Though the two other contractors and I are not currently working on guides, we were happy to join the nursing liaison Augsburg librarian to give the Mayo folks the LibGuides rundown, covering pros and cons, best practices, guide organization ideas and more. I’m intrigued to see what they come up with — the subject matter is more technical and the audience much different from the largely undergrad-focused Augsburg guides, and might range from high-level physicians to medical students to laypersons seeking consumer medical information.

Following the presentation, we were treated to lunch and conversation. I’ve never worked in a medial library, and it was fascinating to hear firsthand from information professionals at one of the best medical practice and research communities in the world — everything from database access issues to painstakingly detailed search notes on reference questions, necessary for review in medical publications.

We also had tours of the History of Medicine Library, housing rare medical texts with stunning 15th century anatomical woodcuts (a pet interest of mine), and the carillon bells in the tower of the Plummer Building. Resident carillonist Jeff Daehn even hammered out a few tunes for us, as we cavorted along the tower with the stone guards and eagle/gargoyles overlooking the city and the Mayo complex.

A few months ago, once fellow Minneapolitan John Troyer, now a professor of death and dying practices at the University of Bath, England, approached me with a vision. Well, it was more like a statement: “We need a blog.” He and his colleague Kim Anderson, a public librarian in Portland, Oregon, were in the habit of swapping death-related news stories via email, sometimes posting them on Facebook. Ever the helpful information consumer and conduit, I too occasionally passed along to John death links I knew would be of interest—think less shock schlock morbidity than the culturally nuanced and historically intriguing bits of death and dying lore and lunacy.

John and Kim wanted an online space where they could share ideas and information with a wider audience. Recognized for my web prowess (and later, praised for the happy surprise of actually being able to turn a fuzzy idea into a solid, slick reality), I was courted to build and contribute to such a joint-venture website with the promise of zero dollars and uncertain outcomes all around. Ain’t that the way of it? But I loved the idea and signed on. After countless hours of WordPress hacking, tracking down permanent WorldCat URLs and trying to determine the best way to organize a collection that doesn’t yet exist, the Death Reference Desk was born.

The blog portion of DRD focuses on death and dying in the news. Topics range from death industry trends, new discoveries in anthropology and the effect of social networking on mourning and memorializing, to name a few. We also function as an email-the-librarians reference desk for death and dying subjects. We’ve only had a couple questions so far, so it’s hard to predict the range of questions we’ll receive and the magnitude of research required; we don’t track down obituaries nor do in-depth research, but we are more than happy to help with search advice and places to get started. DRD also has search term tips and a few research guides, and we hope to add more in the future.

I also maintain a DeathRef Twitter account; the lastest tweet appears on the homepage, with tweets announcing new DeathRef content or linking to articles that lack sufficient weight to warrant their own posts. While (*ahem,* in my humble opinion) Twitter is the most annoyingly hyped and often pointlessly appropriated web doodad of the year, for DRD it has proven surprisingly effective for identifying and making connections with unexpected audiences, namely, genealogists and obituary enthusiasts.

So far the Death Reference Desk journey has been a challenging and gratifying experience for me as a web designer, librarian and writer. I approached it first as a project manager, defining and predicting what we wanted to achieve and how to get there, including our purpose and possible trajectory, scope, audience and value (…both to others and ourselves—I plainly admit I hoped to improve my web skills and expand my portfolio, which I’ve definitely achieved).

Melding knowledge of blog management with information organization, I attempted to translate subject classification and indexing theory and best practices to the category and tag functions of a blog. This has been no easy feat, especially with multiple contributors adding content and metadata and not knowing what our “collection” might ultimately contain. As such, categories and tags shift and evolve. The tag “crime” has become its own category, “Death + Crime.” Given thus-far limited content, the categories “Death + Art” and “Death + Architecture” should perhaps be combined. I scowl nonstop at having both a “Monuments + Memorials” category plus a “memorializing” tag, but I’m not sure what to do about it yet, and so it remains, redundant and confusing.

Naturally, my aim is to make navigation and drill-down terms as logical and useful as possible from a user’s perspective. But it’s also difficult to know how exactly a visitor will and wants to use the site, and I fear usability studies at this point would be, to put it lightly, exceptionally silly. DRD, while interesting to others for its content, has been especially interesting to me as a vehicle by which to explore professional issues, but that doesn’t mean it always requires professional insight and application, nor that such things are feasible. Sad that it matters, but true, I can expend only so much effort while not getting paid, plus I am probably the only person in the whole WWW who cares whether our small-fry blog makes total sense all of the time.

Nevertheless, I am having a blast with it, and what I’ve been learning falls well beyond information organization and design. In addition to that and the requisite web-hashing, I view and work on DRD in terms of its branding, marketing, promotion and outreach (I’m considering delving into and answering relevant Yahoo! Answers and WikiAnswers questions); its editorial policy and the various means of locating and developing relevant, engaging content (thank you, RSS alert services!); researching and creating an appropriate privacy policy and disclaimer; and my personal quest to swallow my disgust and experiment with the grossness of online advertising.

Though I’ve maintained personal websites for nearly a decade, I’ve never considered myself a blogger, in fact, I’ve resented the term. I see blogging as quick and dirty—not necessarily thoughtless but with certainly less mental and emotional investment than the creative nonfiction of my prior web engagements. But whaddya know: finding, writing about and sharing things that I find interesting for people who will also find them interesting is fun as well as deeply satisfying—not to mention a pretty darn librarian thing to do.

The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive. While it’s impossible to predict its long-term sustainability, I’m definitely enjoying it right now—for what it is, and in imagining what it might become and how to make it happen.

It is official; I am a graduate of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia with an MLIS. Hooray! Actual commencement was May 21. Having missed the inordinately early and devilishly well-concealed cap-and-gown deadline, I was not in attendance and thus have no capstone photos of me in full graduation regalia. (Awww.)

In addition to degreed, I am the honored recipient of the Beverly Maureen Becker Memorial Prize for outstanding work in courses related to reference and information services. Strangely, I only took one reference course, the core course required of everyone (I would have liked to take more but scheduling did not allow for it). I believe the criteria were expanded to include actual reference desk experience, of which my co-op jobs at UVic and my Graduate Academic Assistant position with Art + Architecture + Planning and the Science and Engineering Libraries at UBC provided me a great deal. The award includes a schnazzy certificate and a cheque for $500. Thanks, SLAIS! I most definitely appreciate it.

As for jobs… though I’d originally planned to search far and wide for a librarian position, after much consideration I have decided I would like to be in Minneapolis/St. Paul, still home in my heart and closer to family. I’m hanging out in Vancouver to enjoy one last (…for now? who knows!) BC summer of beaches and bike rides along lush seawalls. I plan to be back in the States toward the end of July then concentrate my job search in the Twin Cities area.

In the meantime, I have been entrenched in a handful of creative writing and other projects. One exciting bit of news is that my work, You Are Not Dead: A Guide To Modern Living, a free ebook released in Spring 2008, caught the interest and inspiration of a local live performance production company. Over the past couple months I have been working with the director to turn the guide, perhaps best described as a satirical cross between self help and propaganda, into a script, with some revisions to reflect Canadian content and context. The play will open late October 2009 in Vancouver.

…Which I guess makes me a playwright. Which I am still wrapping my brain around. Though eager to start my library career, this is a welcome and fun change of pace from a grueling semester, and it’s excellent to get some recognition in a regrettably neglected area of my life. Stay tuned!

I may be short on posts for awhile, as my new and final semester of library school has just begun (yes, I should be working on my Collection Management presentation right now… or at least enjoying this brisk but bright Vancouver Sunday afternoon). The front page also looks a little underdeveloped without much content to suck to the side under Recent Posts, and my my what a sad tag cloud, theoretically under Browse. More like a tag clear sky. And cupboard-bare categories, too…. How does one classify a collection that doesn’t yet exist? Hmmm. Best never mind this for now—it’ll look shipshape before long. In the meantime, or anytime, check out the delights under Portfolio to the right to see what I’ve been up to in library school and while on co-op (co-operative education, a full-time internship program I did for all of 2008). I also encourage you to subscribe for updates, or just check back now and again.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome! The picture above, by the way, is the Walker Library in Uptown, Minneapolis, MN, on an icy day.