GLAM Blog Club
Writings about galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.
What Did I Learn Last year?
Usually I'm fairly good at recording my achievements through the year, so when it comes to performance reviews or job applications I have a handy go-to list. Last year seems like a year of business as usual. While I did manage to do a few exciting things, mostly I just kept myself going. No big projects, no pushing myself and my skills, no major revelations, just one day at a time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes we all need to stay the course and enjoy the smooth sailing. It's pos
Looking For Group
I was reading this article about how to get through your RPG (role playing game) backlog and decided to combine it with this month’s GLAM Blog Club theme of collect. You see, among the main librarian-esque collecting I do of books, comics, and movies, I collect games. My board game collection is quite extensive as is my RPG collection. So in an effort to find people who would want to help me get through this backlog, and also inspire others to find new games to play, I’ve decided to list all the
DoDeDoDo – A Location Based Enquiry Tracking System
The Problem For years WA libraries have been tracking information requests/enquiries that staff (mostly front-of-house) handle in their day-to-day work. From this financial year onwards we are now required to break down these enquiries into five categories: * Reference transactions and information requests * eResource enquiries * Technical enquiries (including public PC and photocopier/printing help) * Community information and Government services enquiries * Any other enquiries (Includ
Bon Appétit
A few months ago the algorithm (or Twitter, I forget which) blessed me with a YouTube series from the magazine Bon Appétit where chef Claire Saffitz attempts to recreate various lollies. I noticed in several of the videos there was a colleague of hers called Brad who was pretty hilarious in a bumbling sort of way. Turns out that he had his own series called ‘It’s Alive, with Brad’, a series I consumed with gusto. The cameraman/editor Vinnie adding hilarious text to make fun of the host (wourder)
the GLAMR of DEATH
Content warning: Death, & dying. I was invited to speak at Museums Showoff WA this month about anything that interested me. After going through several options I settled on death positivity and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), especially as I spent half the night thinking about it. As it turns out I'm quite passionate about death positivity, I even have the t-shirt. Nine minutes isn’t long enough to cover everything I want to talk about so consider this to be an introduction
Archiving Australian Twitch Streams - Kappa or PJSalty?
This month’s GLAM Blog Club theme is happiness. Thinking about what makes me happy I reviewed my after work ritual of catching up on my YouTube subscriptions. Since Natalie Tran hasn’t uploaded anything recently I was watching an edit of Bajo’s Twitch stream and couldn’t help but smile. I then got to thinking, are we archiving any of this? As some of you may know, for a librarian business is pleasure, so why wouldn’t thinking about archives make me happy? I put a call out on Twitter but it see
Angelheaded Hipsters
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... - Howl, Part I, Allen Ginsberg. It's the end of what feels like a long month and here I am, quoting Ginsberg. This is for a combination of a few things. The first being that the newCardigan GLAM Blog Club theme is 'watch' and that line was the first thing that popped into my head (well, that and Watchman. Quis custodiet ipsos bibliothecam?). Secondly, I re-watched Hackers while I was in Melbourne for V
Ideas For Your Next Conference Presentation
Inspired by @jinglefrisbee's latest blog post Ideas For My Next Conference Presentation I decided to throw some ideas I've been sitting on for a while out into the world. Sadly the soft focus stopped working on my camera so there won't be any cool bathroom mirror, lip-sync type shots, sorry. It should be noted that these are all sessions that I would like to see or think we need, not ones that I want to run myself. Mainly because for many I am the last person (white, male) who should be runnin
Looking Forward, Looking Back
In trying to figure out what I want to learn in 2018 I looked back at what I had learnt in 2017 and it turned out it was quite a lot. The way I learn best is through practical projects. The mixture of real-world applications, deadlines, and passion really drive my learning. Inversely, I find learning something for the sake of it frustrating, which is why I tend to struggle in purely academic settings. Sitting down and learning a programming language while not having a project seems a bit useless
All Right Stop, Collaborate and Listen
I’m back with a brand new edition…of GLAM Blog Club. Now that you can’t get that song out of your head, let us turn to the theme for this month, ‘collaboration’. Ever since I first found out that authors collaborate and write books together I’ve wondered ‘how do you even do that?’ Do they write a chapter each and try to fit them together? Or do they sit in a room together with one of them typing and the other leaning back on a chase lounge, cigarette dangling from their limp hand, an arm folde