Ta-da
The title of the final Harry Potter book is…. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Guardian reports that JK Rowling announced it today.
Now, I have a longstanding bet with my best British friend that Harry will die in the final book. If he does, she owes me a ticket to visit my beloved Devon. If he doesn’t…. I guess SK will then get to visit sunny Florida. So, scanning this title over, I only have one question: what does “hallows” mean? Rhymes with gallows, which is good for my end of the bet, but let’s see what it technically means. Google define:hallows… wow, this sent a major chill up my spine. Hallows is ” name used by some traditions for Samhain, or Halloween” and more elaborately “November Eve, the Celtic Samhain (“sow-en”); the beginning of the Celtic winter, and of the Celtic year; the beginning of the Witches’ Year, when the Veil Between the Worlds grows thin and the spirits of the dead may return to Earth; the Descent of the Goddess to the Underworld; the final Harvest festival.”
The Guardian reports that the release date for the book will be set in early 2007, so at least we only have a couple of months to wait before finding out definitely how long we have to wait.
I sense a British comedy coming on…
Americans wouldn’t have the touch to bring this story to the screen, but in the tradition of The Full Monty and Saving Grace, I think these boldly fundraising librarians deserve a flick in their honor.
Back to the Biblioblogosphere
The grades are in and I’ve officially completed my first semester of dual MLIS/MFA enrollment. I took 4 English classes (2 lit, 2 writing workshops) and 1 library class (since I have a two semester head start in that program, I needed to slow down and concentrate on the English). In between I worked 20 hours a week, tried to maintain multiple blogs, serve on a couple of committees, exercise 3 times a week, cook food every night so that I didn’t have to buy lunch, and teach a Sunday school class with my husband. The results? From a GPA perspective all is well, and I didn’t let any of the juggled balls majorly drop.
From a career perspective, I’m torn between saying things are just fine and things look a little different. Part of me wants to keep diving into the smorgasbord, especially the writing side, and part of me says that if I want to get anywhere in library world, the world that I started this whole program to be a part of, I am going to need to get focused. I’ve never been particularly good at that in the past. I remember starting a personal essay for some scholarship application in college with the sentence “If I could describe myself with one word, it would be ‘and.’” Not much has changed since then. It’s never hurt me yet, and I have always tended to feel best when I am firing on all cylinders–BUT–I am only human, and I want to be ready to focus when the time comes to build a professional reputation or when outside circumstances require it. Or maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe I should work on connecting my areas of interest and seeing how they apply to the work I wish to pursue. After all, there’s plenty of bridges that can be built between literature, writing, music, and libraries.
But, now that workshop poems and Melville papers have eased up, I’ve started a process of catching up with all the biblioblogosphere developments I’ve missed over the past few months. I finally started a Bloglines page (in part because I have managed to get my internship next semester to include working on the development of an RSS feed for our library–yay!) and I’m being urged to check out Second Life. Will do, perhaps over this week’s trip to Michigan.
I was powered up by this entry on Caveat Lector today, talking about blogs as an increasingly accepted form of professional publication. I’ve read other bloggers on this topic, but this is a particularly forceful look at why blogs form communities among professionals in a much more rewarding and tangible way than journals. All of this points back to the fact that I need to stay on top of this, my theoretical professional face (the only blog that I have that can be linked to me through a simple Google search of my name as well). Especially now that I have signed on to work on Web 2.0 projects at my library, I need proof that I know whereof I hope to speak.
The world of library blogs is so vast, however, it’s hard to claim that I have anything unique to contribute most of the time. Of course, I have my one and only perspective on the world, but it takes more than that to generate worthwhile material. My favorite blogs do have a mix of personal experience and professional reflection, so I know I’ve got at least some material (perhaps not as fully developed as it could be–what exactly is it like to be part of a program specificially designed to train academic librarians? what am I experiencing in this environment that might not be elsewhere?). But the blogs I go to again and again also offer good advice, tips, and tools that I would not have found on my own. What I can add to this remains to be seen. So, for the time being, I’ll keep on keeping on, and perhaps a better sense of a niche will develop.
