Monthly Archives: September 2006

Some nights I hate my body

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So it seems it is one of those headaches.

I’ve gotten almost no sleep, must move very slowly, and am seriously dreading my backpack. At least it isn’t a class day. Of course, the old college catalogs that I’m working on are not going to help either.

When I got up this morning I tried to make a doctor’s appt. but there are none available, with any of the doctor’s. They supposedly keep a few reserved for special cases so I may call them. I am trying to stay calm and “relaxed.”

So many things to do on a tight schedule the next few days. The. pain. must. stop. Please.

Some nights I love my town

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I took myself out to the Blind Pig this evening for some reading and beers. I enjoyed a couple draft König Ludwig Weissen while sitting outside.

I read some of my Database System Concepts book (Silberschatz, et. al.) for Saturday’s upcoming LEEP “weekend” oncampus class and an article by Svenonius, “An Ideal Classification for an On-line Catalog.” The article had several relevant points for my classification seminar presentation and for my project for my info transfer … in science class.

The only thing that might have made it better was if the headache I was trying to avoid actually got avoided and if I had gotten hit on. As I asked Jenny B, who I had a nice conversation with via IM once I opened the laptop up, “What could be hotter than reading Svenonius in public?” ;)

As I said, once I got done reading I opened the laptop and had a nice chat with Jenny.

I was trying to place the barkeep for a while and then I finally decided that it must be Kayla Brown, a local musician. I saw her solo acoustic almost 1 1/2 years ago and then one more time almost a year ago. She’s been having a solo album coming out for a while but not yet. I chatted with her when I went to pay my bill. The CD is done but “they” are waiting to release it until January or so due to “marketing” reasons. Have I mentioned how I hate marketers? She also DJs drum ‘n’ bass music which is something my son is into big time. I was actually listening to some dnb she did over the interwebs right before heading in to pay my tab.

Such a nice town where you can hang out, drink beers, sit outside still (with a light jacket), and be served by a local musician who you like (live, at least).

LEEP “weekend” starts tomorrow. I am so looking forward to hanging out with my distance ed friends and making new ones. I just wish they had a little more time to hang out when they’re here….

WordPress upgrade. Success…?

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It looks as if I may have just successfully upgraded to WordPress 2.0.4. I’ll hold off on the self-congratulatory “hurrah” until I see if things really did go well.

Along those lines, please let me know if anything is odd.

Crap. I think I had done something with my feed…. I’ll have to see if I get this in Bloglines or if I broke the feed. It does look as if my minor header formatting changes kept.

Please let me know if you notice anything wonky.

Update: I got the post in Bloglines!  Yay!  And yes, it really is that fast from my WordPress blog.  Less than 2 minutes.

Yay for LISHost

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Thank you (again) Blake. I decided to try and get some blog-related maintenance done today, like backing up so I could upgrade my WordPress install. I downloaded the new version quite a while ago but never got upgraded.

I went to connect to my domain with my SFTP client and no luck. All I got was some stupid message about PASV mode needing to be off possibly and possible server firewalls. I tried several things, including turning off PASV mode, which had been on before when things had worked previously, to the best of my knowledge.

I finally sent an email to LISHost and within 2 hours (again) Blake had responded. It seems PASV mode does need to be off. I ensured it was still off in Fetch, my SFTP client, and in my System Preferences. Still no luck.

Blake also suggested I try Fugu, a different SFTP client for the Mac. I downloaded it and went to configure it. Taking a look at my setting in Fetch—so I could copy them over—I noticed they had gotten changed at some point. They were pointing at the LEEP server at school for some idiotic reason! Anyway, I dug out my initial setup email from Blake and had Fugu up and running in no time.

I finished getting the WordPress backup plugin configured and ran it. It hung at 55% the 1st time I tried. I gave it about 20 minutes but nothing changed. I hit Home and went back into WordPress and tried again. This time I had a file ready to download within seconds. Yay!

Now I think I should be OK to try and upgrade. If my blog completely disappears sometime soon, don’t panic (as I’ll be doing enough for both of us), it’s just me trying to upgrade. Honestly, I expect things to go well. Hopefully no one will even notice. I’ve done so little customization that even if I lose that no one will probably notice; except me. If I do lose it, then I hope I’ll do a better job of annotating my changes elsewhere this time.

“1st years”: an execration

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execration n. 1.c. Utter detestation; intense abhorrence. OED, 2nd ed. 1989.

Last night I had the pleasure of the company of five of our new “1st years” at The Blind Pig for beers and conversation (Jim, Natalie, Megan, Margaret and Jake).

Now, it is not the new students who I consider to be an execration, but the term “1st years.” [If you've been reading this blog for more than a week or two then you should know that I love every one of our new crops of students!] I’ve heard this referent since I first got to GSLIS in the summer of 2004. I have no idea how long it has been in use, but it really needs to stop.

[Update: I do not mean to imply that this term is used derogatorily; only that it is used as a term to distinguish between people. For more clarification, see my reply to Jenny in the comments.]
I fully understand the use in reference to doctoral students. Most of them are here for 5+ years. For those who are here towards the longer end of the spectrum they may prefer to actually stop counting at some point. That, though, is an entirely different issue.

Where did the masters students get it from? Was it borrowed from the doctoral students or is it more pop culture-oriented? That is, did it come from Harry Potter? My gut feeling is, yes. I have no “proof,” nor even evidence. But I do have my suspicions.

Either way, it’s use in regards to masters students is completely inane. At. best. The kids in the Hogwart’s universe attend school for 7 years. That is, if they don’t get killed first. They are basically young doctoral students. Numbers on the order of seven deserve to be counted.

Numbers on the order of two, unless in binary, often do not need to be counted. What, pray tell, is the difference between a “1st year” and a “2nd year”? Heck, many of our masters students (oncampus) only stay for a year, that is, they get their 40 hours completed in one fall, spring, summer cycle. Those of us on the slower route stay 2 years or a bit more.

I have been one of the “slowest” masters students recently. I started in a summer and went through my second spring. Depending on how one counts, that was 2+ years or only (under) 2 years—June 2004 to May 2006. What is the purpose of differentiating between 1st and 2nd in these cases?

That first class I took in the summer of 2004 was one of the 2 required course we have at UIUC GSLIS. Masters students are supposed to get them both out of the way as soon as possible, that is in their 1st two semesters. There are always some who manage to leave one of them to last. We, in fact, did have a few “2nd years” in our class. They are the ones who introduced this loathsome concept to us. Was there any difference between them and the majority of us who were just starting? No. Not really. They were just (much) closer to graduation.

As for our LEEP (distance ed) students, they don’t use this referent to the best of my knowledge. They have a much more useful way to differentiate themselves, despite the fact they do generally take a bit longer to finish. LEEP students have a cohort number each year, which is how they generally refer to themselves. In fact, if you meet LEEP students from the early days of the LEEP program they too will introduce themselves by their cohort. This year, cohorts 11.1 and 11.2 started the program (it being the 11th year of LEEP). Cohort numbers seem to even be a bit of pride for LEEPers.

Maybe the masters students should count by semesters if they really need to practice their math skills. I mean that way they can at least count up to three or possibly six, except in the rarest of cases.

Worst, I have no idea what I am now. As usual, I am confused under such a system. I am in my 3rd year at GSLIS, but it would be senseless to call me a “3rd year.” I’m not that slow; I have started another degree. Should I be referred to as a “1st year” CAS student? Please, NO! There’s so few of us we really have no need to count.

I’m sure it is just me, but the use of the terms “1st year” and “2nd year” to refer to students who will only be here for either one or two years at most is senseless. IMHO it is inane, inapt, awkward, banal and an execrable use of language.

I have decided that I dislike it even more than “Happy Place.” And that, as a few of you know, is really saying something!

Smurf or ’70s Girl

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I went to take a look the quiz Liz at LibraryTavern posted about yesterday, but I just wasn’t in the mood to display that I am supposedly 67% Seventies Girl. Oops!

But I did see the Smurf Name Generator and couldn’t resist. And once I had my new Smurf name firmly in my electronic grasp I certainly had to share. So apropos:

Your Smurf Name is
Strange Smurf
Get Your Smurf Name at Quizopolis.comQuizopolis

[Sorry about that, but the nutcases who coded the results made the text the same color as the background. With so many nested tables it took me a couple seconds to figure that out.]

[OK, this things was coded by a complete idiot!  I tried fix it up some, but it is not worth the effort.]

Hey, it’s my alma mater (one, anyway)

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Today while I was finishing up some copy-cataloging of 2 issues of Patria, a journal about José Martí‘s writings, I was given a present. [Editorial aside: I consider it a wonderful world when a former nuclear missile site-based Cold Warrior can help make writings about a Cuban "revolutionary" available.)

Seems we have a patron interested in some junior college materials. I was given several stacks of materials (catalogs, bulletins, Dean's reports,...) and told "we" had told the patron we would have them ready by next Saturday.

They all have call numbers and some are bound. Most have very minimal (and inaccurate) bib records but no holdings or item records.

At first, I wasn't even sure if they were all from the same "entity." But thankfully, the City Colleges of Chicago have a decent history on their website. By the way, City Colleges of Chicago, Overseas Division awarded me my Associates Degree.

The materials range from 1915 to 1974. They also appear to be all we have. Or the rest is hidden very well; even better than these were, wherever they were. I could even donate a few catalogs from the mid-1980's. I wonder if the patron is interested in them?

The 1st thing I did was to make myself a document that I could manipulate in various ways that listed everything I had. I initially did it by call number, but have arranged it by date for here (and removed a few bits). Blank lines between titles are to show me a minor (often very minor) title change. Dates in [] are what is on the item as part of the call number. I also put a couple notes in to show myself some missing “issues.” While the document isn’t perfect, I think it’ll help me concentrate on what I have and help get it entered correctly. Oh, and my titles are not the titles proper, but more vague transcriptions in the order they are on the documents themselves. All these caveats aside, here’s what I’m expectantly dealing with when I go back to work on Monday:

Group 1

1. A Circular of Information concerning Crane Junior College April 1915 (Title from cover) [1914/15]
2. A Circular of Information concerning Crane Junior College September 1918 (Title from cover) [1918/19]
3. A Circular of Information concerning Crane Junior College September 1920 (Title from cover) [1920/21]
4. A Circular of Information concerning Crane Junior College September 1921 (Title from cover) [1921/22]
5. A Circular of Information concerning Crane Junior College September 1922 (Title from cover) [1922/23]

6. Bulletin of Crane Junior College September 1924 (Title from cover) [1924/25]
7. Bulletin of Crane Junior College September 1925 (Title from cover) [1925/26]
8. Bulletin of Crane Junior College June 1926 [1926/27]
9. Bulletin of Crane Junior College March 1927 [1927/28]
10. Bulletin of Crane Junior College September 1929 [1929/30]

Group 2

1. Catalog of Crane Junior College (Municipal College of Chicago), December 1930
2. Catalog of Crane Junior College (City College of Chicago), January 1932

Group 3

Annual Reports of the Dean: Crane Junior College: 1930-1932 (Title from cover)

Group 4 [Bound]

1. Announcement of the Chicago Christian High School and Junior College 1931-1932
2. The Chicago Junior College: Supplementary Bulletin 1932-1933
3. The Chicago Junior College: Catalog for 1933-1934
4. The Chicago Christian College (Formerly The Chicago Junior College): Catalog for 1934-1935
[These are sort of questionable still. Whoever pulled these went as far as suggesting they may need to be disbound. I'm not convinced that's true yet, though.]

Group 5

1. Bound 1935/36-1944/45
a. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, September 1935 (cover)
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcements, 1935-1936 (t.p.)
b. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1936-1937
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1936-1937 (t.p.)
c. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1937-1938
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1937-1938 (t.p.)
d. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1938-1939
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1938-1939 (t.p.)
e. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1939-1940
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1939-1940 (t.p.)
f. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1940-1941
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1940-1941 (t.p.)
g. Bulletin of Chicago Junior Colleges, 1941-1942
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1941-1942 (t.p.)
h. Bulletin of Chicago Junior College, 1942-1943
Chicago Junior Colleges: Announcement, 1942-1943 (t.p.)

i. Bulletin of the Chicago Junior College, 1943-1944
The Chicago Junior College: Announcement, 1943-1944 (t.p.)
j. Bulletin of the Chicago Junior College, 1944-1945
The Chicago Junior College: Announcement, 1944-1945 (t.p.)

2. Bound 1945/46-1953/54
a. Bulletin of the Chicago Junior College, 1945-1946
The Chicago Junior College: Announcement, 1945-1946 (t.p.)

b. Bulletin of the Chicago City Junior College, 1946-1947
The Chicago City Junior College: Announcement, 1946-1947 (t.p.)

c. The Chicago City Junior College Bulletin, 1947-1948
The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1947-1948 (t.p.)
d. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1948-1949 (t.p.)
e. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1949-1950 (t.p.)
f. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1950-1951 (t.p.)
g. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1951-1952 (t.p.)
h. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1952-1953 (t.p.)
i. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1953-1954 (t.p.)

3. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1954-1955 (t.p.)
4. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1955-1956 (t.p.)
5. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1956-1957 (t.p.)
6. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1957-1958 (t.p.)
7. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1958-1959 (t.p.)
8. The Chicago City Junior College: Bulletin, 1959-1960 (t.p.)

Group 6

1. The Chicago City Junior College Catalogue 1961-1962
missing 1962-1963
2. The Chicago City Junior College Catalogue 1963-1964
3. Chicago City Junior College 1964-1965 Catalog
missing 1965-1966
4. Chicago City College 1966-1967 Catalog
5. Chicago City College 1967-1968 Catalog
6. Chicago City College Catalog 68-69
7. Chicago City College Catalog 69-70
8. City Colleges of Chicago Catalog 70-71
9. City Colleges of Chicago Catalog 71-72
missing 72-73
10. City Colleges of Chicago 73-74 [Not a catalog]
11. Wright College Catalog 73-74

It appears that in ’73-74, or possibly ’72-73, all of the campuses got their own catalogs. Item #10 is only the text in the front of all college catalogs about matriculation, fees, etc. that apply across all entities of the system. The actual catalog part has been removed, and the Wright College Catalog is the only example we have of one of the then newly separate catalogs.

I’m really enjoying this job so far!

Piratical

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This one’s for Jason and in honor of International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Richard had a Pirate party Saturday night. I was at a loss for a costume so I ended up adapting an old Army PT shirt. My letter sizing and spacing was a bit off so what was going to be “Pirate” became “Piratical.”

Several people loved the word “piratical.” Jason was fine with it, but questioned its authenticity and wondered about it vs. “piratic.” I told him it would sound less odd if we used words like “pirate” and its various forms more often. If we talked about pirates we would have more chance to use piratical.

So besides such wonderful words like piratedom, pirately, piratically, piratism, piratize, and piratously, the OED lists both piratic and piratical. Might I mention that many of these forms start out “= piratical.”

piratic, adj. Of, relating to, or resembling a pirate or pirates; piratical. Piratic War the war waged by Gaius Pompeius Magnus (106-48 B.C. in order to regain control of the Mediterranean for Rome from pirates.

1st use: 1640J. DAY Parl. Bees (1641) sig. C1, He..Out-law-like doth challenge as his owne Your Highnes due, nay Pyratick detaines The waxen fleet sailing upon your plaines.

piratical, adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a pirate or piracy; engaged in or promoting acts of piracy; inhabited by pirates.

1st use: 1550 T. NICOLLS tr. Thucydides Hist. Peloponnesian War I. i, The sayde Pyratycall or theuyshe crafte. 1579-80 in D. Masson Reg. Privy Council Scotl. (1880) 1st Ser. III. 255 Thair piraticall and weikit deidis. 1622 BACON Advt. Holy Warre in Wks. (1879) I. 528/1 The piratical war which was achieved by Pompey the Great.

So, “piratical” has three uses before “piratic,” including one by Bacon. Hmmm. Well, lest I be accused of my own “piraticall and weikit deidis,” I will not link to any photos. But I will ask whether any man in a grass skirt ought to be questioning the adjectival usage of Pirate Bruno the Infected?

FRBR complexities

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FRBR is a fairly complex concept. In some cases, that is a complete understatement! [Short version from LOC. Long version from IFLA (pdf).]

Much work has been done to date, but it has been mostly restricted to prolific authors and composers and works with many expressions. This is important, as this is where FRBR is most useful. A single original monograph that is published in only one edition and one printing by an author who never writes another publshed work, nor is adapted, transformed, abridged, etc., is not going to be impacted by FRBR in any significant way.

More recently, folks are starting to look at other areas of importance to the FRBR model. In that vein, I recently read the following two articles:

Delsey, Tom. “Modeling Subject Access: Extending the FRBR and FRANAR Conceptual Models.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 39(3/4): 2005, pp. 49-61. doi: 10.1300/J104v39n03_04

Jones, Ed. “The FRBR Model as Applied to Continuing Resources.” Library Resources & Technical Services 49(4): October 2005, 227-242.

I recommend both of these articles if you have a basic understanding of FRBR (and if not, check out the “short version” above).

The Delsey article seems very well reasoned, but it relies heavily on the indecs model. I am not familiar enough with this model to decide if it should serve as a proper model to build a subject model within FRBR from. [There should be a less than and greater than sign around "indecs," like it is a tag or something, but WordPress is refusing to encode the less than sign and even removes the "in" following it when I put it in as either a numeric or named entity. I sure hope Dante reserved a special level of Hell for anyone naming their organization or project like a tag.]

The Jones article spends a good deal of effort to highlight the issues with continuing resources under the FRBR model. The first issue is that there are currently two concepts of work at play in continuing resources (content-based and title-based). Jones does a good job showing how we got to this point historically. He also demonstrates issues with “(2) the hierarchies used for expressing bibliographic resources; (3) the level of abstraction at which bibliographic resources are described; and (4) the varying techniques for expressing relationships among bibliographic resources” (228).

Check them out, you might learn something.

Interdisciplinarity links

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NOTE: Feel free to ignore this post. It is a compilation of all the posts I have written (that I can find) on the topic of interdisciplinarity. I need to collect them in one place as I begin on my project for LIS590TR Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science.

Uses and users of information / Kuhlthau 5 Mar 05

Kuhlthau’s ISP Model 13 Apr 05

How much “history” is history? 1 Sep 05

Interdisciplinarity…or why do I always choose topics that are hard to type? 2 Sep 05

Information Work at the Boundaries 3 Sep 05

Bibliography as an Interdisciplinary Information Service 10 Sep 05

O student, pay thee attention 13 Sep 05

More articles on Interdisciplinarity 5 Oct 05

Among the Disciplines 17 Oct 05

Specialization, Territoriality, and Jurisdiction 8 Nov 05

Anne Balsamo speaks at GSLIS 16 Sep 06

Advances in Classification Research Vol. 13 17 Sep 06

Have also read:

Denda, Kayo. “Beyond Subject Headings: A Stuctured Information Retrieval Tool for Interdisciplinary Fields.” Library Resources & Technical Services 49(4): Oct 2005, 266-75.

Hurt, C. D. “Classification and Subject Analysis: Looking to the Future at a Distance.” Cataloging and Classification: Trends, Transformations, Teaching, and Training. NY : Haworth Press, 1997 [CCQ 24(1/2)].

Thomas, Angela R. S. “New Roles for Classification in Libraries and Information Networks: An Excerpt Bibliography.” CCQ 21(2): 1995, 91-118. [Need to start tracking some of these down.]