Daily Thoughts

The bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his oath of office during his first inauguration in 1861, held by Mark Dimunation in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. Dimunation is the chief of the Library's Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

Daily Thoughts

Today, February 12, 2009, is a very important day, it is the bicentennial of Lincoln's Birthday as well as the bicentennial of Darwin's birthday. Both are towering figures in history. Both helped in the process of ending slavery. Darwin had very strong views against slavery and Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Take a few moments to think about both of these important figures in history.

Today was pretty low key. I had to complete a description of all my various duties for the director. It was four pages of the details of the different things which I do at work. I wrote the list twice, once in longhand on the train and once on the computer at work. I tried to be very detailed.

We are getting two new librarians and an assistant director soon. It should be very interesting. I have met both of the new librarians. One worked nights at our library, and the other volunteered from the United Nations.

I am hoping this will take a little bit of pressure off of me, so I can do more focused work. I am hoping I can give some of the more mundane tasks like filing looseleafs, ordering phone books, and ordering annual reports to another librarian.

While I was doing the poetry open microphone on Wednesday, a spoken word poet gave me a tape to listen to. It is spoken word poetry set to music. The music was mellow, there was no cursing, and the words had a nice rhythm to them. It had a slight rastafarian flavor to it. The gentleman had a business card for his press, Poetic Emanciverse; he wanted to offer to teach a free poetry class. I think I will set a date in April for national poetry month. He also suggested I change the open microphones name to Spoken Word so I could include rap, and other forms of spoken word performance.

Things are starting to get a little more interesting where I am working. They finished moving the periodicals desk to a new location.

I also finished writing the summary of the second part of O'Reilly Tools of Change For Publishing day one. I had a short interview today from School Library Journal; so I might appear in the back of School Library Journal. It should be very interesting.

I also got permission to go to a one day conference, Open Access and Libraries on March 17 at Columbia University. I am already looking forward to it. I like doing these things.

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