Realia

For several weeks, I have been reading with interest the responses to Wife of a Sailor’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In. I’ve even started working on my answers the last couple of weeks, but never got around to posting them. I was determined not to miss the chance again this week, so here goes:

1. What secret indulgence do you act on while your spouse is away?

This sounds really lame, but going to bed early is something I indulge in when the husband is gone. He is more of a night owl than I am, and he tends to talk me into staying up later than I would on my own. When he’s here, we usually go to bed at 11:00 or later. When he’s gone, it’s not unusual for me to take a book to bed around 9:30 or 10:00, read for a while, and be sound asleep by 10:30.

2. If you were a spice, what would you be?

I’ve been trying to think of a really clever answer to this question and trying to find the spice that really captures my personality, but for some reason, cinnamon is what keeps popping into my mind, so I guess I should stop ignoring my subconscious and choose cinnamon as my answer. I don’t really have a good reason for it, though, other than I like it.

3. Where do you go for support when your significant other is deployed?

We haven’t been through a deployment yet, but when the husband’s been gone for OBC, training, etc., I have really leaned on my younger sister for support. She lives 8 hours away from me, but she usually comes out to visit me for a weekend any time that the husband is gone for longer than a week.

4. What is the oldest thing you own?

That’s a tough one to answer. I honestly don’t know. If we’re talking about the thing I’ve personally had the longest, there are a couple of stuffed animals from childhood that I still have. If we’re talking about the thing that is actually the oldest, I have two of my grandma’s cookbooks from the 1950s.

5. How did you vision your future pre-military?

The husband and I were married for six years before he joined the Army, so I definitely had time to form a vision of what our non-military marriage would be like. When we got married, I never in a million years would have pictured myself ever being an Army wife. And I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a somewhat rough transition when he joined, two and a half years ago. He’s a reservist, so I suppose our life hasn’t changed as much as it would have if he was active duty, but I think the biggest difference between our life now and how I would have envisioned it before he joined the Army has to be the feeling that we are not entirely in control of decisions about our future. It’s hard to plan for the future and for things like trying to start a family, when I know that the Army could totally pull the rug out from under us at any time. I realize that nobody really has control over their future, and that unforeseen circumstances could mess up anyone’s plans, but when you’re married to a Soldier, it almost seems like it’s not a question of if your major life plans will get disrupted, but a question of when. I’m not completely used to that yet. I’m not sure if it’s something you ever get totally used to.

I’ve been very intrigued by Library Day in the Life in its previous four incarnations, but I never quite got around to participating.  I was determined to change that this time around.  Technically, the official Day in the Life was yesterday, so I am going to tell you about what I did yesterday, even though I didn’t get around to writing about it until today.

For those of you who don’t know, I work as a cataloging librarian at the Nebraska Library Commission, and the following is a fairly typical day in my life.

Like most Mondays, I started my day by catching up on reading email that had accumulated over the weekend and logging into Google Reader to catch up on the blogs that I follow.  Actually, I start most days this way, but it generally takes a little longer on Mondays, since more stuff has piled up over the weekend.

I am going to be teaching a day-long class on cataloging e-monographs in two weeks, and so a good portion of my time yesterday was spent in preparation for the class.  This is the fourth class that I have taught since I started my current job (the second full-day class), and I am still amazed at the amount of preparation that it takes.  I am trying to work ahead and get it completed ahead of time, but I know I will be making changes right up until the last minute.

I also spent some time being an involved member of my state library association, fulfilling some of my duties as chair of the Nebraska Library Association’s New Members Round Table.  I spent a short bit of time looking over the minutes of last week’s meeting, which were sent out by the secretary for approval.  I also spent some time crafting an announcement to send out to recruit library science students to participate in a poster session at NLA’s annual conference in October.

As many catalogers are doing these days, I would assume, I also spent some time trying out the recently-released RDA Toolkit.  Coincidentally, I also got an email question from a Nebraska librarian asking about a presentation I gave recently on RDA, and asking for my opinion on how to best make use of the trial period for the RDA Toolkit.  I suppose that this very accurately captures one aspect of what I do in my position.  I’m lucky enough to have the luxury of time to explore new developments in cataloging, such as RDA, and disseminating information about these developments to librarians in the state and answering their questions is an important part of my duties.

Last, but not least, as you might expect for a cataloging librarian, I did some actual cataloging.  The majority of the cataloging that I do is state government documents (since my library is a repository of these documents), and today was no exception.  And seriously, what’s not to love about cataloging state documents? With titles like “Assessment of Adult Crappie Abundance During the Spawning Season”,  could you ask for anything more exciting?  I am joking about that; as easy as it is to poke fun at the, um, esoteric nature of government documents, I really do enjoy this part of my job.  I feel that my library is providing an important service by making these documents available, especially because they are available online.  In addition, working with these documents means that the majority of the cataloging work that I do is original cataloging, and I realize that it is becoming more and more rare that catalogers can say that.  Because I get to do so much original cataloging, this job has been an excellent place to learn the hows and whys of cataloging, and my work is consistently challenging.  As if that wasn’t enough, the variety of the material that I catalog means that I encounter a number of entertaining Library of Congress Subject Headings that I had no idea existed – like “power line bird strikes,” which I used the other day.

Looking back on it, I would say that yesterday was fairly representative of my job as a whole.  My job is generally an even split between doing cataloging work and helping others do cataloging work (through formal training, as well as answering questions as they come up), and yesterday captured that split pretty well.  It also reflected the division of my duties between my library’s purpose as a state repository and its mission to provide services to librarians across the state.  All in all, it was a pretty typical day in my work life.

When I was growing up, my younger sister and I spent more time than I care to admit playing a Barbie-themed computer game on our Commodore 64.  The premise of the game was simple; Ken would call Barbie up for a date.  Barbie would always cheerfully respond, “That sounds like fun!” And Ken would say, “Great! See you in an hour!” The object of the game was to get Barbie ready for her date (buying clothes, getting her hair done, etc.) before the hour ran out and she missed her date with Ken.  Some of the ever-so-thrilling action of the game can be seen here:

What this short snapshot of the game fails to capture is the fact that at least half of the time, once you got Barbie ready for the planned date – say for example, the prom – she would arrive home to get a phone call from Ken, who would say something like, “Sorry, Barbie, plans have changed.  Let’s go to the pool!” And she would have to go through the whole process again, replacing her prom gown with a bikini and her high heels with flip flops.  And did Barbie ever complain about Ken’s last minute changes? Of course not – she just repeated her cheerful refrain of “That sounds like fun!”

When we first got the game, my sister and I played to win, dutifully dressing and re-dressing Barbie to comply with each of Ken’s whims.  After the novelty wore off a little bit, we began to play a little more subversively, making Barbie arrive late on purpose, or having her show up to the prom in a bikini and blue hair.  While the lack of an appropriate outfit did not change Ken’s reaction one bit, it did make the game more amusing.

I was reminiscing about this game the other day, and what I was struck by (other than complete amazement that I managed to grow up without taking this game’s wonderful gender sterotypes to heart), was the fact that there are times when being married to a soldier makes me feel like I’m living this game.  I’m Barbie, and the Army is Ken, changing plans at the last minute without any regard to the preparations that I’ve made.  My husband’s reserve unit wants to send him to anti-terrorism training, oh, next week? Great! He’s going to have to stay at annual training a week longer than planned so he can train the rest of his unit when they arrive? That sounds like fun!

I know I’m not saying anything that other military spouses don’t already know – the one constant in our life is change. And I know that since my husband is fairly new to the Army and we haven’t been through a deployment yet, being a military spouse will disrupt my life in the future in ways far beyond the small annoyances I’ve experienced so far.

So, fellow military spouses, I suppose my question to you is, how do you deal with the many last minute changes that are a part of military life? Do you have any mantras you repeat to keep yourself sane? Any tricks that are the equivalent of Barbie showing up to the prom with blue hair?

Some of you may be wondering what the title of my blog refers to. If you are a cataloger, you may be familiar with the term already, but, judging from the fact that my husband asked “What’s realia?” while reading my blog for the first time, I assume that people may not be familiar with the term. Realia, in the cataloging world, is a term used in a catalog record to describe a three-dimensional object.

So why did I choose this as the name of my blog? I was looking for a cataloging-related word to reflect my job. I admit that it probably came to mind, at least in part, because I was preparing a workshop on how to catalog realia when I started this blog. Beyond the cataloging-related definition of the word, realia can also be defined as “Objects from real life or from the real world, as opposed to theoretical constructs or fabricated examples,” and I think that spoke to me as well, since I want this blog to be not just about my work as a librarian, but also about all aspects of my “real life.”

I’m reviving a somewhat old Internet meme, inspired by Steve Lawson’s revival of an even older Internet meme. It captured my imagination a few months ago, and now that I have a blog, I present to you my list:

1. My parents realized I could read when I quoted them some fact about George Washington from The How, Why and Wonder Book of the American Revolution. I think I was three at the time.

2. I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye more times than I can count. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s my favorite book, but it’s sort of my comfort book.  I read it when I want something very familiar.

3.  There are three authors that I buy every book they put out, sight unseen, without reading reviews: Barbara Kingsolver, Sherman Alexie, and Nick Hornby.  They all had new books that came out this past year, which made me very happy.

4.  My mom was usually the one who read to my sisters and me when we were growing up.  However, my dad had two specialties, the Little House on the Prairie books and the Wizard of Oz books.  I have very fond memories of him reading these two series to my sisters and me.

5.  It is not unusual for a conversation between one of my family members and me to contain a quote from a children’s book, particularly Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, or one of the Frog and Toad books.

6.  Because of #5, when I was in college, I bought my boyfriend (now my husband) a copy of Winnie the Pooh and Days with Frog and Toad, just so he could understand what the heck I was talking about when I quoted them. 

7.  When I was a kid, I was scared of this version of Frog Went A-Courtin’.  There was an illustration where they were pouring medicine down a chicken’s throat with a funnel, and that freaked me out.

8.  One of the most voracious reading periods of my life was when I was in junior high.  I usually check out library books based on recommendations and reviews, but in junior high, I would wander the young adult section of the public library and check out anything that looked remotely interesting.  It was a great approach to reading, but I wish I kept better track of what I read, because now I have all these memories of great young adult books, but I have no idea what books they are.  I remember them with vague descriptions like “the book where the girl has a dog named Bribe and it ends up dying because it falls out of a pick-up truck bed.”

9.  In my high school speech class, my best friend and I had to present a commercial together.  Our chosen product was a “Discuss Writing with the Dead” hotline, where you could call dead authors for writing advice.  One part of the commercial involved someone calling Dr. Seuss to ask him what rhymes with Xerox.

10.  When reading non-fiction, I need to be able to highlight passages in the text.  I sometimes don’t even go back and look at what I’ve highlighted, but somehow, highlighting helps me process the information.

11.  The summer before my sophomore year in high school, most everyone chose to read Of Mice and Men off of our summer reading list (probably because it was the shortest book).  For reasons that I don’t completely understand now, I chose The Fountainhead.

12.  I feel compelled to see movies based on books that I’ve read.  Even when I loved the book and know that I’ll most likely be disappointed by the movie, my curiosity gets the best of me; I have to see what the movie is like.

13.  I like reading non-fiction history books, but I’ve never really gotten into historical fiction.

14.  I’m not a big fan of fantasy and science fiction books.  I think that I don’t have the patience for world-building.  I like to pick up a book and immediately have at least a rough idea of the environment in which the characters live.

15.  I generally take good care of books, though I’m not obsessive about it.  When I was working on my degree in museum studies, I inadvertently ruined a book by letting juice spill on it in my backpack.  Ironically, it was the textbook for my Conservation and Preservation class.

One of the reasons I’ve always hesitated when I’ve thought about starting a blog is that I worry about not being a prolific enough poster.  I find it hard to think of topics on which to write.  So I decided to look for other blogs for inspiration.  One of the library blogs I read regularly is Library Alchemy.  Leigh Anne recently wrote a couple of posts entitled Cranky Bodhisattva in a Long Black Dress: How I Got Here, Why I Stay (divided into Part I and Part II) and invited others to explore the same topic.  It seemed like a good enough writing prompt to me, so here goes:

In a way, librarianship was a second choice career for me.  While I was an undergraduate student (history and psychology double major) I interned at some history museums, loved it, and decided to get a master’s degree in museum studies.  I loved every minute of my graduate program and my summer internship at the National Museum of Roller Skating (yes, it does exist), and at the completion of my internship, I was excited to be offered a part-time position as the assistant curator, which gave me some extra spending money during my second year in the program and some solid museum experience to put on my resume.  I started feeling somewhat less thrilled when I finished my degree and was sending out job application after job application, resulting in a few interviews and no job offers.  A year later, when I was still working my part-time assistant curator job, and feeling kind of hopeless about the museum field in general, I signed up with a temp agency to get some full-time employment, and I started thinking about considering other options.

I went through a phase where I thought about just about every career possibility under the sun (“I’ll go to law school! No, I’ll get a teaching certification!  Are there any nursing programs in my area?”), and librarianship was one of the options I considered (I think my thought process was something like, “Libraries are in the same general category as museums, right?”), but I didn’t think of it as a real possibility because I didn’t think there were any programs in my area.  In the mean time, in an effort to enrich my life in non-career-related ways, I started a knitting group at a local coffee shop.  At the very first meeting, one of the women who showed up told me that she was a social worker, but she was going back to school to get her library science degree through the University of Missouri’s distance education program.  I checked out the program, and I was hooked.

So, yes, I started library school without ever having worked in a library (aside from volunteer work shelving books at the public library).  Yes, I only applied to one school.  And yes, I was doing it at least partially because it seemed like the next best thing to museum work, rather than pursuing librarianship for its own merits.  So no, it probably wasn’t the most well thought out career move.  But as it happens, the library field has turned out to be perfect for me.

You see, while I thought that the similarities between libraries and museums (the fact that they are both informal learning environments, for example) are what drew me to the library field, in a way, I think I realized that the differences between the two environments were important to me as well.  My interest in the museum world was never simply about preserving the stuff, it was about connecting people with information about the stuff.  I enjoyed creating exhibits and educational programs that told the stories behind museum artifacts.  I got a kick out of digging through our archival collections to help people who came to the museum looking for their names in a program from a roller skating competition they were a part of in the 1950s.  I loved handling research requests over the phone (basically doing reference work) for people who needed information that could be provided by the items in our collection.  (On more than one occasion, I combed through our collection of roller skate patents to find information for patent attorneys looking to defend their clients’ claims that their inventions were original.)

I also started library school without any real idea about what sort of work I wanted to do when I finished.  I think my main idea of what library work was centered around the reference desk at a public library, and I hadn’t really thought about what other kinds of library positions existed.  When I took my required cataloging class, I fell in love with cataloging.  For me, learning the intricacies of AACR2 and MARC format was like learning a language, something I’ve always enjoyed.  But it was not the nitpickiness of cataloging that really drew me to it; I promise I am not the stereotypical anal retentive cataloger (one glance at my kitchen table will tell you that is definitely not the case).  What really thrilled me about cataloging was the whole idea of the importance of organizing information in order to make it easier for people to find.  In my mind, cataloging is a public service; there is no use in libraries having all the stuff that they have if no one can find it.

Even though I loved cataloging, knowing that I was not going to be very geographically flexible in my job search after graduation, I was reluctant to specialize too much.  I got a job as a reference assistant at an academic library, I did my practicum in technical services (again in an academic library), and I did some volunteer cataloging work at a local museum.  I finished my degree in May of 2008 and started applying for pretty much any local librarian job posting I saw.  In August of 2008, I applied for the job that I have now, cataloging librarian at my state’s library agency.  I was lucky enough to be hired and started October 1 of that year.  I consider myself very lucky to have found a job in the exact area of library work that appeals to me most, without having to relocate.

Yes, an original title, I know. After debating with myself for a while, I’ve finally decided to commit to the whole blogging thing.  Though I’ve based the title and tag line on my professional identity, I have a feeling this will end up being a professional/personal blog. So stay tuned, and see what I can come up with!