New site and Jane Rutherford's retirement

Thursday post! Yay, jury duty.

Well, I made it back from vacation, and the building's still standing, the collection hasn't been pillaged, and the campus is still here! That's a good thing.

First, one (relatively) minor announcement: With the exception of a page or two, the redesign of library.gallaudet.edu has been completed! I'm feeling pretty good about it at the moment, but -- and this is a big but -- please do feel free to contact me with any feedback, whether through the comments here (which will be moderated, so watch your language if the new design really ticks you off) or through e-mail at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu or library.help@gallaudet.edu. The whole idea here is to make things a little more compact and easier to navigate, so it's really important that I hear from anyone who uses the site.

Now, for the books. I read a lot while I was gone, but you're only getting two books out of me -- one for each week. I need to have some stocked up, after all.

First, I read The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. Hmm. I sort of have mixed feelings about this one. A friend recommended it and I was curious about the story, which involves a young woman who's born illegitimately to a Turkish woman in Istanbul in the 1980s. It sounds fairly simple, but there's a lot wrapped up in it. When it was published, for instance, it led to a pretty serious controversy in Turkey because the author -- who is herself a Turk -- makes the Turkish genocide of Armenians in the early 20th Century a significant factor in the plot. At its heart, it's a family story, revolving around two siblings, a brother and sister, and the children they raise in the U.S. and in Turkey, respectively, who meet for the first time in their twenties in Istanbul. It's a story of reconciliation -- the American cousin is half-Armenian -- and of closure, when a big family secret is discovered and resolved in fairly short order.

I have mixed feelings about it mostly because it wasn't really my kind of book. I really enjoyed the fantastically engrossing depictions of life in Turkey, especially when contrasted with life in America, but the plot itself, especially the big secret around which it revolves, left me a little cold. That's not to say it's not a good book -- it is, very well-written and enjoyable -- but it's just not my type.

Why write about it in this blog, then? Because I think of my weekly book reviews as just those: reviews. They aren't necessarily intended to be taken as recommendations; they're just a quick peek into what's available through the Gallaudet University Library. If I'm effusive in my praise, though, that's probably a good sign that you should consider picking it up!

The second book I read was The Infinities by John Banville. The story centers on Adam Godley, a brilliant astrophysicist who's discovered a set of equations that have completely changed science and the world's understanding of time. He's dying. His family has installed him in an upper room of the homestead and called everyone back to wait for the end with him. His son, also named Adam, is visiting with his beautiful-but-hollow actress wife Helen, and Petra, sister to the younger Adam and daughter to the elder, who suffers from a severe -- but unnamed -- psychological disorder. Petra in turn brings in Roddy, a young man who claims to be interested in her, but is actually after her father, trying to write his biography. They all stay in the house along with Ursula, the elder Adam's wife, who drinks her way through her grief.

Overseeing all of this -- and this is what makes this novel so much more interesting -- are the Greek gods. The book is narrated by Hermes, the messenger, as he watches over the family and muses about their various idiosyncrasies, while being dragooned into helping his father, Zeus, get into bed with Helen, with whom he has fallen in love. There's even one fascinating episode early in the book when Zeus visits Helen and orders Hermes to hold back the dawn for an hour, which he does, of course, choking roosters and smashing the goddess of the dawn in the face.

Hermes's perspective adds a lot of humor and wry irony to the proceedings, especially when another god shows up in mortal form: Pan, the god of the woods, wildness, and alcohol. Together, the three gods create plenty of mischief over the course of the last day of Adam Godley's life.

In general, it's beautifully-written and very absorbing.

Now, on with the show. Jane Rutherford, one of our Instruction & Reference Librarians, is retiring at the end of August. I feel like I should put a little sad-face emoticon right about here: :( We're all very curious about what she plans to do and what's going through her head at this point, so I talked with her a little bit about her new adventure.

1) Every time I ask someone who's retiring what they plan to do with their time, they tend to say things like, "Well, I'm going to get up at the same time every day and make my coffee just like I always do, except instead of going off to work, I'm going off to get the newspaper, and then I'm going to sit on the back porch. That's my retirement." But you're Jane! I bet you've got a plan. Is that so? Do you mind sharing what it is?
Well, my plan isn't set yet. I've been too busy working to think about it much. BUT ... a big part of my plan is to not have a big plan for a while. I'm going to give myself 4-6 months to do just what I want, when I want. I also want to get my house in order, literally (cleaning, painting, organizing). During that time, I want to research some of the things I am interested in doing, such as volunteering, traveling, etc. I'm actually afraid I may over-commit myself so when I DO have a plan, it will have to include some downtime to really relax.

2) Will you be sticking around the Washington area, or do you plan to move somewhere exotic, like Raleigh or Macon?
Or Wisconsin? Actually, I plan to stay exactly where I am. I live in Alexandria, just south of Old Town. I have a nice condo that is very accessible, both in location and in the amenities it has for people with limited mobility (which I don't need ... yet) and quite beautiful. Plus, I just don't want to move ever again! I hate moving (well, really I hate packing).

3) Lots of retirees have told me that when they left their jobs, they had one big, outlandish thing in mind that they'd always wanted to do, but never had the time for, totally separate from their general post-retirement plans. I've heard all sorts of things -- skydiving, shark-baiting, building their own house by hand, arranging their bookcases by color, going on a European tour -- so I'm curious: Do you have something like that on your to-do list?
I don't think all of these are "big" or "outlandish," and I don't have just one, but here are a few things I am considering and will research in the next few months:

• taking tap dance and/or drum lessons (I love the thought of all the noise these two activities make!)
• holding babies. I did not have children of my own and just love cuddling babies. I am going to look around for opportunities to do that, locally and maybe even internationally!
• going to Africa. I'd like to try working with the orphanage in Zambia which my church supports and where a friend might be going for a year or so. Even though my time there would be limited, probably no more than a month, I admit this still makes me a little nervous -- so far, so exotic, so hard -- but I am truly considering it, maybe as soon as next summer.

4) Now we're going to shift to more Library-like things. You've been pretty busy this summer, getting a lot of things out of the way before you take off. Would you share some details about what you've been doing?
Well, one thing I just started recently was taking personal things home. My goodness, one accumulates a lot of stuff after 29+ years! I'm also getting things together to pass on to my library colleagues -- you know, work stuff.

I've been the library selector for education for many years now and I decided I wanted to clean out those books. I've withdrawn a very large number of books, a decent amount of which were well over 30 years old. That means that those left will be more useful, if only because they will be easier to find on the tidy shelves!

Finally (or maybe not if someone comes up with other projects), I've done a thorough inventory of the general periodical (journals, magazines, and newspapers) collection. With the expansion and popularity of electronic periodical access, the librarians have been steadily increasing our holdings of those products for quite a few years now. That means some of the paper and microfilm products have to go so we can reallocate more of our money to electronic. I've determined exactly what we have on the shelves (titles and years/volumes), collected data about those titles (how much they are used, if they are available electronically, past decisions made, which librarian should monitor them, etc.), and put all this in a spreadsheet so it will be easier to make decisions about periodicals in the future.

5) You've had a long, rich career at Gallaudet, spanning almost thirty years. Looking back, what's the one thing that sticks out in your mind the most?
Change.

• How the University has changed -- Deaf President Now, communication methods, FYS/GSR, the buildings (new ones, long-gone old ones), etc.
• How the Library has changed, not the building but the things we do here and the way we do them.
• How I have changed: When I started I was the Library Systems Analyst and I worked with mainframe computers, then minicomputers, then PCs. About 15 years ago, I switched from computers to people and became a reference and instruction librarian. That change recharged my energy and made it easier to work here happily for almost 30 years.

6) What's something you might miss the most about working at the Gallaudet University Library?
There are a couple of things. First, the interaction with people, students and staff both. I tend to be an introvert, but when I start working with students, individually or in a classroom, my energy soars. Next, I will miss learning things. That is the best thing about being a librarian. New topics come up all the time, and I get to research them and learn things I would never have thought about. It's not that I won't learn new things, but it won't be as serendipitous as it is here at work.

7) And finally, you knew this question was inevitable: What brand of sensible shoes do you recommend?
I believe we all need to be stylish, so I vote for Jimmy Choo! Just kidding ... those might kill or maim me. Really though, I've yet to find shoes that are always sensible (for me that means comfortable), but as my body approaches middle- to late-middle age (this is not a typo), flats are always better and thick soles help cushion these bony feet! Not Birkenstocks!

All joking aside, we're all sad to see Jane go. She's done a lot for the Library and for Gallaudet in general, and it'll be very tough to replace her. By the same token, though, she's certainly earned her time off!

If you've worked with Jane before, please feel free to stop by the Library any time over the next month or so to wish her well!

No question of the week this week; I think this post is quite long enough -- don't you?