Yesterday afternoon after a not-so-great apartment hunting expedition I went to the LIS Library to collect the materials that Pauline spoon fed us to get us started on our reading reports.
Last night I went to Kasey’s party at Boltini due to cancellation of Schlossball. [Pics here.] When I got up this AM it was beautiful out so I leisurely got ready to go to Market on the Square for my 2nd breakfast. The Market only opened last weekend so there aren’t yet a lot of venders, and not too many fresh vegetables or fruits yet either. A few things though. I got some ginger snap cookies and a blueberry muffin. I ate the muffin while sitting on a curb with my coffee and people watching. [Pics here.] Saw several folks. Ran into Matt and Mary who were on break from the Books to Prisoners book sale. Bought some beeswax candles.
After putting my stuff in the car I headed in to the book sale. Found an iris show and contest in the mall. I didn’t bother taking anything but snapshots but there were some lovely ones (irises, not snapshots). [Pics here.] Matt asked me if I wanted to open a request letter from a prisoner so I did. We were able to supply them a new dictionary (which they requested) and I was able to find one book sort of related to one of their other requests.
I told Matt that it had just been a ruse to get me looking in places I could have more easily avoided on my own. I ended up with 10 books for $6.50. Matt jotted a reply on the letter I had opened and wrapped up the dictionary and book I found and addressed it to be mailed. I went and paid for my books.
I got the following books:
Validity in Interpretation, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. 1967.
The Elements of Figurative Language, Bradford T. Stull. (Elements of Composition series) 2002.
The Changing Nature of Man: Introduction to a Historical Psychology, J. H. van den Berg. 1964. (one of Dr. Stivers’ influences)
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, T.S. Eliot and Edward Gorey. 1982. This lovely little beast (but as a cassette read by Sir John Gielgud and Irene Worth, not as a paperback for sale to grade schoolers, although cover is basically the same) caused untoward havoc early on last semester in Advanced Cataloging. Laurie brought it to me to remind me and I figured it’s definitely worth 50 cents.
What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason, Hubert L. Dreyfus. 1992. (another Stivers’ influence)
The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Familes, Mary Pipher. 1996.
Directions in Cognitive Anthropology, Janet. W. D. Dougherty, ed. 1985. I’m not familiar with anyone in this collection as best I know, but what kind of classificationist would I be if I weren’t interested in Section titles like "The Representation of Basic Categories," "Contexts for Learning and Reapplying Cultural Knowlege," or "Systems of Cultural Knowledge?" Anyway, for a half a buck it might point me to something extremely interesting.
Adventures of the Mind, from the Saturday Evening Post, ed. by Richard Thruelsen and John Kobler. Intro by Mark Van Doren. 1959. From the year of my birth. 21 essays by leading intellectuals of the time: Loren Eiseley, Jacques Barzun "The Misbehavioral Sciences," Paul Tillich "The Lost Dimension in Religion," J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edith Hamilton, Aldous Huxley "Drugs That Shape Men’s Minds," Edith Sitwell, Hans Selye "What Makes Basic Research Basic?," Lewis Mumford "How War Began," Aaron Copland, S. I. Hayakawa "How Words Change Our Lives," Bertrand Russell, ….
The knowledge of these essays has crossed my path a few times, as has Mark Van Doren.
Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge, Edward Barrett, ed., 1992. I’m not familiar with too many of the authors in this collection of 25 essays and an intro essay by the editor but it looks promising. A note says that most of these papers were presented at the 1st conference on "The Social Creation of Knowledge," directed by the editor in Spring 1991. Here are two that might be of interest to many, especialy in an historical context:
Anderson, Gregory T. "Dimensions, Context, and Freedom: The Library in the Social Creation of Knowledge." 107-124.
Conclusion: Knowledge creators, librarians, and technologists need to establish the organizational and technological infrastructures to play with the possibilities for the creation of knowledge. We need to build libraries that are transformed into the networked information environment, and we need to propagate them with a variety of electronic data upon which systems can be designed and prototyped. We must find data and work with them in order to learn about delivering knowledge and about multimedia system design.
We need to play, to fulfill our drive to play, our spieltrieb. Let’s strive for greater continuity between research and application. Let’s be prepared to fail and be prepared to succeed. As we succeed we must prepare ourselves for a very different and exciting world where the social creation of knowledge is nurtured by the services of libraries and of multimedia" (123).
Burnett, Katheleen. "Multimedia and Library and Information Studies Curriculum." 125-139.
The Administration of the College Library, 3rd ed., Guy R. Lyle, 1961 [1944, 1949]. I thought this might be amusing for $1.
Apartment hunting. My realtor has a lot of furnished places in Urbana but few unfurnished left. I saw two places yesterday (that are even possibilities).
The first is a basement. Seems pretty decent all in all and is cheap. Parking. A washer and dryer for a few apartments. But it is dark. The front door, at the bottom of a stairwell, has a window in it. And in the bedroom there is [ this ]. That’s it for natural light. I don’t think I can do that. I could buy lots of fluorescent grow lights for the plants and me, but I think that would just be asking for a massive depressive episode on everyone’s account.
The second was a 2 bedroom, odd shape. Possible parking. More apartments in the group. More light, but still little. A small window in the smallest bedroom. And the entire front wall (except the front door) is plate glass with floor-to-ceiling vertical blinds. So, if you want light in your place you have to open your entire front room to view. The place is laid out kind of like a cheap hotel might be. Sad, really. This story line to be continued….
I need to get reading much of that stuff I acquired yesterday. More on my group reading report when we get further. I’m in 2 groups for this class. Beth, Kristin and I are doing our thesaurus as a group. Beth works for User Services (where I started) and Kristin is a 
member. We’re doing our thesaurus for our budding knowledge management system for the Office of Technology and Research (User Services, Applications Development, and Systems Administration) and Instructional Technology and Design Office .
The 2nd group is my Reading Report group, briefly mentioned at the beginning, which is Kristin again, Shaw and me.
I need to run out to the grocery store and other places too. Dang. Oops. iPod needs charging. Maybe I’ll go to the store this evening. Time to either get this entered or start on reading about merging thesauri.
Time keeps flowing….
A couple hours later and here’s this post, still in rough shape, and no shopping done. Of course, the iPod isn’t charged yet, but still. I’m not reading stuff for class. <shame>