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I’m sorry to say that not long ago, my personal life hit a Web 2.0 saturation point. Not because I’ve ceased to find interesting applications, but because there’s a finite limit to the number of things you can effectively maintain.

This seems to be the hidden cost that underlies Web 2.0 technology. As Dion Hinchcliffe pointed out two years ago, truly useful apps are few and far between:

Tons of new Web 2.0 startups are being released every day, I can’t even keep track of the social bookmarking sites alone (I came across three new ones yesterday, seriously). And some of the better Web 2.0 apps that are coming out are for laughably obscure vertical markets.

The biggest problem of course is that these services don’t actually talk to each other, which is kind of ironic considering that much of it is called “social” software. Even those companies who design apps to integrate with other 2.0 platforms, have yet to truly make the disparate parts communicate with one another.

For example, if you want to track you’re reading and share that with your friends, you might choose to join Goodreads. If you’re on Facebook, you could then add the Goodreads app that will pull your list of books into your profile. But if your friends are using LibraryThing, iRead, or Shelfari, then the only problem you’ve solved is displaying the results in a specific location. Facebook doesn’t allow any of these services to talk to one another, nor do any of them support a seamless interface with any of the other applications.

As Michael Hirschorn theorized last April, “the third rail of social media may ultimately come down to that most old-media of issues: ownership.” For users though, it comes down to a question of manageability: how many services can you reasonably manage before they become a liability on your time?

My profession has been grappling with this problem for years. While all of us are attempting to plug our collections into various applications in order to get the most out of our libraries, if we’re asking our patrons to join (yet another) service, how likely are they to take the offer? And at what point does every user wind up hitting their saturation point?

Bobbi Newman, at Librarian By Day, noticed a search in her logs that read: “what is a librarian’s day like?” She writes:

I’m assuming it’s someone considering becoming a Librarian and I thought what an amazing opportunity! If I post about this and get others to do it too, it will allow librarians to share amongst ourselves (our positions are changing so rapidly) and also to let the public know what we do.

I can understand her impulse, as my most frequently visited post is How To Become A Librarian. In fact, it became so popular (so quickly), that I amended my tongue-and-cheek post with a link to real information on how to become a librarian. Since my job is a fairly unique one, I thought I’d share a little about what I’m doing, in the (similar) hopes that it might inspire others to pursue this rather satisfying, if unorthodox, occupation.

I should start with the basics. I’m a research librarian in a Holocaust Museum. I previously worked in different library environments — academic and public — before moving into this specialized library, where I act as a solo librarian.†

Today involved the following:

Completed an annotated bibliography for our Teacher Education Institute
As far as I’m concerned, the bane of library work is the annotated bibliography (clunky, time consuming, static, and out-of-date by the time they’re printed). Nonetheless, almost every course that’s taught uses a guide of recommended resources which is nothing but an annotated bibliography.

Searched for material to use in a Censorship Exhibit/Program
For the first time since I moved to the museum, we’re going to be doing a program for Banned Books Week. The program — a collection of dramatic readings by local actors/performers/poets — is already well into the planning stages, but I’ve just begun pulling together the material for the exhibit, which concentrates on the destruction of books and literature during the third stage of genocide.

Cataloged a small collection of children’s books
While cataloging was never my forte, you have to expect a healthy dose of it when you’re the only librarian. I’ve found that it’s easy to manage when you fold into a workflow that has a lot of variety.

Ordered $350 worth of books
Collection development has always interested me, and it’s something I’m always eager to tackle. This was a fairly light order, but there were two titles in my “cart” that I wanted to get as soon as possible.

Fielded a half dozen reference questions
Unlike cataloging, this is my forte (Jim Carmichael would be so proud). The average day is consumed with varying amounts of research, depending on the types of requests I get, and since I have a non-typical library, I tend to get non-typical reference questions. For example, I spent a large chunk of the afternoon attempting to determine if three Communist partisans were hanged in Kaunas (Kovno) on December 12, 1941.

That was what a librarian did today. Thanks to Lauren for pointing this out.

†A librarian who works alone and is expected to perform all the tasks that larger institutions divide among different positions.

Even though Church Hill has a well known community garden, Liz and I were fortunate enough to move into a house that had an existing plot. Unfortunately, it wasn’t well designed.

Last year, I did a small experiment. I planted green onions and radishes to see what would happen in the existing soil. Both types of plants grew, but they didn’t do nearly as well as you’d want if you were hoping for a real crop. As near as I could tell, there were essentially three different problems with this garden:

First, the former owners neglected to create a bottom for this boxed garden. It looks like they tried to improve the soil by adding peat moss (or potting soil), but otherwise it was the same soil you’d find anywhere in Church Hill.

Second, the frame wasn’t big enough for traditional row gardening. This is the kind of gardening I grew up with, and I don’t have any real experience with other methods. In truth, I don’t have experience with anything under an acre!

Third, the garden is half covered by overhanging tree limbs.

Over the winter, I began doing some research. I knew I needed a solid (organic) reference source as well as a guide to growing in small spaces. Since the garden is a boxed frame that’s built into the ground, I knew I would have to work around the shade problem.

Thanks to Jessica, who talked to Holly, I found a copy of Rodale’s Gardening and Landscaping Techniques (all organic); a number of searches on gardening in small areas led me to Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening. Based on their advice, I decided the best thing I could do for the soil is dig up about seven or eight inches of the existing bed, line the bottom with weed cloth, and replace the old soil with Mel’s mix.

After we’d done this, we planted a small crop:

Pole Beans
Roma Tomatoes
Grape Tomatoes
Beefsteak Tomatoes
Snap Peas
Zucchini
Lettuce
Strawberries

Even though I’m rather skeptical about growing tomatoes in 6″ of soil, the Square-Foot-Gardening-crowd swear it works.

Thus far, everything seems to be doing well except the strawberries, which are being picked over by the birds. Otherwise, the first bean and lettuce shoots are coming up and the tomatoes and zucchini are growing nicely. If Stanley — our neighborhood hawk — would get off his lazy ass, I wouldn’t have to worry about the birds.

It’s no doubt somehow apropos that Liz and I would wind up seeing Ben Folds as our first show at the National, since we’ve seen him numerous times in the past and have something to use for comparison. The last time we saw Ben was at Wolf Trap, as one of two openers for Rufus Wainwright (the other being Ben Lee). While it was a good show, his status as one of three performers on the ticket made for a rather rushed performance; by contrast, this show was much more relaxed, and it felt somewhat more energetic as well.

I have to give credit to the investor group (groups?) who pulled the National out of decay. The interior of the building manages to retain the historic feeling in the architecture while pulling in a modern set-up that allows for bars, balcony seating, and the kind of professional stage gear that medium and large venue acts need. Even though the theater is billed as being able to hold 1500, it seems spacious enough to make that a fairly comfortable number.

For his part, Ben was pretty lively and demonstrative, which always makes for a better show. As the headliner, and without a limit on time, he wound up giving what was possibly the longest performance I’ve seen from him. Of course, like all concerts, you go in the hopes that you might see a few of your favorite songs performed, and I was pleased to hear a number of those — Landed, Bastard, Kate, and Army.

Unlike the past few times I’ve seen him, this one he came equipped with new songs, from a forthcoming album. It’s apparently not due out until September, so I’m hoping it’s going to be a full CD rather than one of the many EPs he’s spun out over the years. From the three songs we heard though, it looks like it’s going to be the kind of percussive sounding tunes with whimsical lyrics that we’ve come to expect from Ben.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the show you should try to catch him the next time he comes through town.

When I first moved to Richmond, I spent the majority of my off hours on the North side of town (where I was living at the time). As I changed jobs, and came to work in Shockoe Bottom, I eventually began visiting a wider number of restaurants throughout the Fan and the Museum district.

I quickly discovered that one of the things that local restaurants have is a trend toward overwhelmingly noisy atmospheres. I originally attributed this to a misguided practice that was unique to Richmond (as there are so many misguided practices here), because I’d not noticed it in previous years. But as Tom Sietsema, a food critic with the Washington Post, pointed out in No Appetite for Noise, it’s the number one complaint among DC restaurant-goers as well.

Sietsema recently took a dB-meter into Zaytinya near the nation’s capital and found the noise level hovering around 86 decibels. Even though he points out that this is the level of a lawnmower, I feel compelled to add that prolonged levels of 85dB or above can result in hearing loss.

On a recent interview on NPR, he was asked why so many of today’s restaurants are so loud? He gives three possible reasons:

The ceilings are quite tall
There’s a lot of glass and wood
The floors aren’t carpeted

In Richmond, particularly the Fan, there’s a fourth culprit which Sietsema mentioned in his original article — music (or TVs) blasting over the crowd. All of these issues are particularly problematic here, as our city essentially requires that all bars be restaurants, and many of the owners are struggling to keep their building’s historic feel.

Clearly, the majority of people who talked with Sietsema were annoyed by the level of noise. But if that’s the case, why aren’t owners, who normally seem eager to find ways of attracting customers, not more pro-active about the problem? If Zagat’s rates noise as the second highest response for what “irritates people most about dining out,” why does this seem to be the trend?

As a result of the complaints, Sietsema will begin including a noise rating with all of his upcoming reviews. I think that’s a pretty good idea, and as Liz will tell you, I personally began ruling out restaurants based on noise years ago. Perhaps, if enough foodies follow his lead, it might drive a few owners to rethink the subject of atmospheric dining.