I recently bought a kitschy romance, called "The librarian's passionate night" written by Cindy Gerard and published by Silhouette books. Now I just discovered that this is not the only Silhouette novel starring librarians, they rather seem to be uncountable (okay, it's hyperbolic):
Sharon Sala: Amber by Night (2003); Allison Leigh: Montana Lawman (2002); Elizabeth Bevarly: The Temptation of Rory Monahan (2001); Carol Grace: The Librarian's Secret Wish (2000); Elizabeth Harbison: Annie and the Prince (2000); Sally Tyler Hayes: Cinderella and the Spy (2000); Nikki Benjamin: The Major & the Librarian (1999); Caroline Cross: The Notorious Groom (1998); Barbara McMahon: Cinderella Twin (1998); Kathryn Jensen: I married a prince (1997); Linda Turner: Maddy Lawrence's Big Adventure (1996); Glenda Sanders: Look Into My Eyes (1995); Laurie Campbell: And Father Makes Three (1995); Cathie Linz: Handyman (1991); Emilie Richards: Runaway (1990); Stephanie James: Velvet Touch (1982)...
As far I can say from the short descriptions on biblio.com and abebooks.de, most of these (female) librarians have something in common: They are mid30s, unmarried, still virgins and longing for a man like they use to read about...

I just browsed the catalogue of Harrassowitz publishing house and found very interesting books. One of my areas of collection emphasis is dictionaries of various languages. My most "exotic" ones are - so far - "Japanese - English - Sinhala" and "Indonesian"; the most beautiful one is a French "nouveau petit Larousse illustré" from 1938 with many illustrations. At Harrassowitz', I spotted the following which I'd really like to purchase: a "concise dictionary of Akkadian", a Tartar - German dictionary, an Aramaic - new Hebrew dictionary... and: the "Rückläufiges Wörterbuch der vogulischen Schriftsprache" (~ retrograde dictionary of Vogulian literary language).
I never heard anything of Vogulian before, so I googled a bit: Vogulian is part of the finno-ugric family. More precisely, it is one of the three ugric languages, which makes it similar to Hungarian, actually most similar from all finno-ugric languages. It is also called Mansi(c) and is spoken by only five-thousand people living in parts of Sibiria, east of Ural.

I'm planning to introduce remarkable libraries here, and I'm starting with the "Literaturhaus Mattersburg". It offers a library with about 7000 books - its main focus being on central european literature, Austrian contemporary fiction, ethnic minorities, judaism, exile - and a carefully selected children's library. The libraries are opened Tuesday and Thursday from 10 to 6, Friday from 9 to 1 o'clock.
There are also a lot of literary activities, like children's storytime at night and readings from centraleuropean authors. Yesterday, the new series "literatur nach tisch" was started, taking place one Tuesday a month on 2 o'clock. The title is a play on words, so not easy to translate, but "nach-tisch" means "dessert" as well as "after dinner". Here people involved in the cultural life introduce their favourite books or books on which they want to draw attention.
The head librarian of the Burgenland provincial library, an author himself, introduced two books by authors coming from Burgenland: "Wäre Franz ein Fluss, müsste er pausenlos entspringen" (really can't be translated properly) by Franz Zalto and "Am Pinkaboden" by Friedrich Singer.

I read a wonderful book last weekend: "Miss Zukas and the library murders" by Jo Dereske, Avon Books 1999. Miss Helma Zukas, an US-American librarian with lithuanian roots, works in the public library of Bellehaven. When suddenly a dead man is found between the stacks (fiction, MO - NE, by the way), she and her friend Ruth, an unorthodox artist, can throw light on the crime. Zukas is a quite proper and accurate librarian (yes, it is quite stereotype), but she is portrayed with affection and certainly not "black&white". She contrasts perfectly with bohemian Ruth. The books are funny and exciting, and, along the way, the readers can learn a lot about American public librarianship (if they want to). And please have a look @ the cover!
The author was a librarian herself, which is fortunately reflected in the texts. There are many more mysteries with Helma Zukas: for example 'Out of circulation', 'Final notice' and 'Miss Zukas shelves the evidence'.

There are a lot of job titles for librarians - just have a look @ the job title generator. Recently, I read an interesting one: "knowledge sources management". I don't know if I should really like it. If the majority of non-librarians reacts to the word "librarian" with an epitheton not really ornans like "boring", "old-fashioned", "not interesting", and if this majority says "hey, knowledge sources management sounds cool", well, then let's do something for our image. Sounds comprehensible. But: I'm proud of being a LIBRARIAN and nothing else, and if those people with a horizon as high as a carpet don't know that librarians are at least as cool as knowledge sources managers, they can't be helped. Of course, this sounds arrogant. So, concluding, I don't know if I should really like it or not.

How to recognize LIS students doing their cataloguing courses: They come in and ask for a numbered monographic series and a multi-volume monograph.

At the moment, I'm doing my evening duty in the library, with, as usual, approximately no, null, nought, zero, nil users coming around. So I'll use the time to rant and moan about my two exams next Wednesday. Both lectures at Vienna University were interesting and exciting, but there's a lot to read and learn. Of course I could have started earlier, but hey, it's me!
Of all the books I had to read this term, I especially liked the following ones: "Kassandra" (Christa Wolf, narrative), "Heldenplatz" (Thomas Bernhard, drama), the short novels of Karl Emil Franzos, as well as his novel "Pojaz" dealing with Judaism in the eastern parts of the Austrian-hungarian monarchy, and "Lotti, die Uhrmacherin" (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, novel). The absolutely lowest point for me was "Kalldewey Farce" by the German dramatist Botho Strauß.

The Austrian library conference ("Bibliothekartag", cfp) takes place in Linz in September. I once wrote a seminar paper about librarians as characters in english children books, and we collect fiction with librarians as characters in the library I work in. So I'd like to give a talk about librarians in literature at the Bibliothekartag.

I have an eGovernment bibliography on my website (with emphasis on Austria), which I updated and expanded today. The listed literature is subdivided according to topics, for example eVoting, electronic administration, eDemocracy & participation. I just added the two groups "governmentality" and "government libraries".
Besides, an article from my colleague Fritz Betz and me (mainly from him, I admit) was published these days. The article is called "Electronic governmentality in Austria: 'Governance work' between self-bureaucratisation and central surveillance" and was published in the collected edition "e-Democracy: Technology, Law and Politics" edited by Alexander Prosser and Robert Krimmer.

On Wednesday, I experienced a somewhat peculiar encounter: In the library for German language and literature studies in Vienna, there was a dead mouse. Probably she's in mouse heaven now, watching "Tom & Jerry" or reading "Of mice and men". At first, I thought the waitress must have put something in my morning coffee and I'm hallucinating. But the librarian confirmed that poison baits were spread out in the library.
I would have suggested a library cat instead. There really is a "library cats map" which lists over five-hundred "Total Known Library Cats"!

Last month, I mentioned Tori Amos' new album "Tales of a librarian". Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to see and hear it. It's really nice - the songs are classified in DDC classes. You can read an article about it here and listen to excerpts here.

Today I'd like to talk about two CDs I recently bought. The first one is "Sex & Drugs & Jesus Christ" by Christian Death. It contains one of my favourite songs, "Incendiary lover" (sung by Gitane Demone), which is here quite "overcooled" when compared with the erotic, "hot" version on the compilation "Gothic Rock", but not less delightful. I like also the song "Tragedy" very much.
The second one is "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie. My favourites: "Five years" and "Starman", the latter offering a hopeful message for SF fans & alien believers like me: There's a starman waiting in the sky...

Maybe you ask yourselves: why does Monika write this weblog in English? Well, first of all, I really like the language - from "I will not be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster" and "She walks in beauty like the night" to "Do not go gentle into that good night" and Tony Blair. Yes, I admit it, I like the way Tony Blair speaks English. Maybe not the content, but definitely the way. Second, it's some training of expressing oneself in another language.

Blisspix lists songs about libraries and librarians and offers, if available, their lyrics. By the way: Tori Amos' new album is named "Tales of a librarian".

There is an interesting conference in Bielefeld in February next year: The overall topic is "Thinking Beyond Digital Libraries - Designing the Information Strategy for the Next Decade". Sessions include "Information Strategy for Universities and Academic Libraries", "Innovative Technologies to Access and Network Academic Online Information", "Intelligent Search Engine & Navigation Technology in Digital Libraries and Information Portals".
For me, the most interesting one is "New Services of Academic Libraries - Institutional Scholarly Publication Repositories" - a current topic in times of restricted budgets and increasing journal prices. The conference will be held in English and German with simultaneous translation.

Today, I had an oral exam in "library law" (comprises copyright law, media law, monumental protection, data protection, university organizational law...) which I passed with distinction, although having started to learn as usual on Saturday. Yes! By passing this exam, I finished the so-called "Grundausbildung für den Bibliotheks-, Informations- und Dokumentationsdienst" (~ basic education for people working in library & information science) provided by the Austrian National Library. I had only to do the legal thingies (constitutional law, administrative law, labour law, library law) - I was given credit for everything else because I had learned it before at FHIB.
Doing courses at the Austrian National Library is very nice... they have nice premises and very good lecturers. The seminars within the basic education costs 24 € per day for guest students like me as I didn't attend the whole training.

"allzu große Vortrefflichkeit"

Yesterday, I spent a few hours browsing through older issues of the "Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen". I found a lot of articles about the occupational image, job descriptions, troubles with salaries... Especially interesting to me are the texts about female librarians. For example, in 1939 Ernst Koch wrote that women librarians had a bad memory, that they weren't familiar with technical-scientific bibliographies and that they were incapable of accounting. His conclusion: He is proud of NOT having any women in the clerical grade in "his" library.
In the next issue, another male librarian, Otto Glauning, presented his view about female librarians in clerical grade (=middle-level service, "mittlerer Dienst"). In original language: "Unzulänglichkeiten waren nur eben soviel vorhanden, daß man nicht zu besorgen brauchte, sie möchten eines Tages wegen allzu großer Vortrefflichkeit auf einem feurigen Wagen gen Himmel geholt werden" :-)

I've found an interesting database via a link in the "Education Librarian Weblog": the "Science Fiction & Fantasy Book List". It is "a comprehensive bibliography of science-fiction and fantasy authors and their books" and is updated monthly.

There was an interesting case of bibliomania in Germany I read about in the Salzburger Nachrichten, in the mailinglist Inetbib and in Yahoo News: Because of an alleged pipe burst, the fire brigades opened a flat in Kaiserslauten. But they had troubles with entering, because the whole apartment, including the bathroom, was crowded with books up to the ceiling. Only to the kitchen which seemingly also served as bedroom, a small passage was left void. As the building was acutely impending to collapse, the fire brigades and the police had to remove several tons (!) of books and store them temporarily in a depot. When the owner came home in his also crowded car, he suffered a nervous break-down and had to be supervised by a psychologist, as he couldn't bear the evacuation of his beloved books.
Apropos: You can read an article in the magazine "Spiegel" about the "Messie-Syndrome" or Eugene Fields "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac" online at the University of Virginia Library's Electronic Text Center.

ePSIGate is building up a database on national legal frameworks for the exploitation of Public Sector Information in the EU member states. ePSIGate, an Accompanying Measure funded under the EU eContent programme, is a portal whose objective is knowledge-sharing, alerting & advisory service targeted to the needs of all PSI stakeholders. There is a conference and a workshop named "Commercial exploitation of public sector information (PSI) in order to boost the private content- and multimedia sector" in Vienna on the 24th of October, 2003.