Friday Foolery #56: Unshelved Bacon!

Me with Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum, creators of Unshelved

Does it get any better than hanging out with our local hometown heroes of the library comic strip world and receiving an autographed copy of their latest book for free as a thank you present for helping out? As a bonus I can add that I know how to operate those credit/debit card swipe machines to my CV!

The truth about the bacon bookmark: Pretty much every library meeting and conference Unshelved goes to (including ours) has someone in attendance who has experienced this strange user phenomenon in their returned books. It's about 50/50 whether the bacon is raw or cooked. Have you had this happen at your library?

Health Care Reform & Medical Librarianship

Me in front of my first poster!

I had a great but tiring time at the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (PNC/MLA) annual meeting earlier this week in downtown Seattle.

I wrote a few entries for our conference blog about two of the dynamic speakers we had and wanted to share them with you since they are very timely topics about health care reform:

• What Roles Will Medical Librarians Play in Reforming the Nation's Health Care System? by Will Welton
• Health Care Reform and the Patient Centered Medical Home Model by Dr. Lori Heim

One drawback to a conference being local is that in addition to the wonderful networking and learning, you don't get to detach from the family routine... lunches still need to be packed and school buses caught by 7:30 am, and there were no late nights over drinks with colleagues for me. Nonetheless, for as much as I enjoy online social networking I truly love face to face connections at conferences and already can't wait for our meeting next year in Portland, OR!

Friday Foolery #55: Oink?

Getting my first-ever poster done (this is me with the proof) was a minor miracle because I have felt like utter crap for the majority of this week.

It kicked off with our son vomiting (an extreme rarity) after midnight on Monday. He had a high fever, worsened to the point where we had to carry him back & forth to the bathroom because he was too weak and dizzy to stand, but then he suddenly recovered. He was begging to go to school on Tuesday morning, able to do so on Wednesday, and you'd never know he was really ill this week by the rate he's playing kickball with his friends after school now.

On Tuesday the fever hit me and malingered around through Wednesday, and I still feel like I've been hit by a truck. Playing kickball is entirely out of the question. I'm still not all that sure how I'll haul myself out of here and go to work this morning!

I don't know if we have different bugs or if either is H1N1, but the fever is definitely gone and I'm not coughing at all so I promise I won't contaminate anyone at our meeting next week. I'll even bring my own personal hand sanitizer. Come say hi!

Friday Foolery #39: Save your bacon - use a bookmark

Bibliobuffet - The Legend of the Bacon Bookmark

Apparently plenty of library books have been returned with real live dead bacon strips as bookmarks in them! I had forgotten about the 2003 Unshelved strip (ha!) dealing with the matter and may just need to have Gene & Bill autograph a printout for me at the PNC/MLA 2009 meeting where they will be our speakers. No really, it's true! See "Banquet with the "Unshelved" guys" on October 19th?

The writer found many mentions of bacon bookmarks (including "book jerky" in Cinncinnati) although I do have to quibble that Multnomah County is is Oregon. If your location has a whole lot of Ks & Ts (Klickitat, Kittitas) or Ss and Qs with unclear pronounciation (Sequim, Snoqualmie), you're in Washington.

PNC/MLA 2009: Our guests are spilling the beans before we are!

As Publicity Chair (I think... this was in an email at some point many months ago when I was still in the haze of my first few weeks on the job) for the 2009 Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (PNC/MLA) conference, I am thrilled to announce that special guest speakers Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes of Unshelved are promoting our meeting in Seattle before we have a website up for it yet. Is that quality customer service or what?

Save the date for October 17-20, 2009, in Seattle at the Washington Athletic Club. I promise not to show up there in my workout gear or yoga pants and hopefully my colleagues will do the same.