SteveJamieson.com

As I was closing the Library last night, I happened to notice a book laying on one of the shelves in the Bound Periodicals section. Not a big deal I thought—someone probably just set it down while looking at an article and forgot about it. As I drew closer I noticed that it was a copy of Joüon & Muraoka’s A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, and that it didn’t have a call number label on its spine—apparently someone’s personal copy. However, when I picked it up I started noticing some odd things about the book. Imagine a Library book where the barcode had been peeled off the back, the call number label had been cut out of the protective tape on the spine, and the ownership label had been removed from the front endsheet. That’s exactly what I was looking at. The call number was still written on the inside front cover and indicated that it was from the Reference section.

Was someone going to steal the book, but had a change of heart? Did someone “borrow” it for the semester and then return it? Who knows? You just don’t expect that sort of thing to happen around a seminary. Sure we have security gates, but they’re more to prevent people from accidentally walking out with books than to deter conscious theft. I was troubled and disturbed that someone in the Seminary community would do something like this.

However, the more I think about it, the less troubled I am. Around the Seminary, where everyone is so nice to everyone else (most of the time), it’s easy to begin believing at some level the illusion that we are good people. People out in the world may be sinful, but seminarians are righteous—or so it might seem. But that’s not the truth. Seminarians are sinners like everyone else. Although my particular struggle may not be the temptation to steal library books, I have my sins, and they are just as evil and ugly. Who am I to cast the first stone?

So, to whoever tried to make off with the Joüon-Muraoka, Christ forgives you, and so do I.

First up, Shakespeare in the Park. Saint Louis has an excellent Shakespeare festival every year in Forrest Park. This year featured a performance of _The Tempest_. While perhaps not Shakespeare’s finest work, the performance was rather good. Many of the actors had a really good time with their parts, and the set was awesome. I also thoroughly enjoyed the hilarious antics of Juggling Jeff—one of the pre-show entertainment acts. The overall experience was so good, I went twice! The first time was with some co-workers one day after work. The other was with my Dad when he visited during Father’s Day weekend.

Second, cool summer movies. ‘Nuff said.

Third, June is the month of conferences. Things got off to an early start in May when I went to the IUG (Innovative Users Group) conference in San Francisco. The conference was good, and I was also happy to have the chance to meet up with one of my first college friends, Kimberly. Earlier this month, I went to the annual MOBIUS (Missouri Bibliographic Information User System) conference in Lake Ozark, MO. Spanning only two days, it was rather short and uneventful. Although, I did get to enjoy the Japanese garden at the Lodge of the Four Seasons where the conference was held and where I stayed. After that, I got to hold down the fort… er… library while several of my coworkers went to the ATLA (American Theological Library Association) conference. Finally, just last weekend I went up with some coworkers to the ALA (American Library Association) conference in Chicago for a day to see the vendor exhibits. The really fun part was getting to spend Friday evening with John & Ellise. We had an excellent dinner at the Red Star Tavern, enjoyed some of the Swedish Days festival in downtown Geneva, and then watched Shaun of the Dead.

Next on the schedule, I’ll be spending a good part of July editing an article for publication in Presbyterion, the seminary’s journal.

The Library is quite the busy place this week—at least for me it is. This is Access residency week. For those of you who don’t know, Access is Covenant’s distance education program. During residency week, Access students come into town for a week of high intensity course work for which they’ve been preparing during the previous months. While they’re in town, it’s a good opportunity to give them an orientation to the services that the seminary offers to its students, including library privileges. Thus, being the librarian in charge of public services (reference, circulation, bibliographic instruction, database access, etc.) I had to give a presentation to the Access students at residency for the first time.

Now Per, my brilliant predecessor, having presented at this orientation numerous times in the past, left me the nice PowerPoint slideshow that he has refined over the years. Nevertheless, I felt it necessary to make a few changes—to personalize it to my style. The first order of business was to nix the animated screen shots and go to live demos. Second, I had to rearrange a few things to better fit my intended flow. Third, I needed a new design template, since the one Per had used screamed 1990’s (which is probably when he first made the presentation after all). None of the factory-installed design templates struck my fancy, so I ventured onto Microsoft Office Online where I found a nice design featuring a stack of books—rather appropriate for a library, I thought. With a new, more contemporary design template featuring subtler, more natural coloration and a photographic accent, my PowerPoint slideshow was ready to go—and just in nick of time too!

I was pleased with how well the presentation went. I had to go pretty quick, but I managed to cover all the basics and I also answered quite a few follow-up questions along the way. The next day I had the opportunity to have lunch with the Access students, and many of them expressed their appreciation for my presentation. I was glad for the positive feedback.

Back home, I decided that I liked the design template that I had found so much that I wanted it on my home computers. I launched PowerPoint, but found that Office Online wasn’t as nicely integrated on the Mac as I had remembered it being on Windows at work. First, I tried Mactopia, Microsoft’s Mac specific website, but I couldn’t turn up any templates that were not already installed on my computer. I then ventured over to the generic Office site (where every page informs you that you are using an unsupported browser unless you are using IE… grrrr). I tracked down the template and downloaded it. However, when I tried to open the compressed file, I found that it was a .cab file that Stuffit Expander couldn’t open despite the nice Stuffit-style icon that had been assigned to it.

Not to be deterred, I headed over to Mac OS X Hints, where I found just the hint I was looking for. Someone had written in some time ago about an open-source, command-line .cab utility (although no executable binary was available, and it had to be built from the source code). In addition, much to my delight, one of the comments on the hint was someone announcing that he was going to put together a package for Fink. I launched FinkCommander, found cabextract, and installed it. Sure enough, cabextract did the trick. It opened the .cab file and I had my template. I just had to give it a sensible name (and appropriate file type and creator codes for good measure), and I was ready to go. The only snag is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to get the template to show up in the formatting palette along with the default templates. Hmmm…

So far my life has been marked by significant, and sometimes drastic transitions every few years. There’s starting school, moving up to middle school, and then on up to high school. There’s high school graduation, college graduation, and graduate school graduation. I suppose one of these days I’ll eventually discover the transition to marriage and :gasp: even having kids (Lord willing, of course). However, today, I’m commemorating the beginning of another transition–the first real job. The full-time working thing. The career.

Yes, I, Steve Jamieson, have been hired. So what [not so] exotic locale will I been jetting off to? The answer is… Saint Louis! Yes, I’m going to be employed right here in the city in which I currently live. So what is this job? Well, you’re looking at (or would be if you were looking at me) the Covenant Theological Seminary Library’s new Reference and Systems Librarian! Yes, that’s right, I will soon join the staff of the institution from which I just graduated.

Now, I suppose many of you might be confused. After all, it is the typical pattern for a seminary graduate to become a pastor rather than a librarian. And, no, I have not been secretly working on a library degree on the side either. So what’s the deal? Let me tell you how this all came about…

One day late in the spring, I was casually logging in to the seminary’s student portal in order to look something up (maybe it was to download a document for class or check to see if any of my grades had come in). As I was greeted by the welcome page, I noticed a new announcement indicating that the library was seeking a new staff person to replace one of the librarians who was preparing to leave to go plant a church. Upon reading the short announcement, my reaction was an intrigued and optimistic “huh”—it had struck a chord somewhere deep inside me.

Despite having never considered becoming a librarian, I contacted the Library Director and expressed my interest in finding out more about the position. Several interviews, a wedding, and a Grand Canyon vacation later, I was offered the job, which I have obviously accepted. So what was it that made the job so attractive to me? Well, let’s look at the three primary duties of the job.

1. Research. One of my key responsibilities will helping students (and other patrons) find the necessary materials for their research and fielding questions about the library and how to use its resources. Thus, I will be playing an important role in the intellectual and spiritual development of future pastors. That’s definitely a ministry and pastoral opportunity that I’m interested in.
2. Systems. Another primary responsibility is to oversee and manage the technological needs of the library. This starts with doing some general troubleshooting, software installation and management, and working with the IT department. However, this also includes working within the regional consortium of libraries with whom our catalog database is linked, and managing the associated technological issues. In short, I’ll get to muck around with computers a lot.
3. Administration. Finally, I will take on various administrative tasks and oversee certain library employees.

With a job description like that, it is little wonder that the more I found out about the job, the more interested I became. I’m thrilled that I happened to stumble across a job that fits so well with my unique talents, skills, and interests, and that I got it too.