“The End” is nigh.

After selling over 50 million copies, Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events series finishes up this Friday with the publication of volume 13, “The End“. Pity I’m a whole hemisphere away from the Fond du Lac Library in Wisconsin, where they are marking the release with a trivia quiz and a chance to win a copy.

If you are not a kid’s librarian, it is still worth checking out the series, particularly the 12th volume “The Penultimate Peril“. This is set in the Hotel Denouement, that has arranged its services according to the Dewey decimal system. The elevator is on the First Floor at 118 (Force and Energy). The ninth floor includes an Indian restaurant (954) and a space observatory (999). If you want to know the rest of the layout, try the entire entry devoted to it in Wikipedia. (But please don’t let those people who accuse Wikipedia of being a shallow and skewed source know it exists..shhhh.)

Although more paranoid librarians whisper that it was a cynical “made to order” effort, with the publishers finding the marketing concept first, then hiring the author, I’ve enjoyed it immensely. I love the literary and pop culture references. (Sunny and Klaus Baudelaire, two of the protaganists take their name from the von Bulow murder of the ’80’s. Two of the Quagmire triplets are called “Isadora” and “Duncan” – a reference to dancer Isadora Duncan). The solutions to riddles and mystery in the plot expose youngsters to more literary technique, knowledge and research than the average 5o+ million seller.

The official Lemony Snicket website has a counter showing the hours, minutes and days before the release. I wonder how they feel about the reports on the Amazon.com web page that people have already received their copies? Or about the seemingly genuine review giving it 3 out of 5 stars?

It wouldn’t happen to Harry!

Google has bought YouTube. Google to acquire YouTube in $1.65 billion deal
by Wolfgang Gruener and Mark Raby.

A couple of days ago, Eric Bangeman foreshadowed that: money = copyright litigation = collapse. Will this come to pass?

Not necessarily, according to Gruener and Raby:

“Google’s acquisition of YouTube could also possibly help the latter with its recent legal headaches. Because of pressure from copyright holders like NBC and Universal Music Group, whose content was illegally being posted on YouTube, the San Bruno, Calif.-based site was forced to initiate a project that would systematically check for and prevent copyrighted videos.

This big decision comes at a time when content companies have embraced YouTube, most likely because of the Google acquisition murmurs. Just today, Sony BMG, CBS, and once-nemesis Universal Music Group, all announced partnerships with YouTube. Under the music company deals, users have permission to use Sony and Universal music in their own videos. The CBS partnership will give the network station its own “channel” on YouTube.”

There are a few gems on YouTube, along with a lot of dross (eg. hundreds of “funny” videos where one 16 year old pretends to take a photo of a group, but is really videoing them [chortle!!] ), so I hope the merger manages to preserve its chaotic soul.

I’m a bit of a comments freak. Love to make ’em. Yesterday, I started writing two on other peoples’ blogs, but they soon became a bit of a monologue, so I’ve combined them into one post here.

COMMENT ON TYPE OF RSS READER USED

This is in response to CW’s request to know whether people are reading her blog via RSS and if so, which aggregator.

” I read in Bloglines, but if a post really interests me I click through to the live blog to check the “flavour” of the post…and to see whether there are comments.

Bloglines makes posts feel a bit like a translated text…the substance is there, but the nuance is missing. Even seeing a photo of the author as I read their post on the live site adds a very different feel. (Like “I wouldn’t have thought someone who looks like YOU would have thought THAT).

I’m going to experiment in the next few weeks with using portable Thunderbird on a thumbdrive. My main reason for using Bloglines is that I can view it from home and work, but I’d really prefer to integrate my email, browser and RSS reader into the one place.

COMMENT ON DISABILITY AND VISIBILITY AND “SPAZZES”.

This one is a rather belated comment on Dee’s Temporal Island about attending a workshop about disability studies for the new millenium, and how it would be great if people did research on “how people with disabilities are often excluded from mainstream society, rather than embraced as a normal part of it”

It’s a really tricky one, the visibility/normalising debate. On holidays at a medieval castle open day, I saw a sign on the wall near a wishing well saying “Make a wish. Support spastic children. Visitors have donated $22 500.”

The medieval sign.

I felt like marching up to them with Mr8 and saying “This is my kid with cerebral palsy, not a spastic. It’s a really medieval way you’re describing him, can you please change the sign”.

Then I thought “Hold on, they are raising money for these kids and people probably are going to give more to the poor little spazzes than to the regular kids who just happen to have brown eyes and cerebral palsy”. The Cerebral Palsy League of Queensland was called the Queensland Spastic Welfare League until 1998, so maybe the castle just had not updated the sign.

It means degrading my kid’s dignity and doing a bit of emotional blackmail to manipulate the public to give more money. It costs a serious lot of money to support a kid with reallly severe cerebral palsy , so would I be doing a disservice to those kids (and adults) by insisting that my less affected kid gets called the right thing?

I’m growing to really love YouTube. I’ve already added links to library videos I loved here and here.

Pootling about the other night, I followed up a crazy marriage of pop culture classics that I first head about on Library Garden after they had a showing at Princeton Public Library. If you play the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon while viewing the Wizard of Oz, there are eerie synchonizations. Entire websites are devoted to the phenomena, for example the Dark Side of Oz and the Dark Side of the Rainbow. I don’t think it works for the Muppet’s Wizard of Oz (2005) but it might be worth the experiment….

If you want to see for yourself, the “Welcome to Munchkin Land” synchronization is on YouTube. Watch out for “black, black, black” repeated over shots of the wicked witch, “down, down, down” over the image of the red slippers disappearing, and “which is which” being sung as we see the witch. Also check out the munchkin ballet in time to the music and the not-so “ordinary men”. Search on “Dark side of Oz” or “Dark Side of the Raibow” to see other clips.

I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to make posts like this one. According to Eric Bangeman in his article YouTube’s Future (or lack thereof
“The questions on the lips of most people fall into three categories: how long the company will last, whether it will be sued out of existence, and whether someone is going to swoop in and buy it.” .

The lack of “in your face” advertising is something I’ve always found attractive, but Bangeman speculates that while they have 60 employees and the “monthly bandwidth bill is estimated to be around $2 million” it’s not fiancially viable to continue.

And, what happens if they do get money? Well, how about the creepy munchkins above? I’m not sure who holds the copyright in DSOTM and WOZ, but not all corporations have gone the way of Warner who has uploaded their entire back catalogue of music videos plus allows user-created content to use their music. Have profit, get sued.

So, if you want to see the girl who took a photo of herself for three years, or the bloke in Central Park who plays the amazing version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the ukulele, do it now.

I was half way through writing an early morning post about how thrilled I am that I’ll be presenting in Five Weeks to a Social Library when Mr4 (a known bed wetter) wandered up to me in his ‘jammies, gave me a big cuddle and said “The only part of me that isn’t wet is my head”. So please accept this is lieu….

If you’re like me, in the last couple of days you’ve seen links in many library blogs to this YouTube clip prepared for the 2003 St Joseph County Public Library Staff Development Day. You’ve probably thought “It’s a staff development video, how interesting can it be? “.

I exhort, encourage and strongly suggest that you watch it now. It’s an uplifting portrait of the day in the life of their library. I found myself not only admiring their library, but thinking about how my library would look portrayed in the same way – “If we were showing people staffing the enquiry desk at night, this is how it would look, and I can imagine us showing Jane in cataloguing doing that”.

Michael Stephens encourages us to steal this idea and see what we can come up with for our own libraries. Worth thinking about. I wonder whether he realises that he not only showed the day to day workings of the library, but also let slip how dedicated and engaged the staff are to have spent what was obviously a huge chunk of personal time crafting the piece.

Waiting in the queue for the Big Red Car ride at Wiggles World, I noticed a sign addressing me as a guest, as in “Guests who choose to ride must follow all instructuctions given by operator, signage and/or announcements”.

I spent an hour in the queue, so I had plenty of time to ponder about how we conceptualise and address our library users. I’ve worked in libraries where we’ve called them: users, “the public”, patrons, “the professionals”, borrowers and clients. Often it’s determined by whatever the ILMS wants to call them. Does it matter? They are the entire reason we get paid, so it should do.

Here’s my knee jerk reactions to some of the terms we use:

1) CLIENTS. We are providing a professional service and bound by professional ethics to serve them well. Implies a give them what they need approach. Reminds me of: architects.

2) CUSTOMERS. We need to serve them well because we are competing with others who provide the same service. Implies a more give them what they want approach. Reminds me of: supermarkets.

3) USERS. We provide products for use, and service is secondary. We are in charge of their experience – they use what we choose to provide. Reminds me of: software vendors.

4) PATRONS. They are in charge of what we do. We are there by their grace and they provide the means for us to serve them. Reminds me of: Medici family and Leonardo Da Vinci.

5) READERS. They are there only for one thing. They interact with the bookstock, not us. Reminds me of: bar code readers

6) BORROWERS. Also there for the books, not the service we provide. Reminds me of: neighbours who want a cup of sugar

7) THE PUBLIC. Includes everyone, but doesn’t really posit any special relationship. Reminds me of: an opera diva’s audience

8) THE PROFESSIONALS. I actually worked in a law firm where that’s what we were supposed to call them. Seemed to imply that I wasn’t also a professional. Reminds me of: real estate salespeople.

Library 2.0 is bringing more demands from THEM. They expect to be able to write to as well as read our web sites. They want to see what other works people borrowed at the same time as a specific book. They expect more personalised service, remotely and for longer hours. They want to bring in their own access devices and have them connect seamlessly to what we provide. Do the terms above fit them?

Maybe we could try: “collaborators” (WWII French Nazi supporters?), or “seekers” (buddhists or Quidditch players?), or “people” or “accessors” or “accessories” or…..

If we choose to call them guests, let’s hope we’re better hosts than the Wiggles. Having made it to the start of the queue and strapped ourselves into the Big Red Car, we had just reached the Wiggle’s kitchen and were singing into our microphones “Fruit salad, yummy yummy“, watching the cupboard doors grooving along as they opened and closed in time to the music, when we caught up to the car ahead. It had broken down. Wags the Dog ceased his descent down the slide into the lounge room mid-bark, the Wiggles disappeared from the giant video screens and we were asked to get out of the cars and walk back to the start of the ride.

Let’s also hope that our “guests” have the initiative of the mum in the car in front, who reassured the children with “Wow! No-one else gets to actually WALK through the Wiggles’ house, Aren’t we lucky?”.

The Co-Pilot and I were married today on the beach at Mission Beach in Far North Queensland.

We thought it would be romantic to run away to paradise and be married, so we did. We only told the kids about it on Monday. They were ringbearers and bubble blowers throughout the ceremony.

We made the usual vows and exchanged rings and then had a sand ceremony where we poured sand representing us individually into a container representing our marriage. If you are friends or family, we’ll email you or send you a postcard with the address of our family blog so you can check out more photos.

It may take a while as I’m going to stop blogging on my wedding night right now.

The Click06 Conference has begun in Perth at the Convention Centrer and continues until Friday. This is the is the Biennial Conference of the Australian Library and Information Association.

If you are in Perth and see a stranger who looks a little bit more interested, clever and organised than the average citizen, and also looks a little dazed and lost – pop up to them and help them out because they are probably a librarian with information overload.

To keep up with what is happening at the conference, while I’m out of the state on holidays, I’m reading these blogs:

• Official ALIA Click06 blog
• blog the conf: – attendees personal impressions of the conf
• University of Sydney’s attendees’ blog