habitually probing generalist

Tuesday of this week, February 7th, was the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth, his bicentenary. Various events were held worldwide and we did a little bit here in Sioux City at the Bishop Mueller Library at Briar Cliff University. Late in January, thanks to having most of our Dickens’ texts around me due to [...]

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My friend Jess talked me into participating in JaPoWriMo, or January Poetry Writing Month. At least that is how I am parsing it out. The idea is simply to write one poem a day. She insisted they could be a short as haiku and that there was no requirement for them to be any good. [...]

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Structures for organizing knowledge: exploring taxonomies, ontologies, and other schemas June Abbas; Neal-Schuman Publishers 2010 WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder [Full disclosure: I personally know and greatly respect the author of this text. I have met and talked with her at 5 conferences from 2006 to 2009 (4 ASIST Annuals and the 1st NASKO). I have seen her [...]

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Thought I’d post a little update regarding my plans for fall. First, a quick update on where I am currently. Update My hours at the BCU library were bumped up to 6 (from 5) hours/week so I could take on a weeding project of my own. I had already cataloged the backlog and current acquisitions [...]

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I thought I’d bring folks up-to-date on what I’m doing work-wise. Since mid-September 2010 I have been working 5 hours/week as a feral cataloger at Briar Cliff University’s Bishop Mueller Library. Technically, I am an independent contractor, not an employee. The majority of what I do is copy cataloging,  although I have derived a couple [...]

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Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart Bonnie A. Nardi & Vicki L. O’Day; MIT Press 2000 WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder This book should be required reading for all librarians and for anyone using technology. Oh, yeah, everyone. I read this immediately after Brown and Duguid which was about “information” and thus IT, and which sought a middle [...]

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The social life of information John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid; Harvard Business School Press 2002 WorldCat•Read Online•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder This is the 8th book for my 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge. Short version: Librarians, and others in any “information industry,” should read it and ponder its critiques of “information fetishism.” I bought this book back in [...]

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I have decided that I will not write my thesis and thus will not finish my Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) from UIUC. Earlier this morning I emailed my Dean, who is also my advisor, with my decision. As some of you know, circumstances arose almost exactly 3 years ago that, at the time, I [...]

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Seeking meaning: a process approach to library and information services Carol Collier Kuhlthau; Libraries Unlimited 2004 WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder This is my 4th book review for the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge. I mostly enjoyed this book, which I read from 10 October to 26 November.  It is written fairly straightforwardly, is reasonably well edited, and [...]

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In Fall 2005 I took a class with Prof. Chip Bruce on Pragmatic Technology. One of our assignments was to: Produce an analysis of one keyword of your choice (see Raymond Williams, Keywords A vocabulary of culture and society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press) for examples. This keyword is not just an index [...]

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