The last two days I've been attending the OCLC Engaging Teens conference in Arlington.

I feel ablaze.

Being with this group of people from our library system and seeing the nods of approval and the gung ho attitudes and spark of life in our eyes I can feel the tipping point coming. We're at a place where there's so much new blood and it's in so many different places and it's pushing against the old paradigm, and there's just enough force behind it that we're going to be doing some amazing things. We're talking about radical new approaches to library service. Breaking people out of their shells, tearing down the barriers that have kept us locked in our ivory towers, and totally transforming everything from the ground up.

There is so much passion in us right now. I'm just looking at everything going YES!

I can feel it's so close I can touch it.

This is exactly where I want to be.

WOW!

Curious Expeditions has a blog post with photographs from some of the most beautiful libraries in the entire world.

This made my heart sing with joy.

I would also like to point out that I have been to:
* The Old British Reading Room at the British Museum
* The Library of Congress
* Suzallo Library (I practically lived in there during grad school) in Seattle

I should make the effort to go to the Georgetown Riggs Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library here in DC. Just never got around to them.

To this list of beautiful libraries I would also like to add the Young Men's Mercantile Library of Cincinnati. If you've never been there, it's gorgeous. Well, it's not the Vatican Library level of gorgeous, but it's definitely cool. In addition I would include the entire Blegen Library building on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. That building is LOADED with bibliophiliac love, though the stacks are decidedly ungorgeous, but cool.

The feeling that I get when looking at these collections, regardless of what is in them, is nothing short of awe. It's that rush of overwhelming joy that I get from being a librarian.

Thanks to jessicamelusine for the link

Oh hot damn!

My boss just sent me the link to the New York Anime Festival website to get a professional pass.

It's December 7-9 at the Javits Center.

I'm SO GOING!

ROCK!

WOW! I just kind of heard this song last week, and I asked sqrlcub to send it to me. I'm crying listening to this.

Lucifer
--by Leslie Fish from Chickasaw Mountain

Let me teach you to wonder and worry.
Permit me to tell you how to wage war.
A creature's reach should exceed its grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?

I'll show you the way to take thought for tomorrow,
To struggle for dreams and a hunger for more.
A creature's sight should outrun its might,
Or what are the heavens for?

Taste of the fruit of the tree that is knowledge,
Of good and of evil and all the world's lore.
A creature's thought must exceed what its taught,
Or who is heaven for?

So come here and learn to become as the gods are,
For I've got a wonderful secret to tell.
A creature's reach should exceed its grasp,
What else is heaven or hell?

Dance Dance Immolation!

"Dance Dance Immolation is an adaptation of the popular arcade video game Dance Dance Revolution, but with fire! Basically, you play DDR; when you do well, the computer shoots big propane blasts up into the air. When you do poorly, it shoots you in the face with flamethrowers. Yes, you, as in your actual corporeal body. And yes, flamethrowers, like the kind that are on fire."



I can't even express how incredibly freaking awesome this is!

Don't believe it?

Watch the Video clip from Burning Man!

Found on cigfrain who in turn found it on Wired

Scientists Create Invisibility Cloak

ROCK! I want one!

I saw this picture on urban_bohemian's blog and I followed the link to something cool as hell.

Stonehenge Aotearoa

Stonehenge Aotearoa, a full-scale working adaptation of Stonehenge, is intended to inspire New Zealanders to explore and experience for themselves how technologies of ancient times were used, and still can be used, to give practical and detailed information on the seasons, time and navigation.