Talking in the Library

The ABC's of Summer in Hale Library

There are a lot of changes going on this summer - here's a quick A-Z rundown of things you need to know.

A is for alphabetical
All our journals and magazines are now in alphabetical order on 1st floor.  No more trying to remember call numbers - just find your journal by title. 

B is for basement
The only area in Hale Library not affected by summer projects is the basement.

C is for carpet
Carpet is being installed this week and into next on 2nd floor and in a few of the meeting rooms.  This may create a little more noise than you're used to; 1st floor should stay fairly calm if you need a quiet spot.

D is for diamond
You might need to take a new route to get to familiar places - just follow the color-coded diamond-shaped wayfinder signs.

E is for elevator
Don't forget to use the elevator to exit the building from 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors - the stairs won't do you any good right now.

F is for familiar
Our media collection - video tapes, CDs, and DVDs - is now located on 3rd floor, in the familiar big white cabinets you remember from 2nd floor.

G is for Great Room
The Great Room is closed until June 10th, so we can continue the mural restoration project that started last summer. 

H is for Help Desk
Our temporary Help Desk on 1st floor can give you a hand with checking out and returning materials, reference questions, getting around the building, using equipment - whatever you need!

OK, that was actually an A-H rundown, but you get the idea. As always, if you have any questions about the projects, give us a shout via your favorite communication channel on the Ask A Librarian page.

Podiobooks and Free Music Archive

At last, free audio books and music, with the added bonus of being guilt-free.

I'm always on the lookout for podcasts and audiobooks that I can listen to while I'm weeding or mowing or otherwise trying to keep my yard from looking like an abandoned lot.  So, I was excited (maybe even jumped up and down) when I stumbled across Podiobooks.  Podiobooks are free(!) serialized books that are released as podcasts.  My first listen has been The Secret World Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libby, read by Veronica Giguere.  Love it.  For you authors out there, Podiobooks welcomes you work.

The next find wasn't mine, it was Tara Coleman's.  But she apparently doesn't love you all enough to  share it.  I do, however.  If you're on the lookout for free music, try the Free Music Archive--especially if you want to move away from the overplayed on the radio variety of music.  While I'm tempted to linger on "Everyone in Town Wants you Dead" in the Old Time/Historic genre, there's plenty to hear under rock, international, country, R&B, and other genres.

The best bit is that both Podiobooks and the Free Music Archive operate under Creative Commons licenses, which means that the authors and artists, rather than publishers or producers, get to decide whether works can be downloaded for free (and here, they can) and to what extent you, the listener, can remix or modify their work.  Each song or podcast will list the license.  So, if I'm intrigued by Glass Candy's Iko! Iko! (vocal/conga mix), I learn that the license for this song is a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. And clicking on that license will explain exactly what Glass Candy is agreeing to let me do with the song.

Happy Holidays: What we're listening to

Now that we've shared our favorite holiday films, we've prepared this big mixed tape of our favorite holiday music for you.  And when I say "mixed," I mean, oh my look at the crazy eclectic mash of music what is some of this stuff?

So, from us to you is a selection of holiday music:

SeeqPod - Playable Search

Want to find any of this music? Here's our playlist

Low: Christmas
Maybe this Christmas
Maybe this Christmas Too
Maybe this Christmas Tree
Sufjan Stevens: Songs for Christmas
Mannheim Steamroller (they seem to come out with a new Christmas cd every year)
Diana Krall: Christmas Songs
Pogues: If I Should Fall from Grace with God
Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Shirley Temple: I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
Elmo and Patsy: Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Bob and Doug Mackenzie: Twelve Days of Christmas
Adam Sandler: Chanukah Song

And really, it won't be Christmas if I don't get a hippopotamus!

What are you listening to?

DJ for a day, Halloween edition

One of the things I most miss about really good live broadcast radio is a talented disc jockey mixing a Halloween-themed set. I've been deprived of this subtle and fleeting pleasure ever since my favorite freeform eclectic music station switched over to news-talk. Pah. At some point I attempted to make my own Halloween mix, but it's a clumsy listening experience. I just don't have the knack for picking out music that fits the theme AND blending it in a way that enhances each song and the entire set.

So I'm turning over my wish to the crowd. Collectively, you can DJ my Halloween (and possibly your own). It's tomorrow, by the way, so start dropping those suggestions.

Since I'm fully aware that I'm a member of the crowd, I'm including a few of my personal faves, with commentary, to get the music started:

"Hell" - Squirrel Nut Zippers - Cake made from ground-up bones? Mmmm.
"Superstition" - Stevie Wonder - Cliched, but so awesome.
"Witchcraft" - Frank Sinatra - Halloween-themed in title only, which is part of the fun.
"I Put a Spell on You" - Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Sets the standard for creepy, possessive lyrics.
"Werewolves of London" - Warren Zevon - Any live version is best. Perfect hair is optional.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Are you buried in invites, notices, and updates from social networking sites?  Way behind in your feed reading? Not even sure how you should react to someone saying they've become an avid tweeter? 

Did you ever wonder where the "e" from "flickr" went?

This video is here to help you. 

P.S. Librarians are total social networking geeks.  Here are our flickr photos, our facebook page, all our RSS feeds, and some del.icio.us links.  Please digg this post; if you don't, we might start plurking.

Not so random song of the day

I've been known, on the most rare of occasions, to randomly burst into song. Today my song is not quite as random, and to celebrate I decided to share it with the world!

Get it? "It was the third of September". Today is the third of September! Sing it loud and proud (your father need not be a rolling song for you to belt out this Motown hit).

Puzzling Out Enigma

This point has likely been made before, but it bears repeating - you can ask us anything.  Case in point: a student approached me today trying to remember the name of a song by Enigma (known citation information included "it's in French, and I think it's on their Greatest Hits album").  A lesser soul might have poked fun at this individual for listening to Enigma in the first place, but I'm an Information Professional.  A little searching online narrowed it to two - but how to hear the full tune to be sure?  Check out SeeqPod Music and search for any song (their list is always growing) and listen for free.  As nothing gets downloaded, no illegality takes place (i.e., it's not piracy)!

I Learned it at the Record Store

In dire need of something new to groove to, I stopped in at my favorite local independent music store.  In addition to walking out with a stack of new cd's I learned:

Oh no, not Danny Boy!

When it comes to Irish music, Shane's my boy, not Danny.  Fronting the Pogues or the Popes, Shane MacGowan is the one for me.  Whether it's the little Christmas carol (carol?), "Fairytale of New York," the bloodcurdling scream in "Turkish Song of the Damned*," or a glimpse of his softer side in "Haunted,"  well, it doesn't matter as much to me that the teeth he has left are black.

To experience Shane MacGowan for yourself, stop by Hale Library with your laptop.  If you have iTunes loaded and a wireless connection, you can find my iTunes shared library (skearns’s Library) and listen to the albums I have.  Can't find the Shared lists in your iTunes?  Go to Edit/Preferences/Sharing and click on the "Look for Shared Libraries" box.  Be sure to share your music, too. 

A note about two of the Pogues albums--MacGowan went on a "hiatus" from the Pogues for about ten years when he became Shane MacGowan and the Popes.  The two Pogues cd's released during that period, Waiting for Herb and Pogue Mahone, are excellent, but missing the rawness that would make them outstanding.

*oddly, not too bloodcurdling in this clip. 

I Don't Worship the Devil, I Just Love Rock

I'm a rocker.  I rock out.  This doesn't mean I participate in black masses or the sacrifice of goats.  Or at least, if I were to, hypothetically speaking, the two would not automatically be connected.  Rock and Roll has been called the Devil's music since the days of Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis, but in the simpler time of the 1950's, this was due more to the association of "young people's music" with gyrating hips than actual references to Old Scratch.  As the 70's and 80's brought us such gems (gems, gemstone, rock - get it?) as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and GWAR, society saw more and more the shaking of one's head, as if to say "yes, yes, yes," called headbanging, and the thrust of a hand skyward with the index and pinky fingers extending outward from the fist.  The sign of the horn.

There is some dispute as to what rocker started this trend.  On the cover of 1977's Love Gun, KISS bass player and occasional lead vocalist (and co-star opposite Tom Selleck in 1984's sci-fi thriller Runaway) Gene Simmons can be seen making this particular gesture.  However, Ronny James Dio (of Black Sabbath, Dio, and the Tenacious D movie) claims that the wicked hand sign originates with him (his grandmother taught it to him as a way to ward off the evil eye).  Either way, the symbol itself is not one of evil, but of one's dedication to the Metal.

Why do I bring this up?  The thing is, I, and a great many other people, will still throw up the sign of the horn for any sort of favorable happinstance in order to display our approval (from me, its roughly the equivalent of a "thumbs up," only more rockin').  So don't be confused (as a colleague of mine was earlier today); I'm not putting a hex on you, I'm just saying that life is just metal, and metal is awesome.