Monthly Archives: April 2006

Update on Tentative Fall 06 Classes

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I’m getting ready to head to St. Louis in a few minutes to see Dar Williams in concert tonight, Yay!

After talking with Carole again, catching up with Allen, and getting a highly draft version of the Topic Maps syllabus, it looks like my fall schedule is the following (see previous post for more detail):

  • 590FO  Applied Ontologies in the Natural Sciences (new) with Allen Renear
  • 590IML  Information Modeling with Allen Renear
  • 590TR  Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science (new) with Carole Palmer

Allen politely reminded me that I could take both of his classes.  :)   Carole has a tentative, unfilled reading list and not much else, but she assured me that I will be able to shape whatever assignments towards my goals.  I didn’t doubt that, but I had to ask.

Here’s the description for Carole’s course:

This seminar examines the role of information in the production of
scientific knowledge. Building on a foundation of classic readings in
the history and sociology of science, the course will cover a range of
contemporary research on scientific communication, collaboration,
research practice, and informatics. The focus is on formal and informal
information transfer and communication as a social phenomenon and
implications for collaborative science and e-science. The course had
been developed as part of the master’s degree in bioinformatics and is
also suited for doctoral students and advanced master’s students
interested in professional development as science and medical
information specialists. [Emphasis mine...]

…I loves me that stuff!  Have already read lots of it; so it’ll serve as
a refresher with a new twist, and I’m sure there’ll be some pieces new
to me.  Plus, I’ll get to bring my reading in this area up-to-date from
a few years ago.  For those of you who think science is some grand methodology that leads to progress and truth, well, let me suggest a few readings perhaps.

It was suggested (party shall remain unnamed) that I skip Topic Maps, for now anyway, as it is a "boutique" course.  "Would be interesting, the instructor is great, good friend of person making suggestion, … , but skip it."  Exactly the sort of advice I need.

So when I got home last night I made sure there were no time slot conflicts.  Oh joy!  Here is what I found:

  • 590FO  Thursday  9 – 1150 AM
  • 590TR  Thursday  12 – 250 PM
  • 590IM  Thursday  430 – 630 PM

Now that is certainly some sort of schedule.  What sort could be argued.  I guess the proof will be in the execution though.  And they are all 4 hour courses, no 2 hour options with these.  Ah well.

It certainly leaves the schedule for the rest of the week highly flexible.  I’ll have to pack lunch on Thursdays, but that’ll be good for me.  And since 590IML is a LEEP course I can come home in the afternoon and take the 2nd Allen class from home.

And thanks to another of the many wise women I get to hang around with, Beth, I was reminded how to find out for sure if I have a time ticket.  And I certainly do!  Come Tuesday at 8:20 AM I’ll be registering for Summer I and Fall.  I’m about as giddy as a schoolboy at recess.

On a related front, yesterday I found out that "Professor Krummel will be offering 511

Bibliography on Thursday mornings and Professors Kathie and Bill Henderson will be offering 582 Preserving Info Resources on Tuesday mornings" this fall, also.

Yay!  Fellow students out there, just a little example of what the power of taking a stand and giving your input into your program can accomplish, even if it was not asked for.

Now, other groups certainly assisted in this effort, but my 2 wonderful allies and I, at least, are going to believe that collecting and providing student input was also important in this matter.  We may have upset the Dean just a bit with our initial letter to the student body on the matter of the emeriti faculty, but it forced him to address the matter much sooner than he would have otherwise.  A little prodding, even a cattle prod when required, can be a good thing.

And, no, really, we don’t expect you to thank us.  We did it because it was the right thing to do whatever the consequences were.

Thank you all for the fun and conversation!

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  Raw sex 
  Originally uploaded by broken thoughts.

Recently I had gotten very distressed with certain seeming traits of the biblioblogosphere. School work kept me from getting that post written, and I am glad that it did. 

Things seem to have improved, and I’m really hoping they stay that way. I was planning on complaining about an almost complete lack of "real" conversation here in our little playground.  Then in the midst of my non-continuous, mostly partial attention there for awhile, I actually witnessed a few wonderful conversations and even had a few here on this humble blog.  Thank you all for restoring a bit of my faith in us all!

I’m getting just a bit excited.  Earlier today I passed 15,000 page views and I’ve been averaging over 100 visits a day (lately that is; much lower for the life of the blog).  Seriously though, those numbers are fairly meaningless, but it is nice to watch them go up.

What really has me excited is that the number of comments is about to tie, and hopefully surpass, the number of posts.    Before this post, I have 475 posts (4 drafts) and 474 comments.  [Oh!  I guess comments already did pass posts.]

Thank you all so very much for the conversation, the prodding, the congrats, the questions, and so on.  I sincerely value it all and please, please keep it coming.

ALA Presidential Candidate “Debate”

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Yesterday, the ALA@UIUC Student Chapter hosted an interview session with the two candidates for ALA President, Loriene Roy and Bill Crowe.

It was done via our LEEP distance ed technology  and was ably emceed by our own Masters student, Sonya Green.  It lasted about an hour and a half and you can access a RealAudio stream of the discussion here.

I jokingly called it a debate in my post title because it was anything but.  I wouldn’t be surprised if these two voted for each other, it was all so friendly.  And, no, I’m not trying to be facetious.  I was sincerely impressed by the level of mutual respect exhibited.

If you make it towards the end, I’ll be the person referred to as the "peanut."  I gave a hearty amen to comments by both of them.  And I was the one to encourage Loriene to keep on using "library worker."  I’ve been most of them and I find it very inclusive and not divisive like so many lines we draw in our professional lives.

You may want to check it out, whether or not you’ve already voted.  If you haven’t, I don’t know if it will help you decide.  They really are fairly similar despite being so different in their professional experiences.  But it might be interesting and/or useful to you.

Once and future classes

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It really should be current and future classes, but that doesn’t have quite the literary ring to it.

Current classes

Advanced cataloging is going well.  We’re working our way through several of the SCCTP‘s Basic Serials workshop sections with our local trainer.  My final project is going well as you can see from my post Monday night.  I have several more articles to read and abstract/annotate, but I have a month basically.

In Indexing & Abstracting, I received my BOTBI in the mail yesterday and I was very pleasantly surprised.  It’s kind of funny and I would say that I’d laugh at myself, but I remember how utterly distressed I was this time last week.  Some of the sections I thought I had least indexed got some very nice comments.  And a few other things I did that I thought were just normal also received nice comments.  Of course, I dropped a locator or two accidentally and I had one blind reference, and could have collapsed a See reference or two or turned a few into double entries.  The first few were due to no time left for proofing and the last few were choices I made.  The main comment was that I did very deep indexing.  But then I thought that was (and it was) the assignment.  Maybe my "deep" is just different and deeper than others "deep."  Leave it to a philosophy major….

Today I need to finish writing up my decisions on indexing another format, which is this blog, and maybe go back and index the personal and blog names from the first post or two that I did before I had decided how to do those.  There’s just one or two small assignments after this, and I have one to make up still.

In Metadata we’re currently learning about OAI-PMH and working on our static repository page.  I’ll be using DC simple (required) and MODS.  I’m going to see Tim Cole, one of our co-instructors for this part, tomorrow.  I think I have a good understanding of the concepts of OAI-PMH, the assignment requirements, and how to encode my bib citations in MODS.  I have to take a closer look at the assignment because we have to crosswalk our "advanced" format into DC.  I don’t think I can just construct my DC records. 

But what I’m going to see him for now—you have to promise not to laugh—is for help in getting the appropriate xsd(s) and namespaces into oXygen so it’ll do the heavy lifting for me.  That was my biggest problem with the 1st assignment.  I’m pretty sure that I know which xsd(s) and namespaces to use, but that all important practical stuff is what we really blew through, or more accurately past, in the first week of class.  Once I get all that worked out, I’m thinking this assignment might not be too awful for me.

Then there’s one more major assignment in Metadata.

Future classes

It seems I don’t have a time ticket for registration for either summer or fall since I’m graduating.  I turned in my CAS paperwork with my advisor’s signature Monday, but it will take the University a few weeks to get it together.  So, I’ll really be pushing it to get registered for Thesaurus Construction in Summer I.  The Fall classes I want could possibly fill up, too, before I get to register but I’m keeping calm. 

I went and talked to someone yesterday to verify my hypothesis about not having a time ticket and she will be getting chocolate and/or flowers soon.  No details required, but I’ll be getting my Summer I class assuming the University doesn’t seriously dork me around.

I also sent an email yesterday to lobby for the advisor that I want for my CAS program, and I was told that it was a go.  The really nice thing about our program, and our professors, is that you can really talk to any of them; so I do.  I actively talk to a small handful regularly and another half dozen when the need or mood strikes.

So, I want to give a quick shout-out to Dr. Carole Palmer, my MS Advisor extraordinaire!  As I said in my email to the powers-that-be, I have no doubt that I will continue to discuss my educational and career plans with her during my CAS and into the future on a regular basis.  But I’m happy to announce that Kathryn La Barre will be my CAS Advisor; it just makes sense based on my focus on information organization.  I had already "adopted" her as an advisor when I first started considering applying for the CAS, anyway.

On to Fall semester….  I’ve already talked with Carole and Kathryn.  I talked with Dave Dubin Friday night at Symposium, and I have an email out to Jerry McDonough asking about a new course (more in a minute).  I need to track down Allen Renear and verify what a few of the others have told me, and then there is the issue of the "missing" time ticket so that I can actually enroll.  That all said, here’s my current list and thinking:

  • 526LE  Searching Online Info Systems with Lynn Hanson
  • 590EPL  Electronic Publishing & Info Processing Standards with Julia Flanders
  • 590FO  Applied Ontologies in the Natural Sciences (new) with Allen Renear
  • 590IML  Information Modeling with Allen Renear
  • 590TML  Topic Maps: Theory and Practice (new) with ???
  • 590TR  Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science (new) with Carole Palmer

I know that I really need to taking Searching, someday.  My understanding is that it may also be changing very soon.  It has been a pretty much completely DIALOG-based class for years.  Supposedly by learning such a powerful, structured system we will acquire powerful, transferrable search skills.  Yes.  Maybe.  I have my doubts as to how transferrable.  If (most) other systems aren’t near as powerful then what good did it do to learn so many DIALOG specific commands, etc.?  There must be ways to teach important, and deep, searching skills with other search "systems;" ones more likely to actually be used nowadays.  So I’ll wait and see what happens.  Besides, just look at the rest of that list, would you?

Electronic Publishing is somewhat peripheral to my main interests, although an interest, but then I realized it’s being taught by Julia Flanders who I really enjoyed in the TEI workshop earlier this fall.  But, it will be a distance ed class, and it is secondary.  I have secured permission to enroll though.

I have been meaning to take Info Modeling with Allen for a while now, and I have secured permission to enroll in it also.  (On-campus students need permission to enroll in distance ed classes.)  But both Dave Dubin and Kathryn La Barre have told me to take Ontologies.  I think I’m agreeing with them, but I want to pop in and see what Allen says.

Topic Maps.  Dave Dubin told me to take it.  I forget who is teaching it, but someone BIG.  This is the class I have an email out to Jerry on.  He is not the instructor but he has some insight into it.  I’m also going to do a bit of research into the topic and see where topic maps currently sit in the world of info organization.  I’ve heard of them, but not really payed them any attention.  I think it fits my focus well, but then it sort of depends on where the class itself is focused.  Have secured permission for this one too.

Then there’s Carole’s new class on info transfer in the sciences.  Yes, it is peripheral to my main focus.  But it is a huge interest of mine:  Inter-, trans-, and multidiscplinarity, scholarly communication, info transfer, knowledge construction, and so on.  I really enjoyed 590CD2 Current Topics in Collection Development with her, and this, this is her specialty.

You know what?  Carole’s class isn’t the slightest bit peripheral.  I just have to think of it as part of the user-based portion of my education.  I have read enough of her work to be worried that all of the info organizing we’re doing might not actually be helping scholarly users.  If they find and use information in ways different, or at least orthogonal, from how we are organizing and classifying it then we are doing them a serious disservice and even hampering "progress."

So many important decisions.  And no time ticket to register.  I’m not really too worried though, because I’m fairly sure I will be let in the on-campus classes and one of the distance ed classes no matter what.

There’s also the question of how many classes I will have to, or will, take based on what kind of employment I secure.  If I get an hourly job (or two) I can do whatever I want; and that is 2 classes, or possibly 2.5 (which there really is no such thing).  But if I get an assistantship then that will determine what I "have" to do.  I may well take 3 anyway based on what is being offered. 

I am so excited about my adventure!  I am a lifelong education geek.  So be it.
 

TEI is too metadata!

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Yesterday, Dorothea Salo, at Caveat Lector, claimed that "TEI is not metadata!"  Now, while I have absolutely no desire to go toe-to-toe with Dorothea in an area in which she is clearly more qualified than me I am anyway.

She did back down a bit from her initial "is completely bogus" to say that the claim that TEI is metadata "requires more thought."  That I was happy to see, and I agree.  I also think I fully understand the issue she has with the claim.  But I’d also like to see a bit more on why. 

But first things first.  What is your working definition of metadata Dorothea?  I have no doubt that it is not that completely inane, "data about data" crap.

I’ll offer a rather loose definition, although I have no doubt that there may be better ones.  There certainly are more restrictive ones.

Metadata is here used to mean structured information about an information resource of any media type or format. This definition is mute on whether the structured information is electronic or not, or whether the resource described is electronic, network-accessible, or web-accessible. It also does not care whether the metadata is intended for human or machine consumption. However, it does place two constraints on what qualifies as metadata. First, the information must be structured, which is to say it cannot be a randomly accumulated or represented set of data elements, but must be recorded in accordance with some documented metadata scheme.

Second, the metadata must describe an information resource.

Caplan, Priscilla. Metadata Fundamentals for All Librarians. Chicago: ALA, 2003. p. 3

Hmmm.  Now, granted TEI is primarily for document markup.  But this markup works exactly as described above.  And while rich textual markup is the primary function of TEI, I just used TEI as a metadata format to encode bibliographic citations because it has a very rich bibliographic tag set.  Not a single bit of text markup in my files; it’s all metadata.

MODS, EAD, VRA Core are all also completely different beasts than MARC.  For instance, I doubt that the archival community would appreciate the suggestion that catalogers could just come in and do proper archival description and encoding.  Might give you MODS as easy for catalogers to learn for the somewhat obvious reason.  I also used it, and I got to say that I loved the way my XML editor would tell me exactly which MARC field and subfield(s) a specific tag matched. 

For beginning catalogers they all ought to be about equally easy to learn as MARC.  But for some, maybe many, experienced catalogers it’s going to be a completely different matter.  Of course, it really boils down to individual attitude towards learning.  I’m taking back the 1st sentence because it is a vastly different thing to describe "typical" library resources vs. archival resources vs. visual resources.  Might not be harder for beginners to learn, but besides the obvious differences between encoding formats, the "what" of what is being encoded is vastly different and requires a different way of thinking about the resource (and a different kind of education from basic cataloging).

Maybe I misused TEI to encode bib citations, but it was all metadata all the time for my project. 

And even if you claim it was misuse, fine.  I still maintain that structured text markup is metadata.  Perhaps text markup and cataloging are both just subsets of metadata.

If you think I’m full of it, fine.  I may well be; but give me a definition of metadata that excludes TEI.  Pulling out a Sesame Street comparison skit is not going to convince me I’m wrong.  Because I agree that, in at least one sense, TEI is not like the others.  But then I could pull out a sense in which each one is not like the others.  They all are used to describe vastly different entities.  TEI just happens to describe information within an information resource (generally), and not the resource itself, or the aboutness of the resource.  I have a hard time seeing that as a fundamental difference, though.

So I guess what I’m asking for Dorothea is the why of why you think the claim that TEI is metadata "requires more thought."

Oh, and in case I don’t sound like it, I am trying to be lighthearted here.  I really don’t think Dorthea and I even disagree.  We’re just approaching it from different ends; unless she has a vastly different working definition of metadata.

And I hope you get to feeling better already!

Tools of the trade

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  Tools of the trade 
  Originally uploaded by broken thoughts.

Not sure what rock I’ve been hiding under, but thanks to a recent comment here I finally found the LibraryTavern: Order a Shot of Knowledge at the Library Tavern: A Tavern Where Individuals May Imbibe Information, written by Liz, the Library Tavern Wench.

I figured a couple $2 pints of fresh Guinness can’t hurt a seriously over tired boy sleep tonight.  I read the article on the left on authority control and then indexed a printed version of another blog post.

By the way Liz, I’ll be heading your way soon for my "baby" girl’s graduation from Oberlin College on Memorial Day.

Bloginality

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Based on 4 not-so-simple (to me anyway) questions, it seems that my bloginality is INTP.

As an INTP, you are Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.
This
makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with an Extraverted Intution.

This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung’s
Rational
(Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Architect or
Thinker.

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with
the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren’t
your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do
a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

Found at LibraryTavern, which sounds like a mighty fine place to hang out!

And if anyone is wondering why I’m doing so many quizzes at the moment … well, we had the wrong sorts of storms last night.  I slept like crap for most of the night and was up at 4:15 AM.  Despite all the caffeine, I’m wiped.  I’d rather be knocking out some homework but I’m just trying to stay awake until a decent time to go to bed; and this is after an hour nap earlier.

But then I can’t complain much.  Many people in town and the surrounding states had it much worse than me [No idea how stable that News-Gazoo link is].

Or for even nearer (much nearer) to my place, see pictures here.  All of these places are a 2-3 minute walk from me.

Which yellow and white math book are you?

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"Whew," he says wiping his brow.  I was worried after seeing what Christina Pikas got that I’d get something I have no idea what it is.  Alright, truth be told, I don’t know what the heck algebraic geometry is either.  I know what algebra is, and what geometry is, but some nightmare clone?  Not so much.  Besides, who knew these things could breed?

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Joe Harris’s Algebraic Geometry: A First Course.

I am intended to introduce students to algebraic geometry; to give them a sense of the basic objects considered, the questions asked about them,  and the sort of answers one can expect to obtain. I thus emphasize the classical roots of the subject. For readers interested in simply seeing what the subject is about, I avoid the more technical  details better treated with the most recent methods. For readers interested in pursuing the subject further, I will provide a  basis for understanding the developments of the last half century, which have put the subject on a radically new footing. Based on lectures given at Brown and Harvard Universities, I retain the informal style of the lectures and stresses examples throughout; the theory is developed as needed. My first part is concerned with introducing basic varieties and constructions; I describe, for example, affine and projective varieties, regular and rational maps, and particular classes of varieties such as determinantal varieties and algebraic groups. My second part discusses attributes of varieties, including dimension, smoothness, tangent spaces and cones,  degree, and parameter and moduli spaces.

Which Springer GTM would you be?
The Springer GTM
Test

Found at Christina’s LIS Rant

What kind of polyhedral are you?

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It’s true.  Really.  I do have a distinct dorky side.  I even used to subscribe to a journal called Polyhedron. 

The sad part is I’m paying good money to store them, along with all that other stuff from TSR (and elsewhere; and no, not WotC) that I probably spent a cool grand on over time.  OK, OK, probably way more than a grand.

But hey, it eventually was a way to bound with my kids.  How many parents get to say the played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with their spawn?

I am a d8

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Not sure why they don’t include all of the text from the results, but here it is:

No use trying to fight it, you’re an eight-sided die, a d8. A fine example of simple elegance, the d8 is one of the least appreciated types of dice, and is often neglected. You are known to be quiet and shy, outward traits that conceal viscous sarcasm and mean wit. You are very smart, yet wise enough to hide your intelligence the quicker they found out how smart you are, the sooner they’ll put you to work, which is something you can do without. People call you dark and pessimistic, or moody and cynical. You find little point in arguing.

Found at the "Shrewd, petty and evil" one’s blog, in the hoosegow.  Hehehe.  Wimpy, little d4.  But she does have a much cooler D&D-related name.  I sure played a lot of rangers in my day.

And some days I’m not such a fan of the Midwest…

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Seems we’re under a tornado watch and a tornado warning.  The sirens were going off just a few minutes ago.  We have a severe thunderstorm and rain squalls, and some serious winds. 

One of the apartments across the way looked like the wind was whipping around inside of it and then it began to look like it was on fire.  So being the good citizen I am (and idiot), I ran outside in all this crap to make sure.  It’s not, and I guess I’m glad I did, but it was no fun.  I think the wind is managing to continuously ripple the glass in their sliding glass door to make it all look really weird from my vantage point.

The electricity has been popping in and out, but I have all the important stuff on uninterruptable power supplies.  I went ahead and cut all the nonessentials off anyway.  Heck, I want to hear if it gets real quiet all of a sudden.  Otherwise, I’m not hanging out in my bathroom, which must be the safest room in my one-story apartment.  Or maybe the laundry room, but there’s more stuff up high to fall in there.

I honestly expect to lose my internet soon.  Then I’ll be mad!

It seems there have been a tornado and funnel cloud spotted by "trained weather spotters."   One was NE of me, and the other NW, both moving NE.  I sure hope everyone in those little towns are OK up there.

Welcome to April in central Illinois!