Love lesson of the day:

Some women find it terribly romantic when you fake your death and then have them arrested for it. More details here.

Having now seen all three of the movies in the Trois Couleurs trilogy, I am planning on exploring more Kieslowski films - especially "The Double Life of Veronique" and "The Decalogue" (the latter of which is really a series of films).

Since I have nothing original to say today, let me direct your attention to some of the blogs and other sites that I have linked on the right. I hope you are already familiar with Bartleby (where you can find classic literature, reference, and other texts online for free). If not, go there and read some Yeats already.

You may not be familiar with Cosmoetica, but you should be. Nijinsky may have said "criticism is death," but he went crazy, remember? The creator and main voice of the site is Dan Schneider, an unfortunately lesser known critic of literature, film, and lots in between. Some of his articles and opinions may rub you the wrong way, but that's what good criticism should do. I stumbled upon the site several years ago when I was looking around for articles on Harold Bloom's silly book "The Anxiety of Influence." Schneider's criticism of the book made me gleefully happy at the time. (If you've ever attempted to read Bloom's aforementioned book, read the article by Schneider that tears it apart, and you'll see what I mean.)

The next is the blog of Jessica Schneider which, among other things, will give you an idea of what good authors have to go through to get something published (or, as the case may be, not published). Both her site and Cosmoetica will also alert you to authors and films that might otherwise pass you by. (I, for one, would likely not have heard of Kieslowski, James Emanuel, and who knows how many other great artists without the help of these sites.)

Another one to check out is Too Many Commas, my friend Elissa's blog - especially if you like seeing rather egregious typographical errors (not hers!)

I read The Dirt Field simply because the author is a fellow law school drop out, and I feel immediate kinship with law school dropouts. She's also quite funny.

Trois Couleurs: Rouge

I would like to recommend Kieslowski's movie "Rouge" from his Trois Couleurs trilogy. Last night I watched "Rouge," and can safely say that it was the best movie I've seen in quite some time. (Considering I've been watching things like "Blades of Glory" recently, that's not saying much. But trust me, it's good.) I won't embarrass myself by attempting an intelligent review of it here - you can read a good review of it over at Cosmoetica.

Today at the library a patron actually happened to check the movie out. I was making small talk with him (about how I had watched the movie last night, and enjoyed it, etc.) and he recommended I watch "The Double Life of Veronique," also by Kieslowski, which apparently the library has. It's always heartening to see that some people still rent movies with artistic merit and read good books. Not that I have anything against Hollywood or junk lit - I dislike snobbery just as much as willful illiteracy.

I have nothing revelatory to say. Just wanted to recommend you check out the movie.

Oh, and I should mention that this year is the 40th anniversary of Otis Redding's death. His home town is celebrating the occasion with a week full of events. Watch:

Madeleine L'Engle dies at age 88

This doesn't have to do with libraries, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I am currently reading her book "A Severed Wasp," and before that was reading her book "The Small Rain." She died earlier in the week, but I just found out this evening. You're most likely to know her as the author of "A Wrinkle in Time." Here is a link to the New York Times obituary.

Copyright Office workers watch porn

So today in Organization of Information, our professor was talking about how the Library of Congress doesn't catalog and keep every item that is published, such as pornography. He then went on to say that he had heard the following story from someone at the copyright office:

They received a "second edition" of a porno film, and did not have the first edition. Now, in order to copyright it properly, they needed to verify whether or not there was in fact anything different in the second edition. One of the employees, after a search in the second-hand porno market proved fruitless, volunteered his own copy of the film to compare with the second edition.

So I guess the lesson is, if you want to view pornographic materials and get paid for it, go to work for the copyright office.

But I am not a wise man, I am not a sage. I am an aesthete, a very old-fashioned aesthete...

The title of this post comes from Harold Bloom, a professor of Humanities at Yale, and one of the better known literary critics. (Literary critics, from what I can tell, are by their nature not particularly well known.) Anyhow, last night I was reading an interview he gave. Bloom often comments on the lack of literary culture in the U.S., and he's undoubtedly right. In addition to depressing me (as his interviews and books usually do) it got me mulling over the state of reading, especially as it relates to libraries.

In my introductory library science class we have been discussing the future of libraries, and the need for librarians to adopt newer technologies in order to reach the younger generations - the generations which will (hopefully) be the main users of libraries when I and my fellow students have entered the work force. The theory, according to library innovators, is that we should be embracing newer and newer technologies in order to better communicate with the next generation of library users. For instance, we should apparently be circulating video games, using IM programs and cell phones to answer reference questions - you get the picture.

This has engendered debate among my fellow students, many of whom seem to despair that the Culture of the Book is slowly eroding. This erosion depresses me as well, but has also forced me ask another question - is the death of this Culture of the Book any more distressing than the death of good books? I work at the circulation desk of a public library, so I have a fairly good idea as to what people are reading. Here's a hint: it's not Shakespeare. It's not Dante. It's not Homer. It's not even Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane. It is, of course, Danielle Steel, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, Stephen King. Of course there are exceptions. Today one patron had interloaned Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady," and another was returning a volume of Theodore Roethke's poems. Most people, however, could not give a damn about poetry.

This leads to the phenomenon of libraries purging their literature sections to make more room for - I shall not even try to be politically correct - trash fiction. Now, we have been taught (by our professors) that we must serve the users of libraries. My former boss, at a departmental meetings, once explained it like this: "We are not an academic library. We don't hold on to things simply because they are good." In other words, we carry what people want to read, not what they should read. This attitude, along with the seeming decline of the book, has led me to wonder... how long before you can no longer walk into a library and find novels by Dostoevsky, Balzac, and any other number of great (but largely unread) authors?

The title of the book that Harold Bloom was being interviewed about was entitled "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?" I suspect that "the library" will soon no longer be an accurate answer to this question.

And so it begins.

I suppose it will be helpful to begin with an introduction. First posts are never pretty, so I suppose I should simply get to it. This blog is meant to serve two purposes: 1) document the next year and a half while I am pursuing a degree in Library and Information Science, 2) allow me to muse on various topics that you will likely have no interest in. Peripherally, it will allow me to say I have some experience in the world of blogging, RSS feeds, and the like.

Now, to the personal details. I am male, a week or so shy of turning 25. I have worked in public libraries for the last six years of so, doing all sorts of things I shan't bore you with. The last year saw me starting (and subsequently dropping out of) law school. Law school, it turns out, is rather like a gorgeous looking girlfriend that you know is just not right for you: it's nice to be associated with it (her), you gain the admiration and congratulations of your friends... but at the end of the day, you're as miserable as can be. So the only sensible thing for me to do was drop out. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Onwards. The first week of classes is over, and it has been already one of the best weeks in recent memory - it's hard to describe how good it feels to be doing what you know you're supposed to be doing, especially after a year of doing something you knew you weren't supposed to be doing.

It has also opened my eyes even further to all of the technologies that libraries are (or should be) embracing. That topic, however, is so broad that it cannot fit into one post. I will no doubt be posting on this topic from time to time.

So ends my first clumsy post.