Just keeping up with Eliza’s increasing language acquisition is insane. The latest: Every night when her evening episode of Yo Gabba Gabba goes off (we watch it after dinner as a wind-down for bedtime), the DVR stops and she says “Uh oh!” Last night, it went off, she said “Uh oh!”, then paused and shrugged and said “Daddy fix it!”
Indeed, Daddy fix it.
She’s 15 months old. I’m scared of her at 2.
I am drooling just looking at these pictures of Duck Prosciutto. Seriously.
This is the “About This Mac” screen from what is not an Apple product at all. After seeing the sale that Dell was having a few weeks ago, and getting my first royalty check from my book, I decided to splurge a bit and grab a Dell Mini 9. I had a copy of OS X 10.5.6 that I got when I bought the Mac Box Set a few months ago when upgrading my iLife and iWork, so I was covered on the legal copy of OS X.
After that, it was a reasonable simple matter. I’ll throw together a separate post with the directions I followed. What I mainly wanted to note here was how incredibly well the Mini 9 runs OS X. Seriously solid, and with NO hesitation. It’s kind of mind-blowing.
She’s turning into Linus, which is something I always feared would happen.
The sacred pink blankie used to live only in her crib or be brought out for naptime at daycare. But now that she can say the word “blankie,” she can ask for it whenever she wants. Today, she demanded to take blankie and Minnie Mouse for a ride in the stroller. She went to her room, pointed to the crib and shouted “blankie!” I gave it to her. She then carried it into the living room, where the stroller was parked, and tapped it, saying “ride! Mommy…ride!” And so we went on a walk, despite the 58 degree temps. And then blankie stayed outside with us and got nice and dirty as she dragged it around the yard. When I protested, took it from her, and told her no, she FLIPPED OUT. Will she be one of those kids that has her blankie in the grocery store, on the playground, at the doctor’s office? Gah, I hope not. Well, at least it’s “blankie” and not “binky.” She has classmates at daycare who are much older than her who still suck on the “binky” all day long.
Me, I pick my battles.
I would like to offer my personal endorsement of the following candidates for LITA offices for this election cycle:
Aaron Dobbs and Maurice York for Councilors at Large. Both Aaron and Maurice have worked behind the scenes for years to improve the way that LITA does things, and I think having them on the Board will help move LITA forward. I know both of them well, and have worked with both at a national level with LITA, and would be thrilled to see them as members of the Board.
I would also like to endorse Karen Starr for Vice-President. Her personal statement says “The innovators and leaders of tomorrow are the LITA members of today. It is refreshing to work with a dynamic group on the national level who care, who want to define that future and who come together to work on what the big picture should look like.” I believe that the time has come to define our future.
Please remember to vote, and I hope that you take my recommendation to the polls!
This endorsement represents my personal opinion and is in no way reflective of any committee, interest group, or other unit of LITA or ALA.
I am overjoyed to be included in the Library Journal 2009 list of Movers & Shakers. More important than being on the list, for me, is the incredible set of other people that are on the list. To be included in any list, anywhere, with:
Wow. I am thrilled and a bit overwhelmed. I’m desperately looking forward to reading up on those people on the list that I don’t know…
I have one bit of a correction: in the article, it says “Their commitment to sharing information about cutting-edge technology led to LITA BIGWIG.” That’s not actually true, unless they left out the word “them” between “led” and “to.” BIGWIG is the original brain-child of Karen Schneider and Clara Ruttenberg. They decided that it was time for LITA to focus on blogs and wikis as a part of the organizational structure back in 2005 or so, and BIGWIG was instantiated under their oversight. It was, however, Karen, Michelle, and myself that moved it into the sort of tech breeding ground that it has become. The next overseers will, hopefully change it as appropriate for the times and needs of the organization.
In any case: I am thrilled, and thanks to anyone and everyone who recommended me for this honor. Now to cross my fingers for that Shovers & Makers award…
Poor Eliza ended up with a double ear infection, thanks to the RSV. This coincided with her first week in a new room at daycare. Needless to say, the transition hasn’t gone smoothly.
She seems to be missing her old classmates and teachers. She asks for a few of them by name every morning. And she isn’t sure about her new teacher, whose tone of voice is a little harsher (even to my ears). She’s also a little intimidated by the bigger, faster, more mobile kids.
She cries at drop off, and she cries a little bit throughout the day, although we hear she’s crying a little bit less than before. Who knows how long it will take her to get comfortable in her new surroundings. Eliza is bright and intuitive, which means she’s also quite sensitive (to change, to others’ feelings, to chaos). I am beginning to see glimpses of the special challenges involved in raising this kind of child. But I am also seeing the joy.
Eliza is simply mind-blowing. She can now say some of her numbers in the correct sequence. I was helping her climb the stairs, counting them as we go. I said “One…” and she said “two…” Flabbergasted, I continued: “Three…Four….Five…” and she said “Six…” I almost fell down the stairs. So I kept going: “Seven….eight….” and Eliza added “nine…” and I shouted TEN! And scooped her up and hugged her, amazed. I don’t know where she learned this. Wasn’t from us.
There was an explosion of discussion about this topic over on Friendfeed, and I wanted to be able to reference it later. Thought maybe some of the readers would want to chime in as well. You can find it here:
There has been a conflation of blog posts and news stories that have really set my brain on fire this week, starting with an amazing post and comment discussion over at Walking Paper by Aaron Schmidt. Then there was a quick email conversation with Michael Porter about the future of libraries if we don’t get ahead of the digital content curve and fast. On top of all that, someone pointed me to the amazing “future of education” slideshow that I linked to yesterday by Dr. David Wiley. And now David Lee King puts together this amazing post about The New Normal, which links out to yet more stories about how the Music Industry and other once-solvent American institutions are undergoing change so radical as to make what comes out the other side almost unrecognizable.
In the midst of all this, at MPOW we are building a new library. So I’m thinking a LOT about several different time horizons. How do I plan for the realities of opening a new library in 2-3 years, but still allow for what I see as the likely outcomes for collections, services, and such in 5, or 10, or 20 years? This is a non-trivial problem…while no one can really tell whats coming, we have to remember that we are creating the future every day.
I agree with David on most of his points, but some of it bears repeating. Here are the sort of “talking points” that I’ve been rolling around in my head for the last month or so.
In addition to this 5-10 year spiral, we have the parallel procedures of the major content providers hoping to rent the future to us digitally. Ebook models have been unilaterally horrific, insisting on DRM that only punishes the hopeful consumers of the printed word. Digital video and audio on a consumer level are starting to come around, with the iTunes store being the last major consumer provider of digital audio to go DRM free. Consumer video is slowly moving from a subscription-subsidized with advertising model like cable to a free-streaming, a la carte, advertising based model like Hulu, but even there content creators are still fighting the inevitable by insisting that only they get to decide where media can live.
Content providers have insisted on holding tight to a model of selling their wares where content is scarce, connections are hard, and communication is expensive. We live in a world, however, where content is ubiquitous, connections are trivial, and communication is essentially free. These two worlds cannot coexist, and library vendors from Overdrive to OCLC must change their models. If they don’t, they will die as certainly as newspapers, magazines, the recording industry, television, and printed books.
Where does all of this leave the library? As the analog dies and the digital rises, unless we get in front of the content providers and claim our place at the digital table, we run the risk of being increasingly marginalized. There are places for us in this new world, but we need to make them, to carve them from the bytes. Stewart Brand’s comment that “information wants to be free” has never been more true, but just because it wants to be free doesn’t mean it doesn’t need caretakers.
The title of this post is inspired by a quote from Eric Hoffer, who said: “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” In this brave new world, libraries and librarians must be learners. If not, we run the risk of inheriting not the information-rich digital world of the future, but the wind.
