It is cold in Toronto. I bought the bike of my dreams in March and want to be on it all the time but it’s not ideal, as I’m lacking some critical cold-weather gear. Today was the quietest day of the year in the library, in that lovely intersession period where one could theoretically cartwheel around the map cabinets, if one only knew how to.
I finished up the aforementioned best course with a deep dive into the Prelinger Archives and what was probably the best paper/presentation combo I’ve ever come up with (not to mention best looking, eh). I never thought I’d find library work more suited for me than in the map library, but suddenly I found myself joining AMIA, rediscovering my love of broadcast media and ephemeral cinema, and creating a syllabus for a beautifully gonzo summer reading course on archiving landscape, again with Brock Silversides. It also just clicked, again, that the domain name I bought seven years ago emerged from a love of microforms.
During the day I’m working on the (huuuge) redesign of the Map & Data Library website, and two upcoming conference presentations: first, on the politics of my work as a map cataloguer at the TRY Library Conference at UofT. In June I’ll be heading to Fredericton for the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives annual meeting, to speak on a workshop entitled Exploring Neighbourhood Change that I teach to highschool and first-year undergraduate students, introducing them to air photo interpretation and census data visualization with ArcGIS. Then I am going to Saskatoon with my library school (and beyond) bff Sheila Laroque where she can teach me how to drive at the age of 33 2/3.