The #ACRLBattledecks hosts and competitors. As champion, I was awarded the Ice King’s crown.
Well duh of course a tumblarian won. Sweet beard, Daniel.
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Some highlights from ACRL 2013 BattleDecks.
I can only imagine how Daniel spun that “freeloading sheep” slide. I can only hope gifs and/or Tumblr were involved.
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the pinakes: On Kate Tkacik's Nomination as a Mover & Shaker →
An excerpt from my communication supporting Kate’s nomination as a 2013 Library Journal Mover & Shaker:
Kate has transformed the atmosphere on Tumblr, her preferred online medium. […] While the librarian community on Twitter and Facebook has been “mature” (fully developed) for a few years now, until Kate started organizing, there was no specific librarian community on Tumblr to speak of. In my case, I followed a handful of friends, librarians and non-librarians that I already knew in real life or via twitter. I didn’t post any serious library-related content at the time.
But what Kate did was different: she immediately saw the potential within Tumblr to connect a network of librarians, and using its search tools started adding librarians to her feed, reblogging their posts, adding her own commentary, and creating her own original posts on library topics — both fun, fanciful posts and more serious professional questions worth addressing. Kate encouraged every librarian she found to use Tumblr’s built-in tagging system to use the tags “librarians” and “libraries,” so that we could find each other’s content, and follow each other’s blogs. She consciously set out to create a community, and very quickly she succeeded.
Raise your hand if you are a member of the Kate Tkacik fan club.
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What struck me about the workshop — and part of why I felt it was so successful — was the curiosity it generated in the students. Students asked unprompted questions about not only Impact Factors, but open access journals, pay-to-publish journals, journal subscription fees, author reimbursement (or lack thereof), and tenure in academia. These are subjects that have almost never come up in my experience as an instructional librarian (with undergrads); the fact that these were student questions driven by their own investigative experience felt like a breakthrough, as if we crossed a threshold point in their understanding of scholarly resources. I feel like the minutiae of database search will now come more naturally to them despite the lack of any direct discussion of the subject — a win-win if there ever was one.
— Investigating Journals: An Information Literacy Workshop for Science Students | Daniel Ransom, The Pinakes: From Papyrus to PDF (via thepinakes)
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The Most Life-Changing Burrito in America is... →
Did Esquire just name my favorite burrito — the place I took my tumblarian buddy Molly to last month — the most life-changing in America? They sure did. I don’t credit Esquire with much, but they got this one right.
Molly, has your life changed?
My life has changed.
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Afternoon Librarian Shindig →
The Information Amateurs Social Club is inviting any and all Bay Area-local librarians, archivists, MLIS students, and other assorted bookslingers to Zeitgeist this Saturday, February 23rd from 2-6pm.
Come out, have a beer, and have a good time! If the rain has gone away, we’ll be on the enormous patio. Newcomers are always welcome!
Bay Area tumblarians, kick it with Daniel this Saturday. You won’t regret it.
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Librarian Wardrobe: LW Valentine's Day Edition 2013! →
Daniel Ransom
Daniel Ransom lives in San Francisco and works in Oakland as an academic librarian at a small liberal arts university, with responsibilities in reference, instruction, and electronic resource management. When he’s not working with his students, he’s either at home working with his kids or out on a bike. He can be found online on twitter and tumblr as @ThePinakes (named for the catalog of the Great Library of Alexandria; he has a pet obsession with library history, especially the ancient variety).
“Daniel is THE BEST. He’s a great librarian, online and off. He’s been an incredible resource to librarian friends online (like me). He spent pretty much a week helping me revamp my application materials so I was ready to apply to professional librarian positions. He’s full of encouragement and practical tips on the profession. His grown a steady following on tumblr because of his willingness to share his real-life work, and engage in conversation with the community of (mostly young/new) librarians. He also wears a signature fedora—again, good stuff for a LW crush”
LW: You have been praised on giving advice and sharing professional info, have any tips on how to be a great mentor?
DR: I feel a little funny being labeled a mentor since I’m still relatively new to the profession. But I benefited a lot from the advice I received from experienced librarians while I was still getting my master’s degree, and I like to pass that advice on to the up-and-comers. There’s a tremendous energy among many of the new librarians I meet, and one thing I’ve noticed ‘mentoring’ others is that I get just as much out of the experience as they do. My advice to the advisors — anyone looking to take on a mentorship role — is that instead of feeling like you have to be a great sage, just be willing to be a part of the dialogue with new professionals. If you do that, you’ll benefit as much as they do, and it will energize your approach to your own work. Everybody benefits from a little professional conversation.
LW: What are your plans for Vday? Do you usually do something with the whole family?
DR: Admittedly, Valentine’s Day isn’t such a big deal in our household. Anniversaries and birthdays get much higher billing. Now that our elder daughter is in kindergarten, just helping her complete the 22 Valentine’s Day cards she needed to make for her classmates was the big effort. Before we had kids, we’d try to go out to a nice dinner, perhaps, or catch a movie. We have a few favorite ‘special event’ restaurants around San Francisco. But for our anniversaries, we try to take a trip and do something memorable — one year we rented a cabin in the mountains, and this year we got my folks to watch our kids while we took off for a weekend trip to Seattle. That little change of scenery is nice, especially when you’ve been together for a long time, as we have (sixteen years as a couple!).
I must say I am pleased as punch to see Daniel made the cut! Click through to see ALL the crushable tumblarians, including this memorable exchange with Patrick Sweeney:
LW: You live on a boat!
PS: I live on a boat!
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One of the perks of being a librarian: being witness to the quiet stillness of a library closed for the night.
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Molly (the LJ tumblr-in-chief) mentioned coming over for a library tour, but she left out the real reason you should be jealous: our excursion to Oakland’s El Farolito (close to Fruitvale BART, pictured) for the best burritos you’ll find anywhere.
GPOTumblarians.
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How to write the perfect cover letter →
Daniel Ransom | the pinakes: from papyrus to PDF
As I recently stated, I’ll be posting some of my longer tumblr posts to my Wordpress site. “How to write the perfect letter” was published on tumblr in September, 2012 and was one of my most popular posts to date.
This is gold, whether on Tumblr or on Wordpress.
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Daniel / thepinakes gave me a tour of his library and you should be pretty jealous right now.
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Why, Library of Congress, why would you have me shelve these two books so far away from each other?
PZ7 is supposed to be an obsolete classification for children’s literature. Obviously the person who did the LCN for Catching Fire was working under the old system. We use PZ7, though, at HNU. Give me Mocking Jay and Hunger Games (if it also needs fixing) and I’ll put them all together. We can discuss which option is best for the books: PS or PZ.
It’s helpful being followed by your cataloger.
<3
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thepinakes replied to your post: A couple thingsIs the 10 Best both fiction and non-fiction?
Yes, the 10 Best list encompasses both. Miraculously, this year, we ended up with five fiction titles and five nonfiction without even meaning to! A serendipitous balance. (We got a similar one with gender: the list is evenly split between men and women authors.)
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I’m a librarian who knows how important it is to vote, and I brought my daughters with me (in a wagon!) to the polling place so that they’ll know how important it is, too.
Librarian for Research and Electronic Resources
Academic Library
San Francisco Bay Area
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I wish I saw Daniel’s post before I went to my local library earlier! As such, I scoured the web for a nice GPOML.
I love this library, and it’s always looked like this. Well, not in the summer. This is a super pretty picture. Here’s a really old photo of it back in the day. They renovated the building many years ago, but simply added on to the back so they could keep the nice structure, which is great because all the cool old rooms are there. My favorite is the children’s room, which has a big fireplace and creepy but awesome owl statues on either side. I remember spending hours in this room reading. My proudest moment here was putting on a fairly successful kids’ program for a class assignment. I also worked at this library for three years in high school as a page.
If you go to the source link, you can read about Joyce Carol Oates talking about visiting the library as a kid. She was from this area and her mom was really good friends with my grandma. I didn’t like We Were The Mulvaneys though. I have a copy of the Smithsonian article she wrote that the quotes are from, and my mom and I agree that she doesn’t remember our town very well.
Oh! And they have a google page with pictures of the inside! Although, sadly, not of that beautiful children’s room. I promise to take a picture of it next time I go.
Yesterday Daniel / thepinakes invented something beautiful: GPOML, or Gratutious Picture of My Library. Cait’s library is a part of this new collaborative project and boy, it’s a looker.
