Oh my oh my. I think this one gave me a case of the vapors. The Old Spice Man has a way of doing that to me.
Straight from BYU is an injection of pure awesome. Today, the internet is made of win.
I just got this amazing The Office-style video from a friend at Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library. Their genealogy night is tonight, so local peeps should go down and pay them a visit!
It gets really good about 2 minutes in…worth waiting for. Man, those librarians can party.
Does what it says on the tin.
http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=184973
Thanks to everyone who’s been reading and making suggestions. I’ve been off on a much-needed post-graduation vacation, and am just starting to get caught back up on emails and the like. If you have been waiting to hear from me, I’ll be in touch soon.
Librarians Do Gaga is now captioned for the Deaf and hearing impaired.
Hi, everybody! You’re probably here because of that “Librarians Do Gaga” video that’s been flying around Twitter and Facebook and pretty much everywhere else. Welcome!
I’ve seen a bunch of questions come up on the various sites, so I figured I’d do a bit of a FAQ for you guys.
Who are you, anyway?
My name is Sarah Wachter, and I’m a grad student at UW’s Information School (iSchool, in the vernacular) getting my masters in library and information science, to be awarded in, oh, about ten days. My goals as a librarian are to provide excellent customer and reference services to my patrons, to develop my patrons’ information literacy skills through one-to-one instruction and workshops, to develop outreach tools that create excitement for and interest in library services, and to have fun! I’m interested in both academic and public librarianship, and am especially interested in job sites in the greater Boston area. You can read more about me here or check out my résumé here (pdf).
And who are all those other people?
I had a great group of students, faculty, and staff collaborate with me on this project.
Audrey Barbakoff, Jenny Dolton, Andrea Gough, Eric Grob, Amelia Herring, Morgan McCullough, Laura Mielenhausen, Robin Chin Roemer, Cadi Sauve, Alex Walker, and Rachel Woodbrook are all MLIS students, most of whom are graduating with me this June.
Bob Boiko, Allyson Carlyle, Mike Eisenberg, Lisa Fusco, Nancy Gershenfeld, Trent Hill, Emily Keller, Nancy Pearl, and Joe Tennis are some of the wonderful faculty members that I’ve had the opportunity to study with over the last two years.
Cris Mesling and Grace Whiteaker are just two of the lovely MLIS-enabled staff members at UW. MLISes – they’re not just for libraries!
Why’d you make the video?
Two student organizations at the iSchool, iArts and iWrite, decided to pool their collective genius and put on a film festival, called (obviously enough) iSight. They announced this scheme mid-winter quarter, when Seattle is dark and bleak and I was listening to a lot of Lady Gaga because she makes me happy. I had also very recently watched the Neutraface parody, so that was bouncing around in my cranium too. I don’t remember if I first thought of “ca-ca-ca-catalog” or “can use my, can use my, yeah you can use my catalog”, but once the idea was planted the rest of the lyrics just slotted themselves around it over the next month or so. I listened to a lot of Poker Face that month. A lot a lot.
It wasn’t for a job?
Nope. Nor did I get class credit for it, more’s the pity.
Wait! I’m going to the iSchool next year! Do I have to make a video too?
Shhh, don’t stress. No, you have a variety of options for your culminating experience and none of them REQUIRE you to make a video. But you probably can if you want to. (I defer to your academic adviser on all matters related to curriculum, and so should you. This does not constitute academic advice. Etc.)
How’d you make it?
The iSchool technology department loans camcorders to students, so I took one out and then frantically recruited faculty and students to say a line on camera for me. I got a group of students together to do the larger scenes, and then just brought my camcorder up to various professor’s offices as they had a fifteen or twenty minute chunk of time free for me to film them. I’d play Poker Face for them so they could sync their lines to the music, and then as I edited in Premiere Pro I only used the video and chucked the audio.
I also did a lot of bumping into people in hallways and at their various places of work and asking them if they’d like to be in a music video. Most everyone said yes.
Yeah, but you got Nancy Pearl in there! How’d you do that?
I bumped into her in a hallway and said, “Nancy! Hi! Do you want to be in a music video?” She said yes.
But doesn’t she shush a lot?
No, you’re confusing her with her action figure.
Why did you use “catalog” instead of “database”? “Database” sounds more like “poker face”!
True, it does. But it also sounds really stupid if you try to go “Duh-duh-duh-database duh-duh-database.”
Is that you singing?
Nope. I’m lucky to come from an exceptionally musically talented cohort and my friend Laura Mielenhausen has a gorgeous, Gaga-esque voice. After I’d finished writing the lyrics, I sent them to her to sing and she did all the vocals and audio editing using Garage Band. (Her husband Rob is responsible for the “Don’t forget the databases.”) She did a fantastic job, I must say.
Can I download an audio track of the song?
I would love to be able to make it happen, but I’m in the process of determining whether offering the audio as a free mp3 download will generate any copyright issues for me. I’ll get back to you.
Can I share your video with a class, conference, etc?
Yes, you can use my video for non-commercial purposes. Please keep my name on it and link back to me. If you have any questions about whether something is okay, please email me.
Who were you making this for?
I made it first and foremost for the film festival, so I wanted to make something that captured the iSchool experience and that showcased our fantastic faculty, staff, and students. Librarian in-jokes were a must. Our professors really are that goofy and amazing. And Trent can wail on that banjo, man oh man.
What’s with the antelopes?
One of the first readings we get at the iSchool is Michael Buckland’s 1991 article, “Information as Thing,” in which he discusses Suzanne Briet’s concept of an antelope as a document. Question: Is an antelope a document? Answer: It depends. Buckland writes:
...Objects are not ordinarily documents but become so if they are processed for informational purposes. A wild antelope would not be a document, but a captured specimen of a newly discovered species that was being studied, described, and exhibited in a zoo would not only have become a document, but “the cataloged antelope is a primary document and other documents are secondary and derived.” (Briet, 1951, p.8)
Your ideas intrigue me! I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Maybe you should think about library school!
And what’s with Captain Kirk?
I dunno. I like Star Trek, what can I say? If I’d been able to make “Starbuck” scan I totally would have.
Is that a Who reference at the beginning?
It’s more of a big ball of wibbly-wobbly whoosey-woosey…stuff.
You’re a total geek, you know.
Quite!
Are you totally sick of Lady Gaga’s music now?
Maybe a little bit, but I’ll never admit it in public.
REFERENCES
Buckland, M.K. (1991) Information as Thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 42(5), 351-60.
Briet, S. (1951) Qu’est que la documentation? Paris: Éditions documentaires, industrielles et techniques.
Wow, this is kind of lighting up the intertubes.
I’ve had at least one request for the lyrics to my “Librarians do Gaga” version of Poker Face. Here they are!
You got a question that is causing you some pain
Typin’ keywords into the search engine again.
Look your naïve searching just ain’t gonna get it done
Cause when it comes to search if it’s not tough it isn’t fun (fun)Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh, ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh
I’ll blow your mind, show you how to find.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh, ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh
I’ll blow your mind, show you how to find.Can use my
Can use my
Yeah you can use my catalog
(Don’t forget the databases)
Can use my
Can use my
Yeah you can use my catalog
(Don’t forget the databases)Ca-ca-ca-catalog ca-ca-catalog
(Mum mum mum mah)
Ca-ca-ca-catalog ca-ca-catalog
(Mum mum mum mah)This keyword search it gives you way too many hits
Boolean limits pare things down to just what fits
Use the thesaurus to find subject terms that work
Then in just one minute you’ll be through like Captain Kirk (Kirk)[Chorus]
Step one define your problem
Pick your sources.
Then go huntin’. We’re not puntin’
On the research. We’re engaging and extracting somethin’
Then you can put it back together
Tell your friends about your awesomeness
It’s synthesis synthesis
Evaluate cause we’re into this.
Feel free to host singalongs, but please don’t duplicate these without linking back to this site and crediting me.
Thanks for watching!
So hey! In about 14 days I graduate from University of Washington’s Information School with a bright shiny new set of letters after my name: Em. Ell. Eye. Ess.
What does this mean?
It means I get to make things like this.
Another example of what I’m learning in sign language. This video uses all of the letters of the alphabet in order.
...Okay, this is not sign language. This is a story told in visual-gestural communication.
Enjoy…
Today was our last day in Amsterdam. Part of me is sad to be heading home, but mostly I’m relieved. It’s been a really long trip, and I miss my life back in Seattle.
We had the day free to do pretty much whatever we wanted, so I went to Bagel Espresso for breakfast, just up the street. I’m well past the point of cultural exploration through food now; I want familiar stuff, I want comfort food, I want a frackking bagel.
So I had one. With cream cheese and smoked salmon and capers and onions. It was delicious.
I also bumped into Trent and another student while I was there, which was funny because I had dinner with the same people last night. I think I might miss this part of things – the part where you randomly run into people you know pretty much everywhere. I wonder if the tradeoff of having my own apartment again is worth it (hint: OH MY GOD YES).
The Guan Yin Temple was next on my list – it’s a Buddhist temple in Chinatown. I got there a few minutes before it opened, and just wandered around the square for a bit. There was construction going on and most of the street was ripped up, with plywood put down to act as sidewalks. It worked pretty well, although I got far too much sand in my shoe which is the sort of thing that irks me to no end. A few minutes before the temple opened, a man came out to sweep the steps and continued sweeping as people started to go in.
It was definitely a bit touristy. There were a lot of old Chinese women in bright clothes, but at the same time it was immensely peaceful. Shortly after I came in a woman knelt in front of one of the statues and began making obeisances. The rest of the people just flowed around her. I guess that’s just how it works. She didn’t seem to mind.
I stayed for a short while, and then went off to try to find the Jewish Museum. This was unsuccessful, as it turns out – I found the neighborhood, I found the cross-streets, I did not find the museum. There must have been some anti-Sarah force-field on it that day.
I did, however, locate a very large, very elaborate greenhouse – it would be more accurate to say that said greenhouse was sufficiently enormous to not be ignored. So I went there instead. It turned out to be part of the Hortus Botanicus—the Botanical Gardens. Despite my apparent allergy to all things natural, I really like botanical gardens and this one was a doozy. The greenhouse had three zones at different temperatures, and you could walk up a set of stairs and wander around the tops of the trees. The plants were generally organized by evolutionary stage, so you could see the gymnosperms in one cluster and the conifers in another area and then the monocots and dicots and man, it was neat. My camera died just after I got there, so I didn’t get any great photos. This made me terribly sad. They had an ENORMOUS lotus plant in a pond, which I had not realized looked quite so vaginal and dangerous—they have these weird fleshy spikes all over! And then I walked up to a plant with enormous, beautiful glossy black berries. I wanted very much to put one in my mouth, and then I read the little card that identified it as atropa belladonna – deadly nightshade. Let’s not do that.
After I got hungry, I stopped at the little cafe on the grounds and had a slice of apple cake and a mug of coffee. I have drunk more coffee and more alcohol on this trip than I ever have in my life—and I am so looking forward to detoxing.
(The coffee is wicked good, though.)
Dinner tonight was arranged by Trent at the Koffeehuis van’t Volksbond. This was an amazing room, with huge painted roses climbing up the wall and an enormous painting of a comic-book superheroine—always a bonus!
The food was spectacular. I finished with a dessert that consisted entirely of cheese and these weird little nutty toast things. The cheese was very…um…fragrant; my classmates three or four seats down were commenting on it. But so, so tasty. They had shaved it into ruffles, so when they brought it to me at first I thought they had brought me a huge white cabbage leaf. But no. Cheese. Nom.
And then we took the tram back to the hotel, since I would be rising at 4:30 to head to the airport (yaaaaar). There was a smidge of excitement on the way home, since my mouth and throat felt weird and spiky. I advised my two traveling companions of this and of the presence of my epi-pen, took two Benadryl, and coped. Nothing exciting happened; I just love having the “Hey, guys, not to freak you out or anything but if I, like, stop breathing, could you please stab me with this and then call an ambulance? That’d be great. Thanks.” conversation. It always goes so well.
But! As I say, nothing exciting happened. I went home, packed (throwing my favorite shoes away in the process, since they have sprouted actual holes in their bottoms), and went to bed for a scant four hours. Then followed a thirty-hour period of more-or-less awakeness. The first thing I did once I got through customs in Houston was buy a copy of Catching Fire.
And then I was home. Home is beautiful. I missed it.