Sunday, 2 Sep

Bade, David. “I Know Where I Am Going, Do You?” Remarks at the ALCTS Serials Section, Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee, Update Forum “Continuing Resources Cataloging: Where in the World Are We Going?” ALA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, June 25, 2007. [pdf available at E-LIS]

You folks do have the E-LIS feed in your readers don’t you? Lots of good stuff, much of it in languages other than English, comes across this feed.

Of course, you probably ought to be subscribed to the dLIST feed, too. Or you can choose to sub by subject. See this page. Maybe you can sub to E-LIS by subject, too, but I have no idea. I prefer to see it all and thus not miss things in a subject I might not normally focus on.

Bates, Marcia J. “Information and knowledge: an evolutionary framework for information science.” Information Research 10 (4), July 2005.

This is one of the Bates’ articles that Hjørland was responding to in “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” [see below and previous post]

Wow!!

This is a doozy, in many ways. Bates is attempting to use the ideas of evolutionary psychology to gain a better foothold on the concept of information.

Sunday – Monday, 2 – 3 Sep

Bates, Marcia J. “Fundamental Forms of Information.” JASIST 57 (8): 1033-1045, 2006. doi: 10.1002/asi.20369

This is one of the Bates’ articles that Hjørland was responding to in “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” [see below and previous post]

I think I am going to have to write a separate post on the ideas in these two articles by Bates.

Monday, 3 Sep

Hjørland, Birger. “Information: Objective or Subjective/Situational?” JASIST 58 (10): 1448-1456, 2007. doi: 10.1002/asi.20620

Originally read 11 August 2007. If you care why I re-read it, look at the comments on the post it was included in.

Furner, Jonathan. “Information Studies Without Information.” Library Trends 52 (3), Winter 2004: 427-446. [Available in the usual places or in UIUC's institutional repository IDEALS]

Cite by Hjørland (above) as arguing “that all the problems we need to consider in information studies can be dealt with without any need for a concept of information. He suggests that to understand information as relevance is currently the most productive for theoretical information studies” (fn7, p. 1454).

Fairly thought-provoking, but I felt that explication of ideas became a little terse near the end of the paper. There were a few places where I wrote, “Huh? How/when did we realize this?”

To the extent that he accepts the concept of information, he seems fairly conflicted whether or not potential informativeness counts or not. The discussion seems to waver back and forth, and then we get a decently explicatory paragraph on 441 that outlines why we need to include potentially informative/relevant messages into our conceptual definition. But then the paragraph ends with this thought (to which I fully subscribe): “In any case, it would appear that determining the extent to which a message is relevant to hearer a at time t is what is more important.” So. Which is it?

In the discussion of The utterance as information we get the following:

In effect, this view commits one not only to the proposition that information is anything that is interpretable—i.e., anything that is capable of being interpreted—but also that the interpretability of an entity does not depend on its historically having been interpreted. Entities can thus be classified as information on the basis of their potential to inform (439, emphasis mine).

OK. I agree that the view espoused in this section commits one to everything in the first sentence. But where did that thus in the second sentence come from? It does not seem to me to follow logically. It is simply a stipulation; perhaps a stipulation based on something along these lines:

If we undertake an inventory of all entities in the world that are potentially capable of being interpreted and decide which are, in fact, interpretable—and moreover, we state that all entities are capable of interpretation—then by the very act of our inventory—and our stipulative definition—we have thus interpreted (and defined) every entity as being interpretable and thus all entities can be classed as information. In fact, there is no need for the inventory or the subsequent classification based on potential interpretability. All entities just are information.

So, perhaps it does follow logically, but in a fully circular way.

In fact, this is highly similar to what Bates has said in the above articles. “Information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy.” The only thing not information for Bates is pure entropy, as it has no organization.

A highly philosophical and thought-provoking article, as I said.

I am grateful for a short discussion on pp. 440-441 which touches on information as uncertainty reducing, amongst other things. This may be helpful in formulating my response to Hjørland.

Monday – Tuesday, 3 – 4 Sep

Cornelius, Ian. “Theorizing Information for Information Science.” ARIST 36 (2002). Medford, NJ: Information Today. 393-425.

This is a pretty good lit review that ends with the following wonderful comment:

However, as we make further attempts to tether the ass of information to the tree of knowledge, we should reflect that, until we know what it is that we cannot do without a theory of information, we will be unlikely to get one (421).

Tuesday – Wednesday, 4 – 5 Sep

Harris, Roy, and Christopher Hutton. Definition in theory and practice: Language, lexicography and the law. London: Continuum, 2007.

Began Part III. Definition and the Law. Read ch. 8 “The Definition of Law and Legal Definition” and ch. 9 “Strategies of Construction.”

Thursday, 6 Sep

Harris and Hutton. See above.

Ch. 10 “Linguistics, Science and Meaning.”

Friday, 7 Sep

Harris and Hutton. See above.

Ch. 11 (Conclusion) “Definition, Indeterminancy and Reference.”

This was a good book; one which bears re-reading. I only wish it wasn’t so God-awful expensive!

Rowley, Jennifer. “The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy.” Journal of Information Science 33 (2), 2007: 163-180. doi: 10.1177/0165551506070706

Suggested by my advisor Wed. when discussing my newest venture into the concept of information.

This article looks at “the data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy by examining the articulation of the hierarchy in a number of widely read textbooks [in information systems and in knowledge management], and analysing their statements about the nature of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom” (abstract).

Overall, this is a reasonable article. It just isn’t very good for my purposes. While it has a fair few sources, a third of them are textbooks in either information systems or knowledge management. Notice that does not say “information science.” They are also, of course, by definition heavily business-oriented.

I know that I get myself into pickles with what I say sometimes and as much as “knowledge management” bugs me silly I realize that I have yet to settle on definitions of these concepts that work for me in the work I want to do in this field, but “wisdom management”? The article doesn’t quite go that far, but it sure seems to be pointing to it.

It does ask some useful questions about the relationships between these concepts, and suggests that inverting the DIKW hierarchy (pyramid) might be “more evocative” (176). More of a “wisdom funnel” (176). I’m still undecided on the DIKW hierarchy since I have yet to fully suss out these concepts for myself, but if I accept it at all my guess is that I would prefer the inverted form.

One other small concern is that the few textbooks that even address wisdom situate “in the context of leadership. Wisdom is seen as a desirable and even essential characteristic of executive business leaders” (177). While on one hand this is probably somewhat true, I think these few textbook writers are out of touch with the reality of much business leadership. Also, the dearth of authors of these texts even addressing the topic is in my favor.

Wisdom has been spun as having a highly ethical component, as it probably should be. So from the corporate viewpoint, leaders should be wise in regards to how they conduct their personal lives as representatives of their companies, but I have a hard time believing that many large corporations want their executives to lead with a focus on wisdom in its ethical mode. I, on the other, wish they would. [See Jackall, Robert. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. for more information on "how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness" (blurb from back of paperback).]

Perhaps that is why the focus on “wisdom management.” Wisdom and its ethics re-interpreted from a corporate standpoint is what they want, but certainly not wisdom in a Socratic vein.

Saturday, 8 Sep

Weiss, Paul J. and Steve Shadle. “FRBR in the Real World.” The Serials Librarian 52 1/2, 2007: 93-104.

Found via The FRBR Blog 6 Sep 2007.

Hjørland, Birger. “Theory and Metatheory of Information Science: A New Interpretation.” Journal of Documentation 54 (5), December 1998: 606-621.

Cited by Bates (2005) “Information and knowledge: an evolutionary framework for information science.” See above.

This is an excellent article that discusses the role of epistemological theories in IS. I know that many folks avoid philosophical discussions like the plague, but this article is quite understandable by all. Another reason many folks avoid these sorts of discussions is that they want answers. But as Hjørland writes:

Epistemology has no final answer, the is no consensus about the scientific method. Insight in epistemology can, however, provide you with knowledge about the merits and weaknesses of the different solutions, and progress in the scientific method as well as classification must be based on the historical evidence gained in epistemology and science studies (613).

For anyone interested in Dr. Hjørland’s forthcoming visit to UIUC I highly suggest this article.

For everyone else, I also recommend it highly as a good, balanced and easily understood overview of how and why epistemology is central to our discipline.

A couple hours ago I wrote and sent off an email that I found very difficult to write.

This weekend I received an email asking me to sit on a panel at ALA to help discuss a topic of current concern to some. But, unfortunately and for various reasons, I decided early in the year not to go to ALA. I chose to go to NASIG instead (June), along with ASIST (Oct.). I have since added ISKO-NA/NASKO in June.

Despite having lodging in the DC area, there is simply no way I can decide to go at this late date. I most certainly cannot afford it, nor can I afford to miss even more days of work.

But how is one to turn down such an offer? This is certainly the highest level invitation of any kind I have received in my so far short library career; probably even of my whole life.

I know some of you turn down these sorts of things frequently. But did you turn down the 1st one? “They” say “timing is everything” and so much about the timing(s) of this is perfect. But bounce that timing off the reality of life and it skews real poorly on one or more axes. OK, one axis. Money.

Several people of importance to me are encouraging me to accept and I am grateful to them for that wisdom. But it simply is not to be. <sigh>

But. Tomorrow I start a(nother) new job and will become a Rapid Monographic Cataloging GA (well, hourly for the summer; GA in the fall). Yay, me!

I am seriously looking forward to actually making some forward progress each day (as in number of titles cataloged). My serials gig is anything but rapid. It’ll be hard to remember that I can only do copy cataloging with the monographs, though.

Life is full of trade-offs it seems. And some of them are even good ones.

P.S. I was reasonably OK with my decision a few hours ago, but now I am finding it hard to fathom that I said “No, thank you.” I can certainly believe the reality of it, though. Oh well. “Buck up, kid! You get to learn something new tomorrow.”

Sickness and death

Been having odd sick-like things going on for a couple months now. Went to the doc last week. Sinus x-rays showed an infection and I’m a third of the way through 20 days of antibiotics. My electrolytes were also off and I had to have them retested. Go back Monday for a follow-up.

I need to call the pest control dude back. Maybe it’s the cold snap, but I have had a couple ants the last couple days. I have about 3 more weeks to get a free touch-up spray. It’s stressful enough right now with the semester’s end rapidly approaching without needing to kill more ants. “Stay outside, you little bastards!”

End of the semester

Speaking of the end of the semester … I’m OK, but really need to get productive quickly! I’ve been reading a lot as you can see, but now it’s time to do something with what I’ve read and to actually research some (i.e., visit and play with) some terminology services-type projects. I’ve been entering many of my readings in Zotero, too, so I can do my bibliography.

My project for Representation and Organization is probably going to be an annotated bibliography. Kathryn’s left it up to me to produce something useful for the class on my topic, relationships, although she suggested a few things including the bibliography. I am going to structure it around Bean & Green’s 4-way grouping from the introduction to Relationships in the organization of knowledge:

1. Bibliographic relationships between units of recorded knowledge
2. Intratextual and intertextual relationships, including those based on text structure, citation relationships, and hypertext links
3. Subject relationships in thesauri and other classificatory structures
4. Relevance relationships (vii)

I will, of course, expand on these (non-mutually exclusive) categories and try to include at least one good article on each topic. Many topics will have several good or even great ones. And, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’ve even gone back and read some of the early classic articles.

Allen really liked my first paper for Ontologies and now I just need to do a bit of expansion and try to add a couple sentences here and there on some points he said I’d get nailed for if it were a conference paper. Our initial limit was 3 single-spaced pages and now I have 1-3 more to “play” with. Of course, I’m supposed to explain the notion of hierarchies, my choice of methodology (chose the right one, but need to say why), and also what I mean by “fundamental category.” I love how he said that “I need to do something (about “fundamental category”), that it’ll be hopeless, and that I won’t be satisfied.” Truer words of advice from a philosopher were never spoken. In 1-3 sentences I need to stave off criticism from those who think they know what they are and that I don’t, and criticism from those who think no one knows what they are. Certainly a simple task, eh?

I really had no idea what to expect from Allen when I went in to talk to him last Sunday since I had never written an actual paper for him before, but it was delightful. We chatted for a good while about a fair few things and it did my heart good. Those memories are mine, though.

I need to get on this paper, though, as I present it to class on Tuesday the 17th. I’ll post it here at some point. I’m even considering posting both versions, but I want to have the expanded version written before I post the original.

Assistantships

I just realized that my thesaurus assistantship is over May 15th, and I verified that they have no money to pay me (hourly) after that. At least I didn’t get let go like several other folks a month or two back. That means I will not completely finish my first pass through FireTalk, although possibly all Top Terms except TT00 General. The problem is, I’m still waiting for node labels (maybe next week) and it will really need a 2nd pass. ::sigh:: “‘ferris wheel rescue’, ‘ferris wheel rescue’, ‘ferris wheel rescue’…”

I think I’m set for Fall, though. I scored another assistantship in Rapid (monographic) Cataloging and kept my Serials gig. Sweet! I’ll get to sit at my own desk all week, and get some great monographic copy cataloging experience. I’ll certainly see a vastly wider range of subjects, class nos, and some other MARC fields than I do now. My only concern is that if some adjustments aren’t made it’ll be 60% total, and those extra few hours/week make a big difference.

My serials gig is through the summer, but I need to find some way to make up the $$ from the Fire Service gig. Cause it only adds up to rent and utilities for 3 months. Else it’ll be a very boring summer as I basically sit in my house and it ramen.

Blogging, or not so much

See the next post…

Future classes

This summer I’ll be taking a class on Topic Maps with Patrick Durusau via LEEP. This Fall, who knows? Registration opens Monday and we don’t have all the classes listed yet! Now this is certainly abnormal for us, but it sucks nonetheless.

I am taking Bibliography with one of our amazing emeritus professors, Don Krummel. After that, hmmm? There really aren’t many decent courses being offered in my opinion. But one should keep in mind that I’ll have 74 semester hours of LIS credit by the time Fall semester starts. Maybe it is about time to move on.

There are a couple that might be interesting in light of my previous socio-technological work, but they are with someone I don’t think I’d take any class from based on what I’ve heard from many of the PhD students.

Julia Flanders (who is amazing!) will be teaching Electronic Publishing via LEEP again. While interesting, I had a look at last year’s syllabus and I don’t know. Kind of peripheral to my main interests.

An analysis of contemporary electronic publishing from the perspective of the production process, emphasizing the role of information processing standards and the concept of documents as knowledge representation systems. Specific topics will include the organization of digital document production, tools and techniques, technical strategies, business strategies, and policy issues. Particular attention will be given to the use of key XML-related standards in the production process, and to the general role of data standards in supporting the development of a high-performance electronic publishing industry. As a vehicle for presenting a coordinated selection of fundamental issues, we will focus on the development and use of the Open eBook Publication Structure, a new industry specification for the content, structure, and presentation of “electronic books”. Students may approach the material from a variety of perspectives. Final projects will be individualized to student’s interests and backgrounds and may be either analytical research papers or technical projects designing and implementing portions of publishing systems (From GSLIS Course Catalog).

Dave Dubin will be teaching Foundations of Information Processing in Lib & Info Science, which will include Python programming. Allen Renear highly suggested I take this after hearing of the other classes I have taken and my professional plans. He’s right; I need to do this. But it’s LEEP and I broadcast this class for Dave once and had a hard time keeping up when in the same room with him even. That boy can pack an English sentence like none I’ve ever known!

Covers the common data and document processing constructs and programming concepts used in library and information science. The history, strengths and weaknesses of the techniques are evaluated in the context of our discipline. These constructs and techniques form the basis of applications in areas such as bibliographic records management, full text management and multimedia. No prior programming background is assumed (From GSLIS Course Catalog).

More important to my current goals are the independent studies/practica that I’m trying to put together. I want to do some work with “authority control,” both traditional (AACR, MARC, LC) and newer, non-traditional forms like embedded gazetteers, term lists, etc. They will probably have to be separate, but who knows? I’m drafting a letter to ask for a meeting to discuss possibilities with our head of cataloging but am waiting on a couple feedback responses first. Quite possibly something could come of this that would shape my CAS project. It’d be nice to do some real work and learning, and benefit the library and our patrons at the same time.

I thought I had the authority control thing sewn up when I got a CETRC Mentor, but seeing as I never heard from them I seem to need to find a different route. And speaking of never hearing from….

ALA and its offshoots

Almost 2 months ago, I wrote about ALA membership processing being broken. I called them a couple of days after that and was assured that everything was right with the world. The lady I spoke with really was very pleasant. She assured me that, “No, I did not owe any more $$ for ACRL and that I really was no longer a member of ACRL, and that surely LITA knew I was a member because they have exactly the same info as she does.” She suggested that maybe I hadn’t heard from them yet as their journal is quarterly and, well, Nov. to Feb. When I asked whether I should have at least received a welcome email or such she was a bit perplexed but, nonetheless, “All is right with the world.”

Well, damn it ALA! All is not right with the world. I still get ACRL publications. I have yet to receive any thing—journal, email, “Fuck off but thanks for the $$”—except for a kindly welcome from a member in my post comments. As I said in my previous post:

I voted for the dues increase ALA. I expect you to actually fix some of the broken parts with it. Starting with membership services might be a good place. That seems like such a basic concept for a membership organization, especially one whose purpose really isn’t to serve their members but where their members work. It seems to me that asking people to pony up large sums of money to be a member of something that actually supports their employers—truly one heck of a concept—would particularly make the organization pay attention to the “small” matter of membership.

I said a lot more, too, and I stand by every word of it. There are other games in town and as I figure out exactly where I want to put my limited time and energy professionally ALA is at the bottom of the list. I also doubt that they could do much to improve the situation for me at this point. I’ll probably stay a member of ALCTS next year, but after that when I am no longer a student and depending on where my 1st job takes me … who knows?

ALA, you are improving in a few small ways and I am truly glad for that. But you still truly suck in some very overarching ways that are far more important. So keep putting money into Second Life because that is far more important than even recognizing that someone is a member of part of your organization. Yeah, seems like the right priority to me. In the meantime you can find me at ASIST and NASIG.

That is all I’m willing to say because I don’t want to find myself in a situation like someone else I know who swore “Never again ALA…” and ended up taking a job there a few months later. See, my ethical sensibilities would have a real hard time with that.

That’s all for now as I have another post to finish so I can concentrate on school work.

Sort of an underwhelmed astonishment. No, not really “astonishment.” I can certainly see how I got here, after-the-fact. Hmmm…? Anyway, not sure if I’m living or being lived lately. Lots of stuff happening. Not ingesting much of some of it. Some relaxing and being with friends, but in a complicated, sort of way. Lots of little “failures,” of the “Am I letting someone else down?” sort.

Late afternoon I sent off my 3rd marked exercise for Information Modeling. I think I was OK. This class is such a (wonderful) dichotomy for me; wonderful in the multitudes of ways in which has been and remains dichotomous. I do believe that I am meeting the requirements and, more importantly, the purpose of the class, but it sure isn’t in the best of ways. It is in effect a “survey” class (of a particular type and level having begun with first-order logic) and I am certainly surveying.

The whole two classes at the same time thing was not my best idea. Far from the worst; but not so great. It’s working; could be better. I’m still missing some of the IML classes even though Classification Seminar is over. Allen had class the previous Thursday while I was stuck in O’Hare. This week I made all of class, but with the tooth and poor to no sleep, I was practically asleep before class was over; just kind of dazed.

I have watched 3 movies since Friday evening. Friday, I watched Steamboy. Yesterday, I watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. I began Kingdom of Heaven last night and finished late this afternoon after sending off my entity relation diagram and exercise.

From 12:30 PM Saturday to about 2 PM Sunday, I drove 320 miles; most of it Sat. Hung out with friends, who had a sleepover out at Lake Bloomington. Tooks lot of fire pics.

I also brought home 5 heavy boxes of books from storage. They’re just sitting in the back “bedroom.” Maybe I’ll have a look over the weekend.

I returned the previously mentioned movies just a bit ago and got 5 more. But by getting them tonight, I get to keep them until Friday at 9 PM instead of Thursday. It’s just me on Turkey Day so I might as well watch some movies. A couple need to be watched before or after, though. Maria Full of Grace seems to not be a Thanksgiving movie. Maybe not Paradise Now, either.

I need some time to think. My adviser and I talked for about an hour today. Mostly it was just catching up; letting her into many of the ‘little “failures”‘ mentioned above. Gesturing toward research/ideas for Carole’s paper, CAS project ideas, independent study for Spring, ….

It was really an odd session; abstract and vague. Although there is nothing wrong with abstract or vague when they serve a purpose, currently abstract and vague is not good for me. This is mostly my fault; seems I can be no other way at the moment.

School is at a really weird point for me lately. I despise the whole semester system, but that’s been a given for a while now. I seem to have hit some sort of a plateau, a stalemate. I’m not worried it is permanent–just a slump–although, I can see slowly moving towards this over time. Possibly.

Kathryn wants me to curl up with all the literature I collected in Classification Seminar; not just soon, but longer term. She thinks my direction(s) will come from there; I think it may well.

In other related news, I now have a CETRC Mentor. [CETRC Mentoring subcommittee.] As some of you know, I passed on the honor to possibly be an Emerging Leader. I have a few reasons; much of it is financial. [I actually know at least 3 of the folks accepted; at least 2 recent UIUC grads. I wish them all the best of experiences with this program!] I had decided to instead apply to the ALCTS CCS CETRC Mentoring Program. I found out a couple days ago that I got accepted and who my mentor will be. We have yet to make contact, so who will remain unnamed for now.

I guess I figure I would rather spend some time learning from those who have (recently) gone before me, before I try running the asylum. In fact, I prefer it as a long term modus operandi. That doesn’t imply I don’t value those who want to. I just prefer a more personal way to learn “to lead.”

And, NO, I do not want a handbag!

Blake has been keeping in touch as LISHost has been getting nailed by spammers the last few days. I get relatively little spam that makes it through to my blog to get caught by Akismet. It stops everything else. Moving to the Cutline template has, for me, drasticaly increased the number that get to Akismet. Still minor. The last couple of days many are making it through to the Moderate cue and some are getting caught by Akismet. Still nothing getting through that I know of. But if I am getting hit this hard, I can only imagine folks like Walt or Aaron. Spammers are in a special level of the special level of hell I have reserved for marketers. So why all the handbag spam?

This is really rough in spots, but it needs to go out. I may elaborate on many of the things touched on here; much of it is my future. This is possibly more for me than others, but feel free to engage me over any of it. I just have mostly questions right now.

In case anyone is interested, here is what I did about ALA for this year:

Stayed as a student member.

Kept ALCTS and the Cataloging and Classification Section (CCS).

Added Serials Section (SS). Hey, it was free and I do serials.

Dropped ACRL and the two sections I was in. Hasn’t been of much value to me and I’m no longer so involved in the student chapter. [Yes, the site needs updating. We're having a "small" issue getting control handed over to the new webmaster.]
Kept Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT).

Finally added New Members Round Table (NMRT).

Added Library History Round Table (LHRT).

Joined LITA. I decided to give it a try and see how it fits my interests.

In the end, my dues went up by $5/year. I guess I was feeling generous when I renewed two days ago. All this certainly won’t be sustainable when I’m no longer a student, though.

As some of you “know” [as in I've mentioned it before], I am currently a member of the following professional organizations (along with accompanying student chapters of ALA, ACRL, ASIS&T):

American Library Association
Association of College and Research Libraries
Association for Library Collections & Technical Services
American Society for Information Science & Technology
Illinois Library Association
Philosophy of Science Association

My ALA and associated divisions, along with my ASIS&T, memberships are all due for renewal late Oct/early Nov.

As a student, I save quite a bit but this is still a chunk of change. My issue, though, is are these the organizations I should belong to?

I’ve been to an ALA Annual (Chicago 1995), an ACRL conference (Minneapolis 1995) and attended an ALCTS CETRC meeting during ALA Annual. I am going to ASIS&T in early Nov.

But. There are several more organizations that I need to consider based on my interests and professional aspirations:

North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG)
Library & Information Technology Association (LITA)
International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO)
The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP)

I have no doubt that there are others that I am not even aware of or am forgetting.

NASIG has a student rate of $25. I ought to consider them as I am a serials cataloger.

LITA has a student rate of $25 also and I ought to consider them for many reasons. Can you say MARBI for starters?

ISKO does not appear to have a student rate and is 60 Euros or approx. $76+/year. That would be my most expensive membership by far, if you count ALA Divisions separate from ALA itself.

SHARP is $20 for students but does not include a subscription to their journal, Book History. If you want the journal you pay the full $55. Now SHARP is somewhat peripheral to my primary interests, but I’ve met several members of this organization and I love them and their work. Some of them were at the European Modernism and the Information Society and/or the Library History Seminar XI that I assisted with.

As for my current organizations:

I need to stay in ALCTS for many reasons. Besides, their student rate is $15. $15 people! Of course, you have to be a member of ALA first, but as long as I’m a student it isn’t too prohibitive.

ILA is my state library association. I forget what it cost, but it wasn’t bad. I will not be able to make their conference this Oct. since I’m going to ASIS&T a few weeks later, but I think this can’t hurt.

I’m attending my first ASIS&T conference in early Oct. This one was $40 as a student, plus an extra $12 to join 2 additional SIGs. I’ll have to see, but I’m guessing this one is a keeper since it addresses so many of my varied interests. I also much prefer smaller organizations and conferences.

This leaves ACRL. Hmmm? Yes, I intend to stay in an academic setting. But what am I getting from this extremely large division of ALA? Don’t get me wrong; I want to belong. I have also really enjoyed my time helping to start the first and only ACRL student chapter at UIUC; ACRL@UIUC [Thanks Rudy for getting the ball rolling!].

But they have no student rate, it costs $35 as a student. That’s $10 more than a student membership in ALA even. I personally get little value from C&RL News, and while I sometimes get something out of College & Research Libraries, I more often than not just find articles that irk me enough to comment on them here.

I may just have to swap LITA for ACRL this year and see how that goes. I’l hold off on ISKO for a bit after talking with my advisor, but I’ll keep an eye on the hopefully budding North American chapter.

SHARP will have to wait for now, too, due to finances. NASIG, maybe? Jenny, I know you told me something once before but feel free to remind me what you may have said.

Anyone else have comments on NASIG? Or on any others of these organizations? Ones I forgot? Feel free to debate why I should stay in ACRL vs. joining LITA. And please don’t suggest both, because along with ALCTS I cannot afford ALA and 3 divisions—even as a student.