A Rant about how no one cares about what I say

Tee hee, silly title, right?

It really doesn't have to do with this blog, at least entirely.

I'm just trying to figure out why people decide to participate in certain online conversations and not others, in social media like Facebook and message boards.

I could post a link to the most amazing article that has pertinence to most of my Facebook friends, but it goes unremarked upon and unnoticed beneath all of the infantile and ridiculous quizzes. (Fortunately, I've discovered you can hide quizzes without hiding the friend). Because I really don't care what video game character you are, or what you just did in Mafia Wars.

Yet an acquaintance posts something about a nefarious bodily function, and she gets 10 replies... a genuine conversation.

It isn't unique to Facebook, either. This has always happened to me on various message boards, dating back to the mid-1990s. I've used dozens of screen names, so I don't think people see my name and ignore me...

Maybe I just don't have anything interesting to say? Why do some people's opinions mean more to others, especially in an online environment?

The Hangover/Random Stuff/Father's Day

So we went to see The Hangover yesterday -- my boss graciously watched the boys so we could get out and enjoy some time together. I think this was the first movie that we've attended together since last summer. We saw Dark Knight in Myrtle Beach last July or August. Yikes.

Anyway, it was a funny movie...full of infantile jokes and so on. My following rant has nothing to do with the movie itself, which I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel in a couple of years.

Shortly before the movie started, a group of giants sat in front of us in the non-stadium theater. I really hate this because the theater had probably 20-30 people and over 100 empty seats and this big goofball HAS to sit in front of me.

So we moved over to some empty seats across the theater, and while we were moving, Lisa noticed one of her former students (a rising 6th grader) and his eight year old brother, accompanied by their mother. The movie hadn't started yet, but we knew it was R-rated and from the trailers knew the content probably wasn't appropriate for children. In fact there were several groups of families with teenagers at this screening. As we watched the movie, I was even embarrassed by some of the content of the movie -- I couldn't imagine what the parents were thinking about some of that stuff. None of them got up and left either, but at least they didn't talk through the movie. I guess that is one consolation.

For being in a supposedly conservative area, where "church" means Southern Baptist and liquor can't be found for purchase between 12:01 am Sunday until 12:01 am Monday, I was shocked to see so many underage kids at this movie. I couldn't imagine my parents taking me to Porky's or Revenge of the Nerds back in the day (although I watched both on Cinemax well before I was 17). Unbelievable, but I guess the upside is that they were with their parents and not alone. If parents want to make that kind of choice, then they are free to do so.

Now some random stuff:

• My eye is finally getting back to normal. I poked it with a garden stake last Sunday night while weeding the tomato beds. I nicked the cornea and caused "significant" damage to the eyeball. Nothing permanent (to my knowledge), but I was pretty miserable for most of last week. Two sets of eye drops and now down to just a steroid to get the inflammation and light sensitivity alleviated. Almost back to 20/20!
• I had an enjoyable Father's Day. We went to our new church (more on that later), Owen made me a key holder at school, and both he and Wyatt "signed" my Father's Day card. Capped off with a movie and dinner, it was the perfect day. I can't believe it's been three father's days so far!
• Work is quiet, even with summer school in session.
• Our new president, Dr. Robert Wyatt, has been on campus even though he isn't "on the clock" until 1 July. This is an excellent sign, and it goes without saying that everyone on campus is excited about his arrival.
• My panel session talk at the SCLA Summer workshop was very well regarded. I got a lot of compliments from people in high places. I even pulled out the "What do libraries and bakeries have in common?" joke. Answer: Neither ever has enough dough.
  

That's it for now.

What's in a job title?

On Tuesday (June 9), I participated in a panel discussion at the SCLA college libraries summer program in Columbia. The panel discussed emerging roles in academic librarianship, and I was fortunate enough to be selected to discuss the small college perspective alongside two librarians from Clemson University.

Emerging roles was the theme of the workshop, and throughout the day I heard stories and anecdotes from larger school librarians about how much we all have to multi-task. I felt reassured that what we do at Coker in this regard isn't that much different than at other schools.

I feel that job titles in our field are mere starting points or "tips of the iceberg." Some are bound by HR/Personnel restrictions, while others of us can change our titles easily. Coker lies in the middle of these two points. I got to pick the favorite of my two main responsibilities to put first in my job title. I made this change recently (officially), and included it in my e-mail signature. Two days later, after sending out a staff and faculty-wide e-mail, I got a request to help someone with Microsoft Access! I guess "Electronic Resources" means something different for a non-librarian!

Here's an outline of my talk:

· Interviewed for Electronic Resources position (newly created) got the Bibliographic Instruction position, ended up having both jobs!

o Although resources were handled by other librarians, the sheer number (thank you PASCAL and DISCUS!) of new and future resources

· Unique background in a small family owned and operated business (bakery) helped facilitate transition to small college library job

o Multitasking is nothing new for me: I am also a reference librarian, collection development/liaison librarian, systems librarian…utility librarian!

· I view “electronic resources” to cover the broad spectrum of information delivery systems, not just periodical databases and other traditional resources

o Some of my tasks since coming to Coker:

§ Electronic Resources

· Virtual chat using Meebo & Facebook

· Kindle as a cost-effective replacement for subscription to New York Times

· Personal Response System (clickers) as an evaluation and assessment tool

§ Systems

· First major project was preparing to migrate from Voyager to III/Millennium

· EzProxy to provide off-campus access (moving from a homegrown solution)

§ Instruction

· Started a one-credit Intro to research skills course (LIB 101), assist with implementation of Advanced Research Skills Course (LIB 301)

· Assist with fundamental computer and research skills: first generation college students, non-traditional students, and students from “corridor of shame” school systems

§ Outreach

· Marketing the library

· Other roles: graduate school advising

o Graduate school forum

o Small school syndrome: more access to students, we know most of the juniors/seniors on a first name basis, this role has fallen through the cracks

Our discussion was well received, and I personally got several flattering comments. I tried to keep it light with humor -- I even made a horrendous pun about both libraries and bakeries not having enough dough.

Is it peculiar that I was more worried about driving and finding parking than I was about giving the actual panel discussion?

Tough Decisions

Yesterday afternoon was spent making decisions on what print periodicals to keep in our collection. It pains us to cut anything, especially from our very small print periodical section, but with the economic realities of this upcoming budget year, it is a necessary evil.

Our periodicals just don't see a lot of use, unfortunately. We've tried talking them up in courses and in faculty meetings, but these methods have not reaped any significant benefit.

The good news is that most of the periodicals are covered in full-text databases, which students and faculty prefer to digging through bound periodicals and back issues for articles. Our database usage is way up, of course.

We're planning to keep a large amount of popular periodicals for browsing purposes, and we'll end up keeping some journals that are tied to our most popular majors and minors.

We've shifted the subscriptions for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the Kindle, and I hope to promote and market the e-reader more next fall.

(Thanks to University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Library for the picture)

Summer Projects at the Library

We had a splendid graduation on Saturday, with 180+ students earning diplomas. The weather cooperated for our outdoor ceremony, although it was hot with the black regalia!

I'll be starting my annual summer "catch up" projects soon. They will include:

• Statistics - we gather a multitude of statistics for a variety of professional and governmental agencies. I will be placing them in spreadsheets and deciphering what the individual surveys are actually looking for.
• LibGuides - we will be adding to our very slim collection of subject guides. We need to beef them up for a hard launch in the fall
• Revamping LIB101 - Alexa and I are retooling LIB101 from the ground up, and going without a textbook.
• Updating EzProxy - our proxy software is a couple of years old now, so it will need updating with the help of our crack IT staff. I probably won't do this until mid-July when Coker is not in session
• Prepping for my SCLA poster session - I am still working on a Kindle poster idea for this Fall's annual conference.

This is only the tip of the iceberg!

New blog, school ending, kids

I've started up a new blog that will cover the activities of the Coker Library - Information Technology Center. Check it out at cokerlibrary.blogspot.com. Mostly library news and information, it probably will only be of interest to Coker students, faculty and staff. But maybe random people might find it interesting.

The semester ends early next week for the day students and the end of next week for our evening school students. Graduation is May 2, at 9 am. Seems like I was just helping the freshmen move in to their dorms back in August. Wyatt wasn't even born yet! Amazing how quickly time passes...

Speaking of Wyatt, he is now nearly seven months old. He is cutting some teeth and is getting close to sitting up on his own. He is an extremely laid-back baby, so we often "forget" about him. Now before you call social services, we don't really forget about him. But he often will just chill in his bouncy seat while we are busy in other parts of the house. He rarely cries when he is hungry or needs a diaper change -- only first thing in the morning most of the time. He adores watching Owen and has a smile for everyone. Fortunately, his allergies are very mild compared to Owen at this stage. A little bit of cradle cap and eczema, but no where near the level that Owen had.

Owen turns three in two weeks. What an amazing little boy! So smart, funny and getting bigger each day. Fortunately, he has his mother's amazing memory. He remembered that that Lisa's dad gave him a specific shirt a year and half ago.

Reference Desk LiveBlog 30 March 2009

It's time to LiveBlog. It's been far too long.

8:02
Time to go home!

7:38
A rush of activity!

I've been working on circulation stats, pulling them from our III server. Since we joined the statewide borrowing network (i.e. shared catalog), pulling circ stats has been a little cumbersome. Instead of listing just our locations, it also lists the locations of each school that we've borrowed books from. Interesting, but difficult to sort out the numbers. Once I got some reasonable numbers, I had to remember how to fix comma separated value text automatically. It finally worked!

I also had a citation question, my first real reference question tonight. It was a good question: how to form an in-text citation in MLA for an online encyclopedia. Essentially, the name of the entry, in quotes, then in parenthesis gets the job done.

About 15 minutes left.

6:33
A reference question of sorts, more of a homework help session. I get a lot of these sessions, particularly with older students with difficult assignments. This particular student has a paper due but needed clarification on part of the assignment. Unfortunately, the professor has been missing class so she couldn't get any help there. Enter reference librarian.

6:06
Well, I helped someone get a book on reserve. If I was designing this library all over again, I would make the reference desk separate. Most of the questions I do receive are directional or could be handled by a work study student. But it really doesn't bother me. Service is very important, at any level.

5:50
The reference desk has that quiet feel to it tonight. It's a shame, because it has been so busy lately.

5:37
No reference questions yet. I see a lot of LIB 101 alums in the library, though. Always a good sign.

5:24
We couldn't find a barcode for a juvenile board book. Turns out that the last pages were stuck together. Fun times.

5:12 PM
The library is busy, heading into the last month of the school year. It's amazing how fast this school year has passed. It seemed like yesterday I was helping the freshmen move into their dorms!

We are getting ready for our summer projects, so Alexa and I were discussing some possible areas to tackle during our quiet time.

Getting What You Pay For

One of the best things about having a blog that no one reads (or at least comments on the posts), is that I can have the occasional self-indulgent post that is totally irrelevant to almost everything. For instance:

I have always hated buying clothes. It has something to do with being overweight, because I always hated being reminded what sizes I was (especially waist size).

Back when I was single, I would buy nicer quality clothes -- and most of them I still own. For instance, I have two L.L. Bean shirts that I bought during my freshman year in college (1992-1993). Both were fairly expensive (especially the flannel lined canvas shirt), but are in really good shape. A little weathered, but they are just now getting broken in.

Flash forward to some clothes I bought a year or so ago from Old Navy. Half the price and they are already in much worse shape than the L.L. Bean shirts. The button placard (I think that's what it is called, the strip of cloth where the buttons are sewn on) is puckered and frayed and the color is already fading.

My favorite cheap clothing story has to do with Old Navy. After I lost 70 pounds, I had to go out and buy a lot of new clothes. There was one particular type of shirt I liked from ON, and I got a couple of different patterns/colors in the same style. Well, you would think that the identical style shirt (with just different colors) would fit the same, right? Guess again. The two shirts were made in different factories and thus had different quality control and tolerances. Ridiculous. So, I have two identical shirts with different sizes.

ACRL 2009 Breakdown

I returned from the ACRL National conference in Seattle late Sunday night. I missed a little bit of the conference on Sunday, but I needed to get home and get back to work. Never mind that I came home to two sick kids and a very worn-out wife.

First of all, Seattle is a great city. Clean streets, friendly people, great food...all in all a great place to have a conference. Normally, I tire of the big city after three days or so -- but not with Seattle. Maybe it was because I haven't been out of South Carolina for any lengthy amount of time, but it was definitely somewhere I could live, work, and raise a family. It reminded me a little bit like Asheville, NC but on steroids: progressive thinking, artsy/folksy, and lots of Subarus!

The conference was very informative, to say the least. My brain runneth over with all of the ideas and innovations I would like to try here at Coker.

I was fortunate to win a scholarship to attend the conference. Looking at my professional development budget, I wouldn't have been able to attend without it. Should any of the ACRL people stumble across this blog post, thank you for awarding me the scholarship!

It goes without saying that I had a lot of preconceptions about the conference before I even set down in Seattle. Even though I had read through the conference schedule, I thought that a lot of the discussions might be above my head as a relatively new librarian. Definitely not the case. Also, librarians are all in the same boat regardless of size of school or budget. Our biggest challenges are financial shortcomings, competing with the open Internet, and dealing with faculty and administration (to name a very few).

LibGuides was the hot topic during the conference, with at least six separate discussions spread out through the four days. It felt good that Coker was (slightly) ahead of the curve with our subscription to this great resource. I hope to finish more of the guides when classes wind down later on this spring.
I felt reassured that I could add to the conversation next time around. Although it is difficult to earn a slot as a presenter at the ACRL national conference, I feel that I have the chops to produce something significant enough to share with my colleagues, perhaps as early as 2011 in Philadelphia.

Back to work!

I started back to work yesterday. Although I was more than ready to get back into the routine, I do miss being home with Wyatt. He really was an easy baby to take care of -- eat, change diaper, sleep, look cute and so on. He started with the new daycare yesterday and there weren't any problems to my knowledge.

As for work, the campus seems quiet for the beginning of the new semester. Our overall enrollment is down slightly which probably means further budget cuts. Hopefully, we'll get some last minute enrollments to keep our numbers up.

LIB 101 starts next week and I am still polishing up the lectures and assignments. Not a lot of heavy lifting there, just some fine tuning. I've had to tighten up the attendance policy because of last semester's miscreants. I had three students miss 4 of 16 classes with no excuses given. Tardiness was also a big problem -- several students came 10-15 minutes late to a 50 minute class, including two of the 4 absence students. I didn't have any problems last spring semester with an older class (mostly sophomores and juniors), so I figured brand new freshmen and a couple of sophomores would be able to handle it. The maturity just wasn't there, so I will have to crack down.

If I was a student in my class at 19-20 years of age, I might have abused the attendance policy -- but certainly not 25% of the class meetings. I have to remember that my most recent academic experience was as an adult graduate student. Clemson had a pretty rigid attendance policy which I thought was Mickey Mouse back then, but I see the reasoning behind it. I just figured that the maturity level of a 19 year old was a little higher than it was. I guess not.

On the book front, I am waiting for a couple more Alan Furst books to arrive via interlibrary loan. In the meantime, I am reading David Hackworth's Vietnam-era memoir Steel My Soldiers' Hearts. It is sluggish going so far, but should be interesting once it gets going. Hackworth joined the army at age 15 and was in the occupation forces in Italy after World War II. He also served prominently in Korea and in the early stages of Vietnam. This book, co-written with his wife, details his job in turning around a misfit Army battalion in early 1969. This guy earned ten (!) Silver Stars for meritorious valor -- the military's highest award short of the Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross.

News and notes

Time flies when you are home with a child. Well, not really. It has been a wonderful experience to be home with Wyatt. Tomorrow will be my last "solo" day home with him - Lisa is out of school and he will head to daycare on January 5th.

He is such a "good baby," meaning that he eats, sleeps and fills diapers with frightening precision. Usually waking only once a night, Wyatt goes back to sleep very quickly -- I'm rarely up with him more than thirty minutes. No major health issues, other than the cradle cap and eczema that seem to afflict our poor babies. Wyatt's skin issues are no where near Owen's issues -- but the bad stuff didn't happen until Owen was older (and the weather got much colder and drier). We're off to see the Allergist on Monday to launch a preemptive stike -- with medications, steroids, and so on.

My original intention was to do a fair bit of yardwork and exercise. I was really good about the exercise the first few weeks, taking hour long walks with the Zune. I tried listening to the Eric Clapton autobiography but it was really dreadful. Maybe a better read, but I doubt it. Not enough time spent on my favorite parts of his career -- Cream and Derek and the Dominoes. Oh well, I digress. I intended to do the yardwork with Wyatt in his stroller, but he doesn't like being in the stroller/carseat combo unless he is in motion. So after about five minutes, he would start to fuss.

Perhaps I'll be able to do some work this weekend and next week with Lisa home. Not likely with Owen home, but maybe we'll let him run amok in the backyard.

I've watched a lot of CNN and CNN Headline news while feeding the boy and the headlines are very dreary and depressing. While watching the ever-lovely Robin Meade this morning, the headline "crawl" had a procession of the most depressing headlines I've ever seen: Morgan Stanley lost billions last quarter, the USPS thinks that they will have the slowest holiday shipping season in decades, bad weather with many flight delays, Ponzi scheme bilks thousands out of billions, that creep govenor of Illinois, and so on. The only good news -- for most consumers -- is that oil prices continue to drop. I really don't want to watch any more news until the Inauguration.

I've also read three Alan Furst novels: Night Soliders, the Polish Officer, and Kingdom of Shadows. I'm not done with KoS, but the other two novels are excellent. Not really off-the-beaten path of what I normally read, but strangely refreshing. Furst looks at (for me) different angles of war in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, from Eastern European countries. They are spy thrillers set in the darkest parts of the 20th century. Great stuff and I can't wait to read the rest of his works. It's been nice to have the time to read without falling asleep after thirty minutes!

Mr. Mom -- again

I'm officially on leave now until the end of the year. We decided to keep Wyatt out of daycare until the new year for a couple of reasons.

First, we both really hate the idea of dropping off a six week old to daycare. It always made me sad to see other parents do this at Owen's old daycare. Immune system, overall development, and sleep/eat routine are easier to create from home with his parents/relatives.

Secondly, the money issue. We're obviously saving several hundred dollars keeping him home for as long as possible. We have a daycare lined up which will cost $2 an hour. Say we drop him off at 8 am and pick him up at 4 pm (which would almost never happen) five days a week and you have another $80 departing our checking account. Most likely, it will be 8-5 making the daycare bill closer to $90. Ugh, it makes me irritable just thinking about it.

But things have been running pretty smoothly so far. He's sleeping well, which is always a good thing. He is much like Owen at this age, pretty agreeable and very portable. He must of had a growth spurt last week because he was irritable and didn't sleep much during the day. I wasn't on duty last week; that fell to my mother-in-law.

It has been bitterly cold (at least for SC) here so far this week -- barely getting out of the lower 40s for highs. My plan was to work in the yard and take him outside as much as possible (walks), but the wind a temperatures have made that a little difficult. Hopefully, it will warm up or the winds will drop so we can get out this afternoon.

Graduate School Forum

Melinda, another librarian here at Coker, decided that the library should host a graduate school forum for our students. Talking about life after Coker is one of those areas that falls between the cracks of faculty advising, counseling, student life and probably a few more campus departments. In a small school like Coker, this means that no one takes ownership of a certain project.

Melinda has been doing ad hoc graduate school counseling for years. She's not sure how or when it began, but faculty members started sending their advisees to her several years ago. She enjoys meeting with students and discussing the whole process but admits that it would be easier for her (and the other library staff) if we held a workshop to cover as many of the general questions as possible.

I wasn't sure what to expect. From the various library literature and listservs, I knew that drop-in workshops are generally poorly attended. I was extremely pleased to see 20+ students and several faculty and staff attend the workshop.

Most interestingly, and no shock to me, is that there were eighteen women and only three men attending. Our female students tend to be more conscientious as a group, although there are a few exceptional male students. We men think we have all of the answers, where women aren't afraid to admit that they need to ask questions and find out more information to help them succeed. A vast generalization, but it might just work here. Also, from our retention studies here at Coker, our male GPAs are lower than female GPAs. I think that is a national trend, but if I recall the numbers correctly, the disparity is well below the national average.

At any rate, we had a very attentive group with potential MBA, JD, PhD and MA students all with excellent questions. All in all, it was a great experience and hopefully beneficial to those in attendance.

ENG 101 Instruction

One thing I've noticed over my three plus semesters of being an academic librarian is that we tend to teach the same course in clumps. For instance, I'm teaching five sections of ENG 101 for three different instructors this week. Earlier in the semester, I taught three PSYCH 101 courses in a two day stretch (with a few other PSYCH classes mixed in that week).

It makes preparing for these similar classes a little bit like an assembly line, even if the assignments are vastly different.

The actual assignments are fairly interesting and should be interesting to both the students and instructors.

Two sections are looking at recent environment news and developing a five page research paper on a topic of interest to them. I demonstrated our OPAC, E-Books, Academic OneFile and its Environmental Studies and Policy subset, as well as Lexis-Nexis.

Another section of ENG 101 examines the various paradoxes that are pervasive in our popular culture. One example is Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl (Do I have to put Big Game on here?) Essentially, Jackson was hired to perform at the Halftime show because of her talent, popularity, and to a certain degree her sexuality. If this factored into her being hired, why the outrage (and fines, etc.) when she expressed her sexuality via her "wardrobe malfunction?" Another topic (actually developed by a student) examines the Disney teen stars that are marketed as role models, yet they dress in revealing clothing etc. Good stuff, but definitely could cause problems for some students. I demonstrated our OPAC, PASCAL Delivers, E-books, Academic OneFile and Biography Resource Center.

The last two ENG 101 sections I will teach tomorrow. The instructor gives the class a list of terms -- all of which are international cultural terms -- and the students must research one of these items. From last semester's class, there were some great ideas in there. I'll stick to my boilerplate lesson of OPAC, E-books, Academic OneFile, and I'll probably add in another database.

We've also been using the iClickers to capture a quick reaction survey at the end of each session. Instead of compiling a huge pile of paper surveys, the students actually have fun taking the eight question survey. Interestingly enough, we have been getting a slightly different dataset than the old paper surveys. The students tend to be a little more honest with their evaluation of our sessions. I guess they feel more anonymous with the iClicker than when filling out our old paper forms. I'll have more on the iClickers in a later blog.

Reference Desk LiveBlog 6 November 2008

Here we go again. Thursday nights tend to be a little more active around here.

5:02: I was summoned from my office to help an evening student. I really like helping most evening students because they really are grateful for any help that they receive. I've had this particular student several times and she always asks for help during and after class. She always apologizes because she feels she is monopolizing my time. She also mentioned how other traditional students sigh and whisper when she raises a question. I told her that most of them should be asking questions, but are too shy or afraid. Tonight she needed to find a book for a CRIM class. We used PASCAL Delivers to order the book from Winthrop University.

5:25: Donnie informs me that the print tracking software is not working. Free printing in the library, hooray!

5:40: Helped an education professor set up an overhead projector in the board room. It's funny plugging in a 40 year old overhead projector to work with $15,000 worth of state of the art A/V presentation equipment.

5:55: Proofread a co-worker's personal statement for application for library school.

6:27: Quiet. Too quiet.

6:44: Cool. A question about Sophocles and Antigone

7:01: The "kids" are having a ball with the free printing. So much for our environmental initiative this semester.

7:05: Talked with a student about taking LIB 101 in the Spring. He is already enrolled in it, but was unsure if the class would be canceled or not. We have it scheduled for evening students, but enrollment isn't where it should be right now. It's still early in registration, but it is a little low for my liking. The evening students really need the info lit class -- most have never done any serious research and most are scared of computers.

7:18: Alexa wants to redo a map of the stacks. Sounds like a good idea to me.

7:33: I really wish that our chat reference was more popular. Since starting it up a year ago, we've had probably 3-4 legitimate reference questions. We get lots of directional questionsI talk it up in every one-shot, and make the students actually send a message in class. I thought that it might solve some of the shyness problem -- students too shy to ask for help -- but so far, that hasn't been the case. I wonder what else we can do? I wonder how the other schools in state are doing with chat reference.

7:48: Java City has been busy tonight for a change. I wish they had real food in there.

7:55: I think I'm going to wrap it up a little early this evening. Not much activity in here right now. Good night!

Another year older...

I turned 35 yesterday and it really has affected me much more than any recent birthday. I don't feel any different, but the mere thought that I am five years away from being 40 years old is a little disconcerting. I am beginning to remember my parents being this age (well, my mother).

Also, most depressing is that I am no longer in the coveted marketing demographic group of 18-34 year olds.

Sniff.

Voting where my vote doesn't "count"

I've lived in South Carolina since 1990. The first election I participated in was in 1992, which began my long history of voting for Democratic presidential candidates. This won't change on November 4th when I will proudly vote for Barack Obama.

I've voted for Republican candidates on the state level, often because there isn't much choice. I voted for Mark Sanford a couple of times for Congress, as well as for Governor. I always admired his true fiscal conservatism -- sleeping in his office during his three terms in Congress, instead of renting an expensive home in Washington or one of its pricey suburbs. He routinely voted against his party's wishes, especially then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Perhaps this is why I continued to vote for him. As a governor, he has done some odd things that have irritated many Republican lawmakers and alienated him from members of both parties.

I voted for Strom Thurmond in 1996, probably because I was flush with good feelings about my fellow Clemson alum.

But I am acutely aware that on a national electoral level, my votes for Clinton (2x), Gore, Kerry and now Obama really don't count here in South Carolina. It's a strange feeling lining up to vote with people who are on the opposite end of the political spectrum than I am. Not that I want to get rid of the electoral college system, it just is odd living where you don't feel adequately represented.

That said, I will be there with bells on November 4th.

Reference Desk LiveBlog

We're going to try something a little different tonight. I'm going to liveblog my reference desk session this evening. Should be interesting.

5:10 - I'm on the desk and Alexa is telling about issues finding Italian textbooks in the catalog. We figure out that she was looking in the wrong place in the OPAC. Disaster averted.

5:15 - From one of the small conference rooms here in the LITC, emerges a group of suits -- the president, VP of Business Affairs, and VP of Student Services. Interesting. I wonder what was going on in there? They were a Provost and one VP short of the full leadership of the college.

5:19 - Computer usage count: 9

5:25 - I swear I'm not going to write in here every five minutes, but apparently I will have a surprise drop-in from an entire English class. Excellent!

6:04 - A reference question: A student needed an article on multiple-murders for a Forensic Psychology class. She is doing a speech in a few weeks on this topic. We found some decent results in Academic Search Premier, and some older articles in Science Direct.

On an unrelated note, Donnie was shocked that I actually have a blog.

6:21 - Computer usage count: 13
It's fairly quiet in here today, but we are coming off of Fall Break and a new evening school session begins tonight.

6:41- The English class hasn't shown up yet. It's been quiet.

6:52 - Just got an e-mail from a student advertising for a campus book club. Anything to get the "kids" to read is important, but I never had time to read for pleasure as an undergrad. Maybe that was because of my major -- Political Science and English, which featured plenty of reading. I just wonder if these kids are being pushed enough.

7:47 - Very lengthy reference question for another Psychology speech. We found a couple of decent articles supporting her argument that one can "think" without the ability to speak. The English class shows up at the same time as the student, which almost always happens. I didn't have anyone at the desk for the hour before (and the time the class was supposed to show up,) but when it rains it pours. The good news is that it's almost time to go home!

8:01 - Back in the office, wrapping up for the evening.

New baby, new bottles?

Lisa is on her way to the big city to trade in some of our two-year old Avent baby bottles -- which have the toxic plastic BPA in them -- for newer, safer bottles.

I was absolutely shocked that the Babies 'R Us here would be taking them without a receipt in exchange for credit towards the new bottles. It just makes way too much sense for me to comprehend.

A corporation concerned with the well being of its customers? Impossible.

This BPA is a nasty toxin that leaches into water, formula, juice or whatever liquid is in the bottle. I guess this leaching is exacerbated if washed in a dishwasher (which we never did, for this very reason). My sister-in-law mentioned this to us over two years ago when Owen started using a bottle, well before the outcry in the morning news shows over this past summer.

Well, Wyatt is waking up and will be hungry. He likes to eat a lot and often, much like his older brother.

Fun FireFox add-on

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