Twilight Librarian--Jim Rettig's ruminations on libraries, librarianship, the infosphere, and more

 Jim Rettig's ruminations on libraries, librarianship, the infosphere, and more

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Twilight Librarian:

Jim Rettig's ruminations on libraries, librarianship, the infosphere, and more

e-mail: Jim Rettig

Why is this named Twilight Librarian?

Jim Rettig is University Librarian at the University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America. Opinions expressed in Twilight Librarian are the author's and do not speak for the University of Richmond.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

On conference badges [Permalink]

Sat Aug 04 19:58:09 EDT 2007

Some frequent conference-goers develop pet peeves--high registration fees, mediocre convention center food, the vagaries of air travel, etc. My pet peeve is more pedestrian.

Conference badges are very useful things. When you can't quite remember the name of that person you see at best once a year, the badge can save you from embarrassment. Badges allow vendors to greet potential customers by name and to know where they are from. Badges make it easy to strike up a casual conversation while waiting in line for a book signing or other event. Badges doall of these things, but only if others can read the wearers name.

Badges suspended on lanyards, especially long lanyards, can be impossible to read. There is a 50 percent chance that a badge will be reversed with the wearer's name on the side facing the wearer's belly. Or the lanyard can be so long that the badge hangs so low that, even though the name is facing outward, another can't read it without getting down on bended knee. I can do without the corporate advertising that makes a lanyard badge twice the size it needs to be and makes every conferee a human billboard. But I cannot do without conferees' names being visible.
I am always grateful when the registration staff at a conference can accommodate my request for one of those simple plastic sleeve badge holders that pins or clips to one's clothing. I appreciate the objections some have to piercing certain fabrics and how lanyards serve their preference. But I appreciate even more being able to read others badges.

Pin-on badge


Lanyard badge

Private conversations in public places [Permalink]

Fri Aug 03 05:41:51 EDT 2007

I am one of the many who sometimes takes advantage of Wi-Fi in coffee shops and other public spaces. It can be a less distracting place to think and work than the office. When I really need to concentrate on something, I put on noise canceling headphones. Rarely, however, am I doing anything requiring that intensity. Over time I have overheard conversations that in the past would probably not have occurred in these public places. Why, I wonder do, people feel comfortable having these conversations in the rather close quarters of a coffee shop? Is it because through their experience in using social networking Web sites they have developed a loose notion of privacy? Is it because this space seems more like a workplace than a third place?

Whatever the reason, I have overhead a personal financial advisor relentlessly interview a prospective client about personal details such as debt, income, and savings that few of us divulge to family or co-workers. I have overheard job performance appraisal discussions. In one of these a trio of employees from a company conducted a review of a contractor. After opening with small talk over coffee and bagels, the review abruptly shifted to criticism which put the contractor on the defensive.

These discussions differ from the intimacies a couple may exchange in public, whether those be professions of love or a marital spat. They differ from the conversation of friends meeting for lunch or to fete a friend on her birthday. Those sorts of conversations have taken place in public probably since humans developed speech. Business conversations have been conducted in public view for a long time, as well, but generally in more discreet venues than crowded coffee shops and not in others' earshot. Those headphones do more than help me concentrate. Sometimes they create a boundary between the public and private when the latter ought not be public. I really didn't want to listen to a tag team pick to pieces that visibly shaken contractor's work any more than he probably wanted anyone to hear it.

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