New Lubango Vlog: The ISTEL Library

I talk about the ISTEL library a lot - here's a video tour of the place I'm referring to!

The sheer stupendous star power that is... Michael Hoskin?

With the Calgary comic expo arriving in a few days Global News visited the University to view our exhibit on pulp fiction and chat about how the pulps led to comics. As the library's foremost expert on comic books, they drafted me in. The resulting piece is only 2 minutes long and I'm afraid my sound bites were disproportionately featured. Sorry, colleagues! Yikes, that voice. I sound like a total hoser, eh?

October 21: Canadian Library Workers Day

I had no clear path before me as high school came to an end. I struggled to socialize with others and my self-esteem was horribly low. I had given no thought to my post-secondary education, much less a career I would be suited to.

One day my mother encouraged me to take an aptitude test and the results gave me a sudden surge of self-confidence; I would never have been believed the results if another person had said them to me, but the impartial nature of a standardized test reassured me. The test informed me I had a strong organizational mind; "Hm, yes, I do have a strong organizational mind," I realized. What careers were recommended for me? Among them was to work in a library. Yes, that sounded right.

It took a great deal of time and effort. I had to struggle at becoming a better student to earn my degree as a library technician, but I worked harder than I had through my high school years because I finally knew what I was building towards. I had to learn to trust people. I had to learn to trust myself. I had to persevere when there were no opportunities in my field.

Yet, here I am; today is Canadian Library Workers Day and I have been employed in that field for 10 years & 11 months. I found work and challenges which motivate me - more than that, I found purpose as one of many people working to preserve and provide information to the world. I am proud to be a Canadian library worker.

Another book splurge

The other day the library held a book sale, offering up discards and duplicates (many of them 100+ year old hardcovers) at bargain prices, nothing more expensive than $1. Now, I was present to help set up, maintain and take down the sale, but that also meant I had fine opportunities to look over the wares and set aside whatever I was interested in. I didn't buy everything I was interested in, out of consideration for my bookshelves. I was interested in a copy of H.G. Wells' autobiography, but doubted that I would ever read it. Restricting myself to books I wanted as reading material, not shelf decorations, I came up with:

• The Confessions of St. Augustine, 1838.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 1891.
• The Complete Works of O. Henry, 1928.
• Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1932.
• The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet, 1937.
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, 1948.
• Escape or Die by Paul Brickhill, 1952.
• Spark of Life by Erich Maria Remarque, 1952.
• The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton, 1958.
• Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, 1961.
• This Gun for Hire by Graham Greene, 1982.

I'm in good shape in terms of reading material for the next few months!

Free is no longer free

Well, I suppose things must be rough when the libraries start charging money not simply to borrow, but to simply use their collections. And behind that is the threat of charging money to browse a collection. That's what the University of Toronto is proposing. There will always be public libraries and ebook sources for the budget-minded, but I know that academic collections - especially one such as U of T's - contain so many hard-to-find materials, that this just can't be a good thing to the academic community. I understand that libraries need to keep an eye on the bottom line, especially these days, but taking information out of the hands of the people simply never ends well.