Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Meet your persona

Interlibrary Loan librarians, batten down your hatches and warm up your computers. Persona researchers are comin’ to town!
The class on “Meet your persona” at Warriors & Warlords drew about 17 people – some brand new and some with quite a bit of Society experience. That may not sound like many compared to a Pennsic class, but the enthusiasm level made up for the numbers. I’m so glad I made a handout, because people really wanted the books I recommended.

Have you explored Library Thing? It’s an online cataloging tool that’s been doing the public interface/community thing longer than WorldCat has. The books on my handout are tagged 'persona' in LibraryThing.
I started putting up only SCA-type books because I wanted to be able to access my catalog from any computer and maybe quit buying duplicates. (hah!) When I put up the first batch I discovered that I had books in common with a friend in Milwaukee (Hi, Merouda!) and one in LA. Some of the books have reviews (by SCA folk, not by people trying to sell you the book). I’ve tagged the ones I recommended for the class “persona”.

Of course I talked up the A&S 50 challenge. It’s just the sort of thing some were looking for – an opportunity to grow their persona.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Persona woes

The Muses are toying with me as I plan this class. This will be held at Northshield's big camping event, Warriors and Warlords. There's no library handy, no internet connection (no electricity) so I'm on my own to make persona development come alive. And since poor old Kudrun has decidedly different ideas of what "persona" means than the SCA has, it'll be Karyn who teaches this class, using Kudrun as "Exhibit A".
They don't call it the A&S 50 Challenge for nothing! 8-)