DC - Day 4

Conference-session-wise today was a kick ass day! I won't bore you with all the details but I will tell you that at this conference I've been to two sessions on "embedded librarians", a concept I have been thinking about and talking about and planning out for years. I am completely convinced that this is the new model of librarianship, particularly in academic and specialized libraries. It was really gratifying to see the research and experience of those currently embedded in their organizations back up what I've envisioned as the future of libraries. After the morning sessions I was really pumped up for the profession!!

The other highlight of the day was a tour of NPR. The NPR building is practically across the street from the convention center. The building is home to one of the two most famous librarians our profession has. The first most famous librarian is Nancy Pearl. Nancy Pearl is so famous she was the model for the Librarian Action Figure. The second most famous librarian is Kee Malesky, NPR Librarian. Someone even made a documentary of her! I really admire the research Kee does and the tight deadlines she works under so when I heard that a tour was being offered I immediately signed up.

Full disclosure: I do not listen to NPR. Ever. Never have, unless by accident. I have nothing against public radio. My beef is more with the hipster set and aging hipster set who feel the need to constantly reference "I heard on NPR . . . " Stuff White People Like explains my annoyance far better than I ever could. I want to emphasize that I am not against public radio, I am against the posturing involved in listening to it. Despite my feelings I signed up for the tour. Hypocrite, thy name is elbowchronicles!
The tour was pretty cool. We got to see the various news rooms and recording studios and check out the reference desks. They have two libraries - a traditional reference "desk" (though two of their librarians are embedded librarians) consisting of mostly online and database resources. The reference desk does a lot of fact checking for news reports and checking proper pronunciations. They also have a broadcasting library where they keep tapes of all of their programs, 27,000 musical cds and a multitude of other broadcasts. It was pretty awesome. We also got to see how they put together Morning Edition which probably would have made more sense to me had I ever listened to the show. The other librarians on the tour were clearly frequent NPR listeners. They giggled and gushed and acted like teenagers at a Tom Jones concert (correct age bracket).

It was a really cool tour and once it was over I actually thought that maybe I should listen to NPR all the time and see what the fuss is about. Then I can be the jerk telling everyone how cool I am by mentioning some topic I heard on NPR . . .

It was extremely humid today. My hair got so big and bushy I had to walk through doorways sideways! Well, maybe I am exaggerating slightly, but it was pretty close! I scoured CVS on a break and found a product called "friz-ease". I am really hoping that in addition to everything I am going to learn tomorrow I will have also learned how to tame my wildly insane hair! :-)