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Daily Reading Log

July 26, 2010

  • We talked about a great, great many things today at Immersion--we had over 12 hours together! I got to tell my group members about an article I read ("Re-Visioning Information Literacy for Lifelong Learning" by Dane Ward), and then we all talked about Palmer Parker's "Heart of a Teacher" chapter from The Courage to Teach.

July 25, 2010

  • Some more Octavia Butler--I broke down and bought Lilith's Brood for my final trip of the Summer (at last!). I read a bit of this at the airport and while in my native Vermont friend's recommended Burlington coffee shop, after exploring down by the water.

July 24, 2010

  • I didn't think that Survivor was anything to be ashamed of at all. In fact, I really enjoyed the questioning of the Missionaries a lot.
  • My suitcase has a hole patched with pink duct tape, and I haven't started packing yet. I'm off to Immersion for a week, and I'm feeling a bit anxious!

July 23, 2010

  • Amid procrastination, Survivor.

July 22, 2010

  • More Survivor, which I am enjoying.
  • Immersion documents!

July 21, 2010

  • Critical Library Instruction
  • I started Survivor, which is a bit scandalous (it's the book that Octavia Butler didn't want you to read!)...

July 20, 2010

  • Firebrands, which reminds me of Library Heroes in many ways.
  • Doonesbury compliations, since they were left out on the kitchen table.

July 19, 2010

  • Today was catch-up. I read my notes from HOPE and googled all the things that the hackers had taught me about over the weekend.

July 15-18, 2010

  • These past few days have been devoted to hacking everything from culture to typewriters to toenails.

July 14, 2010

  • Dane Ward, "Re-Visioning Information Literacy for Lifelong Meaning."
    • "We continually experience the world of inner information.

July 13, 2010

July 12, 2010

July 11, 2010

  • Today I went over to the dark side, instead of getting a million things done on my to-do, and to-read lists: IRC.

July 10, 2010

  • Finished Clay's Ark and Patternmaster. I think the first two books of the series were more intriguing, but I enjoyed all of them thoroughly and am trying to get a hold of the excluded Survivor, third in the series and which hasn't been reprinted because Octavia Butler didn't like it.
  • Started Alex & Me, after hearing Irene Pepperberg on the Moth (and thought it would be nice to pass on to a certain nonagenarian who has been reading books about birds and their relationships to people lately...)

July 8, 2010

  • More Butler; Clay's Ark
  • Telegram Ma'am/Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell! split again

July 7, 2010

  • Finished Mind of My Mind on the train home, and yes, I will admit I took the long way to read some more. 500 pages in and it feels like nothing!

July 3-6, 2010

  • Octavia E. Butler has totally taken over. I found myself thinking, amidst enjoying being a NYC tour guide this weekend, what the characters in the novels were doing when I wasn't reading about them. Must have been the heat.

July 2, 2010

  • Finished Wild Seed, and moved directly on to Mind of My Mind, since the trilogy is conveniently bound together. Good waiting-at-the-airport reading.

July 1, 2010

  • Wild Seed, which I am really enjoying. Thanks to dkg for leaving it in the back seat of the van for sharing to get me started.
  • Telegram Ma'am zine #14. I was happy to also find this in the box o' zines. This one was about bipolar and a welcome read today, when I am feeling up and down and wonky.
  • Telegram Ma'am #18/Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell #9 split. I am reviewing this zine for Library Journal!

June 30, 2010

  • Wild Seed
  • Re-read parts of "Don't Leave your Friends Behind: Anarcha-Feminism & Supporting Mothers and Children" zine, which I came across a copy of in a box of donated materials at work.
  • "Notes on Anarchism" zine by Noam Chomsky, in which he quotes Rudolph Rocker:

June 29, 2010

  • Started Blindness, by José Saramago
  • All of Dan Clowes' new graphic novel, Wilson. Pretty depressing. 15 minute read, so glad I didn't buy it. Each page had the thickest paper I've ever seen in a graphic novel.
  • More of Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, which I am really enjoying

June 20-28, 2010

  • The U.S. Social Forum program
  • Finished A Gate at the Stairs on the road trip home
  • Started a bit of Octavia Butler's Seed to Harvest compilation
  • Added many good things to the reading list!

June 19, 2010

  • More Lorrie Moore.
  • Boot-up screens at the techie house. I helped two get going (before we lost power)!
  • Crimping. Not Krumping.

June 18, 2010

  • A Gate at the Stairs, on my first-ever significant train ride. Great reading, great sights.

June 17, 2010

  • Caroline Sinkinson & Mary Canton Lingold, "Re-visioning the Library Seminar Through a Lens of Critical Pedagogy," from Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods.
  • Mary Rose Torrell, "Negotiating Virtual Contact Zones: Revolutions in the Role of the Research Workshop" also from Critical Library Instruction.
    • This piece got me thinking of a new brainstorming exercise that might help to start off the process of thinking about "research" in library sessions--exciting!

June 16, 2010

  • U.S. Social Forum program (!!)
  • Collection development marathon...
  • From NYPL's Twitter feed: "One sure window into a person's soul is his reading list."- Mary B. W. Tabor

June 15, 2010

  • Choice cards--collection development!

June 14, 2010

  • Today my reading was centered on Information Literacy in preparation for Immersion. I'm starring the ones that I found particularly useful/interesting:
    • *Ken Bain, "How Do They Conduct Class?" from What the Best College Teachers Do.
    • Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen with Nancy O'Neill, "Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations" from Educating the Net Generation.
    • *Parker Palmer, "The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching" from The Courage to Teach.

June 13, 2010

  • Waded through a backlog of periodical mail; On Wisconsin had an article about the founder of the Mustard Museum and a nice photo of the newly renovated WHS. Two places I wish I'd made it to.
  • Sometimes American Libraries columns remind me of Jean Teasdale.
  • I also started my Immersion homework.
  • More Lorrie Moore. Since there seems to be a Wisconsin theme,

June 12, 2010

  • More of A Gate at the Stairs, even though there are many other non-fiction books that I should be reading.

June 11, 2010

  • I broke down and got A Gate at the Stairs to read in the park. It was a perfect lazy day read, and all of the reviews about it being quite obviously set in Madison were true, so that adds a little to it for me, other than it just being amazing in general.

June 10, 2010

  • Many, many emails.

June 4-9, 2010

Just tiny bits of:

  • The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
  • Dune over M's shoulder
  • Tinkers by Paul Harding

What can I say; I was on vacation.

June 1-3, 2010

  • All of a Jeffrey Brown compilation while on a plane at JFK, not even off the ground.
  • Life story of a German woman who Isabella knew and who wrote of her life on a really old computer and printed out the tale for her friends and family after her death.

May 30, 2010

May 29, 2010

  • Kiki Smith exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. I liked the installs in the period rooms best. Creeptastic.

May 28, 2010

  • Techie House prep.

May 27, 2010

  • "Grand Narratives and the Information Cycle in the Library Instruction Classroom." by Sara Franks from Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods

May 26, 2010

  • Bike commuting season has begun... so commuting reading is out the window. And nice hairstyles.

May 25, 2010

  • Today was another day of absorption, but not through text. I attended (and presented at) Brooklyn College's Faculty Day, and was happy to participate in everything from a presentation on game theory to a Bob Dylan sing-along.

May 24, 2010

  • Today was housekeeping, bike-riding and a nice RR event. I finished a grant application that I'd been working on for some time. Felt good to drop it in the mail.

May 23, 2010

So,
so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.

May 22, 2010

May 21, 2010

  • I got a free copy of Dreams from my Father; which is funny because I shared and then gave away my first copy, so it's like it came back to me. I read the preface and the intro on my way from BC today.

May 20, 2010

  • Finished Logicomix. I knew Bertrand Russell as an anti-war activist, so his work as a logician is totally new to me (but not entirely--thanks to J--barber paradox!).

May 19, 2010

  • I finally started Critical Library Instruction today! I read the intro, Elisabeth Pankl and Jason Coleman's piece and most of Jonathan Cope's chapter on my commute, and ate it up with a spoon. I feel like all of the spaces that Ira Shor's lecture opened up in my brain for critical teaching is being filled with these much-needed library perspectives. Special kudos to Jonathan, who really brings theory, history and thought to library instruction, yet very accessibly.

May 18, 2010

  • Finished Beloved this morning before anything else.
  • Listened to Howard Zinn on Democracy Now! this morning, on the subject of "good wars." It was nice after just criticizing the unification of America in my paper on the Revolution and pamphleteering, to hear another attack on early America. "What is dubious about the Revolutionary war?"
  • Returning to Radical Teacher #87, I found this paragraph striking from Rick Wolff's piece, "Teaching Capitalism's Crisis:"

May 17, 2010

  • Do you ever read fiction as fast as you can, wherever you can, to keep up with it, the story, as if it were really happening, in real time? That's how I've been reading Beloved, between meetings and speaking obligations, and an election for a new chair (me?!).

May 16, 2010

  • I'm considering this day one of #TeamAchieve. Game on.
  • Beloved on the train. It seems wrong that I keep thinking about Her Fearful Symmetry when I'm reading this book somehow, since the themes and the characters are so different, but it keeps happening. What other books have ghosts as main characters?
  • More Beloved at the laundromat. Had a major laundry-driven crabbiness. But reading this perfectly crafted work made it a little more bearable.

May 15, 2010

  • Who said social networking wasn't good for something? I just joined #TeamAchieve through Twitter, and now I, along with a few other inspiring pals, am committed to writing 700 words a day six days a week. In addition to a reading log, this sidebar might begin to include my progress on this endeavor.
  • More of Beloved. Excited for Summery, fiction train reading.

May 14, 2010

  • Today was "website work day," but a lot of it was spent out walking in the sun. Read a bit more of Beloved, but not as much as I could have. Think today was a bit of an intellectual hangover from finishing up my first grad school class in a while, and turning my paper in on time!

May 13, 2010

  • I feel like I just performed a marathon of reading and writing in order to complete this 13-pager for my American Studies class. Now my reading will be semi-free again for almost three months, no longer beholden to a syllabus.* I will admit that I enjoyed my class enough to be a little disappointed about that.

May 12, 2010

  • I really appreciated "Teaching Freire and CUNY Open Admissions" by Kristen Gallagher due to its timeliness in proximity to Ira Shor's talk and the locality as a fellow CUNYan. I read what was left from yesterday on my train ride to work and over lunch in the cafeteria, with two BC students shrieking as they tried to share a chair. Inspirational piece.
  • News about whether I'll be forced to donate some of my salary to NY state, illegally.

May 11, 2010

  • My subscription to Radical Teacher hasn't run out yet! I got a bill two days ago, but #87 yesterday. This morning I started right in with "Teaching Freire and CUNY Open Admissions," by Kristen Gallagher.
  • Last night, again unable to get to sleep, I read a few more pages of Beloved, which still feels like cheating on the non-fiction and classwork (even though it relates to it and was mentioned over and over).

May 10, 2010

  • I can't remember when, but at some point this week I couldn't sleep and started reading Beloved right after watching one of those doctor dramas with too many gratuitous emergency room scenes, this one involving puss and fat. This resulted in some creepy dreams I can't quite remember all that well, and a bit of a fear of opening up the Morrison again.
  • But really I shouldn't even be considering reading any fiction with this 10-15 page paper due on Thursday. Knee-deep in books on the revolution, zine culture and print mythology.

May 8, 2010

  • Not so much reading, but listened to Ira Shor talk with a room full of librarians about teaching. Absolutely amazing. There was a very nice communal feel to our discussion afterward as well. Very nice afternoon of contemplation about teaching in libraries.
  • Followed by a night of utterly incomprehensible Herzog. This and that.

May 7, 2010

  • Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
  • Re-reading and underlining almost every word of The Republic in Print

May 6, 2010

  • The Republic in Print

May 5, 2010

  • The Republic in Print

May 4, 2010

  • Pickup Truck Stoled
  • "Introduction: The Theme of Our Contemplation" from Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790-1860
  • Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
  • Russell L. Martin III, "North American Transatlantic Book Culture to 1800" from A Companion to the History of the Book

May 3, 2010

  • Richard S. Newman, "Liberation Technology: Black Printed Protest in the Age of Franklin." Early American Studies, Winter 2010
  • Adrian Johns, "Faust and the Pirates: The Cultural Construction of the Printing Revolution" from The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making

May 2, 2010

  • shortandqueer #12, "Menstruation, not punctuation (periods.)"
  • The Republic in Print

May 1st, 2010

  • Hackers vs. Scientology
  • Republic in Print
  • Sorting through ebook materials and checked out library books to get my total counts down and return things on time--I think the last count was still in the 40's.

April 30, 2010

April 29, 2010

  • The Republic in Print
  • John Sayles' film Lone Star for class

April 28, 2010

  • The Republic in Print

April 27, 2010

April 26, 2010

  • "Pamphleteering in America" by Howard Zinn, from Artists in Times of War
  • Let's prepare to celebrate:

April 25, 2010

  • Finished Ties that Bind, and checked out Beloved since Morrison has been mentioned in so often in our texts this semester, and one historic narrative was also referenced in Gilroy. Let's hope I can keep my hands off it until my final paper is written.

April 24, 2010

  • Ties that Bind

April 23, 2010

  • LACUNY Emerging Tech Talk

April 22, 2010

  • ebooks, ebooks, ebooks and preparation!

April 21, 2010

  • I think I am also enjoying Ties that Bind because it is a nice break from my other studies right now; screens and digital rights and technologies--which is something that I often want to escape from!

April 20, 2010

  • ebrary, and more Tiya Miles. Still really enjoying this last text of my American Studies class.

April 19, 2010

  • Slides, slides and some more slides, zine q&a, accounting databases, shark attacks, and other internet adventures.

April 18, 2010

  • One of the things a decently long commute has taught me is what kinds of books I can or want to read on the train. Anything that causes me to want to take notes is impossible. Anything that I would want to append is borderline. Ties that Bind is a great read in that I can just read it; it's fascinating, it reads like a narrative and yet it's historically appropriate (many "we have no way of knowing"-s) and I am blowing through it, which somehow also inspires me to keep reading more + more + more.

April 17, 2010

  • Ties that Bind on the train

April 16, 2010

  • Started Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom by Tiya Miles, which I am really enjoying! It's nice to read narratives after a lot of theory.

April 15, 2010

  • Finished the required chapters (1-4, 7) of Migrant Imaginaries

April 14, 2010

  • Migrant Imaginaries
  • I got reference questions that I could relate to today! Art history, television, media, film, art ed. Hooray!

April 13, 2010

  • Business research, social networking assignments, and more of Migrant Imaginaries

April 12, 2010

  • Cracked open Alicia Schmidt Camacho's Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (for class)

April 11, 2010

  • We did a lot of ebook talking today and some youtube djing.

April 10, 2010

  • Somewhat impossible reference questions today, and more weeding. Things like software program books for software I've never heard of...

April 9, 2010

  • Nursed hangovers at the cheesecake diner, got to meet the most famous partner of a friend, Madison-reunion style. YOU should let your ears read some Zola Jesus. Amazing.

April 8, 2010

  • Happy Birthday Brokenjaws'er!
  • Taught the undergrad version of my American Studies class about the library today. Enjoyed hearing about their research topics; everything from the Beach Boys to the Lower East Side.
  • Finished The Black Atlantic, discussed it and other imagined communities in class

April 7, 2010

  • The Black Atlantic

April 6, 2010

  • Black Atlantic: finished up all but the Richard Wright chapter (which I still hope to squeeze in!) on the train.

April 5, 2010

  • 46 Pages: Tom Paine, Common Sense, and the Turning Point to American Independence by Scott Liell
  • Finished really amazing but still published in 2001 ebooks article

April 4. 2010

  • More Black Atlantic, almost done!
  • First two chapters of Imagined Communities by Benedict Arnold
  • Browsed what I want to read in the History of the Book in America series and wished they were all part of my own library...

April 3, 2010

  • The Black Atlantic; jam-packedly dense but totally worth it.

April 2, 2010

  • ebook work day, complete with three simultaneous monitors--and that was just for me.

April 1, 2010

  • April fool's found me in the LES, re-organizing with a new planner and re-reading chp 1 of The Black Atlantic and resisting the urge to take notes by just copying every sentence into my notebook (as in, it's good).

March 31, 2010

  • more Black Atlantic

March 30, 2010

  • Peeked into my copy of Critical Library Instruction, which arrived today, amidst the rain.

March 29, 2010

  • ebooks, ebooks, ebooks.

March 28, 2010

  • "No Borders: Beyond the Nation State" by Thomas Bender
  • "Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations" by Henry Yu
  • More of The Black Atlantic, which is tough train reading

March 27, 2010

  • Finished skimming The Case for Books and Started Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Conciousness, for class.

March 26, 2010

  • Read my handwriting as I scribbled away pages of notes at the Baruch Teaching and Technology Conference; there was a panel about using Kindles and ebooks as course texts, so I was writing as fast as the speakers were talking.

March 25. 2010

  • Phew! Marathon of Denning all day!
  • At some point this week, I also read "The Culture of the Thirties" by Warren Susman.

March 24, 2010

  • Sometimes I feel like this is less interesting when I have homework--more Denning.

March 23, 2010

  • Denning is getting good
  • Just discovered that crucial, helpful, and everything I was trying to get at book for my final
  • Weeded old and very very dusty communications textbooks--I shook and blew and inhaled that dust off...

March 22, 2010

  • Beginning in on selections from Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century by Michael Denning

March 21, 2010

  • My morning mta commute has happily been replaced by a bike ride, and the weather could not be better for it. I adore the crispness of spring with all its promises of everything summery to come. That said, I'm diving into Denning's Cultural Front for class today, but not between Flatbush and Utica.

March 20, 2010

  • Were I the super librarian I wish I could be with the ability to read 12 things at once, I'd be through all of David Copperfield in time for next weekend's English 2 class. However, since I am mere mortal, I'm skimming what amounts to the cliff notes so that I can help students write 6-8 page papers on a central theme of the novel.

March 19, 2010

March 18, 2010

  • Read the street signs to the east side bike path and the license plates of assholes on the best biking day of the season yet.

March 17, 2010

  • George Lipsitz, "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the 'White Problem' in American Studies"
  • Barak Obama, "A More Perfect Union"
  • Lisa Lowe, "Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Asian American Differences"
  • Philip Deloria, "Patriotic Indians and the Identities of Revolution"

March 16, 2010

  • Interesting graphs at the State of the Faculty address

March 15, 2010

  • Knitting patterns (finally bought some DPNs I "needed" from Knitpicks)
  • Browsed through my stacks of suggested titles for my final paper

March 14, 2010

  • Michael Omi and Howard Winant, "Racial Formation" from Racial Formation in the United States.

March 13, 2010

  • We pawed through the business/econ section of the Reference stacks today, finding an assortment of titles that would make Awful Library Books proud.
  • I got five paragraphs or so in on the homework.

March 12, 2010

March 11, 2010

  • Judith Butler, "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire" from Gender Trouble
  • Judith Halberstam, "Mackdaddy, Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene"
  • Elsa Barkley Brown, "What Has Happened Here?: The Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics."

March 10, 2010

  • Finished T. Roosevelt piece, on to Judith Butler!

March 9, 2010

  • Helped a bunch of Queens Public librarians read some zines
  • Got my issue of On Wisconsin in the mail, and got a little nostalgic. Interview with Lorrie Moore.
  • Still working on the Teddie Roosevelt and manliness essay for homework this week. Didn't get much reading done on the 3 hour commute to Flatbush--a bit to tired in the AM to read about imperialism and conquest.

March 8, 2010

  • Today I re-read, and then did some free writing. Kind of. I was trying to write up a homework assignment, and the writing came a bit less calculated and organized than I would have liked. I'm going to sleep on it and try again tomorrow.

March 7, 2010

  • Sometimes when it's real. slow. at. the. desk. it seems like the day didn't even happen at all. And I couldn't find where that woman's class was! Or satisfy the CPE student! Long Sunday.
  • Read some more On Writing Well, but couldn't make it through kind of watching the Oscars.
    I liked this paragraph on revising well enough a few days ago that I folded over a tiny corner on page 87:

March 6, 2010

  • I got a really looming and somewhat gluttonous stack of books checked out for me through CLICS today (really-I have over forty books now checked out, and ten more requests...)
  • The beginning of Theodore Roosevelt: Manhood, Nation and "Cilivilization," for this week's gender theme in class.

March 5, 2010

  • More biking and celebrating than reading today.

March 4, 2010

  • Re-read all the homework essays, looking for the threads of resistance that I thought united all of them, and found out I am the only one to have thought out my final paper (overachiever strikes again?).

March 3, 2010

  • On Writing Well
  • More of Counterpoise
  • Call numbers for books for MALS class; American print culture and the construction of publics...

March 2, 2010

  • Fall/Winter 2009 Counterpoise; amazing letter by Sandy, and a nice piece by Dr. John Van Hook.
  • A bit of On Writing Well by Zinsser (one thing that I found this semester is that reading about writing is invigorating for me in terms of wanting to write and be engaged with scholarly activities).

March 1, 2010

  • Constance Penley, "Brownian Motion: Women, Tactics and Technology"--highly recommended article about women and Star Trek slash fanzines
  • Robin D.G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': The Politics and Pleasures of Community"
  • Kelley, "The Riddle of the Zoot Suit"--also really great; talks about Malcolm X's writing about his time as a zoot suiter and how his later perspectives clouded his recollection of the cultural significance of his hipsterism.

February 28, 2010

  • Teaching myself about the American Revolution and tracts. Not finding exactly what I want, and not sure if that means I have to make it...

February 26, 2010

  • Lizabeth Cohen, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920's"
  • George Lipsitz, "Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory and American Studies"

February 25, 2010

  • Raymond Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Theory
  • Zitkala-Sa, School Days of an Indian Girl
  • Finished Trachtenberg; recommended--his vision of American culture is a bit bleak, but true to life (largely powered by capitalism, for worse rather than better).

February 24, 2010

  • Trachtenberg; 4 chapters by tomorrow!
  • Grant proposal, talk proposal, paper proposal

February 23, 2010

  • More Trachtenberg, with a particularly enjoyable part about the myth of Thomas Edison as inventor and made man (as opposed to entrepreneur with an economic eye and workshop of collaborators)
  • Booking a Flight the Frugal Way

February 22, 2010

  • My schedule, my project paperwork, my statement of "educational philosophy" and all the other materials, over and over, for reappointment.

February 21, 2010

  • The last bits of the latest Bitch with breakfast
  • More Trachtenberg, which I am finding hard to concentrate upon whilst on the train

February 20, 2010

  • The Incorporation of America, by Trachtenberg

February 19, 2010

February 18, 2010

  • That book that I've desperately been trying to remember is called The Problem with Pulcifer !!!

February 17, 2010

  • More Bitch, my reappointment CV.

February 16, 2010

  • Bitch Magazine, "old" issue.

February 15, 2010

  • Somehow I am teaching three Television/Radio/Communications classes tomorrow. I would have liked to read a few results for searches in Ebsco databases, but they would not load from home. Thinking lately (with help from J.) that technical glitches and tutorials should not be what we teach.

February 14, 2010

  • Read my drawings and drafts of plans for our two bookcases. One down, one to go!

February 13, 2010

  • Reading and writing to-do lists (academic, shopping, deadlines and teaching) and proposals (talks, papers, grants) seems to take up the 90% of my sitting-down-getting-things-done time.

February 12, 2010

  • Reading a few pages of This Book is Overdue! on the train made me realize how little I care about the first wave of systems "digitizers;" not those who are scanning content, but who are responsible for the initial metadata markups and ILS setups--who took us from card to screen. I think I somehow see them not as innovators but as inevitable. If it weren't for ________, then there surely would have been _______. Is this cynical?

February 11, 2010

  • Homework: The West in American mythology, the Frontier as it Americanizes all of us (via Nash Smith of the UW, interestingly), Buffalo Bill and the blur of the real (history vs. narrative and show) and Kaplan getting all imperial (thank you for that last little bit about Africa and Vietnam and the Philippines and the lack of awareness of the meaning of those helicopters dashing away while filming Apocalypse Now!).

February 10, 2010

  • Snow day! Attempts at reading turned into naps, as the snow flurried outside.

February 9, 2010

  • Broken Pencil-got a sub!

February 8, 2010

  • More of the west readings
  • Kindle stuff-mostly printed from free online sources, before plunging into more scholarly works. There is so much that this touches, so many ways to explore the implications of this machine...

February 7, 2010

  • I have been very poor about reading on the train lately. Somehow if it's not fiction or a codex, I can't get myself into it on the platform or on the train. Or maybe it's just the normal procrastination that accompanies homework.
  • I printed out a good many things about the kindle today, and noticed a bunch of free ebooks online.

February 6, 2010

  • A bit about the west and manifest destiny via Henry Nash Smith
  • Pattern for a new hat. Why do I not have size 7 DPNs?

February 5, 2010

  • Kept reading our proposed abstract for the Conference on Intellectual Property over and over (and our readers helped immensely), until I had all the PDFs in order and sent it off. I like confirmation emails on proposals; they seem to come easily and have an excited person at the other end of the computer tubes.

February 4, 2010

  • American Studies homework at the cafe formerly known as the Bagel Zone: Janice Radway 1998 American Studies Assn speech (liked it best, and just discovered she's writing a book about zines!), Alice Kessler Harris' 1991 speech, Henry Nash Smith, Etienne Balibar, Stuart Hall.

February 3, 2010

  • Communications research textbooks for weeding (lots changed since 1996! Things like calling email "internet electronic mail")

February 2, 2010

  • Homework readings about the history and nature of American Studies
  • Spreadsheets: collection development

February 1, 2010

  • We went to 'Snice and I read my homework. I need to remember to keep a dictionary handy, as I have slowly become someone who does not skim over words, but insists upon looking everything up. I bothered Matt a lot because he has a dictionary on his computer, with or without the wireless.

January 31, 2010

  • Readings for tomorrow's LACUNY LILAC event on credit bearing information literacy courses.

January 30, 2010

  • A lot of 2010 so far has been about organizination and getting hardware on the up and up in my free time, and today I finally got GnuCash to work properly (without futzing up the back end myself), and re-installed Open Office. Contemplating going totally linux. Reeling in numbers and installation pop-ups. Is this reading? Caught up on blogs amidst all of this-especially glad that Library Praxis is back up!

January 29, 2010

  • I'm starting in on the homework readings! The very first of which is "On Recovering the 'Ur' Theory of American Studies" by Leo Marx, as published in American Literary History, 2005.
  • Where is my last tax document? I would like to read it and be done filing!

January 28, 2010

  • Zine from Kelsey, "Getting the Guts Out" (really nice!)
  • Ira Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life has been rattling all my dreamy illusions about education, and feels so close to home and pertinent that I suspect someone is looking over my shoulder when I read it (especially on the train).

January 27, 2010

  • "Revisiting the Struggle for Integration" by Michelle Fine and Bernadette Anand in Controversies in the Classroom: A Radical Teacher Reader
  • Celia's Reading Log zine (yay!)

January 26, 2010

  • Bits of Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, and supplemental materials from the BC New Faculty Retreat.

January 25, 2010

  • Finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

January 24, 2010

  • More Wao, which made me laugh out loud more than once and read nerdy parts (400 hit points!) to Matt.

January 23, 2010

(I took the day off for a significant anniversary, and to re-install a horrible operating system)

January 22, 2010

  • The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

January 21, 2010

  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

January 20, 2010

  • Critical Teaching and Everyday Life by Ira Shor. Introduction was pretty amazing; about CUNY and the struggles of the open admissions.
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

January 19, 2010

  • The fine print on my immunization forms for MALS
  • Signage of Brooklyn on the way for celebratory Ethiopian fare

January 18, 2010

  • More writing than reading today, and business librarianship homework.

January 17, 2010

January 16, 2010

January 15, 2010

  • Finished Play it As it Lays; quick and satisfying read. The kind that makes you feel like you could write too (which could be the best kind?).

January 14, 2010

  • A Passage for Dissent: The Best of Sipapu, 1970-1988
  • Play it As it Lays by Joan Didion

January 13, 2010

  • A Passage for Dissent: The Best of Sipapu, 1970-1988

January 12, 2010

  • A Passage for Dissent: The Best of Sipapu, 1970-1988
  • spreadsheets of info about earnings, spendings, retirement, debt.

January 11, 2010

  • Info about Chip Berlet, after hearing him on this morning's Democracy Now! broadcast warning about the increasing number of racist white supremacist groups on the rise and a new film about them.
  • A Passage for Dissent: The Best of Sipapu, 1970-1988--just as amazing as I had guessed it would be!

January 10, 2010

January 9, 2010

January 8, 2010

  • Jerianne's Literature Review and Zine Cataloging Needs Assessment
  • "Synergy, Social Responsibility, and the Sixties: Pivotal Points in the Evolution of American Outreach Library Service" by Toni Samek, in Libraries to the People
  • Some of the new (Winter 2009) issue of Radical Teacher
  • Skimmed Revelling in New York zine, recommended!

January 7, 2010

  • Finished Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation
  • Skimmed #'s 6 & 7 of The La-La Theory

January 6, 2010

  • Finished In Dubious Battle on the morning commute (perfect timing as we pulled into my station)
  • Skimmed Alternative Library Literature: 1998-99 (27 page index!) and 82/83, 88/89
  • Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation

January 5, 2010

  • Solamente In Dubious Battle (other than things I looked at with patrons at the reference desk and Choice cards for collection development).

January 4, 2010

  • A few chapters of In Dubious Battle
  • Skimmed library-related zines, a few issues of Progressive Librarian, Alternative Library Literature, Sipapu, Booklegger's Guide to the Passionate Perils of Publishing and Alternative Materials in Libraries
  • Content on my GSLIS continuing education business research course via Moodle

January 3, 2010

January 2, 2010

Yesterday the only thing I read was Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day, a present from my secret santa, in an effort to teach myself to make a good sandwich loaf.

2009 in Books

Made a few upgrades to the site (with help) today, one of which was a space on the side here to record what I'm reading. I'm hoping to make this a daily update; it's one of my goals along with other resolutions of 2010 pertaining to schedules, productivity and health/happiness. You can read all of the reading-related posts now at: http://alycia.brokenja.ws/readinglog

To kick off the new module, here's what I read in 2009. 34 books. Helped along greatly by a longer commute. Recommended reads are starred.

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Just finished reading Victoria Law's Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women and wanted to recommend it. Vikki's book is an inspiring read, a great work of activism, and a eye-opening archive of the life of women in prison.

Class, Teaching, Publishing

Confronting one another across differences means that we must change ideas about the way we learn; rather than fearing conflict we have find ways to use it as a catalyst for new thinking, for growth.

Just finished reading Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks late this evening, and now listening to a talk hooks gave at the Women of Color Conference. A few random thoughts follow.

15 Books

As per 2 requests on a social networking site by friends, here are 15 favorite books, a list made "without thinking too hard." What are your 15 books?

Tags in Brokenja.ws

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Currently Reading

Seed to Harvest
Blindness
Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods
The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770-1870
Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now
Critical Teaching and Everyday Life
On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog



Alycia's favorite books »


Daily Reading Log

July 26, 2010

  • We talked about a great, great many things today at Immersion--we had over 12 hours together! I got to tell my group members about an article I read ("Re-Visioning Information Literacy for Lifelong Learning" by Dane Ward), and then we all talked about Palmer Parker's "Heart of a Teacher" chapter from The Courage to Teach.

July 25, 2010

  • Some more Octavia Butler--I broke down and bought Lilith's Brood for my final trip of the Summer (at last!). I read a bit of this at the airport and while in my native Vermont friend's recommended Burlington coffee shop, after exploring down by the water.

July 24, 2010

  • I didn't think that Survivor was anything to be ashamed of at all. In fact, I really enjoyed the questioning of the Missionaries a lot.
  • My suitcase has a hole patched with pink duct tape, and I haven't started packing yet. I'm off to Immersion for a week, and I'm feeling a bit anxious!

July 23, 2010

  • Amid procrastination, Survivor.

July 22, 2010

  • More Survivor, which I am enjoying.
  • Immersion documents!

July 21, 2010

  • Critical Library Instruction
  • I started Survivor, which is a bit scandalous (it's the book that Octavia Butler didn't want you to read!)...

July 20, 2010

  • Firebrands, which reminds me of Library Heroes in many ways.
  • Doonesbury compliations, since they were left out on the kitchen table.

July 19, 2010

  • Today was catch-up. I read my notes from HOPE and googled all the things that the hackers had taught me about over the weekend.

July 15-18, 2010

  • These past few days have been devoted to hacking everything from culture to typewriters to toenails.

July 14, 2010

  • Dane Ward, "Re-Visioning Information Literacy for Lifelong Meaning."
    • "We continually experience the world of inner information.

July 13, 2010

July 12, 2010

July 11, 2010

  • Today I went over to the dark side, instead of getting a million things done on my to-do, and to-read lists: IRC.

July 10, 2010

  • Finished Clay's Ark and Patternmaster. I think the first two books of the series were more intriguing, but I enjoyed all of them thoroughly and am trying to get a hold of the excluded Survivor, third in the series and which hasn't been reprinted because Octavia Butler didn't like it.
  • Started Alex & Me, after hearing Irene Pepperberg on the Moth (and thought it would be nice to pass on to a certain nonagenarian who has been reading books about birds and their relationships to people lately...)