I have planned a day that includes delicious homemade pasta, Mexican food, and general frolics.

I will also make sure I find time to do my homework.

Of course, “do my homework” also means “read YA genre fiction.” I’m clearly doing something right.

If you feel so inclined, please help me celebrate my birthday by leaving me a comment: a poem you like, a book you’d recommend, a link to a neat article I should read, odd facts, or anything else delightful.

Or tell me why you love your local library.

I saw this question earlier today, and daydreamed while I did my errands, and had entirely too much fun daydreaming some answers.

What made me laugh almost immediately, was that all my thoughts hinged on the idea of living in a fictional city. Whether it’s a fictional version of New York with more magic possible, like the city in Veronica, by Nicholas Christopher, or the New York where The Grimm Legacy housed its fairy tale library (imagine working there after I graduate library school!)… or a magic-infused town like the one where Sunshine works in a bakery and charms and hexes bestow luck. Or Charles DeLint’s Newford.

I clearly want to live in a fairy tale.

Also- I want to have access to a restaurant row, where all the chefs I’ve read about and drooled over, can set up their restaurants. from Comfort Food to The School of Essential Ingredients, to Sunshine’s bakery.

It’s apparently easier for me to imagine living in a world where magic is possible than a place that doesn’t have public transportation or sidewalks though.

That makes me laugh at myself.

There are five other people in my class.

Assignments include:

Giving book talks… 2 to 5 minute presentations about a book, including read-alikes, which is a fancy librarian term for “3 books you’ll like if you like this.”

Practicing reader advisory on an Actual Teenager about books they might like. Actual teenagers will be provided, courtesy of our instructor’s school. Because otherwise, I do not know where I would go find one.

Making a website about a genre of YA fiction, including a definition of the genre, subgenres, book recommendations, other resources.

I’m kicking around the idea of historical fiction.

Which leaves me wondering: where do I go to find out stats about how much historical fiction exists on any given time period? I have a suspicion, unconfirmed as yet, that there’s a ton of middle grade novels and YA about World War II, disproportionate to other times.

A volume of poetry.

A collection of family stories, with recipes, from my extended family.

A collection of essays about African American rock musicians, and race and rock and roll. I think I want to edit this collection, though I also want to do entirely too much research about Sun Records. This last may subside as the final paper for reference wears off.

A short story collection. I think I’ve always wanted to edit an anthology.

I wish I could join in. Wistful sigh! Because I know it’s so much fun.

I have caffeine. I have many things to read. I have plenty of things to munch on, so I don’t have to be distracted by cooking. I will be hidden away in my apartment, immersing myself in reading and writing. So my day will be like the Readathon, in some respects.

But writing a term paper is rather less fun.

Cheers for the readathon folks, who have already sent me a few @ tweets to keep my motivation up! Dad sends his cheers too! (Though he is not here to make me pasta. Alas!)

And the paper is chugging along. I might even finish it today, in time to share a few chapters of fiction with my readathon buddies!

It’s cool looking, whimsical science! And people are excited about it!

There is a lot of talking in library science circles about Linked Data. Which would mean that everything on the web would have a link to it, and would have a set name, and would be linked to everything else somehow. There is a lot of talking about how this would happen, what would happen if it did. Ideologies and opinions abound! Techies! Scholars! Philosophers! I am still too new to this to feel sure I should stake out what I think…

But Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Internet… he’s very excited. 

Tonight, I learned a new word! (A few new words, but the others were rather more arid examples of library jargon.)

Mapping the Republic of Letters. Basically, these are data points tracing Enlightenment thinkers, and who wrote to whom, mapped out by relationships and geography. The way it’s visualized reminds me of a Lite Brite which makes me feel less than scholarly.

And then there was a TED talk that was both informative and delightfully goofy: What We Learned from 5 Million Books.

which is about Google’s Ngram Viewer… which I have just tried to play with, and comprehend. But the things I am getting from it are not as much fun as what those two guys got from it.

A bit ago, LisaP gave me a link to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. It shows when and how words are used, tracking them over time. Spoken, written, fiction, news… Be prepared to spend hours!

Last Friday, I went to the Library of Congress, and it was lovely, and a lot of its wonderfulness is on the web. I have not had time to blog about all the notes I took while I gaped enthusiastically at wonderful archive things. Or to explore its digital archives.

Except by replacing that idea with the image of him reading picture books to kiddies.

Let me explain.

I’m writing a paper about social media use in public libraries, and so my head is a stew of depressing statistics about the economic downturn paradox of increased library use and decreased funding, colliding with the inherent upbeat tone of books about social media from a marketing perspective, and my love of libraries that use social media tools cleverly. (Blowing a kiss to the NYPL, Queens Library and my newest public library crush, the Kansas City Public Library)

And then I read a piece in Mental Floss, about charities raising money to bribe celebrities to do odd things. The idea of Celine Dion singing “I Want Your Sex” nearly had me reaching for my wallet.

And then, a memory of a school auction of “Principal for the Day” tickled my memory.

Why couldn’t there be a benefit auctioning off celebrity librarians for the day? Authors would be a good bet, of course, reading their books or books they love. But why stop there?

Let Jeremy Lin shelve some books, or dust the top shelves!

Really smart, interesting reference answers by Malcolm Gladwell. Or Will Shortz.

Storytime by Mark Sanchez would be a hit with the sports-loving kiddies, and parents too.

Storytime by Jack Nicholson or Keith Richards… I just have no words. Or Johnny Depp. It would be wrong, but beautifully wrong. And Samuel L. Jackson? Come on, you know you want him to read Go the F*k to Sleep.

Robert Pattinson shelving Twilight books? Could possibly make enough money from Twihards to keep the NYPL in the black.

Felicia Day is practically a picture book character in her own right. So is Robin Williams.

What celebrities would you like to see working in your library?

“There’s nothing inside that’s 81. It’s just the changes in the body. And the memory. I don’t remember where the keys are. Or as my son says, ‘Ma, it’s not that you don’t remember where you put the keys, it’s when you pick up your keys and you don’t know what they’re for.’ Thank you, son.” She laughs long and loud. “Everything that happened in the first 50 years of my life is dazzling and memorable. It’s amazing, how the past is so clear. And the present is…” She bats a hand in the air.

from an interview Morrison did in The Guardian.

I hadn’t known that Toni Morrison was a pen name- her given name is Chloe Wofford.

Cannot wait to see all the libraryish sights.

But oooh man, I’m going to sleep on the bus there and back!

- Keith Richards, Rolling Stones Guitarist