#1. Listening to Pandora while blogging is highly recommended. There aren't anymore opinions that need to be numbered, I just really wanted to share blogging + Pandora= smiles.
So, Radical Militant Librarians UNITE! We should probably look into making t-shirts and bookmarks to disseminate amoungst our ranks. Subject headings should be included along with QR formulas so that the world knows what it is in for. This should probably been #2 looking back in the hindsight of the last minute...but it is more amusing for RML Unite! (lookee we already have an abbreviation!) to have its own paragraph.
Serious business now. Last class there was a whole bunch-load and oodles of discussion on the idea of space; having spaces in your library for meetings and activities along with the library becoming that 3rd Place dealing with Ray Oldenburg's (yes sociology comes up in librarianship classes, along with politics and other such social fields) theory. First off, I think it is immensely important that libraries have an area/s that are designed for meetings of all types to occur, which means movable furniture!
Yes, you read that right, movable furniture is a must in a meeting type place or a place that fosters collaboration. Giant signs should be place in the room and throughout the library proclaiming that space as a space where you can Feng shui to your hearts content. I mean who wouldn't like having rolling chairs and movable couches? Sure, it might cut into the meetings minutes or such, but it would be a great thrill to set up the room any old way you wanted it. You could even have a dunce corner! Milne Library at my undergrad school did not foster this idea of movable furniture in a general meeting/collaboration and I think that the library could benefit from having a place in which the students are able to make their own space. Having square tables lined up in straight rows (giving off the message that the tables are in that place for a symmetrical reason and should be moved only at your own risk), generally limiting the table space to about four people, larger groups need not apply. To be fair the library was a popular meeting place...but there was not great joy in the meeting...it was just convenient. I think more people would have been in the library because they really wanted to meet there, not just because it was convenient.
In any library that I hope to work at (if indeed I do work in a library for as we are learning in class, books aka artifacts do not make the librarian) , I would love to see a meeting/collaboration space that has movable furniture and smart boards for the benefit of the group to work with. I also see homemade fresh cookies being available for hard workers with a hot beverage of choice. I would love to make cookies for the hard working collaborators using the free moving furniture workplace, but that might be a little more harder to swing, so I will settle for movable furniture with smart boards for now (at my hypothetical job). However, some day....there will be fresh cookies for my lovely members/patrons/users. Yummmm
Secondly, thirdly?, well whichever, I don't need labels for my paragraphs..or do I? I should start using Subject headings in my blogs....maybe throw in some Dewey or LOC. Anyways, Ray Oldenburg and his 3rd space, which is a place that is not your home and not your work, but somewhere you can meet to talk about home, work, and life. A library is a lovely example of this 3rd space. At the Boston Free Libray, where I used to work and still pretend to whenever I visit (the members are gracious enough to humour me and let me pretend that I still work there, they are so GREAT!), there is always a sense of community hanging in the air. Members and the staff are mostly all on a first name basis and there is always a conversation going on the library that deals with the community; schools, families, town politics, you name it. There are also some really awesome regulars who come in every week the same night and oft times they bring us food and the new juiciest piece of town gossip...errr I mean latest factual news of the community.
I live in a town that does not have a library (don't be horrified, Colden is a ridiculously tiny town with probably more deer than people and there are two libraries less than ten minutes away) and so the 3rd place shows up in the town's bars. I am not saying that everyone is a lush but if you go to the Hotel or up into the hills to Colden Lakes you will hear a lot community discussions going on. Ofttimes politics are the main thrust of the conversation and a lot of community business probably goes on there, along with the required shop talk and town gossip...uh I mean factual news of the community). So even though my fellow Coldenites and I are not alcoholics, we probably would benefit from a library with an enticing meeting place for people to hang out and discuss things that is not at a bar...though it would be difficult to bring people in because I don't know if libraries can get a beer and liquor license.....
On that note, Libraries = good place to have meetings, collaborations, and catch up on town factual news.
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