I am my parents' daughter

My parents met in the Brooklyn Public Library; my father was the head librarian and my mother was an assistant librarian. Both of them loved all things 'library', and they made sure we had a library card to loan books from an early age. We learned early on the value of books, newspapers, and magazines to provide important and enjoyable information, and we were avid readers as children. Reading was encouraged by our parents and our schools. Libraries were an important part of our childhood and teenage years. It helped that one of the most beautiful libraries I have ever seen, (if not the most beautiful)--The Warner Library in Tarrytown--was the library where we spent many a summer day looking for books to read.

My father went to his job as head librarian through the years, working for several different companies in Tarrytown and Manhattan. Our dinner table discussions were interesting; I learned a lot about the library world from listening to him, and absorbed his enthusiasm for his job. My father showed me how to use different reference books, so that I could apply to different companies for jobs after college. He knew all about the different reference books that existed. My mother kept a spotless house, not an easy task when we were children. There were places for our toys, and we were expected to keep them in those places, which made sense, because we grew up in an apartment and there wasn't much room to spread out. My mother was able to get three children out of bed, washed, dressed, fed breakfast, all by 8:15 am when we left for school. She had a sense of order and discipline, and she expected us to live according to both.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that my sense of order, my predilection for systematizing many of the things in my life--books I've read, films I've seen, Christmas card lists and lists in general, garden plans--stem from my upbringing. They are the direct result of parents who appreciated order and systems, likely due to their both being librarians. But of course genetics play a part in it too. I inherited the genes for organization and order from both my parents. I realized the other day that one of the reasons I enjoy the new role I have at work (biobank coordinator) is because it requires me to structure and organize information and procedures. I'm good at it and I enjoy it. It is a niche in which I feel comfortable. I channel my parents these days, and it's a nice reminder of how much they meant to me when I was growing up, of how important they were for the security and comfort we enjoyed. I have joined their circle, so to speak, the circle of people for whom dissemination of information, organization, and order, are desirable things.

On Twitter: from Zombie Pandemics to the Northern Lights

I continue to do part-time consultant work for the university science library and enjoy it. It's pretty cool to get paid for a job that is actually a lot of fun--maintaining and updating their Facebook and Twitter pages and helping to promote their events (lectures and conferences). It's also pretty amazing what's out there on Twitter. Twitter is a world of its own, and very unlike Facebook, because if you want to keep a professional profile, you can. So I also have a personal Twitter profile now, but have decided to use it to promote scientific and health issues of interest to me. So besides updates from research journals, popular science journals and the like, I also follow the New York Times and a host of different health and charity organizations. And of course it's very interesting the type of people who end up following you, based on your word usage. Your Twitter comments are actually like 'tag bites'. I recently promoted an event for the library that will take place in mid-November--'Pimp your research'--a lecture by the world-renowned bee researcher Gro Amdam, followed by a discussion about how to and whether to make your research sexier. Wouldn't you know it, but the next day, I had three new women following me on Twitter, all of whom were working in the porn industry. It's easy to block these types of people, but it amuses me that your word usage has such an immediate effect. We are being profiled all the time as long as we're online and actively using internet, and anyone who believes otherwise, just doesn't get it or doesn't want to.

This week I have so far stumbled upon two interesting links on Twitter that I want to share with you. The first one is from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia--the city now known for The Walking Dead. The CDC has now published an interesting pamphlet in comic strip form just in time for Halloween, entitled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic". It's actually quite a clever way of educating people on how to prepare for any type of disaster. You can check it out here: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/documents/11_225700_A_Zombie_Final.pdf

The other interesting link had to do with the beautiful displays of the Northern Lights in the USA on Monday; folks in the Midwest and even in the Deep South were treated to spectacular light shows courtesy of Mother Nature. The point is that this type of happening is rare, and was due to an intense geomagnetic storm. National Geographic has made available some gorgeous shots of these Northern Lights, and you can see them here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/10/pictures/111025-northern-lights-aurora-borealis-united-states-south/?source=link_tw20111025news-aurora#/northern-lights-aurora-borealis-reach-south-united-states-michigan-trees_42517_600x450.jpg   All in all, pretty amazing, and I sure wish I had been there to see them!

Information at our fingertips, all the time if we want it. What a brave new world we live in, and it's mostly within the past ten years that the information highway has grown by leaps and bounds. I remember when I was preparing two lectures in connection with my doctoral defense in 1999; I had to physically walk into the medical library with a list of the articles I needed to be printed out, and the librarians found them for me, or requested them from other libraries, and then printed them out and mailed them to me. In some cases, this could take days or even a week if the journals were not on hand. Nowadays, I can find the articles myself online, print them out at work or at home, and if our library doesn't subscribe to the journal, I can order a copy through the library online and they will fax it to me within a day of my order. Overall, if I need fifty articles, I can find at least ninety-five percent of them myself without help. That's progress. The libraries have adapted to the changes, and now that I do consulting work for a university library, I see just how far they've come. They haven't stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the world around them; they are information providers for the digital age, and if you haven't stuck your head inside a library for a while, I suggest you take a trip to one and check out the changes for yourself. The books are still there, but so are PCs, Macs, iPads, Kindles, digital projectors, SmartBoards and more computers, all ready for use, all offering instant connection to the information highway, which, if used ethically and wisely, is a real time-saver and an endless source of knowledge, even knowledge you didn't set out to find originally.

The New Science and Math Library at the University of Oslo

The University of Oslo will be building a new, modern Science and Math library in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building. Renovations and construction will begin in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building at the end of February / beginning of March. When the new library is completed in 2012, it will be actively used for debate and discussion about science and the importance of science to society. 

You can find the Library's Facebook page here--https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. 

There were some wonderfully interesting Arrangements at the Library during 2010--Bill Bryson, Marcus du Sautoy, Karen Lunsford, and Drew Endy held exciting lectures that had their audiences enthralled. There was a really interesting lecture by Ellen Henriksen followed by a panel debate about young women and why they don't choose careers in math and science. There were two important, exciting, and well-attended conferences--the BioConference 2010 with its Biodiversity theme, and the Bioinformatics Conference. There will be more Arrangements in 2011.  Follow the Facebook page during 2011 to stay up-to-date on all of the new and exciting Arrangements that the Library is planning! Stay tuned......


For those of you who cannot read Norwegian, you can become fans of the Facebook page anyway! Google Translate is a wonderful tool that I use a lot now to go back and forth between English and several languages. It will help you translate the site to English. The translations may be a little weird at times, but you'll get the gist of what is going on at the Library. It is a dynamic, forward-thinking, and future-focused library headed by women who are all these things and more. 

Bacteria bubble lamps, iGEM, and future visions

This past Tuesday the New Science and Math library at the University of Oslo (in collaboration with The Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board) welcomed Drew Endy from Stanford University and a team of students from Cambridge University. They were there to talk about synthetic biology—Drew Endy defined what it is and how he envisions its future uses. He also talked about its impact on society and the potential ethical and moral issues involved in its use. The students were there to present their iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition) project for 2010—an E.coli bubble lamp—essentially E.coli bacteria that have been genetically-modified to become a living bioluminescent ‘lamp’. You can see their ‘product’ here in this YouTube video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=tUFscEVK5Ks. There were four students and all of them wore T-shirts with the words ‘E. glowli’ written on them. They had their presentation before Drew’s lecture, and they held their audience captive for over thirty minutes with what they had to say. They envisioned a future where London was lit by such ‘living lamps’. But what struck me most of all about them was the (high) levels of enthusiasm and interest they had in science and in what they were doing. They believed in what they were doing. They were not fanatical; they just loved their work. You could tell they weren’t just doing it for the fame and glory, even though they have achieved some of that. Mostly they were just enjoying what they were doing and they weren’t afraid to impart that message. And as an audience, you could not help but be inspired by them. You couldn’t help but smile. These students are not jaded, cynical bureaucrats; they are already budding scientists and who knows what lies in store for them? Who knows how far they can go before a bureaucratic daily life confronts them and tries to slow them down? The danger is not that they get completely or immediately discouraged. The danger is that they get slowly discouraged—a gradual, slow, insidious process that leads to a loss of morale and enthusiasm over time. I don’t know what I have to do to prevent that from happening, but whatever it is I will do it. I will be a cheerleader for the other side—the side that says let students do science and let scientists do science. Science students deserve a chance to love science. They deserve a chance to come up with new ideas, test them out, compete with others, and to learn by trial and error. We had that chance in our generation. I still love science. I just don’t love the administrative infrastructure that has built itself up around the practice of science, which has led to scientific daily life being over-administrated by budgets and accountants and unnecessary amounts of paperwork.

All of the conferences and lectures I have been to at the New Science and Math library this autumn (and helped promote on their Facebook and Twitter pages—my consulting job this autumn) have helped to restore my love of and enthusiasm about science. You’ll find the New Science and Math library Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. This autumn has rejuvenated my love for science in so many forms—synthetic, ecological, marine, and polar biology, math, physics; try and explain them to me in concrete, interesting and enthusiastic ways and you’ll find a willing listener and an enthusiastic supporter. And it was clear from the public attendance at these lectures that there were many others who felt the same way. But please don’t talk to us just about impact factors, making money, patents, innovations, which research group is the best and which group is the worst. Deliver us from small-minded, petty and envious principal investigators. Give me instead the principal investigators who think big even if they have small research groups (I know a few), who have visions, enthusiasm, and ideas about the future and who like their students and encourage them rather than being threatened by their intelligence. Drew Endy did not appear to be threatened by the iGEM students from Cambridge. He was proud of them. There was a good rapport between them. There is some really good science being done at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Life Science at Aas and at other research and educational institutions in Norway. But its promotion has to come from the scientists themselves (not from bureaucrats), or from scientists who don’t want to do bench work anymore but who are willing to promote the cause of science in order to inspire future generations of science students, or from science librarians, or from a combination of all three groups. The combination idea seems to be gaining support, which is wonderful—real teamwork! Hopefully, science-interested parties at the University of Oslo will set the wheels in motion to build up a UiO iGEM team after having heard about how well the lecture and iGEM presentation went on Tuesday afternoon at the New Science and Math library. All I can say is—go for it! 

A love of libraries

My parents met in a library; my mother was an associate librarian working at the Brooklyn public library together with my father (he was head librarian). I grew up in a family that loved books and everything related to books and publications of all kinds. From the earliest days of childhood, we were taken to the local library (Warner Library in Tarrytown) by our parents and encouraged to find books of interest and to explore the library. I can remember watching children’s films at the library; I can also remember the feelings of being in the library. It was an interesting and peaceful place—serene. But I knew that it contained a wealth of knowledge, all of it at my fingertips. My father wrote his Master’s degree thesis about the history of the Warner Library; after he died my mother gave a copy of his thesis to the library so they would have it for historical/ research purposes. I read his thesis and it was quite interesting. I can see in my mind’s eye him sitting and writing the thesis, mulling over specific sections and trying to best formulate his thoughts. He moved into the world of atomic energy when he went to work for a nuclear energy company in Manhattan as their chief librarian. He always came home with some interesting stories about his day and we would sit at the dinner table and discuss them in detail. And when I decided to major in science in college, he would come home with different publications from his library about different technologies and research projects being done at some of the national laboratories around the USA, e.g. at Los Alamos, New Mexico. One of those publications had to do with the technique of flow cytometry and how it was developing at Los Alamos; the quirk of fate (and synchronicity) here is that it was the utilization of this technique in the flow cytometry core facility at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that became my job during the 1980s. And to make the story complete--in 1985 I attended an excellent flow cytometry course offered by the lab at Los Alamos. I got a chance to meet a lot of interesting people and to see a lot of New Mexico together with two of my colleagues, Haika and Bob, who attended the course with me.

My mother did not give in to old age. She kept herself active both physically and mentally. During her seventies she volunteered at the Warner Library up until she began to have dizzy spells. Working at the library was an activity she loved and I understand completely why she did so. It kept her involved with other people—both fellow librarians and the many different people who frequented the library. If I was visiting her during these years on my annual trips to New York, she was always proud to tell me that she had to go to work at the library for a few hours. It never bothered her that she was not paid for her work; that is how much she enjoyed being there.

Libraries are such interesting places; there are so many nooks to explore and aisles of books to wander down. I remember that about the Warner Library from my childhood. I bring up the topic of libraries because I have spent some time this autumn doing consultant work for the science and math library at the University of Oslo. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable and fun experience so far, and I am thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with the world of libraries and to otherwise connect with a dynamic and enthusiastic group of women who are an inspiration to me. I have helped promote the library’s extremely interesting lectures and conferences through the use of Facebook and Twitter. One thing is certain--libraries now are quite different places than the ones I remember from my youth; they are digital media educational institutions and it is fascinating and fun to experience them as they are now. 

Marcus du Sautoy and the Public Understanding of Science

I had the pleasure of listening to Oxford University mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy talk about Symmetry this past Monday at the University of Oslo. The lecture was entitled Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle. The event was co-sponsored by the New Science Library (Det nye realfagsbiblioteket) and the Freedom of Expression foundation (Fritt Ord). The library building (Vilhelm Bjerknes house) will undergo extensive renovations starting in 2011, supported in part by the Freedom of Expression foundation. When the building renovations are finished in 2012, the library will be used as a center for seminars and debates about science and its role in society. Professor du Sautoy was invited to give a talk because he is also a professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and the library is interested in focusing on this aspect for the future. After listening to du Sautoy talk on Monday, I can understand why. Here is a man who can talk about mathematics in a dynamic way, in a way that captivates an audience while at the same time educating them. This is no mean feat. He is smart, clever, good at what he does, but more importantly, he can talk to people outside his profession and get them interested in his work and in mathematics. He has done this by writing best-selling books, hosting TV and radio programs in Britain, holding lectures internationally and so forth.

During his lecture on Monday, he spent a good deal of time talking about the symmetry found in the mosaic tiles of the Alhambra, a building in Granada Spain designed by Moorish architects. He also talked about M.C. Escher, whose art fascinated many of us when we were younger. He was the artist who drew staircases in space that merged into other staircases and it was impossible to know where one started and the other ended http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW389.jpg. What I didn’t know was that Escher has done an entire gallery of symmetry drawings as well http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/gallery-symmetry.htm, and that he was fascinated by the Alhambra. So I can thank Professor du Sautoy for this new bit of knowledge. Overall it was a very interesting lecture, and it struck me while he was talking that he did not have to hold an actual talk about the ‘public understanding of science/mathematics’ in order to impart an understanding of his field. His subject was complex, and this was clear to the audience, but his presentation was not obscure or unintelligible. His talk imparted a general understanding of the complex mathematics underlying symmetry (the number riddles involved—hence the name of the lecture, Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle) in a way that was fun, exciting and challenging. The other thing that struck me was that the audience had a lot of questions for him after his lecture, and that is the sign of a good lecture. People were not afraid to ask questions or to share their own experiences and thoughts, and that simply means that he inspired his audience rather than driving them away. I found myself remembering my calculus professor from my freshman year in college. He was such a poor teacher, even though he probably had a good grasp of his subject. He simply could not communicate his knowledge to his students, and the majority of students failed his class. That did not seem to matter to him. I stuck it out for the full year, but never took a math class again after that. I hit the wall somewhere around ‘integration by partial fractions’ which he could not intelligibly explain to us to save his life. But in high school, I really enjoyed all my math classes, and that was due in no small part to Ms. Moloney, our math teacher, who could explain what needed to be explained in an understandable and fun way. That made all the difference. Good teachers who know how to communicate their knowledge and who do so in interesting and motivating ways are the key to attracting students into math and science professions. Professor du Sautoy is one of them.