TLA impressions

I started this next bit as a reply to a posting on AUTOCAT, but realized I was descending into a rant better suited for the Blogosphere. I did respond on AUTOCAT, but changed the direction of my public reply in that professional community.

Anyway, below is the text of my original thoughts, and the original line of thought I wanted to talk about but saved for this setting instead.

Brief quotation then comment on the original thread:

an AUTOCATTER opined recently that:

> I think cataloguing is both complicated and difficult. But it

> _seems_ simple and easy. This is the curse of the cataloguer. Like

> Cassandra, we are cursed to be forever explaining to other people how

> difficult our work is but never really being believed.

To which I began my reply...

One thing to remember about the mythic Cassandra was that she was RIGHT, in the end.

Patrons maybe don't appreciate good cataloging, but they will sure miss it quickly if it ever goes away.

(sort of the point of the Cassandra myth, too)

Try doing typical academic research on Amazon.com (looking for relevant works on a specific topic) versus a typical library catalog, or LC's main OPAC. Yes, for very general topics, Amazon works just fine, at a superficial level.

And for the majority of Library users, general, superficial searching is all they ever do...or much care about.

But if you really want to chase down specific topic areas, "researching" a la Amazon becomes eventually a hit-or-miss exercise in utter frustration fairly rapidly, especially in obscure areas not a lot of people make purchases in, so that even the "people who bought this also bought this" engine breaks down and becomes useless. The typical Library OPAC using LCSH and LC Classification well gives a level of specificity that Amazon will never match. Nor does Amazon need to, as their database serves the ultimate mission of selling lots of books, and it does that very well already. But the Library's mission is to promote scholarship, and with effective, quality cataloging, it does that very well, too. I think what Thomas Mann, Michael Gorman, et. al. are saying is let's try not to unintentionally punish expert users in our efforts to make OPACs more easy to use and accessible to the "average" patron. What I see Michael Gorman saying is that the "Good enough for gov't work" mentality, where some library managers prize through-put speed above all other considerations, does exactly that.

Slightly off topic but not wholly unrelated, I say give the "average" user their single, simple "Meta" search box as the default display if that's truly what they want, but don't disable those "scary" advanced search features for people who actually know what they're doing, or Reference Librarians who can better guide users with these sophisticated tools!

Last week I attended Roy Tennant's recent talk/presentation to the Texas Library Association, and I hated it, or at least the first half of it, just as I expected I would. But I've come to understand that "shock value" is just one of the language games of academic discourse (another is the "old wine in new bottles" game, while another is "exposing the 'old wine in new bottles' language game."), and that saying things like "the Catalog has No Future" is just another example of this feint. He doesn't *really* mean that, or at least not without lots of caveats and verbal somersaults--I got it that he's mostly just yanking chains to stir things up, encourage librarians to "think outside the box", put ourselves in the shoes of Mr. & Ms. Average User, etc.

Aside from a basic disagreement on what Libraries are for...Walt Crawford, for one, challenges Library 2.0 gurus like Tennant when they assert that Libraries are "about Information", which as both Crawford and Gorman recognize, is an almost meaningless, overbroad generalization that rapidly gets us into trouble because it obfuscates rather than clarifies...aside from that there's a basic undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in Roy Tennant's basic line of argument that really really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He seems to dismiss out of hand any notion of the efficacy of bibliographic instruction efforts, leaving the impression he considers it a waste of time and not worth the effort. Tennant himself referred to the average library user as "brain dead" several times during his talk.

When pressed, Roy did concede that "advanced" search features, which he all but put the kibbosh on in his opening remarks, should be left intact for skilled Reference librarians to make use of when they need to.

Roy was even intimated local SLIS professor who challenged him as basically having just advocated a dumbing down of library search tools and methodology. He hotly contested this, of course, claiming he was advocating that we "smart up" our search technology. The SLIS professor brought up the issue of bibliographic instruction, but Tennant declined to follow that tangent.

The 2nd half of Roy's talk discussed new ILS innovations like Koha and Evergreen that really are quite exciting, and I enjoyed that a lot. I had already attended the Evergreen talk put on by Georgia Public Libraries earlier in the conference, and had sat through several live Koha demonstrations on the exhibition floor, which were impressive. Most impressive to me were a Koha feature where you could right-click on a call number and pull up a shelf-map of the library and show a patron where exactly in the stacks to look for a particular book. That was wicked cool.

When I got back to work after the conference, as luck would have it our local Ex Libris Rep walked us through a demo of PRIMO, their latest "Discovery Tool", basically a meta-search interface that will overlay the traditional catalog (Voyager or Aleph)...this was the sort of thing Roy Tennant was pushing in his talk. And I piddled around with some libraries that had installed it, and yes, it was kind of neat. But I also know that in more advanced research, the question is not finding a little bit of everything about a given topic, but winnowing away vast amounts of things you decide you don't need and focusing on the one or two gold nuggets of research material you really do need. In advanced research, knowing what you can safely ignore becomes nearly as important as knowing what to read. One thing I strongly disliked was that in one library, call number browsing was no longer possible. This was an outrage. It is a powerful way to browse a collection virtually, by subject matter. Do patrons know how to use it? No. Would they miss it? No. But librarians DO know, and I DID notice. And I exclaimed out loud WHY!? Why would you do that, disabling call number browsing...what a stupid thing to do. But then again, Roy's dictum is, "Librarians like to search, everyone else prefers to find". Nevermind that Librarians know better how to search than even some expert users, and can find things faster than unaided patrons flailing about, even in a user-friendlier, google-ized Discovery Interface. A colleague of mine who is of a similar mindset also says "is it wrong to demand a minimum of search competence in our patrons? They are college students, after all--some of them graduate students"; and if they lack that competence at first, is it so unreasonable to teach them, via bibliographic instruction? I'm just not convinced that ALWAYS catering to the lowest common denominator is necessarily wise, especially in relation to the ILS and associated discovery tools. Elitist? I don't care. It works, librarians know how to do it, and it's a powerful search strategy. Quit tying our hands and dumbing down our tools and getting in our way. Tennant spent a good chunk of his talk ridiculing an interface put together for librarians by librarians out in California, bemoaning how user-unfriendly it is, etc. And while you can maybe make the case for a simpler interface for the general public, the one designed by librarians for librarians probably works very well at highly discrete searching that keeps the librarian expert user from having to plow through a long google-like results list or give up if what they're looking for isn't in the first page of results. We use those complicated tools so there ISN'T even a full page to wade through. Tennant should know that, but he pretends not to care.

The other major talk of note that I attended was Walt Crawford's talk on "Balanced Libraries", the same title as a book he wrote last year and that I purchased a couple of weeks before the TLA conference but didn't have a chance to read beyond a few brief paragraphs. I love Crawford's general outlook and body of work, and I'm sure I'll enjoy Balanced Libraries as well. The talk was pretty good, mostly good common sense. I wish it had been *after* Tennant's talk, so that everyone could get a healthy dose of reality. I did try to see if I could get Walt to comment on the recent management decisions at LC regarding no longer doing serials authority work and giving as their rationale a desire to spend more energy and focus on making available to the public their digital resources instead, and if he felt these decisions were "balanced" or "unbalanced". But Walt, to my disappointment, declined to comment on it, claiming not to have
kept up enough with the issue to comment intelligently. Others in the audience did say privately it was a good question, though.

The other major talks I attended were the Evergreen seminar hosted by Georgia Public Libraries, and a discussion of Library building plan do's and don't's, whether for a brand new library or a renovation plan. The speakers were Library directors from Austin Community College and the University of Houston, and the talks were great. The UH story was one of remarkable heroism in fund-raising, and no one can deny that the results are visually impressive--I've seen it with my own eyes, and the UH main campus library today is very beautiful and much more open and less dark/depressing than the way the library used to be. It does make better use of natural light, though I personally worry about wasted space in the new layout. Also, it was hard to tell from some of the photos provided, but some of the study spaces looked not very inviting, not a place I'd like to go study...something about being surrounded by the stacks is something I would definitely miss in the study area depicted. I don't want to criticize the new layout too much, but there is something that makes me a little uneasy about it as a library space. Of course, it's hard to be humble when you work in a classically designed Library as beautiful as my own. Our collection is not as robust as over at our cross town academic neighbor, UNT, but then again we are a MUCH smaller campus with a correspondingly smaller student body, and also, we have satellite library locations--more than they do, in fact.

Anyway, all in all it was a very good TLA conference. I was struck how much the spaces in between conference rooms at the Dallas Convention Center resembles nothing so much as it does an airport concourse. I half expected to see metal detectors and passport control stations and money exchange windows and arrival/departure displays as I walked through this space. Next year the Texas Library Association will hold its conference at the George R. Brown convention center in Houston, Texas. I plan to attend that conference as well, since I have free lodging in Sugar Land. I would plan to drive up each day to the free stadium lot at Rice University, and then walk over to the Dryden-TMC rail station, ride up to Bell Station, then walk over to the G.R.B. That's much easier than spending $10 trying to park close and having to fight downtown Houston's traffic. I will probably skip it when TLA goes to San Antonio and Austin, though (the usual rotation for TLA).

Although I was grateful for DART, it was less convenient than I'd hoped it would be, vis a vis the convention center. You had to walk nearly two blocks underneath the massive concrete structure in a very poorly lit, pedestrian-unfriendly setting to get to the actual convention center DART station. It was doable, but very badly designed. You can reach West End via DART from the convention center, though by the time you're finished walking to the station, able to buy a ticket, then ride the train up to the West End station, you could almost have covered the distance yourself on foot, walking up a few more city blocks--it's really not hardly worth it. What is worth it is going a bit further to St. Paul's station, near the Dallas Museum of Art, which I did on the last day of the conference, after all the sessions were over. I spent an hour there at the Museum, viewing the exhibits (focusing on 20th century and contemporary pieces), then took the DART back over to West End, had lunch at Landry's, then wandered over to Dealey Plaza and into the Sixth Floor Museum. I took the guided audio-tour, and checked out the home movie exhibit (including the Zapruder film) up on the 7th floor above, then browsed the Museum bookstore. I made a lucky find in locating a director's cut edition of Oliver Stone's JFK on DVD, which contains a second DVD of special features and a short documentary film. The dual DVDs were moreover packaged for sale with the companion book, JFK: The book of the film, which has the complete annotated script and review articles pro and con in the major media, often with a critical review followed by a response from Oliver Stone or Zachary Sklar, or one of the film's expert advisers, like Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, USAF (ret.), upon whom the Donald Sutherland character Mr. X was partly based. Of the Museum's bookstore offerings, this was one of the few materials for sale actually questioning the official story of the Warren Commission. Not present were any of the early critics' works...authors like Mark Lane, David Lifton, Josiah Thompson, Jim Marrs, Jim Garrison (though some of these books are, admittedly, probably out of print). Vincent Bugliosi's newest tome was there of course, as well as the newest "Mafia did it" book by David Kaiser, and Posner of course. All to be expected, I guess, though Stone's JFK in DVD and the JFK : Book of the Film do a lot of heavy lifting all by themselves. I passed on the other DVD with Kevin Costner, Thirteen Days in October, a drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but may pick it up the next time I'm in town. When I got back to Denton (having to drive back on that fateful stretch of Elm Street each day from TLA), I went over to our local used book store, Recycled Books, and picked up a used paperback copy of Jim Garrison's 1988 book On the Trail of Assassins. I managed to finish the book just this past weekend, in the middle of the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival. It makes for very gripping reading and is very hard to put down. Already being a First 48 A&E television fanboy, Garrison's work read like any good true crime book ought to. I'm trying next to tackle Jim Marrs' Crossfire, which is the other major work that Oliver Stone used to make his film. It was especially unfortunate that the Sixth Floor Museum did not have a copy of Crossfire for sale, since Jim Marrs is a local author, native to the DFW area and still living here, who also lived through the time of the assassination in 1963. But that's just the way things are at the Sixth Floor Museum. What was funny was listening to Warren Commission defenders 'debunking' critics of the Warren Commission in the audio tour, only to later read on my own the debunkers debunked themselves. I'm just dabbling in this material, don't intend to get sucked in or become obsessed by it, but it is fascinating and disturbing.

Anyway, to sum up, the Texas Library Association Annual 2008 Conference was a worthwhile experience. I am looking forward to the ELUNA Conference this summer in Long Beach, California, and hoping to have time to have dinner, or at least coffee, with a Flickr friend who is a grad student in Art attending USC and living in Los Angeles, which is relatively close to Long Beach; I may well be flying into LAX for all I know. It would not be my first time in Southern California, having visited San Diego Naval Station as a NJROTC cadet in the late 1980s, but it would be my first time to visit the greater LA area. I will miss going back to Chicago where I attended the penultimate EndUser conference not long before Endeavor Information Systems was ultimately bought out by Ex Libris, who will be hosting the ELUNA Conference in their home town of Long Beach, California. Endeavor Information Systems, which is no more, was based in Chicago. ALA is based there also, come to think of it. I had a great time in Chicago and would welcome any library business related reason to go back there. I'm not crazy about their crappy local gun ordinances, so actually living there is less appealing than it once was, but that too may change in the next decade in the wake of the final forthcoming SCOTUS decision in DC v. Heller. I'm told I would like NYC, too, and I probably would, but I would have to be pretty tough minded to hack it in NYC, I think. Probably I could do it, but it would be quite a challenge. And their local firearms regulations would have to change, too, for me to actually consider a move there for full-time work. And Washington DC too, for that matter--though that should happen sooner than in NYC or Chicago. Well before I land that dream job at Library of Congress or Georgetown Univ. someday *wink*.

Recent Campus Non-Event

I'm a bit behind in my blogging and will get to my highlights at this year's Texas Library Association conference soon, hopefully. I'm a little tardy because of wireless networking issues at the apartment, and my slow-as-molasses Desktop PC, which is my only functional computer at home, which has been a major pain. I know it's probably something simple, like as in I need to power cycle the Modem/Router, which I had to do in January, but I threw away those instructions, not thinking I might need them again for the exact same problem in the Spring Time.

I also had a blast at the annual Denton Arts & Jazz Fest, which was within easy walking distance of my apartment. I volunteered at our campus fund-raising booth as a cashier (we were partnered with a local North Texas chain of taco shops based in Fort Worth that has a presence in Denton as well). The weather was nice both days, though unseasonably chilly on Sunday.

Anyway, last week was the annual protest week for Students for Concealed Carry On Campus (SCCC). I personally wish it was "Students, Faculty and Staff for Concealed Carry On Campus" (SFSCCC) but it is the older students (21 and up) who do, of course, have to take the lead on this issue. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry last year told the Texas State Rifle Association he would work on this issue so that Texas would never enable a VA Tech-type incident.

Now, as it turns out, our campus has no students actively involved in SCCC, and thus no one to serve as a rallying point, and as such, though I did not personally go out of my way to look, I did not see any students with T-shirts and empty holsters participating in the protest. Nevertheless, our campus news service made everyone aware of the event in advance, to avoid any confusion about it. The email that was sent out was strictly informational in nature, implying no endorsement. I am going to quote some of the campus traffic this generated, but I will leave the names & positions out to protect the identity of the respondents.

Back around the ides of April, this informational message was broadcast on the general campus list:

During the week of April 21-25, there is a national campaign set by the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. We may have students who choose to join the initiative by joining college students across the nation to protest against state laws and campus policies that prohibit concealed handgun license holders from carrying their concealed firearms on college campuses. Students who participate in the protest are asked to wear t-shirts and empty holsters and may pass out flyers. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Office of Student Life.


Innocent enough, I thought. Others, though, engaged their fingers and emotions first...

"This is appalling that this is coming across [campus] e-mail much less faculty list. The promotion of any self-serving agenda is inappropriate at this level. Please take me off of the faculty list if this is the kind of garbage I have to receive. Respectfully submitted, Prof. X."

oh-kay, way to NOT read the original email there, Prof. If this were a reading comprehension test question, you would not be passing that one.

someone else in campus Admissions felt the need to sound off next:

"This is a bit shocking to me.

Does the University have any plans to educate students about gun violence and how concealed weapons are the WRONG way to protect themselves?

It seems we have a responsibility as educators not let this pass by without comment."

And the "right" way, presumably is to dial 911? Even on a small campus like ours, and with a good police force such as we have, the truism still stands--when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Let me recommend a book for you:

Dial 911 and Die (Paperback)
by Richard W Stevens (Author), Richard W. Stevens (Illustrator), Garn Turner (Author)

• Paperback: 278 pages
• Publisher: Distributed by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc (September 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964230445
• ISBN-13: 978-0964230446

This book definitely makes you think, and is a kick to one's complacency.

Professor Y was right to point out:

"Whether appalled or shocked by the announcement, we as a faculty cannot forget that we work for a STATE institution and, as an agent for the state, the university cannot prohibit or limit the rights of any student to FREEDOM OF SPEECH. We are all guaranteed the right to peaceable assembly and and demonstration.
If you are opposed to any potential demonstration, you have the right a public forum as well."

Right you are, Professor. Thanks.

Another faculty member noticed that the original messenger had been unfairly maligned and had this to say:

"As much as I disagree with the agenda of the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, I do feel compelled to thank [Dr. __ ] for giving us forewarding that this protest might be coming to our campuses. ([who] was not promoting the event, simply stating it might happen.) I would rather be aware of what I might find coming to work one morning next week that simply show up to a protest. I would want to know if any other group might be organizing as well - whatever the issue. Every campus has a free speech area for a reason: we are encouraging our students to think and develop opinions of their own, even if we disagree with them. And, yes, it would be good to see accurate information about gun violence disseminated to our students. Perhaps this is something we could work on?"

I laughed out loud at the last line. I mean, yay, good pro-Free speech "even for speech we dislike", yada yada yada, but I'm guessing this person considers the Brady campaign and IANSA and related anti-gun groups as a good source for "accurate information". As a Librarian who cares about accuracy of information, if you had accurate information about gun violence, you could not reasonably oppose the aim of SCCC, pure and simple. Be careful what you wish for.

Yet another pro-Free speech commentator, and possible supporter of SCCC (at least that's how it reads, though in fairness may not be what the person *meant* to say):

"Well this certainly stirred debate, which is a good thing. While we may not agree or even find such an activity offensive, our country was founded on the principles of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. This is a right which we must honor even if we oppose their stance. As a university we of all groups should understand this right as we also support academic freedom for faculty and students to express sometimes unpopular views. Please don't attack the messenger, [Dr. ____] , [who] was simply informing us of the event not endorsing it. Those of us who oppose the concealed handgun policy should also let our voices be heard."

Mmmm, yeah, you go first. I'm too new here to boldly denounce the policy in person; I'm taking a big enough risk with this blog, and doing my utmost to focus on what is being said and not the personalities saying them. I'm not a "gun blogger", though I do read a number of them. I'm just not that avid of a shooter or that knowledgeable to blog the topic 24/7. And let me re-state for the record that I'm politically Left-wing/Pro-Green, even downright socialist/anti-capitalist in some of my views. But the anti-gun stance has been crippling to Democrats, especially well-to-do, otherwise well educated Democrats who have nice jobs, live in nice houses or apartments, donate generously to NPR, buy from L.L. Bean. I know, as I semi-sorta belong on the fringe of that demographic. It utterly alienates Democratic politicians from great swaths of the American working class. Not that the Republicans have ANYTHING to offer them but a promise (sometimes broken) to respect their basic gun rights and sometimes pander to their pet religious prejudices. At least you get more good quality civil liberties pie with Libertarians, even if their economic policy is just as brutal on the working class, if not more so, than regular GOP economic policy.

Anyway, a senior faculty member weighed in next:

"...As repulsed by the idea of students carrying concealed handguns on campus given the recents events across the country, I am dismayed over the outrage that has stemmed from this most recent email. We are supposed to be instilling in our students the drive to go out and make a difference in the world, and stand strong for what they believe in, despite how outlandish it might be to some.

I regular remind my students that if it weren't for a vocal minority a century ago, they would not have the opportunity to participate in the upcoming election, much less have one of the top tier be a female. I encourage my students to use the free speech areas on campus, knowing full well there are bound to be political, social, and cultural perspectives that clearly violate my own personal standards.
Quite frankly, given the social temperament of our campus, I can't imagine this protest to very large at all or spark any significant change in the way most members of the student body or faculty feel about this particular issue. The issue of concern here is the number of faculty who have voiced a concern, not over the topic being addressed, but the right of students to take a stand on an issue that intersects with personal opinions. As faculty who are attempting to mold the minds of the future, we should be applauding students, not for the stance they're taking, but for taking a stance at all. We should be reminding them that as citizens, they have the freedom to think, the freedom to speak, and the freedom to be wrong.

Dr. Q."

I am glad that our faculty are willing to at least stand up for Free speech and all. That really is wonderful and no small thing. But clearly a lot of work remains to be done to change attitudes about the basic human right of self-defense in this country, on or off our college campuses.

The most even-handed response came from this senior staff member:

"...I would like to offer my view on this issue as one who has been at the university for many years and has seen issues come and go on campus.

First, I must remind you that [Dr. ___ ] original message was only informational. It was neither an endorsement nor a criticism of the issue.

Many years ago, now, a group I would describe as overtly passionate about their beliefs in the right-to-life came to campus, as part of a national campus tour, to display information about their anti-abortion position. This included large graphics of fetuses, etc. They were allowed on campus because they were sponsored by a legitimate [campus] student group and displayed their information in a free speech area designated by the university. I would say that the event was successful in that student and faculty were informed in advance that the group would be on campus, students with opposing views were given a free speech area at the same time to allow for other opinions, and a healthy discussion of issues seemed to take place. Information about how to avoid or ignore the display was also provided to students so that those who wished not to participate could do so.

So, now we have the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. And, they have organized what they believe will be a national “Empty Holster” campaign, designed to inform more people about individual states’ gun laws regarding the ability to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. Similar to other “informational awareness campaigns", this will ask students to wear a particular item to represent their views. This allows individual students to identify themselves as having beliefs similar to the group organizing the campaign.

Let us remember a few things:

• Wearing an empty holster is not against any state or federal law.

• Wearing an empty holster does not entitle the wearer to discuss issues within a classroom, unless it is part of the curriculum or the instructor allows it – that is, free speech areas are available to any students who wish to make use of them by signing up for a particular time and particular free speech area.

• University campuses have been, are, and will remain, the safest places one can spend one’s time. Statistically, when you drive off campus, you increase the risk of felonious assault by incalculable odds. The number of college students killed on all campuses by other students over the past fifty years has not surpassed the number of citizens (some of whom were university students) murdered in each of the major metropolitan areas of our country in any one given year.

• Students, faculty and staff who do not wish to be part of any discussion or debate of these issues have the right to ignore those who do.

I hope, just as others have expressed, that the university campus can remain a place where civil discourse about issues is always welcome and that we challenge our students to learn or clarify the process of understanding issues which impact the beliefs they form or hold. I believe that if we can teach [our] students this skill, they will find themselves better able than others to be successful in their work and in their communities.

The [Campus] Counseling Center is available to faculty and staff for consultation regarding this issue. "

Lastly, a faculty member posted a "me too" response thus:

"Thank you, [Q,] I applaud your message!
I am nauseated by the very idea of carrying concealed weapons on campus. Even more intolerable, though, is the thought that as faculty we may stand opposed to the very idea of allowing others to exercise free speech. It is essential to our way of life that we defend the freedoms of all of us. Our freedom has been bought with a dear price--the least we can do is appreciate that sacrifice."

And there you have a round up of faculty views on SCCC and its aims at my workplace. Ugh.

Even if state law changes, it will still be an uphill battle to change university policy. And I would only quibble with the "statistical" part of the even-handed statement by pointing out that campuses tend to under-report crime, and that campus police are often at cross purposes, fighting crime on and near campus, but also reporting to university presidents who want their university to look good and encourage students to enroll there versus somewhere else.

I obey the law and campus policy. I may hate them, but they are what they are, and right now I need this job. If I were a bit more senior, in an institution with faculty status for Librarians including tenure, I might be more vocal than this. But for now this quiet space in Cyberspace is all the freedom of expression I choose to exercise at this stage.

I reiterate that it's going to have to be the students who will do the heavy lifting on this issue. Those of us faculty and staff who support the aims of SCCC are way too much in a minority among our colleagues to be effective. Students on the other hand, pay tuition, and the university wants to keep getting their tuition money and fees. Thus they have to at least nominally pay attention to you if enough of you complain. Take time to educate yourself about firearms, about self-defense, and then really study what happened at places like VA Tech and why, and what would be your best chance for surviving something like that on your campus.

The more recent tragedy in Illinois is more food for thought--Illinois is already one of the most heavily gun-controlled states in the entire USA. There is no right to concealed carry there. And yet they had a bloody campus shooting. If restrictive gun control were really the answer, you'd think universities that allow concealed carry on campus--out in Utah--would be like going to school "at the OK Corral", with "blood in the streets" (everyone's favorite pair of tired simile and/or metaphor)...except that it's not. It's pretty tranquilo out there.

I patiently await the decision in the DC v. Heller case. It should be a victory for freedom, and our 2nd Amendment rights if preliminary analysis of the oral arguments by various experts and commentators are accurate.

At least some in the anti-gun movement are acknowledging that in order to implement their full agenda it will take nothing short of a repeal of the 2nd Amendment--which, lemme tell ya, ain't gonna happen.

I reiterate that I'm not a gun blogger, I'm a Librarian and library blogger who happens to care about this issue. I just wish my colleagues were as passionate about the 2nd Amendment as we unambiguously agree we are are about the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

As it turns out, I did not view any students wearing SCCC t-shirts nor wearing empty holsters. Unless more students make a visible showing, faculty and staff are not going to go out on a limb to join you. Thank you, SCCC for all that you do...I just wish our students would get involved and get informed.