Everyday I take a 2 hour lunch. Okay, wait. Let me rephrase that...

It is customary in Ecuador that most businesses close from 12-2pm everyday. Save the restaurants. This is generally called almuerzo, which means 'lunch'. So everyday I oblige this tradition and take the time to go home, make lunch, have a coffee, read a bit and then sometimes I will take a bike ride down to the coastal street in town, aptly named Charles Darwin Ave.

Lately, we have had amazing sunny weather which makes everything glow with coastal delight. I was enchanted one day by this sea lion that was waiting so patiently for this man to throw him some fish. I swear he was thinking "c'mon dude, I swam all this way, look at my cute whiskers...okay, now I'm beggin' here!" They remind me so much of dogs. The look on their face, the barking.

They don't show up all of the time, just occasionally, so it is neat to see them. Even if it is technically out of their natural habitat. After this begging session, seen here in the picture, the sea lion laid down for a nap under the table. Surely just a charade to make the fisherman think he had moved on. Any dog owner would know better than to fall for this trick.

The great weather lately has been really appreciated, mostly, as I said, because the colours just glow here when the sun shines. It is hard to stay indoors when there is the crystal clear ocean to drown all your thoughts away. It is truly mesmerizing.

This little egret thinks the ocean is pretty cool too!

But it hasn't been all fun and games. I have been busy working on learning how to catalogue using Koha, an online open access catalogue. Elizabeth, the other librarian who is actually leaving tomorrow morning, has just finished organizing the bulk of the archives here at CDF. I have helped with this initiative by creating the records in the catalogue that will allow this collection to be searchable in Koha. This will allow access to a very important collection of documents that holds a lot of the historical institutional memory here. For anyone that has ever been involved in, well, anything remotely related to an organization will know that it is very important to know what has been done in the past so efforts or not duplicated unnecessarily in the future. It is important to build on ideas, not spin wheels.

We are very excited about these archives and already have people using the records and thinking up ideas about how their contents can influence current activities here.

Now that Elizabeth is gone, I am the only librarian left! So the adventure starts! It's sink or swim!

Angela Asked...!

Mangrove, Tortuga Bay, Santa Cruz

Marine Iguana (asleep not dead!), Tortuga Bay, Santa Cruz 

Hey Angela!  Glad you asked! lol!

Angela Pause said...

What are you reading? What's the oldest book there? How does the climate affect the collection? What sort of technology do they have/need in order to preserve and disseminate their collection. Are their kids hanging about?

Are you DIY WODs?

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I am currently working on Nino Ricci's The Origin of Species...of course not to be confused with the non-fiction title On the Origin of Species... by Darwin.

The oldest thing we have here is from 1535.  It's actually an article written by Tomas Berlanga called Carta al Emperador Carlos V, Dando Cuenta del Descubrimiento de Las Islas.  From my rudimentary translation skills, I believe it is an account of the discovery of the islands.  Cool eh!

The largest issue with the climate here related to the collection is that we are having air conditioner problems.  It is ideal to have a collection siting at less than 50% humidity and closer to 20-22 degrees Celsius.  Right now when the dehumidifier turns off during the night it gets up to 55% and that is not great, and this is during the dry season.  This humidity and heat can cause photos to stick together and just speeds up the process of deterioration in general.

Elizabeth, who is working on the archives here, surprisingly didn't discovered any mould in some boxes that somehow ended up being shoved into a tiny crawlspace where there was a lot of water around.  So, although she bought proper archival boxes she isn't going to use them at the moment because she figures that if they didn't grow mould in corrugated cardboard under extreme conditions than why seal them up.  When a better acclimatized space becomes available then she will use the proper boxes.

Elizabeths archival project will create a more robust archives for the station and the hope is that there will be a major digitization project done in the near future.  That is going to need some specialized equipment for creating documents with the correct resolution. They also need the create a proper preservation plan, and that will involve the long term preservation of digital items...meaning good reliable storage disks and a file conversion strategy.  Digital preservation is tough because it means that the items have to evolve with technology and that is hard to predict.

A faster, larger server is needed too.  That's really the only thing holding us back from making the catalogue readily available on the internet.  Right now, as far as I know the server can't handle the potential traffic.  I don't think that this is just the station's issue though.  They rely on satillites for the internet here and I believe this method is just slower and less reliable.

Kids! Ecuadorian kids are extremely cute.  Yes, there are a lot of kids here.  I´ve been told most people get married and have kids very young.  A girl here told me she was considered an old spinster and she is only 23! haha.

I haven't done a WOD yet!  I haven't found a moment of motivation...there are just too many other things to do! Imagine!  It gets dark around 6:30pm here, so running in the evening is sort of out of the question...well maybe I should just go.  It is pretty safe here.

Iguana video!

I made a video for you!


Everyday I take a walk about 100 m from the library to the boat launch to see these marine iguanas hanging out.  They are really quite cute and aren't afraid of people at all.  Lars said he wants to touch one.  :( Kids!

They just go in and out of the water all day.  I can already predict that they will be heading inland if the weather has just turned warm or the sun is shining brightly.  They will then head back to the water after they have been basking for a while.  It's a routine.

They swim well and it seems that they keep their head above the water most of the time.  They eat a very specific diet of red and green algae that grows on the submerged rocks, so they gotta go down sometime, but I have yet to see them dive.

I saw a swimmer out there today so they are obviously not a threat to people but honestly seeing a little dragon swimming by would freak me out a bit...maybe by December.  If I muster up the courage I will be sure to have someone record it.



See more pic here!

From Big to Small

Essentially everything here represents a shift from big to small.  I could talk about the space here, the city, even the people, but what I am going to talk about is the library.

The Corely Smith Library at the Charles Darwin Foundation is an extremely small specialized library.  It represents everything that you would imagine from an underfunded, remote, library in a country that struggles with economic and organizational issues.  But from only my short introduction here I can see that the struggles of this library are not so different from the struggles of any library, even those amidst the hustle of the most advanced 21st century academic institutions.  Libraries worldwide are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing face of publications, communications, and all other aspects of scholarship.  And to take advantage of the vast opportunities proved by online infrastructures.

A major question the CDF Library is asking itself right now is how do we get our information to those who need the information.  Does this sound familiar?  I've obviously simplified this question but this is really what all libraries are asking themselves.  In the case of CDF the library, it has a highly specialized collection that includes documents and publications that are not widely available anywhere else.  The goal is to make their collections accessible to the world, but they also need their information to be accessible by their local population as well.

The solutions to this question include efforts in communication, preservation, knowledge management, collection development, infrastructure, public relations, membership, circulation and the list could go on.

In conclusion, although the CDF library is an underfunded, remote, specialized library its questions are not small, remote, nor specialized.

I hope to be able to share more on the efforts that the CDF library is making to move toward a sustainable solution to this fundamental question.

Galapagos Day 1

The Galapagos does not disappoint.

Photos from today

After some flight delays resulting in some minor lack of sleep I landed on Balta Island and was greeted by Elizabeth another visiting librarian. We hopped on a bus to a little ferry that took us across a channel to Santa Cruz Island, my home for the next 2 1/2 months.

By that point I had already seen a couple frigget birds flying, a sea lion swimming around and a blue footed boobie diving for fish.

We went out for lunch when we got to Puerto Ayora and of course the famous little finches were everywhere.

After a nice dinner down an interesting street (I'll add the name later as I forget it right now), where they pull out all the tables from the restaurants onto the street, Elizabeth and I walked to the pier.  Swimming in the water amidst the glowing purple and green lights attached to the docks were a couple sting ray!

I really wasn't expecting to see so many animals that I had never seen before on my first day!

I think it's a pretty good start!

Elizabeth has already told me a lot about the library I will be working at.  It is small, underfunded and contains a very unique and specific collection of everything Galapagos.  Apparently the latest Galapagos Report is an exceptionally interesting read as it contains some information about a social study that was done here over the past few years.  It brings some insight into this primarily tourist driven town and its inhabitants.

Tomorrow; we will do a tour of the station, go see the giant tortoises and attend a gastronomic feast!

An upside to travelling all day!

In Miami between flights I thought to myself, "self, you deserve a beer."

And the bonus is that it's not bad for American beer!

I can't wait to get to Quito tonight, have a good sleep and head over to the island tomorrow.

Galapagos, here I come.