Score one for the digital revolution!

Some of you know this, but I am a librarian. What that means isn’t quite as clear as it once was, but I work in a library and work with information.

My job, in a nutshell, is to facilitate the creation of digital collections which are available to a wider audience than a paper and ink collection. Anyone, from anywhere, can view the collections that we maintain in the Texas A&M repository, as opposed to a paper collection, that can only be seen or used by a person that is physically in the library.

This brings us to a collection, the Geologic Atlas of the United States, that actually predates my time here, but I have done some metadata work on it. This collection is a set of 227 geologic folios that were produced by the U.S. Geological Survey from 1894 to 1945. Included in the set are folios for New York City, Chicago, Milwaukee, and even Austin. (Be warned… the files are LARGE and will take a long time to download!)

Now, these map folios aren’t really rare, but a complete set is hard to come by. Many libraries have partial sets, including folios for their area. Texas A&M had a complete set, and set out to digitize them, and did it right.

On Monday, this email was sent out to a listserv for map librarians:

The Library of Virginia is giving away the following folios of the Geologic Atlas of the United States. They are listed by number only, but I have included a couple of links to Texas A & M Libraries’ digital collection of the folios, so you can see what’s what.

If you would like the folios, we request that you accept all of them.
Preference is given to libraries.

The folios are as follows: 2, 5, 6-8, 12-22, 24-25, 27-31, 44, 60, 76-79, 81-139, 141-182, 184-185, 187, 193, 195-199, 201, 207-210, 216-217.

http://txspace.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/2490

http://labs.di.tamu.edu:8080/geofolios/handle/123456789/2

What this means is that the Library of Virginia is so pleased with the digital versions that Texas A&M has produced and made available, that they are getting rid of their own paper copies. Texas A&M’s collection has become their collection.

So for those of you that really don’t know what I do or why it’s important… here it is.

It’s cold in Chicago

I am up here for a conference… the Institute for Scholarly Communication to be exact, and I was ridiculously unprepared for this trip. I had to stop in a Walgreen’s earlier to buy a hat and some gloves. It’s really cold here, but not unbearable.

I took a walk up Michigan Avenue, which was decorated and very busy with shoppers. I also walked over the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge and down to to Daley Plaza to visit the Christkindlmarket and got some very good apple strudel (only a half). A very relaxing and enjoyable walk through my absolute favorite city, even though it was snowy, cold and wet.

Tomorrow morning I am off to the Newberry Library, which I didn’t get to visit when I was here in 2005. The conference gets going at noon, and then it’ll be work for the rest of the trip.

Though I am a lifelong Texan, I really enjoy this city and even this weather. Check the Flickr pictures on the right for some of the shots from my walk earlier this evening.

A nice bonus today

Our office is an open area, similar to a cubicle arrangement, but we don’t even have the partial walls. Just a desk. This can lead to distractions coming from others workstations… like phone calls, video conferences, or music. Nothing kills productivity like Green Day or Radiohead coming from someones speakers, or even worse, spilling out of their headphones. If I can hear your music coming out of your headphones that you are wearing, you’re doing it wrong.

One of my coworkers is a musician, and plays french horn in the local symphony. He has been one of the Green Day offenders at times in the past, but today he has classical music playing. Now I like classical music, but I am very much a layman. I couldn’t listen to a piece and tell you who the composer was. I can’t expound on the moods and emotions certain musical keys and tempos can produce. I find classical music to be a good backdrop for work. It’s entertaining but not distracting. Very conducive to a work environment.

I have no idea what exactly is coming from his office at the moment, but I like it.