Monthly Archives: February 2006

LIS Graduate Education and Reading

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Two recent posts addressed the ‘reading habits’ of LIS students (from my perspective, of course):  "Becoming a graduate student" and "Cataloging and Metadata Education."

Jenny commented on both of them and Angel and Laura commented on the first.  I think Jenny read them in reverse order based on the way her comments went, but that makes no matter.  I told her last night, at Beth’s Un-Birthday Party at Crane Alley, that I thought she was either scolding me or had a really bad Thursday going on when she wrote her comments.

I would like to tie together some thoughts on this idea of graduate LIS reading from my commentors, myself, and a post I found this (Sun) morning at Christina’s LIS Rant called "The reference interview in a scientific research setting:  question pairs establish intellectual identity."

Christina is talking about an article:  Tracy, K., & Naughton, J. (1994). The identity work of questioning in intellectual discussion.  Communication Monographs, 61(4), 281-302; which I shall have to get and read.  [EBSCO or the university's proxy server is being stupid at the moment.]  I shall make use of Christina’s comment on this article that I have not yet read to shed some light on how a part of my thinking about reading for a graduate education works.

The authors break down the facets of intellectual identity that are
"made visible through questioning practices" into three parts 1)
knowledgeability 2) originality (are you just reiterating everything
that’s been done) 3) intellectual sophistication ("recognize the
intellectual tradition within which they work, to grant its limitations
while articulating its advantages, and to reveal awareness of what is
entailed by and inconsistent with their framework") (Tracy &
Naughton, 1994). The lexical choices of the questioner and question
recipient place them in a framework (these are smaller than disciplines
– these are what methodologies are used, what schools, what invisible
colleges…).

I believe that something akin to these "facets of intellectual identity" are also important to one’s own standing in relation to one’s discipline/field, not just between one person and another.  If one does not critically read either the literature that is assigned or that which is not, how is one to become knowledgeable, much less gain "intellectual sophistication:" "recognize the
intellectual tradition within which they work, to grant its limitations
while articulating its advantages, and to reveal awareness of what is
entailed by and inconsistent with their framework" (Tracy &
Naughton, 1994)?

That is one reason, of many, that I try to read the literature the way that I do.  To get an understanding of, and to question,  our founding and current assumptions.  To get a grasp for the limitations and strengths of "classic" and "paradigm" cementing studies.  To determine intellectual (and social) linkages betweens the ones we quote, and the ones we actually follow.  And so on.  If one is only skimming then these sorts of understandings are nigh impossible to make. 

I have recently been noticing more and more deep-seated assumptions and beliefs in LIS that are outright wrong, have arisen due to one small and flawed study, and so on.  These are then propogated explicitly and implicitly through the literature and the profession.  I want to be able to tell when I should be hesitant to accept someone’s claims.  These and so many other reasons are why I want to be able to really read "the literature."  And, yes, some things must be re-read several times.

Let me reply to Angel first:

… Most professors do give relevant reading lists, but there are one or
two out there who give more than the fair share. Overall, the
professors do know that you will be skimming some stuff. This is a
given. Some of the stuff is assigned as extra or food for thought. They
also know you may not get to it. How do I know? Well, besides personal
experience, I had one or two professors who were very open about all
this. …

Yes, although I stated that I assume professors give relevant reading, I do know that it is not the case that they always succeed.  I also am well aware that some are completely removed from what it is like to have to read all of that stuff (generally for the 1st time) at once.  Some are just cruel (It is a form of institutionalized hazing).  And, why yes, some is food for thought.  But it is hard to "get full" thinking about something you haven’t "ingested."  On a related note, my professors this semester are doing a pretty good job of (mostly) explicitly or implicitly telling us what to read, what to skim, and what truly is "nice, if you can."

And, Laura, although I most certainly appreciate well-written, life is too short to not read some things that aren’t necessarily a pleasure to read.  :-)   Unfortunately that’s true, in my opinion.

As I said, I told Jenny I thought she was either scolding me or had a really bad Thursday going on when she wrote her comments.  The thing is.  I mostly agree with her. 

Speaking from personal experience, most library students don’t read the literature because:
1. they could care less about the profession.  they need a piece of paper to do the same job they are doing and get 10K more.

2. they are in library school because they have a humanities degree
and nothing to do with it, and again do not care about the profession.

3. they have to stay in town and get paid and thus they are in library school and don’t care about the profession.

Sadly, she says ‘most’ and I think these explain a large percentage of our students, so I can’t disagree with much of it.

4. it isn’t apparent how the LIS literature is laid out. this may
seem a bit more obvious to you, but through basically my whole
academic/research career, i look for articles in databases. i have not
really had to go to a library and look in individual journals. i think
it’s pretty difficult to realize the trend in your research if all of
the articles you look up come from all different magazines that you
have never seen a paper copy of, or seen in "issue" format. It’s like
an "mp3" vs album idea.

I think Jenny’s on to a bit of something here.  It’s just not very clear to me.  This would be a metaphor that is much more existentially valid for Jenny than for me, although I understand her concept.  But even in my case, I have to learn the structure of the literature, in either paper or electronic form.  Many things are also only available to me electronically (CCQ, anyone) so this issue is beginning to affect me.  But this issue is much larger than Jenny and my discussion here.  We, librarians, structure and order the knowledge of all disciplines.  We may not have much direct influence on the physical production of the materials that we name and declare what they are, but we still must know the structure of that output so that we can "provide access" to it for others.  This is in all disciplines and arenas; not just in our own.  So whatever the fleshed out issue that Jenny is describing here, and I think she has a good point, we still need to overcome it in our own discipline along with in those for which we are responsible to patrons for.

5. Most of us do not care about library research. Sorry, a lot of
library research is 1. way theoretical, 2. on very specific subject
areas which you really don’t get into until you get a job, 3. totally
non-applicable if you are not THE librarian at a library (i.e. you have
no say as a grad assistant), or 4. fake science. Honestly, I can’t
bother with ultra theoretical/philosophical articles. I don’t care. Any
article written by someone who does not work in an actual
library/information center/company that works with books or software is
basically irrelevant to me. Perhaps this is reverse snobbery, but just
because you have to write something to make tenure doesn’t mean I want
to read it.

Hmmm.  I’m going to be careful here as I think Jenny writes like me on-the-fly.  There is a lot packed in these short sentences that might sound a bit harsher than if they were actually unpacked.

I hear a lot of carping about theory from many and varied student quarters.  I understand the words they use to describe their "aversion," I just don’t understand that they feel that way.  Just what is it that a human does that doesn’t involve some sort of "theory," other than jerking their leg when tapped on the knee with a rubber hammer?  Pretty much everything is theory-laden; just as most everything depends on observation.  What is the difference between "way theoretical" and only slightly theoretical?  Yes, many things are on specific subjects.  But many things can be related to others.  So nothing I’m learning is relevant until I’m the boss?  [And yes, I know that is not what Jenny said.] 

"Fake science."  I love this one.  I truly do.  And I agree.  Although I’m not a huge fan of the I-word, I really am not a fan of the S-word in our field [See the 1st paragraph of my About page.]  Fake science sucks.  Granted.  But that is a good reason to know what is being done in the literature.  And much of that bad science is done on both sides of that "reverse snobbery" line that Jenny drew.  I feel her pain on that one in many areas of life.  Someone who is not a practitioner should rarely tell one who is what practice is, does, or should consist in.  But that does not imply that their lack of direct knowledge of something means that they have no knowledge that might bear (even fundamentally) on that topic.  To believe so would completely undermine "library science" and philosophy, among others.  I, for one, do not see this objection as a total deconstruction of what libraries have been practicing for at least a century.  And I most certainly do not believe that philosophy, properly employed, is the slightest bit inconvenienced by such piddle. 

While I will agree that there is some good stuff in all of the "we did it good" practictioner literature in our field, much is also pure crap.  The same holds for the more "scholarly" portions of our literature.  Lots of bad or "fake" science, lots of assumptions, lots of misuse of others’ studies, lots of bad writing, and so on.  Anyway, personally, I see these as things to be aware of, but not as reasons not to read.

6. Most library students (in the UIUC incarnation) work 20+ hours a
week and take 3.5-4 classes. Perhaps for you there is time in there for
reading, but for most of us, even having time to read something for fun
is difficult. True, it is about prioritizing, but if work and school
combined take up 50+ hours a week of your life, you are not going to
want to read about that stuff in your spare time.

While Jenny is right that many of my fellow students take more classes than me (being in a hurry for assorted (often valid) reasons), I do "want to read about that stuff in your spare time" but I can accept that I’m somewhat of a freak.  It is the depth to which this hints that worries me.  How big of a freak am I?

7. No one requires it, encourages it, or even shows you how to find
articles/journals that might be appealing. Honestly, the current
awareness here kinda sucks, and isn’t directed at students. It’s
difficult to do digitally and except for going to the LIS library once
a month and bumbling about their in print copies, unless someone points
out the major journals in your area of interest, you would be wasting
your time.

There is too much here that I would want to have Jenny unpack before I took it on on its merits.  I do agree with the gist of what she says.  There is little encouragement, few who show you how [hell, some of us could teach many of the faculty a few tricks on keeping up], communication and current awareness within the department and university could be better, and students are left out of some loops.  So.  Work at it.  It goes hand-in-hand with numbers 4 and 5 above. 

8. More of us read blogs about LIS. A prominent, young, technical
faculty member at UIUC asked me what podcasting was LAST MONTH. I think
our faculty read traditional journals, but if you want to know up to
date info about actual events, blogs are way more useful. I think a lot
of new graduates are also looking outside of LIS into tech blogs as
well, since academic journals haven’t really caught up. It’s also what [stops abruptly in original.]

Agreed that blogs are useful, and in some ways more useful than the more formal "literature," but only in some ways.

9. A lot of academic journals just seem to be the same argument over
and over: technology good! no technology BAD! I already have an opinion
and it’s always somewhere in the middle. I do not care to reread the
same arguments with minor tweaks over and over again.

Agreed.  So be on the lookout for such crap and skip those.

10. Perhaps I will refute this point by placing it here at number
10. I don’t like reading long things. Again perhaps this is just my MTV
generation thing, but if you can’t say something in under 5 pages, it’s
totally irrelevant to me. And I read way more than your average human,
but still, boring technical articles? Do not care. This is why, when I
go to meetings where people cry "we can’t put it online, then everyone
will get lazy an there will be no true scholars." Sorry, that’s already
true. I am not reading something if I have to go physically somewhere
and xerox it, let alone travelling 2000 miles to an archive. It
basically doesn’t exist unless you cam deliver it to my house or
office. This is why I choose to live across the street from a library
and work in another. :) I know there are some academics that this will
never apply to, but for 90%+ of humans, we just don’t care that much.
Sorry.

I don’t buy into the definition of "true scholar" that is implicit in the above, but that is a whole lot of other discussions.  Jenny, I know you read books well over five pages, so what exactly are you saying?  Are you just complaining about "boring technical articles"?  If so, OK.  They do exist.  And yes, I do skim things like ANSI/NISO Z 39.19-2005 "Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies."  Because while parts of it are brilliantly intruiging, the thing as a whole is a real sleeper.  But then I’d make a special case for all of us reading even more standards, boring or not. 

As for the "MTV Generation thing," I don’t know.  Possibly.  But honestly, I think it’s just a cop-out; even if causally true.  We are not determined by our society.  Overcome the limitations imposed on you by your environment.  Be human.  But only if you want to.  Or if the demands of your profession should require it.

Jenny finished by putting an addendum on my intitial post addressing this topic:

Yes of course everyone can learn somethign from reading everything.
But my first semester of college I had an old school history professor
who laughed at me when he realized I was attempting to read everything
he assigned. This was a man who, on the first day of class, announced
that everyone was behind because there was reading for that day and no
one had come to his office the week before asking for the syllabus so
none of us could have done the reading. While you may assume that all
the professors "Instructors are assigning relevant readings" I totally
do not. I think all things assigned are meant to be skimmed.

Yes, I had one of those this semester, except for he’s too young to be "old school."  But he has a bit of that instiitutionalized hazing mentality of making it hard on us because it was made hard for him.  And, yes, a comment was made on the 1st day that we were all behind in our readings already.  But so what?  Recognize those pathetic souls for what they are?  They are not true educators.

Clearly, other people survive and even thrive by "reading" the literature of our field in various manners and with vastly different assumptions.  I think that is good. 

But I also don’t think that it is good considering what it is we are supposedly doing as librarians.

But maybe, it is really the lack of questioning that I find most appalling (27 Feb pre-8 AM ).  To be continued….

oXygen and TEI P5 All

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Yay!

I just installed oXygen 7.0 on my PC and created a new file from template, used TEI P5 (experimental) All and it validates!  Yippee!

That may not seem like much to many of you, but the oXygen-supplied RelaxNG schema for TEI P5 All would not validate on any of the lab PCs, nor on my laptop.  Trying to validate a document using that schema caused a Java memory error.  Only 2-3 people in the TEI workshop were able to successfully validate that schema.  They all had their own laptops and they were an even mix of PCs and Apples.  An even number, or more, of personal laptops failed at validating that schema, too.

Thankfully, oXygen allows you to install a registered copy on any platform its available for, which is several.  It sucks that I’ll have to do much of my homework restricted to the PC, but I’ll manage for now.  At least if the PC handles the extra Java load gracefully.  That isn’t a given as it is rarely graceful anymore.

I need the full thing as I need the complete bibliography tag subset.  I can then remove large portions, but I need to start with All and not Lite.  Now I just need to figure out how to make my own schema using Roma, and get it working in oXygen.

Ahhh, learning is in the air.  Or is that Spring?

Update (dateline yesterday):  I got Roma to make me a schema and got it into oXygen, made and validated a document.  On the laptop!  No memory error.  Yay!

Cataloging and Metadata Education

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And speaking of "extraneous" reading … I finally sat down last night after getting home around 9:15 PM and read the following which I printed several weeks ago:

Hsieh-Yee, Ingrid. "Cataloging and Metadata Education: A Proposal for Preparing Cataloging Professionals of the the 21st Century.  A response to Action Item 5.1 of the "Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan.""  ALCTS/ALISE Task Force, 2003.  The web version, which I read, is available here as a PDF (468k).

Wow!

This is a very interesting report!  The web version does not include the budget information, implementation details or appendices.  I need to see if I can get my hands on a full copy of this report.

I have to say that I am highly impressed.  But it is only a report, a recommendation, a proposal.  What has happened since?  All of the timelines for implementation are passed.  So, again, what has happened as a result of this proposal?  What has happened in graduate education that fits this report’s recommendations but were driven by "market forces"?  Where are we now?  Where are we going?  I doubt that I’ve ever written so many question marks in the margins of a 40-ish page paper before!

This proposal goes to the heart of much of what I was talking and/or complaining about and suggesting in "Librarian education, or lack thereof" after ALA Annual 2005.  Seeing as it involved a review of the literature on cataloging and metadata education it is also an excellent source for my bibliography.

While it covers lots of ground, its core is the set of objectives and specific knowledge and skills laid out in three levels.  The competencies include those needed for expertise in cataloging and metadata and also leadership and management.  The levels are Level I: Expertise for all LIS graduates, Level II: Expertise for metadata catalogers, and Level III: Expertise for leaders of cataloging and metadata projects.

I like what I see in this report, but the important thing at this point is to find out what happened with this proposal.  Seems I need to do some investigative work now. 

Maybe that’s why many of my fellow grad students don’t read "extraneous" stuff.  It might lead one to actually and actively question.  But isn’t that one definition of "learning"?

Becoming a graduate student

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It seems that I am finally becoming a graduate student and I’m not sure that I like it a bit!

This, my final (?) semester, took off like a jack rabbit.  I have been struggling to keep up and the work I was envisioning was crushing.  Once I realized that I was thinking of more work than was possible and talked with my metadata prof I calmed down quite a bit.

But my reading, and admittedly it is a lot, has been suffering.  I haven’t even been reading much in the way of "extraneous" materials.  I haven’t read a word of Buddenbrooks for my Mimesis seminar which meets next Monday.  So, even ignoring the loss of "extraneous" reading, I haven’t been able to keep up.  I didn’t get much more than 10% of the things for my 3 classes read this week thanks to the TEI workshop all weekend!  Guess what?  The world did not end.  Nonetheless, I do not like the situation.

Many of my peers make fun of me for trying to read everything.  Some of them have formed reading groups where they split up the reading assignments for each week and then meet the hour before class to go over them.  Makes sense.  Just not for me.  I could see reading them and then discussing them amongst ourselves first, but not relying on others to read them for me.

I know.  I know.  It is supposedly one of the elemental rules of survival in grad school.  It’s just not one of my rules for survival.  The important point though is, although I am unhappy about slacking in my reading, I am coping with it very well.

But then the coping worries me.  What kind of student am I going to turn into if I can live without reading what I’ve been assigned?  I have finally become an outstanding student; now is not the time to be learning that I can "berry pick" my assigned readings.

On a related front, I am learning to skim certain things.  And that is a good thing. 

In all of this, I am making two assumptions: (1) Instructors are assigning relevant readings, and (2) some things are meant to be skimmed.  This is not high school or even undergrad education; if my instructors assigned irrelevant readings they would hear about it from me.  Oh, I guess there is a third assumption.  Just because something isn’t discussed in class has no bearing on whether it was relevant to read it.  That little bugaboo is a major gripe of many of my peers.  They are of the opinion that if it isn’t discussed in class (or on a test) then it is irrelevant and just simply stupid to waste time reading it.  I understand that idea from an efficiency/time management perspective; but then I reject it on every other count. 

One is not able to read everything.  But that has no bearing on whether it is relevant to you or not.  And to deem something unworthy of your time because it is not to be discussed in class or on the test seems to me to be a serious form of self-denigration.  Are you not capable of learning from the text itself?

Understanding Andrea and the Carnival

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In the latest Carnival of the Infosciences #25 I featured a post by Andrea Mercado:

Andrea Mercado at LibraryTechtonics muses "On Tagging People."  It is an interesting post that intriguingly has something to say about the recent meme of fours to travel through
the biblioblogosphere, among other places.  Even if some of it is
beyond your knowledge of "friendship" in an online environment, stick
it through to the end and then let’s see if we can help Andrea give
form to her thoughts.  Nice list of resources included.

I see it somewhat of a reminder that considering content
and information about
people and things is not the same as considering the resulting
relationships and knowledge about people and things on the New Web (an
incomplete thought in my brain that’s still a work in progress).

At the opening of my Carnival post I said:

That is my goal for this Carnival—can we maybe discuss some of these further?  I have not had the time I’d like to really consider these, and I’m not even sure what Andrea is talking about at points, but I think there is something important being said in all of them.  I hope that maybe we can re-look some of these and perhaps discuss them a bit more in the hopes of furthering the good bits [emphasis not in original].

Greg Schwartz of Open Stacks, and Carnival creator, commented that "I really enjoyed his admission that "I’m not even sure what Andrea is
talking about at points." I laughed because I felt the same way after
my first reading of her post "On  Tagging People." It’s a worthy read though."

Andrea responds with "I’m a librarian, ask me questions!"

First, let me give a small apology to Andrea.  I do basically understand what she is discussing.  I know what the topic is.  I honestly debated using that terminology in my post and never was really happy with it.  But I was way too busy to spend much time trying to get it perfect.  I wish I could have.  [Although, I'm not unhappy with what I said about the post itself.]

My lack of understanding falls mostly in the experiential realm.  I have not used much of the type of social software that Andrea discusses, and those that I have used have been used primarily as an assist at the individual level.  I do not use most of the "social features."

Andrea says that "Most of it makes sense to me as food for thought and discussion."  I agree entirely.  That is why I selected it for the Carnival.  She goes on to say,

I’m a librarian with a hypertext mental process who is open to cordial intellectual dialog. When in doubt, or just totally confused, send me email (and/or send me your IM handle, and we can chat). Ask me questions. Challenge my ideas. Make opposite arguments. Add your own support comments. Tell me what you don’t get. Even if I don’t write a whole email back, I’ll post what I think is interesting and/or might help other people understand (names can be witheld to protect the innocent, never fear, simply ask). Alternately, post something about it on your blog.

I agree with her on all of this too.  I wish that I had had time to contact her before the Carnival to clarify any of my misunderstanding but, alas, I did not.  Again, I wish I had had the time and energy to make a better comment in regards to Andrea’s valuable post.

So, for the record:  My comment on my lack of understanding of Andrea’s post was not to suggest that it is somehow incomprehensible, or even simply unclear.  It was entirely about my personal experiences, or lack thereof, with the types of software she was discussing.  Go read her post.  Think about it.  Discuss it.  Contact her if you like, as she suggests.  Personally, I’d love to be able to sit around over some coffee or beers with Andrea and her husband to learn from them.

Birthday Weekend

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Those of you reading this in an aggregator may have noticed a rogue post by the same name as this one. Having spent all weekend in a TEI workshop I marked up my Birthday Weekend post in TEI Lite and posted it in here.  All appeared to work fine in preview until I made the post live.  The amazing part (although maybe it shouldn’t be) was that the markup came through perfectly.  It was the indentation and white space that choked.  <sigh>  So let’s try it again without all of the pretty indentation:

<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
    <teiHeader>
        <!– Header info goes here –>
    </teiHeader>
    <text>
    <body>
    <head type="titlepost">Birthday Weekend</head>
    <div type="post">
    <docAuthor>Mark Lindner</docAuthor>
    <docDate value="2006-02-20">20 February 2006</docDate>
    <p>I had a hectic Birthday Weekend but <date value="2006-02-20">today</date> was pretty nice. My wonderful friend <name type="personal">Cindy</name> made me an incredible cake. It was a bundt cake that was basically banana bread with nuts and chocolate chips and the top was somewhere between being drizzled with and being dunked in chocolate. She delivered it to my 9 AM class with plates, forks, etc. It was scrumptious! Tasty, filling and went well with coffee. What more could a boy ask for ? And although I actually had my camera with me, I didn’t think to take a picture of it. I shared with my class and had plenty to take upstairs to my co-workers afterwards.</p>
    <p>I had a 90-minute massage from 1-2:30 and then headed back to work. I broadcast a class from 4:15-6:35. Then my friend <name type="personal">Emily</name> picked me up, ran me by the house for a moment, and then we headed for <name type="business">Crane Alley</name>. I had a really nice steak, baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar, and green beans, 2 <name type="product">Guinness</name> and a pint of water. It and the company was heavenly! </p>
    <p><abbr corresp="tei">TEI</abbr> workshop this weekend was pretty good. I do recommend it as an introduction to <abbr corresp="tei">TEI</abbr> and I second Richard’s recommendation of <name type="personal">Julia Flanders</name> and <name type="personal">Syd Bauman</name>.  <mentioned>http://libland.blogspot.com/2006/02/aura-of-ownership.html</mentioned></p>
    <p>I tried to go to <name type="personal">Eva</name>’s show in <name type="place">Danville</name> <date value="2006-02-18">Saturday</date> night but I could not find the place. I had a map from <name type="website">Google</name> and an address. I don’t know what happened. I’ve been just staying calm about it, but it was a massive let down. </p>
    </div>
    </body>
    </text>
</TEI>

It seems that I wrote down the address that I was provided for Eva’s gig.  I’m not sure what went wrong; I guess my more spontaneous lifestyle will include such disasters of execution.  I gave it a good shot and it didn’t work out.  I just hope Eva isn’t mad at me, and wasn’t worried about me while she was performing. 

Thank you Cindy for the wonderful and delicious cake!  And thank you Em for dinner and conversation!  I will certainly take Gardner and you up on the weekend dinner deal, too.

I currently have no more Birthday Month happenings planned, but I’ll probably head to the Esquire on Friday as another classmate is celebrating her birthday.  In early March, Richard will be having another party during LEEP oncampus weekend, "this party is dedicated to all the fishes and friends of fishes."  So maybe I have a couple more chances to bring up the fun quotient in this year’s instantiation of Birthday Month.  And no, I really don’t feel any older than I normally do.  That’s because I am already older than the vast majority of my peers and some of my professors and instructors.  No good reason to dwell on that.

Update:  I emailed Eva to apologize for missing the show and she felt really bad.  It seems there was (at least) one little piece of info that I needed to know.  The place has NO entrance from the street its address is on; only from some alley.  Is there a parking lot in the alley?  Oh well.  I told Eva it was all good; I hadn’t and wasn’t going to get upset about it. 

I may get to have dinner with Eva and Gina again on Monday.  No broadcast of class since next weekend is LEEP oncampus, so I’ll be heading to Normal at some point in the afternoon Monday.  Monday evening is our Mimesis discussion of Buddenbrooks.  Still haven’t read a word… <sigh>.

I went to LeAnn’s birthday party at the Esquire last night.  Beth’s having an Un-birthday Party at Crane Alley tonight.  Why, oh why, can’t these children start partying in public before 9 PM?

Carnival of the Infosciences #25

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Come one, come all. The Carnival of the Infosciences has returned to beautiful Urbana, Illinois for its 25th instantiation.

Olympic coaster

Photo courtesy of Yee Wong.

Seems the Carnival is in its midwinter doldrums. We got one submission this week and, Steve, I’m considering it the best birthday present I’ll get this year! Thank you!

I’ll consider the chance to construct my own little version of “What did Mark find interesting around the biblioblogosphere this week?” as a present from the rest of you all who stop by.

This is #25 folks! Can we sustain a bit of semi-focused conversation in our little region of the web? That is my goal for this Carnival—can we maybe discuss some of these further? I have not had the time I’d like to really consider these, and I’m not even sure what Andrea is talking about at points, but I think there is something important being said in all of them. I hope that maybe we can re-look some of these and perhaps discuss them a bit more in the hopes of furthering the good bits. That is what I would consider a wonderful birthday present!

Without further ado, Carnival of the Infosciences #25:

Steve Lawson at See Also gives us “Building a blog to the 18th century,” because he wants more people to “know about the cool blog that [he] wrote up….” I certainly agree that more people need to know about this blog and pictures would be a wonderful compliment.

Andrea Mercado at LibraryTechtonics muses “On Tagging People.” It is an interesting post that intriguingly has something to say about the recent meme of fours to travel through the biblioblogosphere, among other places. Even if some of it is beyond your knowledge of “friendship” in an online environment, stick it through to the end and then let’s see if we can help Andrea give form to her thoughts. Nice list of resources included.

I see it somewhat of a reminder that considering content and information about
people and things is not the same as considering the resulting relationships and knowledge about people and things on the New Web (an incomplete thought in my brain that’s still a work in progress).

Words are important things. Naming and expressing are two of the most fundamental human traits. A loss of either is usually only precipitated by trauma or a failing body. Feel-good Librarian reminds us about “The power of a word.”

**Special Section: Not sure what to label this insert but I see it as a small conversation. Ed’s piece serves as a kind of prologue, while Will’s report of Bausch and Michael Casey seem to have a lot of overlap. What would these three posts be like in conversation? You may want to break them up though.

Edward Vielmetti, Superpatron, gives us “A rant, mostly, on the difficulties ahead.” A discussion continued well into the comments about the pains of ILS migration and its impact on innovation, or lack thereof.

“Online NW: Keynote Speaker Paul Bausch” as reported by Will Stuivenga at LITA BLog. “Bausch expressed a desire to “convince you that the web and library worlds are working in the same arena.”” I really liked the use of “translation” and metaphor.

The central promise of a library is that someone can access scholarship, through reading what other people have written before they themselves can add to the larger conversation. In the web, we’re in the middle of our own world of translation, but we are translating offline processes into the online world. Web 2.0 is beginning to speak the language of the web like a native; finding its strengths.

It sounds like it was an interesting keynote, as it is interesting reporting. Good job Will!

“Evolutionary Technology and the Emerging Divide” by Michael Casey at LibraryCrunch. Where are we with “library technology” now? Are we in an evolutionary or revolutionary period?

Programming being done by Casey Bisson and John Blyerg
point to some of the revolutionary things that can be done with small,
evolutionary, tools. What will result from these efforts will be
amazing, and I am very anxious to see where we are in two or three
years with their services. This illustrates the one item that we
cannot put on our Emerging Tech suggestion list, a programmer.

Jane, of A Wandering Eyre, is all for “Melting Down the Sacred Cow.

The time and evergy spent on this one handout is staggering added to the fact that even a change in color caused an uproar. Seriously, a piece of goldenrod paper.

I’m with Jane on this melting down the sacred cows. I have witnessed more than my fair share of goldenrod paper-caused uproars.

Richard Urban of <libraryland> asks “Can images be metadata?”

While I haven’t seen anything clearly state this, there do seem to be assumptions in practice that suggest that images are metadata in certain contexts. How can we refine and explicitly state this practice?

Can you help Richard out? Disclosure: Richard is a classmate of mine. Nonetheless, I still think he asks an intriguing question. At the bar Friday night I had him clarify a bit what he meant for me, but as it was somewhere around the 3rd pint you’ll have to ask him yourself…. By the way, Richard is one to watch for from the computing and cultural heritage intersection </tip>.

ALA President-Elect Leslie Burger gives us “A few highlights from the ALA Midwinter meeting” over at Burger’s Blog. She talks about attending her 1st conference in her “official” capacity as President-Elect and she asks some good questions about ALA meeting protocol. While that may not make for a killer Carnival post by itself, considering what we’ve put up with this past year, I’ll take the President-Elect of ALA blogging as a reason to dance in the streets.

Dan Visel at if:book experiences “travel blindness.” How is it the French have a philosophy book store? Dan asks, “Why don’t we need books like these?” Interesting discussion of book cover designs across “markets.” And since we’re in the “American market” we even get pictures. Wine bars, book design, philosophy bookstores, cultural capital, “universal” novels, and more all in the service of reminding us that:

Culture cuts both ways. It’s important to remember that the ways books (and, by extension, their electronic analogues) function in American society isn’t the only way they can or should function. We tend to fall into the assumption that there is no alternative to the way we live. This is myopia, a myopia we need to continually recognize.

I’d love to see all of these posts and the ideas they contain get revisited. Lots of questions being asked. But that is a very good thing in my mind, as long as they aren’t asked into a void.

Angel, The Gyspy Librarian, gives us a lovely little review in “Booknote: It’s Not Easy Being Green.” I’m taking lessons, my friend.

Yeah, well, I’ve got a dream too. But it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. That’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well, I’ve found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And it kind of makes us like family.
–Kermit

“…I’ve found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And it kind of makes us like family.” Let’s talk then like family, here in our little region of webspace. Let’s continue the conversation.

This week’s Carnival comes to you courtesy of some things Mark would like to see conversations around, and the letters TEI.

Next week the Carnival moves to Amanda Robertson’s Data Obsessed ~life has no subject headings~ Amanda’s contact info is on the right sidebar just under the Categories.

Otherwhen

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As I sit killing time before heading to Eva’s show in Danville, I’m listening to a CD I made it bit over 6 years ago.

I had gotten divorced about 8 months earlier and several people from way back in my life reemerged, for a while anyway. I was trying to capture some hope, elusive though it was. On 26-28 January 2000 I recorded:

Otherwhen

1 With A Little Help From My Friends – Joe Cocker
2 Late For The Sky – Jackson Browne
3 When It Comes To You – Dire Straits
4 Day After Day – Alan Parson Project
5 Wasted Time – Eagles
6 The American In Me – Steve Forbert
7 2001 – Melissa Etheridge
8 Days That Used To Be – Neil Young
9 Love Is A Long Road – Tom Petty
10 Epitaph including March For No Reason and Tomorrow And Tommorow – King Crimson
11 What It’s Like – Everlast
12 I Wanna Be Loved – Elvis Costello
13 Still Alive & Well – Johnny Winter
14 All The Best – John Prine
15 Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
16 Effervescing Elephant – Syd Barrett

Meant to be played as loud as you can stand!

Back Notes above. Inside notes below.

“What would you do if I sang you a tune? Would you stand up & walk out on me? Lend me your ears & I’ll sing you a song. I will try not to sing out of key.” This CD represents my song to you. It may be out of key because it’s not what it began as. I’m sorry if this is somewhat depressing. I intended to make this more upbeat to try & reflect my hopes & renewed spirit going into a new year. But something else seemed to come out of me, although I know not exactly what or why. It does, though, accurately reflect a large portion of what I’ve been listening to since early Dec. Anyway, a couple important people from way back in my life reappeared very late last year. I began listening to a lot of stuff that I was listening to in the 70′s. I acquired both Barrett CDs, a Janis boxed set, copied a lot of early Pink Floyd, King Crimson & who all knows. It was really kind of strange because there was this whole cascade effect of people, music, feelings… Welcome back Trace! I’ve missed you for a very long time. Many people have commented positively on Cake’s I Will Survive from the 1st CD. You’re welcome, but thanks really belong to Steve for turning me on to it. You should check out the rest of the album, quirky but great! I was wondering why I liked Cake’s quirkiness so much until I began listening to Barrett again. You should hear his eccentric little love ditties.
29 Jan 00 MRL

Sorry. That’s all for now. Interesting set this. It holds up reasonably well.

Approaching Carnival

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Alright folks!   I did a bit of spring cleaning around here even as the temperature plunged as the Carnival comes to Urbana on Monday.

But we’re a little light on acts right now and we’re rapidly running out of elephant food!  "Come one, come all."  Step up and do your part.  Make a submission (your stuff or recommend someone else’s).

I hate to resort to bribery, but let’s say a submission will get you a free all-week pass for two.  Can you just imagine the value of such a thing?

Don’t answer that please!  Seriously though, I certainly don’t read every library-related blog out there, but there are some that you read that I may very well not.  I’m not looking for literature, I’m looking for something said well, an important question asked, an odd angle on something familiar, a piece of value that deserves to be seen by more eyes than it might….  Please help me out here folks.