Rogue Librarian

On Monday I began a Master’s program at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. Task number one: pass the German translation test.

My dear friend and colleague Maurice Berger, curator, cultural critic and political analyst, helped me get in to Bard. Now he has launched the deliciously obsessive and super smart PollTrack. The site is offers snap shots of what voters are thinking, poll-based projections of the 2008 elections, and some yummy analysis written by M. himself.

Things have been cooking at NYPL ever since Josh Greenberg came to run our digital library. Earlier this year, he announced NYPL Labs, where you can get a peek at the library’s digital works in progress. Today, he and his crew soft launched a redesign of the NYPL Digital Gallery, which now provides access to more than 7,000 items from our collections.

Some Times coverage of our big event yesterday.

Some of our older, more experienced gamers, who are also members of the Library’s teen advisory committees, were a tad disappointed that we only had E and T games. Instead of moping, they jumped in and started teaching the younger kids how to plan.

I couldn’t have been happier with the event. Go, Jack, go.

Getting ready for games at the Library today.  See you in Astor Hall.

Big can be good. I didn’t think that SXSWi could be good big. Last year, with more than 6,000 in attendance, the event felt like it was about to spill over the edges, and like all of the creative juice that I normally drink up there would get soaked up by the pavement.

Even though this year’s festival was attended by more than ever, some 7,500+, it felt as cohesive as it did in 2003. It still feels like the place to be if you have any interest in staying in tune with the filed.

And, man, do I love hanging out in Austin, especially with my kid.

Arggg. Edward Rothstein slams one of the best things we are are going to do all year.

The following text is taken from our announcement:

Whaaa!!! Teens @ Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street Friday, March 21 @ 4:30 p.m. Game On @ The Library! You want games? We got games! Check out the very first big-screen Game On @ The Library event in Astor Hall! Challenge your friends to Guitar Hero, Wii Sports and Naruto on Playstation 3, Wii and Xbox 360! For ages 12 & Up!

Astor Hall

Humanities and Social Sciences Library

The New York Public Library

Fifth Avenue & 42^nd Street

New York, New York 10018

For additional information: (212) 930-0605

Admission is FREE

The first Rogue Librarian appeared in this film from 1986.

Jeffrey and I flew home from our last trip to San Francisco on September 10, 2001. It was good to go back again.

This is why I moved to New York nine years ago.

“Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York” at the Municipal Art Society

“The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”

“Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”

New York, I love you.

I am, honestly, a good cook. In a past life I regularly turned out apple pies with perfect crusts, three-cheese macaroni from hand-made pasta and shortbread with my own lemon custard. Ask my husband and three-year old about my cooking, however, and they will tell you that I dial with the best of them. A few weeks ago the kid said, “Mommy, I am going to get you some dinner from my kitchen.” She dashed to her bedroom, picked up a toy phone and parroted the previous night’s dinner order, including out area code and telephone number.

Rebecca Federman’s Cooked Books, All Things Culinary at the New York Public Library, makes me want to change my wicked ways. Federman is our cookery bibliographer and her blog digs in to NYPL’s vast food collections. This fall I am going to follow her lead and make her Swiss Macaroni and Melted Gruyere and Apple Compote recipe.