6.12.2006

S-O-C-K-S

When I was growing up, there was this annoying radio ad for some Spanish-learning program. Now, I only remember that to demonstrate their easy-to-remember method, the cheery woman would say, "How do you spell socks? S-O-C-K-S; that's what it is!" Hence forever engraving in my brain that "¡Eso sí que es!" means "That's what it is" in Spanish.

Now, S-O-C-K-S is my own in-joke for when something describes or demonstrates what it is (ahem, metadata). I had experienced two instances of this today at work.

I was passing through the stacks on my way back to my office, and happened to be in the art section--how I love the N's!--and my eyes happened to glance at one particularly bold title: Serendipity*. I thought this was quite nifty, as one of the major discussions of artists and art historians as information-seekers involves serendipitous discovery, or walking through the stacks and picking books at random (instead of first searching the OPAC).

And this afternoon, my boss and I were discussing our thoughts on using IM as a reference service--oh, and we were discussing this on our email client's proprietary IM service.

I love my job.

*No, I did not realize I was still in the P's when I had that fun little thought. Sigh. So much for making my point.

1 comment:

Luke said...

I'm so glad someone else remembers those crazy ads. When I was in ~5th grade the ads would play practically on repeat during our three hour drive home from ski lessons.

To this day I want to know who made that series and buy the damn tapes.