Blogging is good for you

Sent by the long-suffering Val, this new article from Scientific American reveals the truth we in the blogosphere have known all along--blogging is good for you. It boosts dopamine, helps people make connections with other like-minded people, and yes, even fosters a sense of placebo catharsis that someone else is listening to my troubles.

If you're feeling blue, then it's time to blog. Would THAT be cool? Your doctor writes out a prescription: 3 tablets, 2 walks in the sunshine and 1 blog post and call me in the morning.
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DID anyone else hear David Sedaris on Fresh Air last night? That guy cracks me up. Here's on a book tour for his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames and was talking about Hugh, his long-suffering but always heroic boyfriend who can do anything. And random association time. Sedaris's being on a book tour reminds me of Patricia Martin's inspiration for Ren Gen--David Sedaris reading to a sell out crowd.

All of this is probably, as my friend and colleague Kate says, "fascinating, but irrelevant..."

Happy Tuesday.

And so it goes, and so it goes*

This is my very last post for It's All Good. It also happens to be my last day as an employee of the House That Fred Built where I've spent ten years. My husband and I are relocating to Vancouver, British Columbia (which is where I lived while I did my library degree twenty years ago) and I am going to take the summer off, and decide what I want to do next. I could have kept my OCLC job, because OCLC is a very flexible organization with regard to where employees do their work, and my boss is a flexible person who would have supported my move, as she has supported other changes over the past several years.

But I like change. I like the feeling of embarking on a new adventure, of starting things, and of new challenges. So, it just felt right to step through this particular door and close it gently behind me, as different ones open up.

I've had a terrific ten years at OCLC and had opportunities that I thoroughly enjoyed and from which I learned a great deal. I have worked with great people at OCLC and got to meet many more great people through workshops and presentations I've participated in. And my co-bloggers Alice, Eric, George and Chrystie have been a large part of my last few years at OCLC, and have been the best co-authors and pals a person could hope for. Thanks. And thanks to all of you in the biblioblogosphere, who have become friends and colleagues through this not-so-new publishing medium.

I am not going to write my final thoughts on libraries and their futures because I will be starting up my own blog as soon as I have a chance to do so, and I am sure one of my IAG buddies will blog about it when I do and so provide a link. Also, it would be sort of anti-climatic as I will be at ALA in June, stage-managing the OCLC Symposium and making sure there are anough pretzels at the Blog Salon. I hope to have a chance to see many of you there.

I am going to leave you with a quote from Miss Gratia Alta Countryman's 1905 address to the Minnesota Library Association because I think it's as "web 2.0" as anything written this week and so is a fitting coda to my IAG career.

“Many of our libraries are now housed in beautiful buildings, in which case, the building as well as the books become a means of social influence. The whole building at all times should be managed in the broadest spirit of hospitality…do away with all unnecessary restrictions, take down all bars, and try to put face to face our friends the books and our friends the people. Introduce them cordially, then stand aside and let them make each other’s acquaintance.”

*And so it goes, and so it goes. This is the title of a Billy Joel song (although my favourite version of the song is by Jennifer Warnes on The Well) as well as the phrase Kurt Vonnegut used like a litany in Slaughterhouse Five to denote transformation

Thanks for the fish.

The Twitterverse

I am not a Twitterer (yet?) but many people are, almost against their will, viz our own IAGer Chrystie who wrote recently, "I am as surprised by this as some of you. Me? On twitter? I checked this out as an experiment. I am the last person I ever thought would move into mobile online community. I like to read about such things, sure, but do it? And here I am."

And if you are like me, wondering why the heck you might want to get into "micro-blogging", here is "Your Guide to Micro-blogging and Twitter" from Mark Glaser at Mediashift.

There's also a Q&A with the UberTwitterers, founders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey.

5 Blogs - Alane

Lorcan's post on the 5 non-library blogs he reads reminded me that Chrystie tagged us, her IAG colleagues as well.

I read many non-library blogs and a lot of them are work-a-day tracking interesting things sorts of blogs, but here are 5 that stand out for various reasons.

Journal. David Byrne is the author. If you're around my age, or are younger and maybe discovered Talking Heads or Byrne as an influence on younger performers such as Arcade Fire, you'll know he's a very clever multitalented person (who else could turn Powerpoint into art?). And he's a good writer. Journal is just one of many channels at his site. He even has his own web radio station.

By Neddie Jingo. (warning....no naughty pictures but topics and language are not always entirely SFW). A psuedonymous blogger who I find very, very funny (so does George) and who can rant better than most. Here's a fairly safe one from two years ago (just a few non-work words and no political views, which Neddie has aplenty) on "why are books the size they are?"

Arts & Letters. This is kind of cheating as A&L isn't really a blog. But it is blog-like and often the last webby thing I look at before going to bed and reading static words on repurposed trees.

the cassandra pages. This blog I read almost as I would a book...not daily, but in chunks, reading many posts at once, perhaps because cumulatively they are like chapters in a book and often beautifully written. One aspect of Elizabeth Adam's blog I like is that she is an American living in Montreal (as well as Vermont) and writes vividly and evocatively about being there. Many lovely photographs as well. Adams also writes a lot about religion--specifically Anglican/Episcopalian matters. I am not a church-goer but my father, among other careers, is an ordained Anglican minister so the topics and debates are ones I am mostly familiar with.

I really waffled over the 5th blog....the photo blog that would completely, irrevocably uncloak my politics? The nothing-but-cute-animals photoblog that would reveal my insipidness? The snarky celeb-tracking blog that would reveal my shallowness? So, I chose one that may be just as telling but about what, I am not sure.

I give you gapingvoid, Hugh MacLeod's cartoon blog from which I have borrowed cartoons for presentations when they do not have "Not SFW" words in them. It stands, in a way, as a metablog as on his blogroll are many other blogs I read regularly.


Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod, gapingvoid.com

1001 Posts

Well, we are like Scheherazade in that we've told 1,001 stories here at It's All Good since our first post on May 20, 2004. Although, as far as I know, none of us will be executed if we stop telling stories--but I could be wrong.

It's fitting that our newest IAGer, Chrystie, made the 1,001 post.

If we posted all the stories we come across, we would be way way over this number--Alice and I seem to exchange at least two emails a week bemoaning the number of items we would like to blog about and don't find the time to, amidst all the other things we have to do.

So, perhaps a brain scan that can read my intentions and then make words based on what I planned to blog about will help get more things out of my head and into IAG.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, and University College London and Oxford University in England, have apparently developed a technique for doing at least the first part of this--looking inside peoples' brains and reading their intentions before they act, according to this article published in The Guardian Online today.

Very "future-y" and Minority Reportish. Maybe public libraries that charge fines for overdue materials can recoup money earlier in the process--say, before the material is even borrowed--by scanning the brains of borrowers and fining those who clearly have the intention of returning stuff late.

Happy Friday.