medicine and radios

I quit

2006-09-03T13:52:00.000-04:00

Alright -- as my last post was August 8th, I think it is safe to say that I did a pretty bad job of maintain this blog. At the end of the day (let's keep in mind that I leave the house at 6.15am and return at 7.40pm) the last thing I want to do is write about my day. But, I tried. And that has to count for something. But I quit now.

Graves Disease

2006-08-08T21:47:00.000-04:00

Today I cataloged one of the earliest articles on Graves Disease. This was pretty exciting for me, being that I have Graves Disease. So does Olympian Gail Deevers, as well as George Bush Sr., his wife Barbara, and their dog Millie (who may be dead now, I have no idea). The crazy thing is, it looks as though very little has been learned about the causes of this autoimmune disorder over the last one hundred and twenty-five years. The Washington Post Express has this really lame column called "What you could have" or something alone those lines and each day openly preys on hypochondriacs by outlining some rare disease they could have. I say this as a proud recovering hypochondriac. Anyway, interestingly enough, today the chosen affliction was...you guessed it--Graves Disease.

Things I have been meaning to blog about

2006-08-04T20:59:00.000-04:00

1. Legacy issues in small libraries
2. Doing reference/fact checking for Intern Edition or Police Suicide Hysteria
3. The new books I have been reading
4. The stress of picking courses
5. My tour of the National Geographic Library
6. How advocating for your library is actually really important within a larger organization
7. 117 degrees Farenheit and how ridiculous that is

I might get around to some of these.

The lunch line

2006-07-25T21:26:00.000-04:00

Last week I stood next to Ted Coppel in the lunch line. For about ten minutes. Is it unprofessional for me to be kind of excited about that?

'Reasons why I am a lousy blogger' OR 'What makes you think I will be able to get that?'

2006-07-21T23:21:00.000-04:00

A good blogger would post regularly and consistantly. I am never in the mood to post, and then I find some time and feel as though I have to catch up with several at once.

I have been loving the reference work I have been doing. Finding awesome video of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for Day to Day and bringing in my own copy of Grey's Anatomy Season One DVD to be dubbed into a science show is exciting and makes me feel good as a librarian. However, yesterday I seemed to get several questions that I could not provide satisfactory results for. This was really getting me down until I started thinking about some of the questions I got and what in Heaven's name made people think I could get those things. Vintage sound from a roller derby which took place from 1935 to 1940 only, and on deadline? I found some from 1946, but when I finally heard the obit piece I realized it wasn't used. sigh. Or what about the BBC broadcast of Captain Kurt Carlsen speaking in 1951 about his ship sinking....from London, in 24 hours?!? I called London, but not surprisingly my quest was a failure. I have to admit that everyone has been very nice and understanding when I just can't find what they are looking for. I guess I just need to understand that just because someone might expect me to be able to find something, I need to allow myself to understand that it will not always be the case and I should be OK with that. Right?

Some projects I have been working on:

2006-07-21T23:13:00.000-04:00

1) Tech processing for the archive project. Tedious and monotonous but important (or so they tell us so that we feel better).
2) Collection development and management. I think that this might even be more challenging in a news sound library than in a traditional library because one does not only need to evaluate whether an item is of use to a patron, but also whether that item will ever be of use to a patron. I have been going through old, un-cataloged, un-marked audio reels of campaign materials and trying to determine whether they are worth keeping. This is kind of tough when looking at state representative candidates from 1992. They weren't big names then, they aren't big names now, but they could become president one day and then we might wish we had held on to them. The difficulty of deciding what should be considered historically important as well as trying to anticipate the news of the future. I feel the responsibility.
3) Reference.
4) Making a proposal of how to catalog 16.9 hours of FDNY radio transmissions from 9/11 as well as hours of BBC special coverage of that day. That's what I worked on today, and let me tell you I went home feeling drained.

The Arrow Lakes needs a little more excitement

2006-07-21T23:02:00.000-04:00

So, the communications interns sent out press releases to everyone's home newspaper. Today some fellow from the Arrow Lakes News called to interview me about my internship. I found it incredibly difficult to describe what I do and have it make sense to a lay person. Cataloging begins to sound a lot like data entry, even though it requires thought and creativity. Does the average person know what reference is? I forgot to mention that the broadcast library doesn't have any books, forgetting that people might not realize this. And...on top of it all, I am worried that I am going to be misquoted or give librarianship a bad name. Granted, will anyone read this article or care? Probably not. But since a few trees being cut down on Morton's beach make the news cut, I guess a small town girl working for one of the world's foremost public broadcasting organizations might get a second glance. Maybe. I mean, I guess it is slightly more newsworthy then that time my picture was in the paper for dressing up as a mime in the July 1st parade. Here's the picture I was bullied into submitting. Pretty dorky.

Brushing shoulders

2006-07-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday there was a lovely catered 90th birthday tribute lunch for Daniel Schorr. I stood behind Ted Coppel in line for food.

roof top

2006-07-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

This is the view from the NPR rooftop. Kind of pretty.

The Shadow

2006-07-19T18:16:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I finally got to hear the fruits of my reference labour. I had a producer come in on Friday needing sound of “The Shadow”, which I was able to find and on Saturday I heard it on Weekend Edition Saturday. It was pretty exciting hearing something on the radio that was there thanks, in part, to me. Now I just need someone to access one of the 140 historic baseball clips that I spent so much time cataloguing last month…

temp

2006-07-16T21:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my first shift as temporary librarian staff at that un-named non-profit broadcasting organization and not as an intern. Not one person came into the library. I spent the entire day typing (on an IBM electric typewriter) almost 200 lending cards for the archive project. Only about 900 more to go. Fun.

If I weren't a librarian...

2006-07-12T23:29:00.000-04:00

I am really quite happy I decided to become a librarian. But, if this falls through I have a back-up career plan: zoo historian.

I have been reading a book called 'Giraffe', which, while fiction, is based on the following true story: "In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive heard of giraffes in the world [32]." (Ledgard, 2006). As well as 'Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the world's Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers' (subject self-explanatory, I hope). They are both really fascinating and stir up that historian in me. So, zoo historian has now been moved up the list of back-up career plans ahead of culinary historian and author of a glossy history/cookbook called 'The History of Blood as Food: subtitle yet to be decided', and epidemiologist with a focus on infectious tropical diseases and the plague. I know this is off topic for this blog. But, I just thought I would mention it.

Authority Work

2006-07-12T23:20:00.000-04:00

I am now doing name authority work to go along with my NLM records. Adds a little research to the mix and keeps things interesting.

Read some horrifying articles on the use of electro-shock therapy in the late nineteenth century. Not surprising that those in need of it seemed to be women for the most part. One discussed inter-vaginal and inter-uterine galvanization to jump start halted menses. My readings on female hysteria and mania show that halted menstruation was a problem that a lot of women suffered from, and it almost always led to hysteria. But, then again, so did reading literature, being away from your husband, idleness, and general excitement. Thank god we don't all have that problem anymore.

trial by fire

2006-07-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

Or at least that's what it felt like on Friday at the reference desk.

Hour One: "I need sound of a British newscaster saying 'there has been a bombing' for our story on the anniversary of the London transit attacks. We're going on the air in 45 minutes." Seems easy enough. But wait. We went into special coverage on that day and none of that is transcribed. Clearly I can not listen to eight hours of footage in the next 45 minutes. However, with a little bit of investigation and a lot of trial and error I was able to come up with a British newscaster with an Indian accent, and some unidentified British citizens - take your pick.
Hour Two: "You know how the Radio Mundo football announcers yell 'gol', and hold it for a really really really long time, when someone gets a goal? I need that." This one was fun. After I decided what we had in our library was not as long as the 'goooooooooooool' that was demonstrated for me in the reference interview, I got to spend 15 minutes listening to MP3s and YouTube clips of really entertaining sports announcers. Now, I am sure that soccer would be much more popular year round here if Bob Costas got excited like that. (Is Bob Costas even alive anymore? He was a sports announcer, right?).
Hour Three: "Interviews with John Huston, please." Check.
Hour Four: "When was the last time I talked about watermelon on the air? What did I say." Check.
Alright - so, that was my heavily abridged day (and it lasted 10 hours, not four...but you guys aren't that interested anyway). There were a lot more questions. Most of which I could answer in an accurate and timely manner and a few that I couldn't. I probably did not take a deep breath all day. I was stressed out but high off of it. Pretty fun.

Then Moe did a great brown bag lunch on Wikis which inspired me to just suck it up and learn some computer skills. She easily convinced me that using bloglines to collect rss feeds for all the celebrity blogs I normally check is really the only efficient system. Moe, you are so right -- what the hell have I been doing before now?

IOU

2006-07-11T21:34:00.001-04:00

I owe this blog a posting. I think about doing it. But either I am too tired or I am busy reading celebrity gossip sites. Tonight it is the former.

"On the Nature of the Knee-Jerk"

2006-07-03T18:24:00.000-04:00

By Warren Plimpton Lombard.

I also cataloged an article on Lyssa (rabies), which argued that humans with rabies have not, in fact, been infected with a disease, but rather are rendered hysterical because they have heard too many stories about people who have become warewolves after being bitten by rabid dogs. On a related note, and much to the misfortune of all those 19th century individuals who were infected with rabies and tried home remedies, rabies has the highest fatality rate of any infectious disease at 100%. Although, HIV is also likely 100%, although some experts are hesitant to state as much as there are some of the earliest known infected individuals who are still surviving (Garrett, 1995).

It had been two weeks since I had been at NLM and I was worried that I was going to forget all those MARC codes, the delimiters, and indicators. However, it all came back to me and I got some really positive feedback on the records I had done over the past month, as well. That made me happy. It's kind of neat that my original catalog records get posted on OCLC for others to copy catalog. And as NLM will, likely, keep these items indefinately, it is my little contribution to history. Very little, but it's enough for me.

The Terror of the Reference Desk

2006-06-30T21:59:00.000-04:00

Today was my first day alone on the reference desk. While Hannah was only about twenty feet away, answering the phone, email, and walk-in questions was all up to me. And, unlike many reference desks, when an individual comes in asking for a particular item here they need it immediately because they are under strict deadline to put things on the air. First question of the day: Do you have the theme songs to the Cosby Show and Fat Albert? Easy one - plus, I got to just hand it off to Jacob, the music library intern (who is wonderful, by the way). Second question of the day: Tomorrow is the anniversary of the first ever television commercial, a Bulova watch ad, which premiered in 1941. Can we get that? Today - so that it can go on air tomorrow morning? Not so easy. After checking our catalog and the Library of Congress catalog, I called the National Watch and Clock Museum in Pennsylvania, the Museum of Television & Radio, and the Bulova US headquarters. And people respond, and so nicely, when they hear who I am working for. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to track down any sound but I felt satisfied with the effort I had put into it. Happily, there were other questions I was able to answer and there are actually clips you will hear on the radio because of me. I love cataloging, but reference is starting to look more and more fun.

My other project for the day, in between helping patrons, was to begin cataloging a collection of audio clips from films of the 80's. This is much more challenging than one would think, as the only information I am provided with is the title of the movie; then I just have to go from there. It started easy with "The Breakfast Club". Within the first few words I knew exactly who was talking. I'd recognize Anthony Michael Hall's teenage voice anywhere. Things got a little more challenging when I tried to determine who was the actor who picked up a hitch hiking John Cusak in "The Sure Thing". Larry Hankin - success. Then there was "The Slugger's Wife". And who the hell knows. Luckily no one will ever look for that clip. Ever.

Today was good practice for July 15th where I will be THE ONLY librarian in the broadcast library for the entire day. I could single handedly bring down Weekend Edition. Scary.

The Spirit Catches you and You Fall Down

2006-06-21T19:45:00.000-04:00

I finished Anne Fadiman's book with the above title about two weeks ago, and have been meaning to write about it ever since as it was so effective. I worried, however, that I wouldn't be able to articulate what I wanted to say about it. I have decided that that is ok.

This incredible book details the clash of two cultures -- that of Western medicine, American doctors, and social workers with that of a traditional Hmong immigrant family with an epileptic child. The book is tragic and beautiful, and to me, inspiring. I have always been a huge proponent of the importance for a patient to be an active participant in their own health and their own advocate. Which is probably why I am drawn to the field of consumer health librarianship. I thought that this book just emphasized what an important role information plays in health care, and how challenging the dissemination and interpretation of information can be for health care providers and patients/families, thus the importance of an interceder. This challenge becomes exponentially more difficult when one considers the communication problems between cultures, notwithstanding language barriers. What sort of difference could it make in a place like Merced, and for a child like Lia, for health information professionals to be able to provide culturally relevant information to the Hmong community while providing vital information to health care providers in order to allow them to best serve that community. Just a thought.

old-fashioned librarian

2006-06-18T13:25:00.000-04:00

When I decided to become a librarian I had fantasies of wearing tweed, dusty books, flipping through card catalogs, and getting to stamp things. I was a little disheartened when I finally allowed myself to realize that unless I travel back in time, I will never be that kind of librarian. However, I get to come a little bit close at the broadcast library. Yesterday my duties included typing out the lending cards on...a typewriter! Granted, it was a fairly modern electric tyepwriter, but still. It definately made me realize that while my typing is fast it is not very accurate and I have become a slave to the backspace button and auto-correct functions of modern word processing. But, I slowed down, got the hang of it and felt a little bit like that stereotype of a librarian that I secretly, rather not-so-secretly, long for.

On top of that, I have learned how to use reel-to-reel tape, which is pretty exciting. On Friday I got to bake a bunch of these tapes of old programming in the oven to cure them from the syptoms of sticky-shed syndrome. I never really considered getting involved in preservation, but I am definately going to take an archives class next year because it seems as though it is something I could really get interested in.

I have taken on the role of Reference Librarian for the Summer Intern Edition show. I was worried that no one would take me up on my offer to help with research, fact-checking, etc., being that most people don't seem to consider librarians to do much more than stamping and reshelving books. However, by the first day I already had one reference request. It was a really challenging question, that I still have not found a satisfying answer and I am slightly uncomfortable with the pressure. There isn't really immidiate pressure or consequences with cataloging. I understand that if I do a poor job of choosing subject headings an item could be essentially 'lost' forever to all those who hope to seek it. I definately feel the power of that, but it is very different and less frightening than just failing to be able to help someone who needs help right then and there. It's good for me to do this, though; I definately need the practice, and I know from the little bit of reference work I have done at Princess Margaret Hospital that the end result is very rewarding.

I guess I am just not a blog person

2006-06-13T23:25:00.000-04:00

My first diary was pink, with a puffy fabric cover and a tiny gold lock. It is still in my childhood bedroom and if you went and found it you would see careful penciled D'Nealian printing on the first few pages. The rest is empty. I have journaling ambition but it never gets much farther than intention. I'm really going to try with this blog though. But I feel as though I maybe need to set the bar a little lower. My posts will not always be long and they will definately not always be thoughtful. I will try to be ok with that.

Here are some of the titles I cataloged today:

1. On the composition of the milk of forty-two cows. 1881
2. Renal Tenesmus
3. Vesico-vaginal fistule: comparative analysis of different surgical methods -- results, American and European. 1856.
4. A contribution to the anatomy of the elephant’s ear. 1888.

And I'm going to hold off talking about my experiences with MARC for another day. Bet you're excited. See -- not long, not thoughtful.

National Library of Medicine

2006-06-12T18:51:00.000-04:00

So, today was my first day as an intern in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine over in Bethesda, Maryland. The security to even get onto the NIH campus was quite impressive: hand over your ID, metal detector, x-ray machine, no knife for your lunch. Welcome to the federal government.
I got to hold a book today that was printed in 1493, the year after Columbus 'discovered' the New World. It was so exciting-- like going to a museum, but actually getting to interact with it. The book, the name of which I can't remember, had plates demonstrating blood letting points as well as really interesting depictions of 'wound man' and 'zodiac man'. 'Zodiac man' showed the areas of the body and the sign they were governed by, warning that physicians should not try to treat an illness when the stars were in that sign. Fast forward fifty years and the medical books were markedly different and amazingly advanced comparatively. And I got to turn their pages. Can you, who know me, think of a collection I could be more interested in working with? I am very much looking forward to the rest of my summer. More details on what I am actually going to be doing to come. I have to pace these things to keep you interested, right?

Karloff and Lugosi

2006-06-07T21:31:00.000-04:00

Horror flicks all day today. All day. And yes I was being paid for it. Granted, not much...but still. I really intended this to be an informative, thought provoking, witty post that fully expressed how much I am enjoying this internship. However, I am just too tired for that tonight. Sorry.

I love my job...

2006-06-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

Let me detail what I do. Or at least what I do so far (it was only my second day). So, essentially what I am doing is indexing/cataloging the spoken word collection. And, before you groan, that does not mean that it is just one giant collection of spoken word poetry by lonely boys and girls who 'perform' in smoky bars; the collection includes tv, film, and audio recordings and is basically anything in the broadcast library that is not music or the organization's original programming. To continue, I listen/watch the recordings and then create metadata for it, including subject headings, dewey numbers, and name/role indexes. Today I processed a biography of Jimi Hendrix, a conversation between a journalist and Jerry Garcia, and began work on Lynne Truss' "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" radio show. How fun is that? Let me tell you - fun.
It's so different from the monograph cataloging I have done in the past. There is no obvious chief source of information. You can't just read the back cover and the table of contents. And the user's access and needs are entirely different from anything I have done before. But, that's what makes it so exciting. I do have to admit a tiny bit of frustration (maybe not frustration...how about discomfort?) in the fact that the system there does not follow a strict code. There's no AACR2 or Dewey sitting right next to me to consult on every little question I have, knowing that it will be answered with a simple rule. Or at most, a rule cross-referenced by another rule or two. But, I guess the same has gone for the Botanical Gardens library and CATIE as well. Is it possible that perfect adherence to a classification system works only in the classroom? Heaven forbid.

I had lunch on the roof of the building today with a couple of the other interns. Look, I'm even trying to be social!

welcome interns

2006-06-05T20:35:00.000-04:00

So, today was my first day as the broadcast library intern. I got up at 5:15am to leave the house by 6:10, catch two buses and the metro to get to the building on time for intern orientation. I got my photo ID badge (I feel so professional) and a tour of the building incuding the news desks, studios, and satellite rooms. I am totally intimidated and excited by what lays ahead of me in the little audio room that will be my home for the next three months. More to come on what I will actually be doing -- but let me tell you, it's going to be crazy cataloging fun...

patience, please.

2006-06-02T13:31:00.000-04:00

So, I am keeping this blog for the following reasons:
1) When I got the job at the un-named news library I was hoping that I would be able to find online documentation of past library interns' experiences in order to get a better idea of what to expect. Alas, there were none. So, I figured I would document my experiences for posterity and so that if next year some library student Googles 'NPR library intern blog' they just might find mine.
2) In order to tiptoe into the vibrant online librarian subculture.
3) With the farfetched dream of learning a little more about HTML/CSS...if only to learn how to change colours. Be patient with me on this one.

I arrived in Virginia yesterday and the humidity hit me like a truck as I left the airport. I was so emotionally unprepared for it. My internship starts on Monday. Nervousness and excitement are battling each other in my head and I'm definately experiencing some mourning over the end of my vacation and time in Santa Cruz. I still need to figure out the logistics of my communte from here to DC/Bethesda...and what outfit to wear for my first day on the job. I'll keep you posted, whether you want me to or not.