suspect it was originally written in German. I wanted to read the verso of the English version to see if I could find more information, but WE DON'T HAVE IT!

I am shocked. Absolutely and thoroughly shocked to find myself sitting in a library which does not have a copy of The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was None of his Business. Even more shocking - the other local libraries only had one copy between them, and that copy is missing. I must make sure we buy copies in multiple languages.

Anyway, I finally thought to google the original publisher of the book, and confirmed that the German version is, in fact, the original. However, at no point did any of the libraries I consulted (including the Libraries Australia public catalogue) mention that the English version was a translation. Neither did any of the bookshops I tried originally - although I did discover that there's an alternative English title: The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit - which is closer to the German title, but not as witty. No idea if it's the same translation or not, there's no mention of a translator. Or that it's a translation.

For some reason, Amazon.co.uk is trying to sell both versions of the book together. That must be disappointing to whoever wanted two different books.

Even the wikipedia entry neglected to mention that it was a German original. We'll have to fix that...

Anyway, I was a bit put out that I couldn't find this information in Trove, or in the first five libraries I clicked on. I would have thought the fact that a book was the English translation would be fairly basic information to put in a catalogue record. No doubt many of these libraries had it in the "full" record - but not in the one that was available to the general public. Every now and then I like to pretend I'm not a librarian and use the catalogue like a normal person. It's always interesting to note how much libraries like to keep their patrons in the dark.

The fifth library I tried actually included the words "English translation" in the record, but made no reference to the original version, or the translator. The sixth included the German title in the record, but didn't bother mentioning why. What is wrong with you people?

It shouldn't be this complicated to find out if an insanely popular children's book was originally written in German. Only Mr God knows why the libraries of Australia and booksellers of the greater English speaking world think such information is not worth mentioning.

Das habe ich nicht verstanden

The other morning I caught the last five or so minutes of a show called "Yo Gabba Gabba" whilst eating my breakfast.

I gotta say, that show is seriously weird. I can't help thinking I would have appreciated it better if I was stoned. I spent those last five minutes (and the next ten or so minutes afterwards) saying "What?" a lot.

Then, I had a strange repeat experience later in the day - only this time I was reading Widdowson's 1979 book on applied linguistics - specifically the chapter on authenticity in texts supplied to language learners. This is one of those works which are referred to by every man and his dog, so I thought I should read it. I couldn't understand it. Bits were making sense, the rest of it may as well have been recited by people dressed as robots and hopping on one foot.

I found myself saying "What?" a lot.

What is it with applied linguistic theorists? They say something perfectly reasonable, and then "explain it" by saying something that seems barely coherent. It's as though the spend all day studying how people communicate, and then decide to see just how much they can mess with it.

Murder Must Socialise

I maintain that, somewhere, out there, there exists a copy of a half-finished manuscript by Agatha Christie. In this manuscript, Miss Marple has been invited by the daughter of an old friend to a house party in a small English country town.

Very shortly after arriving, Miss Marple wanders into the library to discover a dead body lying on the floor - stabbed and strangled! She replies in a way entirely natural and expected under the given circumstances:

"Oh, crap! Not another one!"

If I was one of those "amateur detective" characters that keep stumbling across murderers and dead bodies in book after book, I'd start getting a complex. I wouldn't accept invitations to parties, after a while.

Bulletproof tights

This is something worth listening to, if you have the time:

http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2010/pc/pod-v-080410-28m14s-tts.mp3

'Tis a programme from an Irish radio station (weblike) discussing the image of librarians and the stereotypes a lot of people just can't let go.

Library stuff

I love the fact that I have two academic libraries at my disposal. It's so very nice to have all those resources.

I recently discovered that Curtin's FindIt thingy has some lovely little things that JCU's FindIt thingy doesn't.

When you click on "FindIt at Curtin" in Google Scholar (you can set it to pick up Curtin in preferences whether you're a library member or not) it doesn't take you immediately to the article. It takes you to a page where you have a number of options depending on the article...

And one of those options (more often than not) is downloading the citation into EndNote. You don't even have to sign in! As long as you've got EndNote on your computer, it will just download the citation information for you. So, even if you don't have access to that article through Curtin, you can still get something useful out of them.

Very nice if you, like me, occasionally can't be bothered trying to figure out how each particular database wants to play with EndNote when you're doing your research in the first place.

My latest brilliant idea

I think my university should go bilingual.

I think they should pick a language which a) has a sizable number of "home language" speakers in the region and b) is spoken by a large number of prospective intentional students (and, maybe: c) is spoken by a sizable group of the international community). They should then offer subjects and, yes, maybe even courses in that language as well as English.

I love the idea of people being able to come here to take a degree entirely in Italian or German. I love the idea of local students having the opportunity to study subjects in a language other than English. How cool would it be to be able to study German literature in German? Or Italian cinema in Italian? And all without having to move to the other side of the country or another continent?

Imagine how much our student base would swell if, in addition to the students we already get because we're the "local" university, and the students we get because we advertise well overseas, we also attracted students who wanted to study in an English speaking country but didn't think their English was up to the challenge? Or potential mature-aged students from all over the country who speak English as a shaky second language but would still love to get a degree?

It could be the best and most vibrant thing we ever did - and could probably net us all sorts of interesting funding options from the government.

Of course, they would have to stock the library with enough books in that language to make it viable. And, of course, the existing staff would be offered free language courses to cope with the new bilingual environment, while the ability to speak XXX would be a valuable skill in potential employees...

A challenge? Yes. Expensive? Well, duh. But honestly, sometimes you get good returns from putting in a bit of effort.

A Lack of Clear Guidance

Or: My Kingdom For a Flowchart

I used them all the time when I was teaching - visual guides for how to set out an assignment.

They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but my favourite ones (and the ones my students seemed to like best) were flowcharts.

They were wonderful, magic things that helped you to understand the form of an essay by literally showing you the shape of one - a box standing in for the sentence you would write here, a line guiding you through the checklist needed for a good paragraph there.

If you put your main points in the appropriate boxes, writing the assignment was like running a hot knife through butter. It was a simple matter of wrapping some sentences around those points according to the specified rules (this sentence must give a general introduction, this one must point back to your thesis, that sort of thing).

I know how useful these things are. I know how much they benefited me when I was stuck on an assignment, and how much my students appreciated them. I still direct students to them all the time.

But I can't find one for a thesis. I've been asked if I know of one, and I've looked, but no one seems to think such a thing is worth producing. Now that I'm writing my own Masters thesis, I'm really feeling the lack of such a clear, simple guide.

You want a guide for writing a thesis? Here, have a whole book on the subject, full of wonderful things you don't have time to read and not a single thing resembling the simple, clear flowchart you desire. Or, here, look at a couple of examples of other theses. Surely you can glean what you want from here? Or, wait, here are some general guidelines for things you should think about when writing a thesis - what do you mean, they don't give you any actual writing guidance in regards to form? Why would you want that?

Just draw me a picture, man! Show me what the shape of the thing is supposed to look like.

I don't have time to read half your prattle - especially when most of it is great advice, but not relevant to the particular problem I have right now.

I want to see the form. I want to have it staring in my face. I want to be able to assemble my sentences like one of those jigsaw puzzles that have the shape of the missing pieces etched into the backboard. I've got fifteen thousand words to write, and I want to make sure I know where each of them are supposed to go before I waste any more time.

Oh, and if someone out there actually has such a flowchart, what the heck are you calling it? Why isn't it turning up in any of the most logical searches? What book have you buried it in without mentioning it to anyone?

Really, people, it's quite frustrating.

My Scathingly Brilliant Idea

"I've got it!" I said proudly, declaring my genius to everyone in the room. Sadly, that consisted of the cat and me. "It's perfect! Everything will work! All I have to do is convince my boss to create a job that doesn't exist and hire me for it."

As often happens in my life, I'm facing an unnecessary choice between several things that all seem like really good options. Unfortunately, they can't co-exist.

On the one hand, I really like my job. I love being a librarian. I specifically love being a liaison librarian at an academic library. I also love working with the people I'm currently working with, and although I think the institution I'm currently working for could do with a bit of work, I'm don't mind working here at all. So, staying exactly where I am and doing exactly what I'm doing seems to be a pretty good option.

Except that, I would also like to get another job at another library in one of the capital cities. When I first took this job my boss suggested it would be good for my career if I looked at staying here for a couple of years and then working at another academic library, and I thought that sounded like a pretty good plan. I still think it sounds like a pretty good plan - particularly as I like the idea of moving to Brisbane or Melbourne for a couple of years.

On top of that, I also want to go back to studies. Specifically, I want to study a language degree majoring in German. There are a couple of universities that offer part-time Diplomas in Modern Languages, which I could possibly do via distance education and would take about three years to complete. In theory, I could do those wherever I happened to be working...

BUT...

But I have seen the course I want to do, and I don't think I can do it via distance education. I don't even know if I want to do it via distance education. It's a brilliant three-year full-time Bachelor of Languages programme that offers all sorts of delicious subjects in Linguistics including such treasures as Traditional Grammar and Phonetics of Spoken Language along with literature subjects in the target language. I could do Classic Literature and Modern Theatre! As well as the actual "learning the language" subjects!

You can't do that in the part-time Diploma programmes. And while I believe you probably could undertake a course like that via distance education, it would be so much better to actually be on campus and talk to the lecturers and tutors face-to-face - as well as interacting with the other students. The evening course I'm doing at the moment has reminded me how beneficial sitting in a classroom with other human beings can be.

Only...

Only I'd have to be physically located in Canberra in order to undertake this course. Over the years I have previously wanted to live in Canberra. I almost got a job there at least twice (only each time I ended up choosing another job somewhere else). At the moment, though, it's not ticking my boxes for a place I want to live in. The thought of living in Brisbane fills my mind with interesting possibilities. Ditto for Melbourne. Sydney not so much, but I think I could make it work. Canberra, though, currently filling me with a sense of "eh". It's too much like Townsville without having the things I love about Townsville, and none of the things I've been hoping to get involved with in Brisbane.

But still, every time I think of that course, I start salivating.

Only...

Only I'd have to find a job in Canberra. And if I'm studying full time, I'd have to work part time. And getting part time work as a librarian isn't that easy in this present economic climate. And I love being a librarian.

Then it came to me - my brilliant idea. You see, where I work we used to have a position that involved providing liaison support to off-campus and micro-campus students. When the guy who held that position shifted into a new position, his job was disbanded. That is, all of the liaison librarians took on the role of supporting those students, instead of having someone who was specifically there as their first contact point.

I've often thought it would be nice if we brought that role back and expanded it, so that the off-campus/micro-campus liaison would actually create and deliver Information Literacy Training specifically designed for students whose main contact with the library was completely remote. We currently do a little bit of that, but it's not a major focus.

Now, in theory, a position could be created which involved creating and delivering online and remote IL training and information and research support. This position could be a part-time consideration operated in the afternoons (when distance students who work full time will be home and looking at their assignments) and, since the role involves helping students who aren't actually on campus, there would be no real need for the person filling this role to be on campus either.

I could, in theory, work remotely during semester time and come back to touch base during the inter-semester weeks. I could also be physically on the campus where I work during O-Week to help with the training, so I wouldn't be completely dead weight. That way I would still, sort of, be working here with these lovely people, while at the same time doing this course I want to do.

So now all I have to do is convince my bosses to create a position that they probably don't want to make and hire me for it even though it would mean they have to fill my current position with someone else - all in order to make life easier for me. What do you think my chances are?

The trouble with working in a library...

I had a strange desire to see if we had any books by H. Rider Haggard in the library so that I might try reading one.

Then I remembered that I own a copy of King Solomon's Mines which I've never gotten around to reading...

Stairs

"Go up those stairs," I say, pointing to the stairs to which I refer, "and go right down to that side of the building," I continue, pointing to the side of the building I'm talking about.

The stairs to which I refer are to my right. I think raising my right arm and stretching it out to the right of me as I point directly at the stairs (which can be seen from where I am sitting and, more importantly, can be seen from where the patron is sitting) is a reasonably clear indication of which flight of stairs I mean.

"Go upstairs and go down that side of the building?" the patron asks, in confirmation.

"Yes, that's right," I say, still waving my right hand towards the stairs which are on my right.

"Okay," she says, and promptly walks over to the other flight of stairs - the one to the left of me, and walks up those stairs instead.

I admit those stairs are closer to where we are currently sitting, but they are not closer to her goal. In fact, had she taken the flight of stairs I had indicated (which she should have been able to see from her position), she would have been on the same side of the building as the book she sought. It would have been a simple matter to walk down to the relevant section. By taking the stairs on my left, she doubled the distance she would have to travel and gave herself more opportunities to get confused along the way.

She is not the first person to watch me point to the stairs on my right, and then take the stairs on my left. I have seen it happen many a time, as has every single one of my colleagues.

I just don't get it. Are they so blinded by the "big" staircase that they cannot fathom the existence of another? Do they think we would send them the longer way if a shorter one existed? Do they have a problem with recognising the direction our fingers are pointing?

Is it possible they simply don't understand what we mean when we point at something? If that is so, then will they also go to the wrong part of the building to look for their books?

I fear I know the answer to that question, and it makes me wonder about the human gene pool.

Udolpho, or novel bashing

So far, it's feeling a little bit like Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded. Which, as I'm sure you remember, did not fill me with joy.

I mentioned previously that Jane Austen mocks this book in Northanger Abbey, which is interesting for a couple of reasons. The one I feel like mentioning at the moment is the fact that she engages in novel bashing while, at the same time, pointing out that novelists who engage in novel bashing are hypocrites.

It's obvious Austen has little respect for anyone who would read a novel like Udolpho, yet she also makes a point of mentioning that it's a bit rich when a novelist tries to establish the intellectual superiority of their heroines by suggesting they never read novels.

There's some sort of hidden cleverness in this. Like someone who sings a parody song about how parody songs show a lack of imagination.

I love the tradition of novel bashing. It's been around as long as novels have. Apparently, so the argument went, novels encourage sentimentality, which is a grave handicap to foster in a young woman. It makes them want to do crazy things, like marry for love instead of money. It also excites their imaginations, which is just asking for trouble, really.

Really, it's this strange desire we have to trash whatever is popular and enjoyable. These days, we bash novels which are popular enough to have everyone reading them. Twilight and the Potter novels are bashed by all and sundry just because they're insanely popular. Otherwise, they would be completely ignored. I wonder of the Brontës had to deal with the same thing? I can just imagine the kind of trash talk that would have gone on about Jane and Rochester...

When I was studying 18th Century literature I used a piece from an afterplay for an exam. Can't remember the title of the thing at the moment, and the Internet isn't as helpful as it could be. I'll have to look it up when I get home. Anyway, the whole play was about a girl who read too many novels, which made her susceptible to being emotionally manipulated by a conman who was trying to woe her in order to steal... something. Can't remember if it was her father's fortune or her virtue.

Actually, what I remember most about that afterplay was the girl's father. Man, that guy was a jerk. She wouldn't marry the man he chose for her because she was in love with the conman, so he spent the whole play calling her a "wanton hussy". That happened a lot in 18th Century plays, actually. Not to mention folk songs dating back to the Middle Ages. Girls who were saving themselves for a certain someone special being called whores and hussies by their fathers, who were essentially hoping to "sell" them to the highest bidder. Talk about double standards. Or maybe that was mixed messages.

What was I talking about anyway? Oh, yeah, novel bashing. Fun stuff.

Book Days

I still think librarians should have "book days" in addition to "sick days". I mean, if we don't get the opportunity to occasionally sit around all day reading books, what's the point of being lumped with that stereotype?

Jane vs Ann

So, I've started reading Northanger Abbey, in which the lead character is reading "Udolpho", by Ann Radcliffe.

I'm about ten chapters in, and I can't shake the feeling that the book she's reading is more interesting than the book I'm reading. Thankfully, I work in a library, so I've just borrowed The Mysteries of Udolpho and I'll see what this Radcliffe woman is like.

My French thingy is on it's way.

I want one of these:

Possible... or Probable? (press play, go away for 15 minutes then come back and watch it).

It doesn't exist yet, which is a slight problem.

It's getting closer with the iPad, but 'tis still a little way off. Give it a couple of years.

Review: The Complete Book of Roller Skating

Ah, second hand book stores. I really should keep out of them – especially when I'm on vacation and will have to carry the books home with me...

On my recent vacation in New Zealand I happened to walk into a second hand book shop, where I chanced upon a book that would seem, at first glance, almost completely useless:

The Complete Book of Roller Skating “by” The Editors of Consumer Guide®, published in 1979. I don't know why I had to buy it, but I did. I don't know why I had to read it, but I did. I don't know why I had to record a passage and use my Mac applications to turn it into a Youtube clip, but I did. Maybe it was the Oh-So-70s font on the cover of the book. Maybe it was the line drawings that seem to illustrate every sporting book of the late 70s and early 80s. Maybe it was the fact that I've never been able to face inline skates and secretly yearn for the days before you had to specify you wanted “quads” when talking to the rental people at the skating rink...

Whatever the reason, I found myself the proud owner of a thirty-year-old book about roller skating – supposedly, the complete book about the subject.

I have to say this book is quite interesting, but possibly for the wrong reasons. I always worry a little when no authors are willing to put their name on something, and the writing of this book is somewhat uneven. Parts of it are instructional, other parts evangelical – and you get the distinct impression that 70% of the book is padding, pure and simple. I have a feeling that they didn't really have enough practical material for more than thirty or forty pages about roller skating, and since two chapters on roller skating and a buyers guide would make for a terribly short “complete” book, they passed the thing around the office to see if anyone could add anything of interest.

Thus you have some passages walking you through the basics of skating backwards, and others waxing lyrical (well, prosaic) about the joys of roller disco. Some parts are surprisingly well written, yet completely pointless. Other parts are just completely pointless. There's a whole chapter dedicated to a “skating into shape” programme which doesn't actually include an exercise programme. They just tell you that skating is a great form of exercise, and so are running, swimming and riding your bike. It's almost as though everyone at the Consumer Guide® office thought an exercise programme was a great idea, but no one knew what one looked like.

I have to admit, though, I did learn a lot about roller skates and roller skating that I didn't know before. I just have no idea if any of it is still “true”. After all, truth has a use-by date, and a lot of things have happened in the world of strapping-wheels-to-your-feet since 1979. Take roller disco, for example. There's a whole chapter on roller disco in the book – including the clothes you could wear to the disco in order to look really cool. The opening passage is a brilliant piece of writing (that's the bit I've recorded, if you want to hear it - it's at the bottom of this post), but I'm not sure I'll ever use the advice they provide...

This book is, well, history. A flippant piece of throw away history that I doubt even The Editors of the Consumer Guide® expected to sell more than a few copies before being pulped. An attempt to capture a fad and jump on a bandwagon while the jumping was good.

I'm keeping it, though. That buyers guide at the end was actually kind of useful.

Showcase Presents: Booster Gold

*Spoiler Alert*

One of the first colour comic books I owned was a second-hand copy of Booster Gold #18.

Now, if you've never read a Booster Gold comic before, #18 is an interesting one to have as an introduction. For one thing, it actually fills you in on the character's backstory quite nicely and gives you a hint of what it's all about...

But the hint is actually a little off. You see, #18 is full of time travelling cops, superheroes who can save the day without changing into their costume, rings that can give you the power of flight, high tech gadgets and robots, multimillionaires with alternate identities and thieves who have become better men. You learn that Booster Gold was a football player from the 25th Century who fell from grace, then stole a time machine to come back to the 20th Century where he became a superhero using his (stolen) advanced technology. You learn this courtesy of the flashbacks of the cop who has followed him into the past to hunt him down. You learn that he's rich and has geniuses working for him, creating high-tech gizmos to use in his training. You learn that he has a robotic “coach”. And you get this wonderful James Bond style story that involves a dashing man of action saving the day in his expensive suit.

What you don't get is a true taste of Booster's character. You don't get the cocky, overconfident, brash, self-centred, money grabbing, attention seeking, juvenile yet strangely charming jerk that Dan Jurgen's creation is. You don't get the superhero-promoting-aftershave or the “Superman has nothing on me!” moments that give you the truest insights into what you can expect from Booster. On the one hand, he means well and honestly wants to be the hero and save the people and the day. On the other hand, he'll never pass up an opportunity to grab publicity and make money. He's not the squeaky-clean-boy-scout that Superman is. He's not the brooding, guardian-of-the-people-weighed-down-by-responsibility Batman is. He's a jerk who needs a good slapping, but he's also charming, lovable and fun. And he's trying – he really is trying to do the superhero thing properly – so you sort of forgive him for the rest of his faults.

He embodies the whole concept of “new and fresh directions” that was the point of the Crisis. He also embodies the mid-late 80s love affair with capitalism and corporate greed. Reading over the original comics later, it's hard to imaging Booster coming from the future into any year other than 1986. If they ever make a film of this character, I hope they set it in the 80s.

These are the sort of things you learn about Booster as you read the first twenty issues of his original twenty-five issue run, published for the first time since the late 1980s as part of DC's Showcase Presents series.

The Showcase Presents books started by packaging some stories that first appeared in the old Showcase title put out by DC in the 60s and 70s and has since moved on to later comics. This series is possibly the most magnificent thing DC has ever done. By publishing these stories without colour and on cheaper paper than they use for their Archives series, they've made all of these stories affordable and accessible.

There were many of us who were hanging out for the original Booster Gold series to be reprinted, and while the colour and the glossy paper would have been nice, having the whole series in one book for just over AUD$30 is a dream come true.

Finally being able to read the whole series from start to finish is... mixed.

I mentioned before that you find out a lot of things about Booster's character in the first twenty issues. That's because the first twenty issues are good. Okay, so they repeat the origin story a little often (#18 was the fourth time we hear it told from various sources). It's still a rollicking adventure story. The series starts in the middle of everything, goes back to the beginning, comes back to the present, bounces into the future and brings us back to the 80s a few months after we left. It plays with the cliches of the genre quite nicely, letting us have a few while joyfully breaking some others. Jurgens wanted his character to be different and fun, and for the first twenty issues that's exactly what Booster Gold was. Sure, there were moments of pathos, hints of romance and the sense that eventually Booster's irresponsibility was going to come back to kick him up the cloaca, but you never doubted that there would be light at the end of every tunnel and these characters were just going to get more interesting as things went on.

The characters had real legs. Jurgens not only created a group of people you wanted to know more about to start with, he also added to them as he went on. To begin with, there was the shallow, go-get-em agent who was a single parent after his wife walked out (and may have more to him than meets the eye) and the secretary who may be a romantic interest (but for who?) and may or may not become a superhero herself. Then came Jack Soo, who gave up working for S.T.A.R. Labs because designing gadgets for a superhero was so much fun, and Michelle Carter, Micheal's twin sister from the future who saved everyone's life with a stolen school bus, and then went on to steal the Super Suit (with magnetic powers) Jack invented. You just knew there was going to be a showdown between the sister and the secretary over the super suit. You just knew the secretary was eventually going to have to choose between the superhero stud she secretly fancies and the obnoxious agent she initially can't stand...

Except, none of these things happened.

Jurgens set things in motion in the course of those first twenty issues. Things that promised us something fun was going to happen. But then, just as we were starting to really appreciate what he had planned for Michelle, he killed her off. And in such a bizarre, pointless way, too. Part of his playing with cliches, I guess – he sets up a successful rescue and then, hey, waddayaknow, the girl dies anyway. And it doesn't make any sense at all within the terms of the over arcing narrative. As the last five issues progress, it becomes a little bit obvious that Jurgens killed of Michelle because he had to damage Booster and make him miserable – and he had to do that because of forces beyond his book.

One of the things I've always hated about DC is the propensity to create stories that sweep across the entire DC Universe. Every couple of years or so, some major tragedy, catastrophe or crisis happens which is supposed to involve every character in the universe and have cross-over story lines going through every title. This has always sucked. This has always sucked for at least three reasons:

1. Every title has its own continuity – it tells its own stories and follows its own arcs. Usually, only one or two writers manage to get their arcs to flow seamlessly into this company-wide story arc. For everyone else, it's a horrible imposition that seems forced and out of place and ruins the lines of the story. Going back years later to read the stories again, these issues make very little sense and are, simply, awful.

2. You never get the whole story of the company-wide arc anyway. It's mainly carried in the major titles with a few weird tendrils thrown off into series you might not normally buy. Later on, you may get the entire run of all of the Superman comics that fit in with this story, but good luck trying to find that one issue of the Black Canary which links the story from Superman #275 to Action Comics #423. And, if you were a Black Canary fan who owned every issue from that period, chances are that one issue suffers badly from the problem I mentioned in the point above.

3. Some twit always decides this is a great opportunity to kill or otherwise completely ruin one of the minor characters in the universe for the sake of pathos. So your favourite member of the Justice League is going to go insane, destroy all who are dear to him, and then die in a last heroic effort to save the planet. Every single time DC has run a company wide cross-over, they've killed or destroyed someone I like. Someone I would pay good money to see in his or her own series, or at least used more often. They seem to think this makes them clever. It doesn't.

So come the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988, DC runs this ridiculous Millennium cross-over thing where almost all of the heroes in the universe find someone close to them is, in fact, a Manhunter in disguise. I'm not really going to explain that one, except to say that the Manhunters are against the Guardians of the Universe and trying to stop the Chosen Ones from promoting mankind to the next stage of evolution. It was a stupid story.

Oh, and guess who the sacrificial bunny was? That's right, Booster Gold. Because of his role as the loose cannon in the Millennium story, Booster's life had to get miserable and fast. So Jurgens kills off his sister, introduces a new character (who we hardly ever see) purely for the sake of creating a distraction and turns Dirk, the agent, into the Manhunter in Booster's life. This, by the way, makes no sense. Dirk's character and motivations had been well established, and it's impossible to believe he was secretly a Manhunter. Everything seemed too fast – positively rushed – and clumsy. Motivations – ignored and trampled on. Logical plot progressions – thrown to the wind.

Jurgens spent twenty issues establishing a world that could have easily carried another twenty issues worth of stories... then spent five issues smashing it to pieces with a hammer.

I suppose at least it finished with the promise of a brighter tomorrow. In spite of his role as the sacrificial bunny, causing him to lose his family, friends and home, there was still an indication that Booster would continue to play a role in the DC Universe as one of the good guys. He managed to survive another twenty years as a minor character and guest star in other comics before the writers of another stupid cross over decided to use him as a sacrificial bunny again.

Turns out issue #18 was actually the peak of Booster's career. It showed everything the series could have been, if only Jurgens had been allowed to keep playing by his own rules.

As for the Showcase Presents anthology? Well, if you're a Booster fan, you can't go past this book. If you aren't a Booster fan, I think there's a good chance you will be one by the time you finish the first twenty issues. Then you can join me in my hatred for company-wide cross over stories.