I have to work today and my stomach feels not so good. Seriously, it's like I'm nervous, only I don't have anything to be nervous about because it's a Saturday. Ugh. And I even ate breakfast, so it's not that I'm hungry or anything. Unless I'm having an adverse reaction to the mixture of coffee, peanut butter bagel and yogurt.

Anyway, it's the first hour at work and I don't feel like working. And I used to blog a lot in my old department, so I figured today would be an homage to the good ole days. Or perhaps the boring old days. But it's early and a holiday weekend and I just don't bloody well feel like doing library related things.

I'm writing up some notes on my recent trip to Pittsburgh -- ostentiously, that's what I'm doing right now. I really am a library nerd. I looked up "information architecture" and Pittsburgh in Google and I found this architect's website -- the one that designed their library. Look under February 2004 and download the middle Powerpoint (or the one with notes). It is so fascinating that they have taken information architecture -- a concept usually reserved for websites and data-related endeavors -- and applied it to the library as a whole. Perhaps I am not as well versed in all things library as I think I am -- and that is probably the case becuase I haven't been doing it that long -- but I think it's an ingenious solution to most library problems. Is there something wrong with me because I feel like researching this further? Or does it just mean that I probably have gone into the right field when I care about something and am interested enough in a topic to read about it outside of work?

And that segues nicely into my next -- and final -- topic for today. I started reading this book last weekend -- Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. I haven't gotten more than a chapter into it, but I think it's a really interesting concept -- people aren't interested in joining things any more. Apparently, middle aged people are the ones that are more civic minded and so "they" thought there would be a huge surge in the number of people joining community organizations in the 1980s and 1990s. But there hasn't been -- apparently membership in community organizations has gone down. Very, very interesting -- and when I read his thesis, I thought, y'know, that is true. And I can't help but think, how does this apply to libraries?

Yes, I am a true library nerd, but that's okay.