Librarychan

Hello from Southern California, where the weather is fantastic and the food is even better!

There have been some big changes afoot: I am now engaged, I left my job in Rochester, and I’ve moved across the country. We moved to Los Angeles for my fiancé to pursue his Masters in Interactive Media Design (AKA game design) at the University of Southern California, and he starts this Fall semester. We’ve been here for a little over a week so far. Things are starting to settle now, but we still have a bit to iron out. I am unemployed again as the searching and applying for jobs in this area has not yet returned any rewards. I still have a lot to do.

ALA Annual is coming up! This will be my third consecutive ALA Annual Conference, and, since I was accepted to a LITA committee for the 2009-2011 term, I will be going to at least 3 more ALA conferences in the near future (including Mid-Winter). As a bonus this year, I will be roommates with none other than the Library Scenester. (Aren’t you envious?) With the lovely Erin around, I’m sure to have a fantastic time.

The LITA committee I will participate in after this upcoming ALA Annual Conference is the Program Planning Committee. My use of Twitter (@library_chan) and information from other librarians I follow were instrumental to my volunteering and getting accepted to the committee.

I follow several people on Twitter who are very involved in the American Library Association. As most know, Jenny Levine (@shifted) works for them, but Amy Harmon (@infowidget) was, and continues to be, an ALA Councilor-at-Large. I also follow Jason Griffey (@griffey), a very active member of LITA and the Program Planning Committee Chair. Aaron Dobbs (@awd) helped me greatly via Twitter. An active LITA and ALA member (and now an ALA Councilor-at-Large — congrats!), he lobbied the LITA president to include me in a LITA committee. Thanks, Aaron!

How did this come about? During the past ALA Mid-Winter Conference, many people were tweeting from sessions and meetings. In particular, Amy Harmon tweeted from ALA Council meetings and encouraged more of us to get involved. Though I love going to the conferences, I find the ALA hierarchy mind-boggling, and I had preconceptions about the inner-workings of ALA and its divisions. Amy Harmon’s call for more involvement coincided nicely with an announcement from the LITA Twitter account that LITA was looking for committee volunteers. What better way to get involved in ALA than to pick one of the most interesting and exciting ALA divisions? So I joined LITA (finally!) and signed up (and tweeted about signing up)!

• Title: A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France
• Author: Georgeanne Brennan
• Publisher: Harcourt Books
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Pages: 209

When I went to Paris for a week in 2007, I had difficulty finding any restaurant that served Provençal food. But even if I had been successful, I would have had trouble figuring out how to pay for it. Money was tight, but I managed. So regrettably, I left France without ever having tried rustic French food. Instead, we ate Chinese food, Italian food, German food, lots of crepes, baguettes, and croissants. Everything was delicious, but nothing was Provençal.

Reading Georgeanne Brennan’s A Pig in Provence was like taking a trip to the South of France without ever boarding a plane. The book is separated into eight chapters, each with a related recipe at the end. Brennan and her first husband moved to the South of France in the 1970s, intent on raising goats and making homemade goat cheese for income. They were both graduate students from California, making the move with their baby in tow. They managed to make not just money from their goat cheese, but friends as well.

Most of the chapters are about how and what Brennan learned about food from her friends in Provence. Whether it was the real way to make bouillabaisse (fish soup), pistou (French pesto), aioli (garlic mayonnaise), or tomato tarts, it all revolved around tradition, local ingredients, and community.

Though A Pig in Provence is Brennan’s personal story of her experiences in Provence, she managed to make it much less about her and much more about the place. Her descriptions and explanations were wonderful and complete. The only things I was left wondering about were questions about her personal life she never explained, and that’s quite alright.

Last night we tried one of the recipes: An Aioli Feast. We boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, green beans, a few eggs, and poached some salmon. Then we crushed four cloves of garlic and sea salt with a pestle in a mortar, mixed in three egg yolks, and added a cup of olive oil very slowly. To eat, we dipped all of our food in our aioli, including a baguette from the store. It was simple and delicious! 4.5/5

A couple weeks ago, I attended a Rochester Regional Library Council workshop called “The Changing Role of Libraries: Designing the Library of the Future.” It was presented by David W. Lewis, Dean of the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Libraries. The workshop was split into two parts: a lecture and group work. Read the rest of this entry »

• Title: Queen of Fashion
• Author: Caroline Weber
• Publisher: Picador
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Pages: 292 (with notes, 372)

As my book review on French Milk gives some indication, I’m a bit of a Francophile. It all started sometime around the opening of Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette (2006), inspired by Antonia Fraser’s biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001). I loved the film, and my interest in Marie Antoinette intensified when I visited Versailles in the summer of 2007.

There is something about monarchies that I find absolutely enchanting: the history, the genealogy, the societal pressures, the mores, the architecture of their abodes, the luxury. This extends even to the British monarchy. I am also mesmerized by anything about Queen Elizabeth I and the rest of the Tudors. (This interest was cultivated long before my interest in Marie Antoinette.)

Perhaps my interest in these infamous queens has something to do with the fact that so much was expected of them and yet they faced great obstacles in achieving anything because they were women of their time.

Caroline Weber’s fantastic biography of Marie Antoinette, Queen of Fashion, approaches the subject in a refreshing way. Pointing out the intentional and unintentional symbolism in the styles and colors of the clothing the French queen chose to wear provided another dimension to the story of her life. In the introduction Weber provides, she explains that this biography was meant to fill in the gaps that other biographers left out. Since clothing was such an integral part of Marie Antoinette’s life, to tell her story without a detailed account of what she wore and why ignored an entire facet of her existence.

Weber doesn’t just talk about the clothes Marie Antoinette wore, but also her life, the trends of the day, her influence on French style, the symbolism of the clothes her countrymen wore in revolt, and the French Revolution’s influence on fashion.

All in all, I felt even more sympathy for Marie Antoinette as a human being after reading this book. The first time I ever heard of her, likely in elementary school, was of her allegedly saying “Let them eat cake!” in response to news of starvation, extreme poverty, and famine in France. (That was discovered to be a false accusation.) This book and the aforementioned movie paint pictures of a Marie Antoinette who was not perfect, but certainly did not deserve to be maltreated and executed. They illustrate a complex and nuanced view of the life she led, and how much she really was a victim of circumstance. 5/5

Inspired by Erin (the Library Scenester, a source for many great ideas), I think it’s about time to reflect on the past, the present, and the future.

2008

• I started a professional blog (first on Blogger and then migrated to Wordpress).
• After a year and a half of graduate study at Syracuse University, I completed my Master of Science in Library and Information Science in May.
• I ate at Per Se in New York City. (Pictures are here.)
• I traveled to California for a month to explore the state and attend the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Anaheim. I went to Disneyland on my 24th birthday.
• I began cooking as a hobby. (Zuni Cafe is my favorite cookbook.)
• I went to a farmers’ market for the first time (and started a local food addiction).
• I spent (and still spend) a good deal of time on the job hunt. Doing so, I realized what a bad place Central New York is for an unemployed librarian seeking a full-time job.
• I went to my first New York Library Association (NYLA) Conference in Saratoga Springs, NY.
• I started my first “real gig” post-graduation as a substitute reference librarian at a local public library.
• I was approached to have one of my blog posts published in the NYLA Ethnic Services Roundtable (ESRT) Newsletter.
• I saw over 45 movies in 2008.

2009

• I plan to make the most out of my substitute reference librarian position. So far, I have learned a lot about public librarianship and reference services. I haven’t done as much children’s reference work as I would like, but that will change soon. I have a lot of ideas for programming, policy, website changes, and general improvements that I should write about on this blog. (The fact that I have so many ideas makes having such a small amount of responsibility frustrating sometimes. Writing about my ideas might help with that.)
• I am broadening my search criteria for a more fulfilling librarian position. (And hoping the economy gets a boost through the change in administration.)
• I will try to read more, write more, and be active more.
• I will be attending my third American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago in July. Even though it won’t be my first time, I’m just as excited!
• I also hope to go to Alinea in Chicago and Chez Panisse in Berkeley this year. We’ll see!