For some reason I really slept like crap last night. Or maybe I should say I was awake much of the night with my mind fighting with my body as to which could do the most tossing and turning. Woke up this morning with my throat sore like a gland on the right side was swollen and inflamed. I did get better through the morning, but I sure am tired now.
Hope I get some sleep tonight because tomorrow night is the 1st of this year’s Illinois Shakespeare Festival plays: Twelfth Night. Sure glad the comedy is first, cause I’m needing me some funny in my life about now.
Next week is Henry VIII and then the week after is Macbeth. They don’t get over till 11 PM and it’s an hour drive home, hence the need for sleep.
My morning was made better by finding out I got listed in LISNews, "This Week in LibraryBlogLand," for this past week. Twice even! Thanks bentley. [I've really got to figure LISNews.com out. It seems so complex at first that it's like a foreign country. Need to poke around more. Figure out how to order a beer, say "I'm sorry," "Please," and "Thank you," and ask where's the toilet. If I can get those sussed out I know I'll be OK.]
My practicum supervisor Beep! Beep! Beep! We interrupt the regularly scheduled drivel to bring you a critical weather warning. Whoa! We got us a hell of a storm literally blowing in. I hope everyone’s safe indoors or will be soon. Beep! We now return you to the drivel. … told me today that someone requested a video from Remote Storage Box #117. That means I made an item accessible so a patron could identify and request said item that was previously languishing unknown. Yeah! I know that’s pretty small stuff, but if you know me, or you have read a post or two, please allow me my moment of small pleasure for myself. I can certainly use them, and rarely allow myself them. It’s kind of like the 1st breath of a newborn cataloger.
Well, it’s official. According to the radio, we’re under a severe t-storm watch and here comes the thunder and lightning. Everything important is on UPS/surge suppressors, but maybe I better turn off the radio and put on a CD. WEFT’s actually playing good acoustic stuff right now. Damn! But if that transmitter gets nailed it could make a mess of the tuner and the resulting spike won’t do the speakers any good either. Then again, I think I’ll just enjoy the sounds of the storm.
Went ahead and cut off the desktop computer too since I’m working on the laptop. Lit a few candles just in case, and because I like them. Cut off the air and opened the front door about 18 inches. Sure glad the sirens got cut off cause there really isn’t anywhere for me to go in my little one bedroom apartment. Laptop or no, I’m not hanging out in the bathroom. Damn, I love a good summer storm! Unplugged the power to the laptop and plopped myself in my recliner. Hopefully the laptop on wireless will be fine if the cable gets nailed.
I really have to slow down on the blog for a bit. I have some school work that needs to get done over the next few weeks. I guess you could say all this reading/writing/posting/commenting was my summer vacation, but now it’s time to do myself right. I’m working on another post to extend the conversation about the gendered LIS citations and was hoping to finish it tonight, but the weather is distracting me.
So, I guess I better finish up here and go finish that if I’m going to get it done tonight. Of course, them darn dishes soaking in the sink have figured out how to call my name too.
Articles read yesterday, 25 July 2005:
Brewerton, Antony. "The creed of a librararian: a review article." Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 35 (1), March 2003, pp. 47-55.
Is a reappraisal of D.J. Foskett’s 1962 The creed of a librarian: no politics, no religion, no morals. London: Library Association. [13 page pamphlet.] Was a fairly good article. Nice use of philosophy. I just wish he wouldn’t have relied so much on Simon Blackburn’s Think: a compelling introduction to philosophy as his main philosophical reference. Think (1999) is a nice popular intro to philosophy. Heck, I own a copy and have read it, but it just seems his article needed more. All in all, the article was fine. I guess maybe I’m judging it a bit harshly because he uses a lighter weight, popular work as his main philosophical reference. Seems a bit superficial.
Seadle, Michael. "Editorial: Education for twenty-first century librarians." Library Hi Tech 22 (4), 2004, pp. 337-339. DOI: 10.1108/07378830410570430
The education of librarians for the twenty-first century certainly needs to include practical training, … [b]ut those librarians who plan to work in a research environment, or who want a research degree like a PhD, need to acquire a methodology that grounds their work in an established scholarly context (339).
Tennant, Roy. "A bibliographic metadata infrastructure for the twenty-first century." Library Hi Tech 22 (4), 2004, pp. 175-181. DOI: 10.1108/07378830410524602
Recommended read. Identifies key infrastructure requirements; proposes a new infrastucture consisting of a number of components, all of which may exist in multiple variations; and identifies many of the serious, but probably surmountable, obstacles to the adoption of a new bibliographic metadata infrastructure. I still have serious concerns about crosswalks, but Roy may have forgotten more about this stuff than I may ever know. The article does leave me hopeful though, which is saying a lot more for it than most I’ve read about these issues.
Articles read today, 26 July 2005:
Cheng, William C., Leana Golubchik, and David G. Kay. "Total recall: are privacy changes inevitable?" CARPE’04 October 15, 2004. 7 pp. [Don't remember where I got the pdf.]
I took notes on this article and was going to savage it and the authors, but I just don’t have it in me. Do they answer the question in the subtitle? No, they just assume it. I guess that helps them sleep at night as they go forward in helping to design a system that will eradicate any real privacy, much less a sense of it.
They pretty much lost me with their first sentence in the Intro, "Technology’s ultimate purpose is to improve people’s quality of life." Technology does not have a purpose. Individual technologies are often designed (by intentional agents) with a purpose, as in "a reason for which something is done or made." But that is often not to improve one’s quality of life. And even if that is the intention of the creator/designer of said technology, it is then used by others and often they use it in ways it was specifically not designed to be used, or with a different purpose. All technologies, even the most benign and quality of life enhancing, have negative consequences. For me, it just went downhill from there.
Their claimed purpose, is to address the privacy and security issues of a personal sensor-based, always on, recording technology as an ostensible, quality of life enhancement to memory. They do bring up some serious concerns, only to brush past them. All they are really doing is justifying what they are already doing, and assuming that all this sacrifice is worth it for the amazing quality of life improvements to our memories.
I do not deny that this sort of technology could be useful in certain, restricted situations and possibly for those with serious memory disabilities of various sorts. But this is not what they are discussing. If RFID in libraries worries you, this should have you absolutely terrified! Most of their "possible" technological solutions to some of the privacy and security issues are about as technologically feasible as SDI aka Star Wars, and even less likely to be allowed if a system like this were implemented. Oh, sorry, it seems to be "inevitable," according to the authors.
There are some good ideas in this article, and some (perhaps all) of this is where our society seems to be heading, but to me they just seem to be bringing up serious concerns to lightly dismiss them so they can say, "See, we did talk about them," as they help us down the "inevitable" path to a complete loss of privacy.
The article raises as many questions, outside of privacy and security, as does, say Google Print. Who will have all the time to replay, sort through, code (catalog) it for retrieval and so on? What is the use of it if you can’t share it with others without permission from everyone in the vicinity? Why in Jehosphat’s name would I want to record all those inane conversations on the bus, or even worse, at the bar, that I’m already trying to tune out? What quality of life enhancement, and for whom, other than law enforcement, is something like this really designed for. And so on. And no, this was not savagery.
Well, the storms been over for a while now. So much for the other post; need to go do those dishes and then calm down for bed before it gets too late. Maybe I can get it posted before noon tomorrow, but I’m not counting on it.