Category Archives: Conversation

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Life. What the fuck is that anyway? How do we know if we’re living it?

Mama I’m strange
The thoughts and the wants are the locks on the back of my brain

Melissa Etheridge. “Mama I’m Strange.” breakdown.

Last week ended … weirdly. In a flattering way mind you, but nonetheless weirdly. One could do with more of (parts of) that.

Friday was a very slow day with a few hours to make up due to weirdness.

Last night I really slept like crap. I had multiple bad headaches. I could and did manage to find another “place” in my mind/head every so often but in every place I found another, different, bad headache. I should have went to bed way sooner than I did.

Stayed up too late, and watched a movie.

Now I’ve been sitting at this computer almost all day and I’m very tense. And if not at the computer(s), then I’ve still probably been sitting. Been freezing rain and stuff outside. Thankful I am for online public library renewal.

And, as one will notice based on further reading, I’ll be sitting at the computer(s) for a while now.

Aunt Wanda

Thursday my mom called to tell me that my Aunt Wanda had had an operation and that at some point she started fighting for her life. Mom called this morning to let me know that Aunt Wanda had passed earlier this morning.

… and i really don’t know how it happened so fast
how we all grew so old
how we fell out of touch …

Eva Hunter. “Cold Shivers.” Fancy Prairie.

I will most likely be attending a funeral in St. Louis in the next several days. Eva’s son, thankfully, does not tell the entire story.

I got to (re)know my Aunt just a few years ago. Unlike when I was a kid, I found her very comforting to be around and my view of our relationship and her importance in my life [mostly] from a very early age was dramatically shifted to the better. I am so glad for that. I haven’t seen her in a few years either now since last spending some quality time with her. I am so very sad about that.

I accidentally left a very important (personal meaning) knee pillow at her house the last time I was there. I knew it was safe.

Do I wear a uniform? How in the hell do I begin to answer that question now?

What I should be doing

Should be seriously focusing on bibliography. Need annotations (lots of re-reading), lots of synthesis (lots of re-readings), well-crafted essay on the connections between Harris and Hjørland and due fairly soon. Need drafty thing real soon. Finished in two weeks, perhaps.

Also have class in the rare book room Wed. AM to see 2oth century fine press books.

Only thing left in Dave’s class (Python) is a lecture next Thur. and then a take-home final which I’ll have a week for. Unfortunately during prime bibliographical essay writing time.

I have a draft of my CAS paper proposal (for Spring) out for comment. Awaiting feedback. Won’t make registration during Fall but want to be ready to register as soon as it re-opens at start of Spring.

As I hope any library-type reading this knows, the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control Draft Final Report came out. Comments are only open until 15 Dec. Comment link on the previous link.

I began reading this Friday morning but haven’t gotten very far. This is very important in my opinion but the timing really sucks for academics (and many others) whose semesters will be wrapping during and until the deadline.

I hope I have time to comment on this. If I am tight on time (“if” haha.) then I may concentrate on the educational part 5. But maybe something else will really capture my thoughts as I read it, so who knows?

Little time to be as engaged in this as I would like. See my various comments re CommentPress version of this.

What I am doing

thinking I should clean my apartment. dead give-away.

books read in 2007 data collection. primarily this, but am also generating data for related things so I’m annotating in various ways as note-taking and data verification. But not on anything imminently critical. [did a lot of this earlier in the day.]

calling my brother-in-law for his birthday, Christmas-time arrangments discussion.

looking/listening for linguistically-related song snippets for use as epigraphs. no time to explain.

dreaming about going beyond what I need to be doing in the present re my CAS project. Doing what needs to be done soon is important, and it is a part of what needs to be doing overall, and a time to reflect, consider, synthesize, and present some of that coherently. All critical. Yet, still, I want to go on questing.

thinking about my aunt, and a funeral.

not thinking about the topic of my bibliography.

reading a bit more of the Working Group report. dreaming about what I’d love to do with it but simply cannot. We need a CommentPress version. Quickly.

writing blog posts. [across all of day.]

Recent life before now

I went to Columbus, OH to be with Sara, Max, and others for Thanksgiving.

Monday afternoon I went to Bloomington-Normal for a dental appointment. Saw my friends Mo & Chris and a few others. Ended the evening not feeling very well.

Slept like crap (not as bad as last night). Was sick on Tuesday. Unfortunately, where it was all overcast when I didn’t want to climb out of bed at 6 AM on Monday, on Tuesday when I didn’t climb out bed for a couple hours it was all bright out.

Need to make that missed time up during break.

Wednesday through the present, thinking & scribbling about (scholarly) annotation tools [began in the context of MDRT discussion pt. 2 on OAI-ORE.

A non-wrap up

So work towards my bibliography is most crucial and not getting done. Not capable of much sustained, coherent thought at the moment it seems. And the only serious reading I am trying at the moment is the LC Working Group report.

Life cares not a whit for good timing.

This is still confused and/or confusing, in an odd order, evasive, etc. Little of that is actually intended. Sorry.

“Perhaps they’re better left unsung”

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If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music?
Would you hold it near, as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
…

Grateful Dead ¤ Ripple ¤ American Beauty

As some of you know I am not doing so hot again.

Before I go any further, let me say “Thank you!” to those of you who check in with me, make me laugh and remind me that those I care about also must face their own demons. I think (hope) you know who you are.

There are so many reasons for my current situation; many are old and highly persistent. Many will never be mentioned here.

I am sick, again. Now many people in the world are facing far more serious health issues than I am. But, nonetheless, this almost constant low-grade ill feeling for the last year and a half or so has become tiresome, in multiple ways. It is also actively interfering with any attempt to actually get back in better shape so that I could generally feel better. Viciously circular, ’tis.

It is also that time in “the cycle.” Spring is, or at least used to be, much worse. A few of you are aware of why that is and I’ll leave it at that. But this past Spring went quite well; even dreadful expectation didn’t make it too bad. Oh, there were small issues, no doubt, but my hard learned coping skills were enough.

This time I’m not so sure. I still noticed the onset of “symptoms” and I have begun implementing those skills. Check. But something is different.

I’ve had a few realizations recently that have affected me deeply. One will never be talked about here but it is something which I absolutely cannot stand about myself. Perhaps it can change as it is a fairly recent phenomena.

The other has been building over time but has only recently found full expression. It, too, was fairly devastating for a while. I have since realized that, although true, it was only one side of the story. The other side, which I had been telling myself and many others, is also true.

Despite my continuing education being a way to avoid facing much about the state of my life, it still serves all of the more positive reasons that I have espoused. And those reasons will serve my patrons, my employer, and myself quite well.

In the meantime, I am about through with “school.” Although my education does not match most of those who have been (somewhat rightfully) complaining about the state of LIS education in the blogosphere, and elsewhere, it is starting to grate on me. In my case, it is not the content of LIS or any other discipline. It is school. Although I have an amazing department and set of professors and instructors who almost never give busy work or meaningless assignments or other kinds of assignments to be derided, I nonetheless could care less about doing most of my assignments.

I simply want to read and to discuss what I’ve read with folks who have also read and care about the issues involved. I don’t care if they agree with me either. Just make me think. Of course, I also want to spend time with people who think somewhat along the same lines as I do so that we may jointly attack issues and problems of merit.

Friday I turned in a midterm that almost had something along the lines of “I simply do not care” as answers for a few of the questions. I managed to do a little better than that because I am a big boy and do, on some level, care. This is not to say that I think any of the questions are meaningless, unimportant, or even busy work. I know that they are important and meaningful questions, and I greatly appreciate and respect that fact. But, personally, I could care less if tic-tac-toe can be modeled as a DFA or not. Nor do I particularly care why, and how many states it might require. Important? Yes. Meaningful? Yes. But those questions are for theorists of computer science to answer. And that person is not me.

Now I know (or at least feel) that that attitude is wrong. I especially feel bad since the person who almost received such an answer is the one who wrote and presented me with an award at my MLS graduation. I feel as if I am letting him down. I do not like that at all. But the mind leads one into painful territory when it goes into self-preservation mode.

So it is definitely time to get out of full-time school. Thankfully (God, I can’t believe I just said that), I am almost there. I have hopefully (awaiting confirmation) moved my Python class back from 4 to 2 hours meaning I won’t have to do a final project. So I have a few more small programs to write and a small final, I think. This leaves me a tad freer to keep reading what I am interested in, particularly towards my CAS project topic.

Of course, I will need to do my bibliography for Dr. Krummel. Now I’m pretty certain that I won’t want to do that either. But I’m fairly certain that I can motivate myself since it is pretty important towards making progress on my CAS project.

After that it is just my CAS project in the Spring. I am going to try and sit in a class or two, though. Allen Renear is teaching a class on Ontology development and Kathryn and Pauline Cochrane are having a seminar on Subject access.

590OD’s description is not in the catalog yet, but here’s the one for 590SA:

An advanced topics seminar in subject access that covers a range of topics including aspects of the traditional bibliographic canon, Hjorland’s philosophical challenges to universal subject access, ongoing discussions at the Library of Congress about Library of Congress Subject Headings, experimentations with hybrid folksonomic and taxonomic approaches, as well as case studies of how enhanced subject access can increase ROI in business and industry.

Hey! This is the first time I actually read the course description (as it matters not to my desire to sit in) and see? See? Hjørland. I need to be there. Of course, all the other clauses are good enough justification, too.

Some of you may be wondering why in the hell I’d want to sit in on more classes if I am fed up with school. Fair enough. But I said sit in, as in unofficially audit. I know Allen is fine with it. I am hoping Pauline and Kathryn will be. I can go and listen. I can prepare if I want to. And I can participate once in a great while when I can no longer sit on my hands and/or keep my mouth shut.

Besides, I’ve had several Ph.D. students, past and current, tell me that it is best to keep oneself somewhat engaged in something that interests you once you get to the full-time writing.

There is still the unspoken question about actually writing my CAS paper. I’m pretty sure that I’m OK here. Sure. I’d prefer to just read and discuss. But another of my problems is that I have almost no one to discuss with (in a manner conducive to my style of discussion. Not to dismiss those who gratefully continue to attempt discussing with me in this venue and by email). Despite the fact of writing very little for my classes while pursuing an education in LIS, I do well remember writing lengthy papers on complex topics. Grappling with one (or a few) main text and a few supporting or peripheral texts and working through some serious analysis and synthesis to produce something that one could be proud of is something I remember fondly from not too far back in the past [See the stuff under Sociology].

The thing to be proudest of was often the immense amount of learning that took place and not necessarily the actual product that was written. The actual writing of the paper only serves to focus the work of analysis and synthesis and, thus, the learning. And that can be a very valuable means to do so. It also serves as something for the professor to use as a judge of the learning that has taken place, but that is primarily a requirement of our educational system and not of learning proper.

So, assuming I can keep such experiential knowledge in mind, I think I can write my paper just fine. I may have few hopes, but this is an important one, and I am looking forward to it.

My plan at the moment is to keep reading and hopefully thinking about the issues. I was taking some notes but need to get better about it. I also need to enter more of my readings into Zotero and not just here.

From what I’ve read so far I need to pick out what I consider to be key texts and do the above with them if I haven’t already, along with writing some draft annotations. I need to identify what others seem to be potentially key and prioritize them. Some of what I have been reading has been driven by the 2- or 3-week loan periods with no renewals that a few lenders are imposing. Grrr!

As for my Python class, well, I just don’t know. I tried lots of things earlier today to get my 3rd program working. While I was able to get lots of assorted error messages, I was unable to get anywhere. Having tried so many different things I am now more confused than I was when I started. If I was ever on the right road I have no idea now. This one isn’t due until Monday afternoon so we’ll see.

There are avenues of help available to me but none of those really work for me. The effort to implement them is simply too great for me in my present state. They’d be a royal pain in a normal state. Now….

I do know I dropped a class as late as 11 Nov. once.

I haven’t had much time since getting back from ASIS&T to do what I should in this venue. I have lots of comments to get to, lots of emails—personal, school-related and professional—to attend to, and other ways in which I haven’t really treated others as well as I’d like, discourse-wise, over the last few weeks.

Lots of things to say/do but far too broken to say/do them. I hate being here and I do not like that person who incessantly whispers in every corner of my mind when I am. And, no, I am perfectly sane. I am well aware that that person is me.

I can no longer hear my own voice
nor am I holding it near

Perhaps they are better left unsung

I told you something was different this time. I do not know exactly what that is … but the fact that I’m using this song to illustrate something negative is breaking my heart. It is not the only positive touchstone that I have lost touch with.

Perhaps this whole post was best left “unsung.” Maybe so. But recently Kirsten reminded me that I, too, had been doing more self-censoring than I intended. Depression is rampant in our society and yet we do not talk about it. In the meantime, we get drug ads that convince people that “If you just took this pill you’d be fine.” Well, that is pure bullshit! “What is it about our society that is causing this level of depression?” is a far more important question in my mind than is designing some pill. But I’ll leave that battle alone for now in the interest of actually accomplishing something.

ASIS&T 2007 Annual Meeting Sessions, part 2

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Monday, 22 Oct

Oops, I forgot the Alumni Reception in the evening. They had awesome food this year. Kudos!

Tuesday, 23 Oct

Poster Session III

Those of most interest to me:

Searching for Books and Images in OPAC: Effects of LCSH, TOC and Subject Domains. Youngok Choi, Ingrid Hsieh-Yee and Bill Kules (Catholic U of America)

Tagging and Findability: Do Tags Help Users Find Things? Margaret Kipp (U of Western Ontario)

Browsing with a Metadata Infrastructure for Events, Periods and Time. Ray R. Larson and Michael Buckland (UC-Berkeley)

I had a very nice conversation with Ingrid Hsieh-Yee and was able to thank her for her LC report generated as an action item from the previous “future of bib control” conference. See here for my initial comments on this report and a link to it. [If there had been wifi at the conference I could have looked this up and discussed some of these questions with the author.]

Larson and Buckland have presented on their project a couple times and it is a wonderful example of what can be done if we were to have vocabularies and authorities widely available.

Took a trip to Downtown Books for a fairly priced, used copy of the 2 v. set of John Lyons’ Semantics. I also picked up a copy of Borgmann’s Crossing the Postmodern Divide for a really good price. I’m pretty surprised that carrying those books around in the same bag for several hours didn’t result in a rift in the fabric of space-time. Hat tip to Tom for alerting me to Lyons availability in Downtown Books.

Social Computing, Folksonomies and Image Tagging: Reports from the Research Front. Samantha Hastings (moderator), Hemalata Iyer (SUNY-Albany), Diane Neal (NCCU), Abebe Rorissa (SUNY-Albany), and JungWon Yoon (USF).

Iyer:

  • User supplied image category labels. Thinks prototype theory is applicable to tagging.
  • In social tagging group labels tend to be superordinate. Individual labels = more Related Terms/non-hierarchical associative terms.
  • Not much structure; is structure desirable?
  • Influence of the 1st tagger is great – thus initial tags by author or professional. [Excuse me? Why the desire for control?]
  • Further exploration of prototypes and basic level needed in tag research.

Neal – PhotojournalsmAndUADs geotagged:ASSSIST2007MilwaueWI topresent [title; misspellings on purpose]

Rorissa:

  • There is no single model, nor any single method.
  • Change Ranganathan’s 2nd law to “Every user his or her overview of the document collection.”

Yoon – Semantics of User-Supplied Tags

Awards Lunch – sat with Christina

Tagging and Social Networks: The Impact of Communities on User-Centered Tagging. Heather D. Pfeiffer (NMSU), Edward M. Corrado (College of NJ), Margaret Kipp (Long Island U/UWO), Qiping Zhang (Long Island U), Heather Moulaisen (??) and Emma Tonkin (U of Bath).

Corrado – Social Tagging: Community Tagging or Personal Tagging in Communities? Tried to answer the question, “Are people really tagging socially?” by looking at the code4lib community.

Kipp – Patterns in Tagging: Collaborative Classification Practices in Social Bookmarking Tools. Looked at del.icio.us, Connotea and CiteULike.

Zhang – Social Tagging in China (co-researcher is Zhenzhong Sheng). Is looking at cross-cultural patterns in tagging in the long-run. This work reported on their attempt to answer what tagging is and how it is viewed in China.

Moulaisen – Social Tagging in France: The Evolution of a Phenomenon. Looked at the Tecktonic killer (dance) phenomenon among some French youth on YouTube and how tagging is used in that context.

Tonkin – Community in User-Centred Tagging.

  • Characteristics of tags depend on: interface, use case, user population, user intent/motivation for tagging.
  • Assertion: tags = ‘language-in-use.’ Informal, transient, intended for a limited audience, implicit
  • What’s in a tag? Marshall’s dimensions of annotation. [The Future of Annotation in a Digital (Paper) World, Catherine C. Marshall]
  • Participatory mechanisms in language development
  • Speech/discourse community
  • The ‘C’ words: Context, Community, Confusion … ?
  • Caution: seeing named social entities in a dataset may reflect preconceptions…

This was a very coherent panel. More folks who should be well funded if we want any answers.

Dinner with a large group of students from assorted places at the Water Street Brewery.

SIGCON. Quite a different attitude than last year regarding tagging. This year it was sanctioned and even the tools were provided and yet I saw very little of it happening. Last year a small handful of us illicitly made it happen. And call me bitter, if you will, but a little bit of props for SIGTAG would have been in line, not to mention intellectually honest.

I know I’m about the only one who doesn’t find LOLCats humorous. But that was not funny at all.

And what is it about IS/librarian-types that they have to pick on others in their humor? Is it because we feel so powerless ourselves? Sorry but I do not find it funny for librarians to diss paraprofessionals. In fact, it is unprofessional. Last year it was picking on the disabled.

Can I just say that I enjoyed myself far, far more last year. No disrespect meant to my friends that I sat with this year, but last year my posse was all new to me and we were actively involved.

Wednesday, 24 Oct

SIG HFIS (History and Foundations of IS) breakfast meeting. Breakfast and conversation with Marcia Bates, Michael Buckland, Toni Carbo, Trudi Hahn, Thomas Haigh, Barbara Kwasnik, Kathryn La Barre, Julian Warner, Cheryl Knott Malone, Howard White and Margie Avery. Business meeting after breakfast.

Plenary, Clifford Lynch. For a recap suggested by Dorothea see this one at RSS4Lib.

Lunch at The King and I with Christina Pikas, Jack Vinson and Jordan Frank.

Headed home after lunch. Without driving through Chicago during rush hour on a Friday night it was a 4.5 hour trip.

For me, ASIS&T is all about the people. Seeing and talking with the luminaries, seeing “old” friends and making new ones. And finding oneself surprised by what one finds interesting that could not have been predicted; such as, Megan Winget’s score annotations work. “That so rawked!” as my buddy jennimi might say.

You were missed deeply and by many, my dear friend. I hope you caught some of the healing love sent your way.

And, Ben, we talked about you too, boy. Missed, indeed, you were.

ASIS&T 2007 Annual Meeting Sessions, part 1

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Sunday, Oct 21

Who Is Tagging Information? – Edward C. Lomax (Georgia State U), Hsin-liang “Oliver” Chen (U of MO-Columbia), and June Abbas (SUNY-Buffalo).

Lomax spoke about Social Tagging in K-12 Education; Chen spoke about Social Tagging and Newspapers; Abbas spoke about Tagging and Libraries and Museums.

The panel was down two members so that had some impact on the program.

I’m not going to get into details as I took few notes but despite June’s best efforts this panel was only the first of several that really left me depressed about this portion of my field. I later had a conversation with June (and have had a few on other occasions) and I know she gets it. But what the heck is most everyone else’s problem(s)?

There are fundamental issues with tagging (as with anything else) in libraries and, in particular, as a means of access and retrieval. But these can be dealt with. Anyone who reads me regularly well knows that I am quick to play devil’s advocate and ask the tough questions while all the cool kids are espousing how great something is. But good God! Can we please move forward with some real research in this area? I most certainly do not mean to disparage June’s or Margaret Kipp’s (and a very few others) here. They are doing good work, but can we please support them?

My conference roommate was also quite disturbed by the state of research in this area and it was having a serious impact on his view of his first ASIS&T. When he questioned me as to why this was it sounded like he was putting much of the blame on the researchers. But this is not the case at all. Tag researchers in no way control the systems (OPAC, tag systems,etc.) that (may) implement these tools. Let’s hope PennTags is doing something useful with their data; even better would be if they’ll share that data with outside researchers.

Another big issue in this equation is that large-scale, easily implementable tag systems are fairly new. Certainly far newer than the 10 years of research in tagging.

Here are only some of the disparate reasons why my roommate and I are so depressed about this:

Much is based on audience reaction(s): complete misunderstanding of tagging and/or how it even works [researchers have to give demonstrations of how tagging works in a session before presenting their research or the audience will be completely lost]; what about Internet predators?; do tags need to be vetted?; what about bad words?; are we just going to throw out privacy?; we can’t have the public adding things to our records, ….

In some cases it is the presenters themselves who are not really prepared to investigate such a multiply complex topic that they have happened to find interesting. One of the presenters in this session offered Amazon.com as the gold standard of tagging sites. Excuse me? There were several other non-starters offered up by two of the panelists but perhaps in the sake of mental health I have repressed them.

Yes, there are serious issues to be addressed in this area. I do not mean to make light of them. But if we cannot move further quickly now that we have systems that will allow us to do some real and useful research then we are failing ourselves and, more importantly, users.

Can someone please provide funding and access to a quality system to folks like June Abbas and Margaret Kipp?

Theoretical/Methodological Exploration (Papers)

Megan A. Winget (UTA) – “A Methodology and Model for Studying Boundary Objects, Annotations and Collaborative Practices: Musicians and Musical Scores.”

Jason M. Turner (Air Force Inst. of Tech.) – “Towards a Social Affordances Perspective of Media Capabilities and Interface Design.”

Miles Efron (UTA) – “What Crossword Puzzles Teach Us About Information.”

Upfront admission, I went to this session primarily based on the crossword paper. Boy, was I ever surprised!

I may not be a musician but Winget’s presentation was fascinating! I look forward to reading the whole thing. She looked at score annotations across amateur, semi-pro, and professional musicians in chamber group and orchestra settings. Annotations are almost always fascinating and this area was especially so.

As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the few must reads from the sessions I attended. Get your hands on the proceedings and read this one.

Efron on crossword puzzles was, for me, a big disappointment. As far as I’m concerned his title is a complete misnomer and a big unanswered and unaddressed question.

He took a mathematical approach to determining the difficulty level of the weekday New York Times crossword puzzles. As you may know, the difficulty level of the NYT puzzle (generally) increases from Monday to Saturday. The puzzle editor is the one to determine which puzzles are printed on which days. This work is an attempt to formalize that determination.

On one hand, it is kind of interesting and it works reasonably well. He also made sure to restrict his claims to being able to determine the difficulty level of a puzzle as to which day of the week it should be offered on and not as to the difficulty level of a specific puzzle for any individual puzzle solver. Kudos for that! Nonetheless, it really doesn’t seem to teach us anything about information and, more importantly, this sort of mathematical approach to word play is an anathema to me and many other word lovers. Color me mostly disappointed in this one.

Dinner at The King and I (Thai) with Karen, Wei and Gina (fellow UIUC students).

Welcome Reception/SIG Rush.

Monday, 22 Oct

Assuring Quality in the Information Professions – Nancy Roderer (moderator), Ann Prentiss (for José-Marie Griffiths), Charles Henry (CLIR), and Libby Trudell (Dialog)

Prentiss presented some early results from a 2006 IMLS study for Griffiths who could not be there at the last moment. Due to this we couldn’t get much beyond the slide content and it is early results. There may be something interesting to come out of this study, and I hope there will be, but not so much yet.

Henry as the President of CLIR had some interesting things to say.

Context: higher education, specifically the profound changes in HE, and the continual redefinement of libraries in HE

1 Rise of cyberinfrastructure – 3 major reports recently on the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are all in agreement

  • technical layer
  • software
  • new kinds of expertise [these 3 are the definition of cyberinfrastructure]

leads to new research methods and new intellectual strategies [CLIR is more interested in these, along with the incredible collaboration that arises (from Q&A)]

2 Rise of new disciplines

3 Rise of undergraduate research

4 New models of scholarly publishing – books and articles less and less as growth of knowledge, more and more as accreditation

Trudell (Senior VP at Dialog and on SLA Board of Directors)

Context: Information industry and the role of info pros in business

Roles:

  • Service supply side: large number of roles
  • Product development end: design, QA, editorial, product documentation
  • Senior management roles

Professional competencies across this broader perspective:

  • core competencies
  • people skills
  • business savvy
  • strategic perspective
  • attitudes – assertiveness, proactiveness, flexibility, driver for change

Spectrum – varies by role

technical vs. content

knowledge of particular target area, e.g., pharma, …

Person should have an interest in a wide variety of ways info can contribute to success of the organization.

How can industry contribute?

  • expand core curriculum
  • partner in creative ways
  • professional organizations, continuing certification, advocate for values of profession

What is role of service provider?

  • on-going education and training: product/content, “Quantum program”/leadership development
  • provide support for prof. orgs./library schools to do their jobs

Key is vendor participation in prof. orgs., not just as vendor display & funding, but as colleagues, and investment in education.

Q&A

Archivists and info managers are much more embedded in orgs. than libraries.

What about the downsides?

  • HE doesn’t study itself closely. Info pros see these changes more clearly. Thus, we have an opportunity to lead. Onus is on us to do so.

Plenary: Anthea Stratigos, Outsell, Inc.

I took a few notes that I am not going to reproduce. This was highly disappointing on so many levels. ASIS&T is full of corporate and business types along with academics and practicing professionals, but I resent being sold a message of the market economy, which is all this boiled down to!

She really rubbed some of us the wrong way when she started off the section on the Library Environment with a slide with a picture of a card catalog and the caption, “It Used to be Simple.” While there is some truth to what she was trying to get at there are much better ways to get at that truth visually. There simply is nothing simple about the card catalog as a technology and/or information environment! While I am well aware that many of my colleagues think there was, it only goes to show their lack of education and understanding of history and systems.

I was so proud of Karen for going up during the Q&A and correcting Ms. Stratigos on this point. Oh, one should know that Karen is highly mathematical and her research focuses on the application of logic in our field. Way to represent, Karen!

One of her main claims is that libraries are not keeping up and/or moving fast enough. Of course, this claim was across libraries broadly. Enough said.

Under What Does this All Mean? we get the claim that all of this is “creating a permanent shift in consumer habits.” Sorry, Ms. Stratigos, but there is nothing permanent about this shift (these shifts, would be truer, also)! Shifts have happened before and will happen again. Shift may be permanent, but this shift is certainly not.

Under A New Order Emerges we get the shift from product-centric to market-centric. We also get Information as Entertainment and Entertainment as Information (ala Richard Saul Wurman). As something to celebrate. Perhaps I ought to learn to play the fiddle at this point?

Essential Actions gets summarized in the statement, “Be a digital marketer delivering a digital experience.” Um, no thank you.

So, yes, a marketing talk delivered by a marketer.

Lunch at the mall with Christina Pikas.

Poster Session II

Most interesting to me:

How Incorrect Information Delivers Correct Search Results: A Pragmatic Analysis of Queries. Jin Ha Lee and Allen Renear (UIUC)

What Exactly Is an Item in the Digital World? Ingbert R. Floyd and Allen Renear (UIUC). How often do you find research with two different views presented?

Tag Decay: A View into Aging Folksonomies. Terrell Russell (UNC-CH)

Tagging the Tags … Process, Observations and Analysis of Conversations in Metatagging at an ASIS&T Interactive Poster Session. Jennifer E. Graham and June M. Abbas. (SUNY-Buffalo). This was an initial follow-up to their amazing poster at last years ASIS&T. [Photo from about the mid-point.] Great stuff!

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) Standards – Marcia Zeng (Kent State U), Margie Hlava (Access Innovations), Jian Qin (Syracuse U), Gail Hodge (Information International Associates), and Denise Bedford (World Bank Group)

Zeng covered some of the work that the ASIS&T Standards Committee did this past year [I am a member of this committee].

Hlava covered KOS standards, focusing primarily on the US and British controlled vocabulary standards.

Qin covered Encoding KOS: Languages for Machine Understanding and Processing.

Hodge covered KOS in the Government Environment: From Traditional Thesauri to Standards Integration.

“Agencies are interested in how better management of semantics can improve organization and access.” This quote makes me smile (as long as I ignore a literal parsing of “management of semantics”). :)

Bedford discussed Popularization and Use of Standards at World Bank. This was real-world usage on a vast scale across many languages. Fascinating stuff. My jaw about hit the floor when she said they use MultiTES! Primarily due to its reporting capabilities. Now MultiTES is just one small part of a very complex system, but still ….

I was also quite impressed when she said that recently one group within WB wanted to add an area to the system. Something like 91,000 terms reduced to under 15,000 and properly related in something like 2 weeks! Clearly she has better systems and more people than when I was doing real-world thesaural work, but I still find that amazing.

Standards Committee meeting

Dinner at The King and I with Edward Corrado, Heather Pfeiffer, Emma Tonkin, Margaret Kipp and Qiping Zhang.

Tuesday and Wednesday to follow

Quick update

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[This was started and mostly finished early Friday morning, with some additions Saturday morning.]

Things are normal here—great in some areas, horrible in others.

I am almost completely exhausted after Dr. Hjørland’s visit (more in a moment). I have not been sleeping well, and despite it going well it has been a strain. I have come home the last several days completely exhausted. I even have been in bed by 8:30 the last 2 nights.

Communication backlog

I owe several people replies to comments, emails, etc. Unfortunately, some I owe email replies to will not see this.

Nathan, your comments and email are great! And fine. I will do my best to respond as soon as I can, but no promises as to timeliness and/or how comprehensively. But I greatly appreciate your efforts. :)

Versifying

For those who have seen my photo and what I will very loosely term a poem … please do not worry. Certainly no more than normal. I have no desire to explain it but, yes, it is about me (and much more). These sorts of things are always below the surface roiling around and once in a while they bubble “up.” The “scary” part for me is not the thoughts themselves but that I actually recorded them. And then shared them. It would be silly to claim that I rarely think in verse; it is just that it is usually other people’s verse.

Dr. Hjørland’s visit

Dr. Hørland’s visit went wonderfully for me; hopefully it was great for him. But for some reason it was quite a bit more stressful than I’d have thought. Not in the direct sense and certainly not in interpersonal interaction, but more in the surrounding spaces. Not sure why; but it left me exhausted.

I went to the student brown bag lunch, the Research Fellow lecture, helped lead Metadata Roundtable (MDRT) with David Bade’s more-than-able help, and then had my personal meeting with him.

During MDRT I was given a writing assignment. More about that in the future.

LEEP Weekend / Python class

This weekend is LEEP weekend meaning the distance students are here. My Python class is a LEEP class and I have my all day oncampus class today. This also means some of my friends are here. I look forward to hanging out with them (assuming I have the energy to do so) this weekend.

Python regular expressions have so far evaded me. I compiled my re just fine and I’m even pretty sure it is doing what I think it is supposed to (i.e., what I coded it to do). I know it is matching the strings I am asking it to, and it knows full well where they start and end. But. The use to which I am then putting my matches is failing, though. It seems that I am not actually capturing the string(s) I am matching.

I have had various suggestions, checked the textbook, the web, spoke with the instructor and banged it all with some very big rocks. Nothing is making any difference and it is all syntactically “correct.” Still. Something that needs to happen is not happening.

Having spent over 20 years in the Army I know full well how to bang lots of things with rocks and bang things into and through rocks (e.g., ground stakes and tent stakes). I have a lot of respect for “rock banging!” But at the moment it serves me no purpose. I need an explicit answer to what is missing from my program to so that I can make use of my re. That is the only thing which will allow me to make any conceptual progress at all.

Once it is working, I have plans to make it break so that I can start banging away again. And from that banging I shall learn much about how regular expressions actually work.

As several folks have said, one should have lots of methods to attack learning problems/situations. And I agree that usually learning mostly by dint of your own efforts is a good thing. But once in a while you are at a point where the only way forward is to have something shown and/or explained to you. Even if I were to somehow stumble on what the issue is in my program I would not conceptually understand why it is the case that that is what was needed. I will only (perhaps) know that it is needed. And while the one is far better than nothing, it is still pale in comparison to actually understanding why it is that way.

Perhaps I am a bad learner and/or bad librarian, but I need an answer.

==Saturday finish to the post (although I changed a few words above)==

Near the end of class we had a chance to ask about anything Python related that we were just not understanding. Having little shame or pride I was more than happy to ask about my re issues.

With a version of the program I did not turn on the screen and a class of approx. 30 folks looking at it it took about 25 minutes for the instructor to recognize what the issue was. Turns out I made a most illustrative error for the edification of the whole class. Dave promised them all that they would make a similar mistake at some point. Always happy to serve as an example. :) Perhaps they learned something; I know I did. And now I can go on an finish the simplistic thing I was doing with regular expressions and then do something much more useful and complicated for my next program. In fact, something in which beating with rocks will again make a lot of sense.

ASIS&T

ASIS&T 2007 Annual Meeting: Joining Research and Practice: Social Computing and Information Science is in less than a week. At this time next Saturday I will be at the 18th Annual SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop. I am really looking forward to it.

Lots of things to be done to prepare. Lots of things to catch up on. I have lots of things on the slate for today and tomorrow and I will be happy if I can get most of them done along with some relaxing with LEEP friends each evening.

Tunneling for rabbits

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How far down the rabbit holes can I fall, and can I then tunnel between them whilst still falling?

Do I deserve my “little ducklings” or would I be better served by spectators at my self-immolation?

I offer the ducklings/spectators the option of deciding for themselves and changing their minds as they see fit, just as I reserve the right to change what I think I’m doing here.

I’m not sure that I’m really ready for this (the announcement, not the work) but I have decided on the topic for my CAS project, which since it came “soon enough” in the semester has changed my topic for my bibliography in Bibliography class this semester.

For Bibliography I had decided, and significantly begun, on the (primary) English-language publications of Dr. Birger Hjørland. Based on my wide-ranging interests and readings of the last several months I had been attracted to more and more of his articles and ideas. He also has a fairly representative list of publications available on his website, though it is not complete. A few A&I searches, luck, and ensuring that the “right people” know of my interest and I quickly have a pretty close to exhaustive list. Much of it is available electronically and much more will be as soon as Knowledge Organization gets online. I now have almost everything printed or photocopied and in 2 large binders (except for his book which remains pristinely non-hole punched).

I was really looking forward to (and had begun) reading this substantial amount of material chronologically. How many of us have ever had the opportunity to do such a thing and literally observe (as much as possible via published output) someone’s views develop over time?

But a choice of CAS project topic forced a shift. As I said previously (and even earlier in other venues), one of the possible things to address during Bibliography was “compiling my working bibliography for my CAS project.” But as the semester began I still had no idea what I was going to do for my project.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I “knew” my topic. But it has taken several weeks and multiple conversations to go from the idea that my topic could only be addressed as a dissertation, to it being doable if I take the “long route” to finishing my CAS by getting a job first, to “Suck it up, dude! You can do this in a semester” to “Yes, I have it and damn it, I’m excited about it!”

So what is my topic? Well, I actually did a better job giving it away the other day than I feel up to at the moment. But simply put, I am going to attempt to apply Integrationism to the field of LIS [see both links for more details.]

What does this mean for my immersion in Dr. Hjørland’s work? At least two points come immediately to mind. First, of the major epistemological viewpoints or “paradigms” in LIS, I see his approach “(the ‘sociological-epistemological paradigm’ or the ‘domain analytic approach’)” (Hjørland, 1998, 611) as the only one (currently) capable of embracing an integrationist perspective. Second, it is a handful of his articles which have seriously allowed me to see (or perhaps crystallize for me ) some of the overarching themes, stances, viewpoints, paradigms, and so on in our field. Thus, much of his work remains critically important to my further work and, in particular, to my CAS project topic.

For instance, I took myself out for dinner and drinks this evening and read the intro chapter to his book (1997) and took notes. There are several places where his language practically screams Integrationism.

As for my bibliography itself, it has gone from being boldly reaching in quantity but well defined and bounded to highly amorphous and about as vaguely defined as possible. But I absolutely adore Dr. Krummel for allowing me to take this route. I have not completely shifted to Harris (and/or Integrationism) as that is a much bigger topic for a bibliography. What I am theoretically focusing on at the moment are the points of contact between Harris and Hjørland. Depth and not quantity is the operative word now. Quality was always the operative word and still is.

Dr. Krummel said he is completely unconcerned about the number of entries that are in the final bibliography and that my focus is on the direct points of contact while including and defining the grey areas to either side as best as I can. That leeway and trust seriously frees me up to do some important exploratory work. I can read the things I was reading anyway, albeit in a different light, and include the things I consider important without having to worry about reading pretty much a whole body of work.

Have I leapt in over my head? Again? Probably. But I am fired up about this whole project! Hell, I even seem to be turning into a proper researcher and doing well thought out searches, considering what kind of sources I need for each aspect of my project, talking to subject librarians, and so on.

I have been making so many book purchases lately that the credit union contacted me to make sure someone hadn’t stolen my debit card info. I have mostly been buying Harris books, but I ordered 2 proceedings last night with papers by Hjørland in them. In most cases I have library copies available and even in my possession. But I want and/or need these for myself.

Today I had another productive conversation with Kathryn because she is my advisor and because Dr. Krummel insisted that I keep in touch with her about all of this. What an easy demand to meet! :) As my ideas have been coalescing to morphing to coalescing again I have been wavering about whether I was going/needed to meet with Dr. Hjørland one-on-one when he comes to visit soon. Today I scheduled this meeting.

Now I have an ambitious list of things to address in preparation for making this a productive meeting for both of us. I need to read some of and re-read some others of Dr. Hjørland’s publications, same for Harris, hopefully have a productive talk with The Improbable Don Quixote, make some short overview sketches, and try to have a short overview document of “the issues” as I see them for Dr. Hjørland’s convenience a day or two in advance.

“Yeah.” Anyone got a match?

Seriously though. I am absolutely stoked! Perhaps I’m just too stupid to be more than a itty-bitty bit concerned about what I’m getting myself into. Perhaps I expect too much of myself. But I want this.

I do not expect to revolutionize the world or even LIS. I certainly do not expect to solve anything. Even if I managed the first I wouldn’t accomplish the second. But I can do a good job of laying out what I see as a major problem area in our field. I can point to some overlap and points of contact between two major theoreticians.

Best of all possible outcomes? Who knows?

Success? Spark a few interests and start a conversation. That is what I am aiming for. Well, and a tad bit of learning for mself along the way. ;)

The upside for the moment is that it keeps me out of the biblioblogosphere for a while. Perhaps a very good thing? Cause some of you folks … yeah, I got some things to say and they may not be exactly endearing. But some of you really need to come down off your high horses. Sure, you’ve got some valid points but it simply is not the case that we all learn the same nor is it always the case that trying to take a middle road or questioning is meant to be obstructionist. The place has become mighty fractious (and worse) again. Disagreement I like. Veiled name-calling, belittling, “just get on board,” and “my way is the right way” are not disagreement and they are certainly not discussion. They are condescending, they are threatening, and they are wrong. OK, done.

See what I mean? Probably best I have no time to get into all this at the moment.

Hjørland, Birger. “Theory and Metatheory of Information Science: A New Interpretation.” Journal of Documentation. 54.5 (1998): 606-621.

Hjørland, Birger. Information Seeking and Subject Representation: An Activity-theoretical Approach to Information Science. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Bodily imposed time out

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I want to apologize to everyone who has commented on my last two posts, and to several other people who I owe responses in various venues. I did not mean to start a wonderful conversation and then leave it, but I must for the moment.

While waiting on the bus to come home this afternoon I started feeling extremely poorly. I tried taking a nap when I got home but despite being immediately and immensely tired I pretty much failed at napping.

I have been hydrating myself and have now eaten dinner. Nothing is helping at the moment. I need to give myself a break it seems. So I am stepping away from these computers for the evening.

I am sorry! As the comments started pouring in this morning I was itching to get the day over (work and 1st class of the semester) so that I could address them.

I promise I will get to them as soon as I can.

For the record, I was aware of the potential hypocrisy of complaining about del.icio.us feeds in blogs compared to my weekly “Some things read” posts. In fact, probably hyper-aware as it kept me from writing that post for almost 2 weeks. I will attempt to address this issue when I return, but it goes back to my comments about the blog author’s purpose. There certainly will be others who will not see any difference between these actions. This is true.

Book, music, communication, content, social

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This post is technically only for me, but feel free…. It is, in effect, a manually constructed “del.icio.us post” to collect the comments that I have made in the last day or so on issues of language. Oh, and some added-on self-analysis and rumination.

Books

See Also…, A study of scanning habit : a couple of comments

Pegasus Librarian, The Book-ish-ness of Books : a couple of comments

Life as I Know It, A Book Is A Book Is A Book – Or Is It? : a couple of comments and an email exchange. Thanks, Jennifer! And I apologize for making your “head heart.” ;)

Music

Pegasus Librarian, The Book-ish-ness of Books : a couple of comments (but the same as above under Books)

Communication, Content, Social

Stephen’s Lighthouse, Internet Activity Index – From communication to content

Other word issues from last couple days

On Assumptions about language use in tagging : my own post and especially my multiple comments on it.

Before I get to my self-analysis prompted by much of this discussion, I would like to say that:

All I can say is that I hope I have been reasonably coherent across this discussion, that I am thankful to everyone for making me think, and for participating in this conversation. I also hope that whether folks agree with me or not that they see that I think there is an important difference in these two (allowed) uses of book and that I am not just being pedantic.

Sorry, ripped myself off from my own comment at Jennifer’s place.

[All the below is really just me talking to me. Read it if you must. Perhaps it'd be better not being here. I don't know. Perhaps it'll do someone some good to see that others have serious questions in their own lives, too.]

I am not trying to be a pedant. I am not trying to be an ass. I am not trying to tell others how to use language.

I am trying to show that it might matter how they do, and why it does.

I am at an odd place in my life and in my career. For many reasons, I do not know “my place” in either. I have some vision(s) of how I might fit into the profession, but it is a difficult position. In fact, it is a position that I seem to be adopting along many axes. Bridge; boundary object.

I am not a good researcher, and quite likely never will be. I am (at the moment) not a good practitioner. That, I full well know, can be remedied. I have been an extremely good practitioner; in this field and others. But at the moment I am a neophyte struggling with a complex form of practice; one which some people would argue that I, and people like me, can never really succeed at. I even accept that argument; at least, in the best of all possible worlds. But we do not have that world; so I struggle to become a good descriptive and subject cataloger, be that traditional cataloging or metadata. [I was telling Tracy just today that things would be better if I could just be Candide....]

But I do, in many ways, by bent and education, sit in the middle of practice and research. I am reasonably good at seeing how each matters for the other. Kind of hard to make a living at that, though. And one always runs the risk of becoming a thorn in the side of both camps. C’est la vie!

This is one of the biggest splits in our field I feel. Perhaps I’ll have to learn to accept a measure of success as something along the line of 1-2 helped in their thinking and/or navigating the theory-practice divide to 10-12 regretting that they even heard of this particular thorn.

Praxis (in the Donald Schon sense) is what I want to affect and effect.

Kathryn and I had a discussion of something I might do in the realm of knowledge organization research today. It seems to fall into the middle ground as above. Pauline said she expects me to do important work. Bridging this divide, or more importantly, helping others do so, is important work. She didn’t say it’d be easy work. And I’m sure she didn’t mean so either.

But as your girl says:

and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says would you prefer the easy way
no, well o.k. then
don’t cry

…

i do it for the joy it brings
because i’m a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it’s the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
and i do it just because i want to
because i want to

Ani DiFranco ¤ Joyful Girl ¤ Dilate

Or, for the other view:

come on kids, let’s all hold hands
and pretend we’re having a good time

…

so just suck up and be nice

…

cuz i’m a pixie
i’m a paper doll
i’m a cartoon
i’m a chipper cheerful free for all
and i light up a room
i’m the color me happy girl
miss live and let live
and when they’re out for blood
i always give

Ani DiFranco ¤ Pixie ¤ Little Plastic Castle

Jesus, my friend, how did we get here again?

I’m a small honeybee
I drown in the water
you are my hand in the well.
HOLD ON

Bif Naked ¤ Hold On ¤ Purge

Some things read this week, 22 – 28 July 2007

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Sunday, 22 Jul

Crawford, Walt. Cites & Insights 7 (9): August 2007 [pdf]

An excellent issue covering the LIS literature; authority, worth and linkbaiting (Britannica, Gorman, et. al.), disagreement and discussion; and ethics and transparency.

I think you did a fine job, Walt. As I said elsewhere (probably as a comment on your blog), I was/am interested in any direction in which you took the topic and continued the conversation. Thank you!

The Good, the Bad, And the ‘Web 2.0′. Full-text version of an Andrew Keen and David Weinberger “Reply All” debate at the Wall Street Journal online.

I would like to say that Andrew Keen is a fool; but, perhaps, he doesn’t actually believe that tripe he was spewing. Of course, if that is the case then I’d have to call him something worse.

Such a shame he argues so much like Gorman. Both men have important ideas that need to be considered and they are either cluelessly or intentionally burying those important ideas in their rhetoric, name calling, and ridiculous argumentation.

On the other hand, I gained a large amount of respect for David Weinberger by reading this “discussion.”

It is rather fitting that I read this piece today (after printing it 3 days ago) after reading the newest Cites & Insights.

I thought this comment from Weinberger fit extremely well with Walt’s (and others) thoughts on authority:

Knowledge is generally not a game for one. It is and always has been a collaborative process. And it is a process, not as settled, sure, and knowable by authorities as it would be comforting to believe.

Sunday – Monday, 22 – 23 Jul

Raber, Douglas. The Problem of Information: An Introduction to Information Science. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2003.

Read ch. 1 – 2.

Pretty good so far, but is somewhat sloppily edited. Some are perhaps a matter of style, while some are just sloppy. I can’t find the most offensive one at the moment, but here is one that is a matter of style, perhaps.

Remember, the indeterminacy of signs and the phenomena they represent do not derive from the fact that they cannot be determined, but they can plausibly and usefully be determined in a variety of ways (24).

Alright. The sentence is fairly clear, but I had to do a double take due to the contrastive clauses (sorry, don’t know the technical terms). In my world I think it would be much clearer to say “…from the fact that they cannot be determined, but that they can plausibly and usefully be determined….” Without the second “that” I feel that the sentence lacks force and that the 2nd clause does not match the strength of the 1st clause. Perhaps you disagree. That’s OK.

Here’s a definite example of sloppiness:

The implication that there exists both good and bad information in turn raises questions regarding the criteria are applied in judgment (42).

That sentence clearly needs a “that” or the “are” changed “to be.” Another sentence in ch. 1 had both an “in” and “of” when either would have been fine, but not both of them. None of this sloppiness has resulted in incomprehensibility yet, but I would argue that when the mind is busy picking out these sorts of things and/or being forced to re-read something just to parse it correctly that comprehension is reduced.

The contest that concerns here us turns on several questions (45).

Despite their fundamental and profound differences, however, there are some important common threads bind these metaphors together (46).

WTF? This text has a serious issue with “that!” I sure hope the editing gets better quick or I’m not reading this much further. What a damn shame as this looks to be an important book on “the problem of information.”

Tuesday, 24 Jul

Raber (above).

Read ch. 3 and began ch. 4.

Neill, S. D. “The Dilemma of the Subjective in Information Organisation and Retrieval.” Journal of Documentation 43 (3), Sep. 1987: 193-211.

Cited by Raber in ch. 2.

Is an attempt to bring “together the views of Brenda Dervin and Karl Popper on subjectivity and objectivity as these relate to information use” (abstract). I wasn’t so impressed and I do not really see how it supports the claim Raber uses it to support, or, perhaps, I should say that I do not think I see it claiming what Raber said it does.

Wednesday – Thursday, 25 – 26 Jul

Raber (above).

Finished ch. 4. / Read ch. 5 – 6

Thursday, 26 Jul

Yee, Martha M. and Michael Gorman. “Will the Response of the Library Profession to the Internet Be Self-Immolation?”

This is Martha Yee’s written testimony to LC’s Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. It was posted to AUTOCAT in multiple parts and then a link appeared to a copy posted on the James Madison University cataloging wiki.

Thankfully, Christine Schwartz posted a link to it on her blog Cataloging Futures.

Friday, 27 Jul

Hillmann, Diane I. “Adding New Skills to our Skillset.” July 2007.

Found at Cataloging Futures.

Raber (above).

Began ch. 7.

I have kept reading this book despite the poor editing — it only gets worse — because I find its message important. I will probably finish the book because of this message. It could have been so much better with some quality editing, though. Words are frequently missing; sometimes they even affect the meaning. There is also some stylistic editing I would argue for in a few places.

My main concern, though, is that “This book was written with beginning LIS students in mind” (Preface, vii). I find that highly questionable. If Prof. Raber is blessed with beginning students who are capable of critically following and engaging with his arguments in this book then he is truly blessed.

I am not saying that beginning students could not gain something from this text, but that for most students to be able to profit from it in more than a cursory manner requires some previous time spent with many of the concepts in the book, whether conceptually, experientially, theoretically, or however you want to say it. That is, the text assumes too much familiarity with a plethora of deep issues; none of which is itself free of problems.

The “problem(s) of information” is deep, perplexing, and highly intertwined with many concepts, most of which are equally deep, perplexing and enigmatic.

Hesitantly recommended.

In an IDEALS world we can keep up with the past

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In a recent post I asked why “keeping up” always seems to be forward looking and recommended that we remember to learn from the past.

Wednesday night when I was out to say goodbye to a friend and colleague (Kurt), and Sarah Shreeves, the Coordinator of our institutional repository, IDEALS, gave me some wonderful news based on that post.

The GSLIS Publications Office has decided to put the proceedings of the Allerton Park Institute and of the Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing conferences in the IR.

Also to be included is all of Library Trends (with an embargo of 2 years) and, eventually, the GSLIS Occasional Papers series.

I got so excited that I sucked down 4 pints of beer in the middle of the week! Seriously, this sort of news makes my year, much less my week.

The Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing conference proceedings from 1963 – 1995 are already available (472 items).

The Allerton Park Institute conference proceedings (476 items) are also up from 1954 – 1997.

Library Trends is currently represented by 52 (3): Winter 2004 – 53 (4): Spring 2005 (92 items). This is barely a beginning one might say, but seeing as it includes 2 of my favorites issues — one of which I do not have a physical copy of — it warms the cockles of my heart. Oh, The Philosophy of Information and Pioneers in Library and Information Science (have).

I have read a couple of the Allerton Park Institute proceedings already in all their physical glory. I am particularly fond of 1959, The role of classification in the modern American library, and recommend it to all and sundry interested in cataloging, classification, metadata, the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, and related topics.

Library Trends‘ theme issues are indispensable and the Occasional Papers series has some lovelies, too.

Sorry, but I cannot say anything regarding the Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing proceedings. I shall have to remedy that, though.

A hearty “Thank you” to all involved in this! I only hope that more schools will do this. Anyone knowing of those who have already, please, feel free to comment here and write posts of your own. We should not just let these things languish in our repositories, nor leave them for the search engines to perhaps index and show to us on the 1st few pages of search results. We need to shout from the rooftops that they are available. So, consider this my SHOUT regarding the work of my institution’s IR. And, yeah, there’s a lot of other stuff — interesting, I have no doubt — in IDEALS also.

As they say, “What’s past is prologue.” (The Tempest (1611) act 2, sc. 1, l. [261], per The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.)

Go forth. Read.  Learn. Keep up.