CDC Song

It's holiday time, and the CDC is lightening up. Enough already with dire disease warnings, cautionary traveller's advisories, with always being the first to proclaim the bad news. Someone at CDC is in the holiday spirit and has written a little song to the tune of "12 Days of Christmas". Altho it's still advisory and cautionary in nature, it's in musical format. As soon as I get to a computer with speakers enabled (I'm on the Reference Desk now) , I'll have a listen: http://www.cdc.gov/family/holiday/12ways.htm

The Importance of Having Checklists

Interesting article in a current issue of the New Yorker regarding the use of checklists in medicine:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1
According to the author of the article, the implementation of checklists in the ICU "...has saved more lives than that of any laboratory scientist in the past decade". Wow.

Commitment

I was actually thinking of this concept in terms of a pledge to follow through, as it relates to posting to your blog regularly after you've set it up. But because I went to a dictionary to make sure I was spelling the word correctly, I was reminded that "commitment" can also be defined as "consignment to a penal or mental institution" and has some other negative nuances related to obligation and indebtedness. I think that's what stops me from blogging: the notion of being obliged to be creative, clever, and perhaps even inspirational on a regular basis. Once in a while, sure, no problem. But every day or even every week, on cue? I dunno. Some days, it's hard enough to get it together just to get to work. Blogging might consign me to a penal or mental institution.

Finding My Voice

This is a recent photo of me in San Francisco, lurking in the doorway of the "Voice Studio" on Potrero Hill. It's allegorical because I'm in the process of finding my blogging voice.

I would really like to start a blog on the library's new web site. I would like it if the blog became very popular, a site staff go to first thing every morning, just to see what fascinating thing I have to say.

I want to make the writing informal, but not too irreverent. Hip, but not slick. Cool but not irritatingly so. Interesting but not too controversial. It may take some experimentation