Libraries – Becky Levine

Friday Five: What’s Happening Out There?

Posted on 16 Apr 2010 by beckylevine

Okay, the blog’s been pretty Becky-centric this week, so for Friday, I’m scanning the blogosphere for interesting news, discussions, and events that are happening between and to others! School starts up again on Monday, so my brain (my middle-aged brain!) should be back firing on most more cylinders!

1. April is National Poetry month, and writers all over the blogs are doing some pretty cool things. If you haven’t checked out Susan Taylor Brown’s blog lately, she’s given herself an incredible challenge–to write a poem a day about the father she never know. Susan’s a friend, and I’m not a poetry expert, but true gut feeling? Every poem I’ve read has been incredible–open, honest, and lovely.

2. Kerrie Flanagan at The Writing Bug talks about the blogging “box” she found herself caught in and warns us that she’ll be busting out soon! How are you feeling about your blog these days?

3. I love this post from Sherrie Petersen about what it’s meant to her to find her critique group.

4. Laurie Halse Anderson has a few posts about MORE proposed library cuts. Page down the blog a ways and catch them all, in order.

5. Jane Friedman at There Are No Rules talks about trying to make “it” all happen.

Research

Friday Five: What I Learned at the Library

Posted on 12 Feb 2010 by beckylevine

Let’s go back a few years. Okay, a few decades, to the last time I did any substantive research at a library. Let’s call that year, oh…1985. University of Virginia. A beautiful library.

With card catalogs and books.

Basically, you looked through the catalog and then you went and looked through the book. I vaguely remember that they did have computers, and you could find and get a copy of a journal article or two, but I honestly can’t remember if I did that myself, or if those computers were only for the librarians to get into.

The basic thing I’m saying here is that your resources were limited. It didn’t feel that way, it felt wonderful and exciting and like you were going down multiple paths to find out about your chosen subject.

Ha.

The “me” that was doing research then had no clue about how many paths there were, or how far the spider webs of connective research could spread. Because, you know, the Internet was just a gleam in some ten-year-old’s eye back then. That’s just one of the many things I learned on my trip to San Jose’s Martin Luther King library this week. Here are a few others.

1. You are now allowed to bring food and drink into a library. Really! They even have a little cafe down on the first floor where you can buy it. Some floors only allow the drink, but, where I was working, it was all good. And Numi Green Tea and a Cool Mint cliff bar make research a much happier thing.

2. Librarians are saints. Definitely. Here’s the thing, though–They’re really good at this research stuff. And they make it look pretty darned easy. Um…not. My best recommendation to you–if you sit down at the computer, and what you thought they told you to do just doesn’t work like it did for them, go back and ask for more help. If you can’t email or save the file you thought you’d be able to, go back and ask for more help. If you don’t know how to even start finding the books and articles on that list of autobiographies by women doctors, go back and…well, you get the point. Because they’ll keep helping you! Nicely. With smiles. And not an ounce of that “Are you an idiot, or what?” tone you’re so afraid of hearing.

3. You don’t need to bring any coins for the copy machine. I didn’t even see a copy machine. And you may very well not have to worry about paying for printed copies. You just…are you ready? EMAIL everything to yourself! (Okay, well, you go back and ask for help emailing everything to yourself!)

4. Libraries are still quiet, but they’re not painfully quiet, anymore. Remember, you already have sipping and munching noises. And you have the faint click of lots of people texting on their phones (yes, me, too). You even have a few faint voices of people *gasp* TALKING on their phones. Now I did venture up to the top floor to look for a few books, and that floor was labeled as a quiet zone, and it was…very quiet. But, you know, the quiet zone used to be the whole library.

5. This last thing I learned may be more about me than about the library, although they’re tied together. There is, for me, a quality of research I’ll call TMI. Yes, Too Much Information. I don’t know if my brain is hard-wired this way, or if it just needs to be stretched and retrained out of those card-catalog-to-book limits, but my synapses do not go happily along all the possibilities the Internet and Intranet offer. My visit felt a little bit like the computer was asking me over and over, with increasing impatience, “Is this what you need? Is this what you need?” And all I could say back was “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

There’s a tie-in here, somewhere, with the introvert-extravert definitions at Shrinking Violet Promotions (where an introvert may or may not be shy, but does get an energy-recharge from alone time; an extrovert gets that same research from interacting with other people). My visit to the library was not a recharge experience.

I’m not positive, but I think I found some resources that will help me with my story. I feel like I just dipped into things, and only the next couple of weeks of downloading and reading will tell me if I skimmed any gold off that surface. I’ll need to go back to the library, and I will go. I’m pretty sure I’ll get better at this each time I go.

But only, you know, because of #2. 🙂

Research, Uncategorized

True Confessions: When Research Gets Scary

Posted on 7 Feb 2010 by beckylevine

Remember this photo?

I posted it sometime last year (?) to show how big my stack of research books was getting. Of course, that stack has grown since then, and let’s not even count the books that have come home from and gone back to the libraries.

I find research at once exciting, inspiring, and frustrating. I read so many pages, and–lots of times–I just find myself diving into the world my characters live in. I discover facts that make story connections leap into my brain, read about social and cultural trends that unfold personality layers and conflicts, and find beautiful little details that I can use for setting and atmosphere.

Other times, I can’t find what I want.

That’s what last week was like. I spent way too much time on the Internet, obviously googling all the WRONG terms. I browsed online, trying to find the right books to enlighten me. Can you say dead end? Picture Wile E. Coyote painting the “tunnel” on the rock, the Roadrunner zipping through, and Wile crashing absolutely into the stone. Yep.

So…I’m going to the library on Tuesday. My wonderful bookmobile librarian has helped me figure out that some of the stuff I need is at the San Jose State University library, which I can actually get access to with my San Jose REGULAR library card (they’re connected somehow, by one of those magic, wand-waving library affiliations). And she’s told me, kindly, but firmly, that I need to go there.

Now, I like libraries. I LOVE libraries. When I was little, my sisters and I were just like the kids in Edward Eager’s books, checking out our 10 books from the library, per week, and sharing them around so we’d have (wait, let me do the math) 30 books each to read. My school librarians were always friends, because, you know–they didn’t have to do an ounce of work to get me to read. (Although I do wonder what my 4th-6th grade librarian thought of me checking out Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain multiple times during those years. Secret? I thought it was a fantasy novel, but it was SO big, I never cracked the cover to find out the truth!) Libraries are cozy, warm, and–let’s face it–smell like paper and ink.

But library research? Um, not so much. I’ve done my share. In 10th grade, I wrote my nonfiction research paper about fairies (yes, really), and you can imagine that took a bit of digging. I did my master’s orals on the Brontës and my thesis on Wuthering Heights. More digging.

I don’t [Insert appropriately whiny tone here.] like it, though. I find it…overwhelming. It’s like trying to solve an Agatha Christie mystery, without any assurance that Poirot will actually tell you what happened at the end. One reference leads to another, leads to another, leads to…you get the point. And even if you DO find the actual document you want, it won’t necessarily be a lovely memoir or well-written history book. It might be…an academic article! Or an original source that’s filled with numbers and statistics and data, all in someone’s charmingly scribbly, totally illegible cursive.

I know, you’re thinking…well, why the heck is she writing historical fiction. Oh, because this silly girl came to me, as I was reading about the 1913 Suffragist march on Washington, DC, and said, “I want to be at that march. I need to be at that march!” And now I’m in love with that girl, totally stuck with the belief that she’s right.

Which means, yes, I need to be at that library. I’m listening to all of you historical-fiction and history writers (Yes, you know who you are–stop looking over your shoulders to see if I’m talking to someone else!), and I’m going to put my worries in the hands of a librarian. I’ve blocked out all of school hours on Tuesday, and I’m driving to downtown San Jose, and I’ll have my notebook and my pencils and my questions and my open mind, and I’m going to put myself in the hands of a kind, supportive, technically-savvy librarian.

And, hopefully…

that painted black spot on the rock face will turn into a real tunnel for me, and I’ll come out the other side, with the details and atmosphere I need. Wish me luck!