About Tom
Tom Ipri is a librarian and writer living in Philadelphia, PA. Currently, he is the Liaison Librarian to the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University’s Hagerty Library. Among various duties, he develops and manages the libraries’ collaborative relationships with the departments and programs of the college, including development of library collections, provision of specialized reference, instruction, and consultative services.
Professionally, Tom has published in the Journal of Web Librarianship, New Library World, College & Research Libraries News, Computers in Libraries, Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing, and Information Technology and Libraries. He has presented at several Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences, at American Library Association conferences, and at a variety of workshops. He reviews films for Educational Media Reviews Online.
Tom has had poetry published in Small Brushes, Superior Poetry News and The Vermillion Literary Project. His short story, Six Minutes, has been accepted for the April 2013 issue of Ayris Magazine. Another story, Drunk Monkeys, was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 73rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in the Literary/Mainstream category.
Previously, he was the Head of Media and Computer Services at Lied Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 2007 until 2011. In this position, he directed the future of the libraries’ media collections and services and led the development of the media design studio, the learning commons, and the strategic evolution of media services within the University Libraries.
Prior to working at UNLV, he was the Media Services Librarian, for 7 years, at La Salle University’s Connelly Library in Philadelphia, PA. In addition to developing a film collection of approximately 6200 feature films and documentaries, he oversaw the library’s Web site and contributed to the development of the library’s content in the university’s portal. At La Salle, he also taught freshman writing for the English department and a general education Humanities course.
Tom earned his Master of Science in Information and Library Science from Drexel University in 1999 and his Bachelor of Arts in English from La Salle University in 1990.
Tom is an a member of the American Library Association (ALA), through which he serves as the Past Chair of the Video Round Table. He is a former member of the Notable Videos for Adults Committee where he nominated, reviewed and helped select documentaries for the annual ALA Notable Videos for Adults award. He co-founded and served as Vice-Chair of the Transliteracy Interest Group for ALA’s Library and Information Technology Association. He is also a member of the Philadelphia Film Society.
In addition to blogging at Being and Formulating, he blogs about food, along with his girlfriend, at SuperPlus Eats. Among other places, he also can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Goodreads, Pinterest, and Yelp.
About the Title
The title comes from a quote from the diaries of Anaïs Nin. I came across this quote second-hand from Brassai’s book Henry Miller: The Paris Years:
“In Miller’s mind…to commit the events of one day, or even one hour, to paper takes days if not weeks. Anaïs would therefore never catch up with events, and her Diary would never be truly current. Moreover, all she was doing by trying was postponing the exhilaration of life, the moments in whose heat you would never think of writing. The pulse of life makes any formulation impossible…All the diary can reflect are life’s stagnant period, what Andre Breton called the ‘empty moments’ of existence. Anaïs wouldn’t always avoid throwing herself into the current of life. She too would directly confront the dilemma of whether to live or to write. She herself says as much in her Diary: ‘The river of life divides into two branches: being and formulating.’”
Although the quote obviously speaks to a period of time well before anyone blogged, it certainly speaks to the recent explosion of this technology (and certainly speaks to the on-again-off-again nature of my posting. So, if I’m not posting, assume I’m “being.”) I love this quote and decided I wanted to use something from it for the name of my blog: my choices being either “Being and Formulating” or “Life’s Stagnant Period.” While the later has certain panache, I opted for the former.