Team Rowling Goes to Midwinter

Team Rowling Girls
Originally uploaded by sophiebiblio

Full Midwinter report to come later, but here you have our giddiest moment: attending the Youth Media Awards Press Conference, decked out in our "Team Rowling" shirts, which Carlie, genius that she is, had made for us so we could show our support for HP7, which we thought might take home a Printz Honor. Alas, it was not to be.

In case you're worried about why otherwise mild-mannered librarians are throwing a gang sign, be not alarmed: that's the Nerdfighter Salute.

You can juuuust about see the awesome "We Heart Our Dead Gay Headmaster Button" festooning my conference badge. Another Carlie brainchild, these Heathers-Dumbledore mashup buttons were so popular that we are thinking of selling more of them (via CafePress or similar) & donating the profits to a gay rights organization. Would you buy one? If so, please comment!

Rock & Roll Mamas (and The Library)

I found clips from the forthcoming documentary Rock & Roll Mamas, which promises to showcase "the struggles and triumphs of both emerging and established rock stars who are also mothers" via a link at Babble.com. You can view clips on YouTube of notable female rock luminaries such as Suzanne Vega, Corin Tucker (ex of Sleater-Kinney), Zia McCabe (of the Dandy Warhols) and Kristen Hersh (ex of Throwing Muses).

As of the filmmaker's most recent blog post, there are only 5 minutes of edited footage, so it's not as though this is a movie coming to a theater near you in the next month or so. Still, it's worth noting for a few reasons:

• This is a documentary which will appeal to lots of new, youngish parents. The musicians whose interviews are showcased on YouTube are perhaps not famous in a Beatlemania sort of way, but they are very well known in their own way. Does your library hold CDs by these artists? If so, you can cross-promote two collections at once when the DVD comes out.
• This is a project you can replicate, cheaply & easily, at your own library with a video camera, a USB or firewire cable, and some editing software, in about 15 minutes after storytime. Call it Your Town Mamas, and post your videos as responses to the videos already hosted at YouTube! Who knows, maybe you have the next YouTube star singing along with "The Wheels on the Bus." She's so money, and she doesn't even know it.
• This is just one more entry in the endless parade of examples you can file under DIY for the nanotech age. This is what our present era is about: people creating their own content and using it to make connections with others. On a broader scale, look at what John & Hank Green and their devoted Nerdfighters are doing for microfinanciers kiva.org, through their Brotherhood 2.0 project. This is amazing, world-transforming stuff! I'm not saying that Rock & Roll Mamas rises to the level of transforming the world at the macro level, but I think it will at a micro level ("Hey, having a baby will change my life, but I'll still be myself!"), and I bet Your Town Mamas would have a similar effect. Consider it a kaffeeklatsch for the digital age.