explodedlibrary.info

4 things

A little while ago I realized that I was tagged by Laura.

I've found it interesting watching this meme pass through librarian bloggers. There was a time when I got overloaded by these sort of memes in LiveJournal, but it's been a little while now, so let's give this a shot.

4 jobs I've had
- Law Librarian
- Special Librarian (including one position where I was responsible for Competitive Intelligence)
- Customer Experience Executive - this was my job title at the Vodafone call centre
- Senior Secretary - my job title for when I once worked as a Faculty Secretary at the University of Minnesota, where I learned great word processing skills

4 Movies (very hard to pick out four - these are just ones that are memorable to me right now)
- I <3 Huckabees
- 21 Grams
- Donny Darko
- Magnolia

4 Places I've lived
- Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia (where I was born and spent the first couple of years of my life)
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (where I grew up - one of the prettiest small cities in the world)
- St Paul, Minnesota, USA (I lived in the area close to Grand and Summit Avenues and the Cathedral)
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (Wolli Creek, Alexandria, Randwick, Smithfield and Burwood)

4 TV Shows
- Dr Who
- Angel (or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly)
- Farscape
- Six Feet Under

4 Places I've gone on vacation
- Alaska (Anchorage, Chugach State Park, Seward)
- Maria Island, Tasmania
- Oahu, Hawaii
- Grand Portage, Minnesota

4 Sites I visit daily
- Sydney Morning Herald
- LiveJournal
- Salon.com
- TypePad

4 places I would rather be right now
- South Cape Bay, Tasmania
- Grand Marais, Minnesota
- Mt Victoria, NSW
- Glenrock

4 books (or series)
- Stephen Donaldson, the Gap series
- Ursula le Guin, Earthsea trilogy
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Richard Flanagan, Death of a river guide

4 songs
- Bjork, Vespertine, Undo
- Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm, Video
- Kylie Minogue, Come into my World (Fischerspooner remix)
- Sarah Blasko, Sweet November

4 cars I've owned
- 1974 Ford Escort (Australian model)
- 1994 Honda Civic hatch
- 1998 Toyota Corolla
- 2001 VW Jetta

4 video games I can (and do) play over and over
- World of Warcraft
- The Sims  (my computer can't handle the Sims2, but I'm still enjoying Makin' Magic anyway)
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City & San Andreas (no, not so much for the random violence - but cruising around listening to retro music and doing jumps)
- Avernum 3

4 of my favorite dishes
- Fresh fruit, particularly cherries, mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, apples, pears, mandarins
- my Dad's spaghetti bolognese
- Ash e Reshteh (a Persian soup)
- Pad Thai

4 bloggers I'm tagging
- Real Public Librarian
- misseli
- Connecting Librarian
- Vampire Librarian

moving to the Blue Mountains

Lots of things have been happening in my life lately. One big thing is that I'm moving to the Blue Mountains in 2 weeks.

I'm very excited and am looking forward to the move. There are many positives and only a few negatives.

• cheaper real estate prices means that I'll  be able to live in a bigger place (house not apartment) without any flatmates
• I'm looking forward to living in a slightly cooler climate which has more autumn colours and more of a winter than Sydney
• it will be nice in an area of enormous World Heritage-listed natural beauty, surrounded - a place that seems like a bushwalker's / hiker's paradise
• to grossly generalize, people in the Blue Mountains seem friendlier and less in your face than people in Sydney. It seems like a more cohesive community which has a lot to offer artists and writers. [are bloggers writers? For me, it's a similar question as to whether photographers are artists. It depends on the intention. At any rate, I'm looking forward to meeting other Blue Mountains bloggers]
• being close enough to Sydney that I will be able to keep my job there and enjoy other things which the city has to offer
• the big big minus (other than the possibility of bushfires) is that I'm going to have a longer commute to work.

I'll need to allow for 2 hours travel time, including a 90 minute train ride between Central station and Faulconbridge. I'm hoping that this time can be used productively for things like reading, writing (blog entries among other things - this post was drafted on the train), unwinding and snoozing.

Once the hassles of moving are over, I'm hoping that the Blue Mountains will be the best of both worlds for me. Close enough for the good things of the city, while offering an escape to a friendlier quieter place on my weekends and evenings.

information prices and information rights

I will play Devil's Advocate for a moment and argue that it is a good thing that information can be so expensive - especially the business and legal information which I am somewhat familiar with. After all, if people are accustomed to paying a premium to receive expensive information quickly, they will be more willing to pay a librarian who is adept at finding this information quickly and efficiently. It is probably a good thing if the price of information increases, because then the size of this information marketplace will increase, eventually leading to more jobs in the field and/or better salaries for people with the necessary skills.

On the other hand, I believe that sometimes information is a fundamental human right. In the same way that a child has a right to an education irrespective of the finances of her/his parents, people need access to certain information (and have basic information finding and evaluating skills) to be able to function in today's society. If I were a public librarian or a school librarian, my job would be directly about helping people in this way. As a special librarian who works in a non-public library, my contribution must necessarily be less direct. My first duty is to my particular library and its users (neglecting this duty would lead to me soon not being any librarian at all!). Although I may not able assist with providing access to my library's physical or electronic resources, there is nothing to prevent me from sharing whatever research know how I may have, limited as it may be~

Currently playing in iTunes: Sweet November by Sarah Blasko