Birdbath Makeover

I'll share a quick little project that I put together last week and it's brightened up the landscaping. I love gardens and animals thus my yard is beginning to reflect that. I now have plants galore and I've added bird feeders to the back flower bed. Once we finish putting up our fence (this weekend I think!) I will build a few birdhouses and possibly a small shelter for the stray cats that we care for. You'd think they'd have attacked the birds by now but 1) They get fed by enough people in the neighborhood that they don't care to hunt anything and 2) The birds KNOW when they cats are hiding under the feeders and don't go anywhere near them. But these structures will have to be far apart from each other, just in case.

My aunt very generously gave me a bird bath that belonged to her but has been stored in my grandma's garage for many years, getting no use out of it. I finally got a hold of it last weekend and it's time for a rehab! Here's a pic of it, peeling paint and grunge all over. But it has such a lovely triangle pattern on it, there's potential here. I hosed off much of the dirt, and set to work painting after it dried in the sun for a bit. Once our fence and exterior house painting is completed, I have a few shades of tan/cream with accents of blue-green and cherry red. Most everything will be painted the base of cream so I decided to reverse it for the bird bath. (The brown fence in the background is now an off-white color--I just finished it this week) I painted the birdbath the lighter shade of blue (called "Rain Cloud") and will then add accents in the cream color and maybe the red. I don't need overkill.


At first, I didn't paint the inside of the bowl because I didn't want to accidentally poison any birds. I wasn't sure how the paint would react with water, even though it's exterior paint and should be waterproof. I did some research online and since it's latex-based, it's nontoxic. Good, because many people complained about algae, water leaching through cracks, etc. This paint should help because it's sealed the porous cement surface and a hairline crack. And it's also a deterrent for mildew so I hope it will help with algae. Plus it's prettier! I played up some of the accents with the cream paint (Gobi Desert) but not too much. I actually painted blue back over some of the designs because it was too much going on. You can still see the pattern on it, even with just the blue. If you click on the pictures, you can see the larger image.

Finally, I decided to add shiny, colorful stones to attract the birds and make it look more colorful. I had to double-check that the adhesive I used would resist water and be non-toxic (bottle info seemed fine) and voila! Here it is, all pretty looking.

Now, I've had it set up in the yard for almost a week now and besides some bird poo, I have yet to see a bird in it. Just on the edge. They'll figure it out eventually. I also noticed that I'll have to get a different glue because after being submerged 24/7, the water-resistant glue is softening and stones are coming loose. Not a big deal really but I don't want to lose any in the yard when I dump the water. And then run over them with the lawn mower.

Genealogy

There are so many articles this past decade discussing the unique name trend that parents are supporting. Naming their children after fruit, countries, animals, or just making it up, everyone is quick to worry about the effect it will have on children who have to grow up with these odd names. Yes, there are some I would avoid. Actually, probably many I would avoid. But I like the creativity that parents are utilizing as well as the opportunity for a child to stand out. Yes, they might get picked on. But if 99% of your class also has a strange name, who is going to pick on whom? And really, it strengthens your character to stand up for yourself in some way. I loved that I knew nobody else with my first name, while many of my friends had to be distinguished by a last initial. Just sayin'.

Yet, I really don't think that creative, clever, or obnoxious names are really new to the baby-naming game. I'm VERY involved in genealogical research for my family and I've been lucky that most of our history is already documented in two published books (Just enough to still leave puzzles for me!). I enjoy the stories about my past relatives but what I really like is looking at their names. Who named which child after which relative? Which name got copied the most within a family branch? And I can say with certainty, weird names abound! My great-grandfather and his siblings all had first names that started with the letter O, although they only ever went by their middle names: Robert Elisha Nixon and his wife Mary Hempleman had: Ola Floyd, Ora Emerson, Orval Leslie, Olive Katherine, and Ollie Ulric. And before anyone suggests that some of these could have been related to ethnicities or their native culture (seemingly normal for them) but sounds strange to me, my family (this side in particular) is Irish. And they moved here in the late 1700s. There are almost NO Irish names in my family. Odd, I know. I guess they wanted to be different.

Also, the preponderance of fall birthdays is nearly 100%. I know they were all farmers but I guess this proves it since what other time of year besides winter would you have time to get it on? ;)

Here's a list of my favorite unique names from my family tree.

Irish side:

• Andrew Jackson Nixon (he's the older gentleman in the Nixon family photo, some of these other names are there too but I can't remember who's who besides his wife Cassandra.)
  
• Luella
• Valvera
• Polly
• Cora
• Huldah
• Ardona
• Alta
  

German side:

• Philomena
• Amandus (male)
• Urban
• Euphrosina
• Bartholomaus
• Franziska
• Isidore
• Amalia
• Bernadette
• Boniface (or spelled Benifacious)
  

The Czech/Austrian/Hungarian side had mostly boring names that repeated a lot, like Stephen, Mary, Paul, Catherine, etc. Do you have a favorite family name?

"The Internet is full. Go away." ~Anon

Well, that quote (from the lovely Quote Garden) sums up quite nicely how I'm feeling lately. With the approaching disappearance of graduating students, my month of August is usually a time to catch up on the worthwhile projects on which I've fallen behind. One of these projects is the creation of our departmental website.

At the moment, we don't even have a web page for our department so it's important that we at least have contact information and a general description of what we do. You'd be surprised how many people think we don't exist. OK, maybe you wouldn't be. I've been brainstorming ideas for who our audience will be, what information we want to share, how important educating this audience will be, all following in-line with our institution's current layout and specifications (no easy task). I also wonder how much overhead will be included with the "updating" process and this could affect what type of information I include and how that content is conveyed. For example, I would consider a departmental blog but I have yet to find out how that would be carried out. (There is a great deal of detail I could add here but cannot share because of how it relates to my job. So, apologies if this seems general in nature)

My other frustration is that there are already many great preservation websites, in particular departmental ones. They have blogs and photos and project ideas; what can we contribute that someone else hasn't done? I ask this question, not because I'm feeling low on how special we are as a department, but because I wonder how to justify the time I will spend on the website to my institution. As of yet, I have no estimate for how much time per week I will update it. That depends entirely on the content. It could range from an hour or two per month to that same amount per week. But I have to justify what we will get out of it. I'm a big supporter of the outreach and education mandates so a website would personally satisfy those because I'm educating our institutional members and the public at large. But is that good enough? I don't know.

On thoughts of a possible blog, it would be interesting to see how my voice there would differ from here (we're a teeny department so it would be me posting). Here, I mix professional and personal but I hesitate to get too far into either. I like my personal privacy still and of course, my job. Similarly, when I browse my handwritten journal, it's a different voice. Even when I write about the same topics, there is a world of difference. It reminds of this article, shared on Twitter yesterday by @librarianbyday.

Those are my musings for the day. Any thoughts on the website woes, please share!

Library Day in the Life, Round 5

I've been following the Library Day in the Life tweets on Twitter, contributing a few here and there myself. And since I then progressed to the blog posts, I will contribute my own sample Library Day in the Life.

My job title is Conservation Technician. Basically, I'm in charge of the Preservation Lab and it's day-to-day activities in an academic library. This includes managing students, training, budgets and supplies, dealing with other departmental projects that relate to our own, and of course, performing the treatments/repairs myself while keeping track of 1500+ items.

• Upon arriving at work, I usually eat my breakfast (0f oatmeal or cereal bar with fruit) and some hot tea. Minimum of two cups. I check my email, listserv digests, and any calendar appts. for the day.
  
• Greet students as they arrive and assign any special projects that need to be completed this week. Right now, we are trying to get the treated/repaired materials sent back to the libraries before fall semester starts. This requires a good bit of sorting and organizing by book trucks on my part, which I can then assign to students. Some will need to photocopy barcodes and call numbers for boxes and others will need to create spine labels with title info.
  
• I sort through more book trucks of treated/repaired materials to check quality assurance, taking note of which students need more training (they label them so I know who has done what). Those books that look good are routed to a separate book truck to be discharged from the system, statistics noted, and packaged up. They might also be transferred to a different storage site, which of course is a different book truck! Those items that don't pass muster are sent back to students to fix.
• Students still seem to be chugging along OK so I use this opportunity to handle any other special projects myself. Often this includes fragile books to be disbound for digitization, repairing leather-bound volumes, creating cloth clamshells or portfolios, or just whatever fits the mood I'm in. Maybe I just want to glue things today. This week I'm completing a set of corrugated box bases that are taller and wider than I for Archives. They need a nice container for rolled maps that will fit on a long shelf.
  
• Lunchtime arrives and as long as I eat roughly at the same time as the students, I won't be interrupted every ten minutes with questions about repairs.
  
• Post-lunch sleepiness is hitting me, so I deliver completed projects to other departments in the building, check in with questions about projects they'd like completed, and pick up new preservation problems.
  
• Returning to my desk, I check my current supply order statuses and check the lab for our current needs. Students interrupt to ask when they can learn new treatments, maybe I'll have an hour in a little bit? Back to my desk, I update our supply needs, browse online for what I need, submit an email order, and update our budget expenses after. While I have the spreadsheets open, I update the statistics gathered this morning for our completed projects.
  
• Mail should now have arrived so I head downstairs to fetch the daily arrival of stuffed boxes and envelopes of books to be repaired. I need to open each immediately to make sure there are no Rush requests to be handled immediately.
  
• Back upstairs, I plan to spend 45-60 minutes instructing students in lab on a new enclosure or repair, depending on what they have yet to learn. Invariably, this takes 2 hours instead and we have yet to complete it. I'll have to remember to finish training once the student is back in again, by which point they will have forgotten how to start the repair.
  
• I return to my email, responding to requests for meetings and to see if a missing book is in our lab, despite the lack of documentation of it being here. Hoping we'll find it (because it's missing) but hoping it won't be in lab (because that means I failed to document it's arrival), available students and I search the lab for an hour with no luck. The day is just about over and I take the last 20 minutes to work on the website I need to create for our department. Or maybe update our treatment manual. Or the backlog of special projects. Either way, it's clearly something that always gets pushed to the back burner! Calling it a day, I check the lab for tools plugged in, lights and music left on, before locking the doors. I didn't get as much done as I wanted (I always say this) but at least there were no leaks or other collection-related disasters to respond to. That means it was a good day.
  

"Librarians always look like librarians who are trying not to look like librarians..."

"...Even librarians who try not to look like librarians look like librarians trying not to look like librarians." (Unknown)

As usual, I'm a little behind. :) I have returned from the sweltering D.C. area, full of great ideas and new contacts, with sore shoulders from carrying tote bags full of books, and a SmarTrip card still loaded with money. And in reference to the quote above, I enjoyed my game of "Let's spot the librarians (with and without ID badges in public) while roaming the streets of D.C." I can, in all honesty, say it was fairly easy. Frankly, either you were in your forties and up and dressed like a "traditional" librarian or you were young and looking very hipster (myself included although I REFUSED to wear tennis shoes and look like a tourist). I did have people actually stop and ask me for directions. I despise looking like a tourist. In this pic, I do have my comfortable Teva's on, but note the giant bag? I lived out of it during the conference since I was staying about an hour and a half away from DC. This was at the Da Vinci exhibit at the National Geographic Museum, right across from one of the conference hotels. Pretty neat exhibit. I'll post something here or on Flickr later (I'm OBVIOUSLY behind).

In summary, ALA was great! I enjoyed myself immensely, went to meetings that were chock full of information, and even managed to scope out an exhibit or two. Surrounded by my peers at the PAIG and Book and Paper Interest Group meetings, it was an exhilarating feeling to be a part of discussions that concern my own job responsibilities. I haven't felt this way since, well I would say grad school but that's not exactly true. Ha! Anyway, there was still a good bit of discussion concerning the demise of UT's MLIS Conservator program and talks of which institutions are going to pick up the reins; also, is the MLIS degree necessary for conservators wishing to do just benchwork? And are some conservators not considering circulating collections to be desirable? I certainly agree with many of the attendees that the degree is necessary. Consider how easy it is now to take classes online and how often it is hiring policy to require certain degrees. I think if the MLIS comes bundled, why not? You never know what you are going to desire to do later and it can't hurt having the degree. Then again, I could also say if it's that easy to get, just go back if you need it. It's up to the individual I suppose but I prefer to get the hard work out of the way early on and relax later. Finally, James Reilly from the Image Permanence Institute gave a presentation on new points of view concerning environmental control and monitoring, which I won't summarize. I'm sure someone else has already done a better job of that.

At the Book and Paper group, I found the Co-Chair Beth Doyle (from Duke University's Preservation Department) exceedingly helpful. She led a great session (again, talk of the conservator program) but had a lot of information that she shared concerning her own department's activities. The creation of their blog (which I had already come across) was a great talking point because (as I will be in charge of our departmental website, which has yet to exist) I've been prowling for ideas. A blog is one I've considered (considering that I already like to write one?) but I just wasn't sure that it would be worth it. Beth provided a number of points to consider, one of which being what they get out of it (hard to measure). Additionally, she shared some of the ways their department has tried to cut costs and since professional education is usually quick to go....Needless to say, ways to educate themselves was high on the list. Her idea (which I would LOVE to implement in Pittsburgh) was to gather local bookbinders together, use the lab as a free space (they buy their own supplies) and utilize each others' knowledge to learn historic book structures. I was practically drooling in my cushy seat.

Another session/tour that I ADORED was Preservation Forensics & Document Optical Archaeology at the Library of Congress. Honestly, so much information was conveyed that in my rush to explain it all, it would sound like mumbo jumbo. I'll have to find a good summary and share it. But there are just some amazing this they can do with technology and the women of the Preservation Research and Testing Division are AMAZING. Their enthusiasm for their job was obvious and infectious. A colleague and I wanted to kidnap them for dinner they were so lovely. AND (drumroll please).....guess what I stood next to?! And even accidentally brushed?! Yes, folks, that is a steel encased Declaration of Independence draft. If my colleague hadn't pointed it out, I would have been none the wiser. I could have died on the spot. AND if you saw the news article post-ALA '10 that showed the hidden word on the Declaration of Independence draft...we got to see it first! Lastly, I loved their chairs (designed to be sat on frontwards and backwards) and their scanner which scans up to 6000 dpi. Crazy.

(To be continued)

"To sit in the shade on a fine day..."

"...and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." ~Jane Austen

Where do you turn to for peace and quiet? When your brain is numb with stress, when tasks that were easily handled along with a multitude of chores now seem to take hours even with a focused concentration. What do you do (besides sleep!) when it seems your brain is over-thinking and you are no longer following along with it? I go outside. Alone. I may go for a walk in a park-like setting (not in a city!), I might just lie in the grass watching the sky, or I might climb up a tree. But I go outside. It clears my head, makes me focus on things that are much bigger than me and my (mostly) silly little problems, and my mind slowly settles down. I often bring my journal with me and just write. I write whatever is on my mind, what I see in front of me, a good idea for a story, anything. I absorb, I write, I breathe, and it calms me. Whenever I'm feeling stressed, I have this incredible desire to be outside. To get away and just relax. Now, yoga has become another manner of de-stressing for me and I am excited that one day I'll do yoga outside. What could be better?

Recently, my desire to get outdoors led me to some interesting articles. (Hold on, I might wander a bit, but I'll get to the articles, I promise). I was thinking (while sitting at a desk desperate to be outside in a park with my journal, all by myself) about this behavior and how it seemed like forever since I had really been able to get outside. I really began to love the outdoors when I was 5 and we moved to a house in the mountains with a huge yard, fruit trees, some woods, caves, and lots of wild animals. I spent most of my time outside in a tree or under a tree writing and sketching to my heart's content. I never wanted to be in the house. I loved to read outside in the open field, getting lost in the book and feeling lost in the field at the same time. It occurred to me while sitting at the desk that I haven't been able to really do that since I was a kid. And I've been craving it like mad.

Thinking about this natural world I grew up in and wondering if everyone felt that way, I came across an article on preschools in the northwest U.S. states. (Check it out here) They spend all of their class time outside. Outside. This is the way of things in Europe but here in the U.S., it's rather new. There are no structures academics yet; after all, it's still preschool. But the instructors contend that they are learning so much more by being outside instead of trapped indoors all day being force fed math. They get creative and learn how to settle fights among themselves. No matter the weather (they've only missed one day when the snow was too high to walk in), the children are appropriately attired and accompanied outside by their teacher. And they love it. The article led me to the book "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv, which I am currently reading. Now, there is a really good critique of his work here, but overall, I see his points. And I'm hoping some of these schools open up here in Western PA. Obviously, I can do a great deal of outdoor activities on my own with my eventual children but for them to be with their peers? Priceless. Check out the book if you can.

Around the same time, I came across a new blog post by Roger Ebert (who has an excellent blog, by the way) about the quest for frisson. He discusses his use of the internet and Twitter and how it's made us wired for the next buzz, essentially. We are constantly online to learn or do something more and more exciting. Our attention spans are decreasing (I've definitely noticed this in myself) and we just want more, faster. I have to say, this is exactly when I'm feeling the most overloaded and when I need to escape outside. To slow down and focus on one thing at a time. I wonder if this rewiring is beneficial in the long run or not. And when my eventual kids are begging for another hour on the video game system instead of going outside...No, scratch that. I hope that we integrate many interests into their young lives so that they enjoy a variety of activities without spending time on only one. And can enjoy it without me forcing them (too much of a positive hope?). After the Golden Rule, the 2nd Golden Rule should be "everything in moderation".

Well, it's Friday afternoon and soon enough it'll be time to head outside! Enjoy the weekend.

"It is not light that we need, but fire..."

"...it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

Well now that the crazy whirlwind that sucked me up for a month and half has plopped me back down in my (very messy) house, I can heave a great sigh of...Relief? Contentment? Not the exact word I want, but somewhere close. I can destress, start sleeping again, and get back to my yoga classes and yard work. Life can return to normal. Whatever that is.

The festival. Since I know you're all dying to hear how it went. I would say it went well. I deliberately chose a small festival (with a low vendor fee), that was two blocks from my house because it was an easy first run. Plus I'm supporting my local community. Did this inhibit my sales? Very probably. Us Western Pennsylvanians do not like to spend lavish amounts of money if we don't feel it's worth it. And even then, are we likely to have that money? If I had been in downtown Pittsburgh or in one of the city's neighborhoods, I think it would have gone just a little better; but again, this was a test.

People really liked the leather journals and the Bookbags. Where I live, people are very frugal and so they didn't all buy one just because they liked it. But there were quite a number of people that asked about my online shop, any custom work I could do, and that took business cards. So would I say it was a success despite the fact that I would've liked to have sold more than I did? Yes. I got the word out and I got to see which products most people were interested in. I'll be taking some better photographs of what I have left to post on Etsy, but here is a simple one I managed to catch of my table. This wasn't the end arrangement, I was still playing around. But you get the idea. I had small and large soft-cover sketchbooks, soft-cover and hardback books, leather books, canvases, a few pieces of jewelry, and the Bookbags. It took a hell of a lot of time and effort to get this all together so quickly, but now I have a nice inventory to build on. I also had information on custom enclosures as well as packets of information for people to take on how to take care of their own private collections (always trying to share the info!).

It was also a test to see how I enjoyed participating in the festivals and to be honest, I'm not sure how I feel. When I had people that were really interested and asked questions, it was great. I love educating people on it and explaining the entire process, especially when some of them still didn't understand that they were hand-sewn, cased in, etc. They looked rather confused at the table as though asking, What are you selling? Did you buy books somewhere? But when people weren't interested, frankly it was boring. My wonderful hubby stayed the entire him (and carried all the heavy tables and boxes back and forth up the hill to our house) and kept me company, ensuring that we could both take breaks and walk around to look at the other tables. But we couldn't explore it together, which is what I really love doing at the festivals. He gets excited about the food and I get excited about...well, everything else! I think I'd rather participate in educational fairs and festivals, letting people know I can do custom work, and mostly just sell my items online.

Would I participate in another festival? I think so. As long as I had the inventory mostly built up and wouldn't have to kill myself to do it again. :P As soon as I get some of it posted on Etsy, I'll let you know and you can check them out. Pass on the word! And as always, any feedback you have would always be welcome.