Aggie Librarian

20 x 20 hindsight or warning lights in the rearview mirror.

2011-11-30T21:16:00.000-08:00

It didn't really occur to me until today that, as an Aspergian male going to work in libraries, I am entering a world populated and managed largely by neurotypical (NT) women.

The flashing red warning lights are now quite blinding in my philosophical rear-view mirror as I look backwards through time.

My ability to relate to neurotypical (NT) women on any level has been historically not promising, to put it mildly. NT male-female communication is challenging enough. Throwing an AS diagnosis into the mix "turns it up to eleven", so to speak.

I left a job that was damn near ideal for me as an Aspie (as a Medical Travel Assistance Coordinator for AIG International Services) and entered what turned out to be a goddamn minefield of intrigue, misunderstanding and dirty poker politics.

In part because my well-meaning mum thought the AIG job was "beneath me" and that "someone so smart" as me should have a better paying, more respectable job. I did come to embrace the idea of librarianship for myself eventually...but I'd be lying if I denied that part of my motivation was just to make mum finally shut up about my career choice. If I could become a librarian just like her, she'd have no further grounds to gripe about me, or so I had naively reasoned.

Gawd, some days I just want to crawl under a rock and literally die of embarrassment.

Subjective views of damaged books

2011-11-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

I continue to be amused by the highly subjective nature of judging book damage employed by many different librarians.

"Oh! It has a pink stain on one of the pages! And yellow highlighter all throughout! This book is RUINED!!!"

No, no it isn't. As Ranganathan's first law states, "Books are for use". You're a librarian, not an antiquarian bookseller. There is a difference. I used the heck out of good library books all throughout my undergrad and graduate school careers...they endured coffee mug ring stains, my cleaning my fingernails with the pages; I even spilled a shot of whiskey on one...(had taken the book to a bar as it was more interesting than many of my fellow patrons)...the "kids" had just started to arrive at 11pm-ish and we older barflies were preparing to shuffle on out and home when some jerk bought everyone a round of shots including me. The bartender put the shotglass on my book and it left a little whiskey ring on the cover.

It was after that, and still feeling intoxicated walking to work the next AM, that I decided it was a bad idea to go out M-Thurs in library school and saved my partying for the weekends. *cough*

The point is, books get USED...used for education hopefully but also to prop open a door, or look pretty on a table, or something to set one's drink on, etc. They do not have to remain in pristine condition to be perfectly functional, usable. The sooner some librarians disabuse themselves of this notion and embrace the reality of the life-cycle of a book, the better. Ranganathan knew what he was talking about, his laws aren't just flowery, feel-good rhetoric; they have practical, philosophical import. They're not something you learn for the SLIS Intro to Reference Services final then promptly forget once you land your first library job...they're meant to guide your actual practice of librarianship.

Anyway, Cracked spine, pages falling out...THAT is a ruined book. If it can't be reasonably repaired with a minimal expenditure of funds, or if the cost to repair exceeds the cost to replace, that is when a book should be withdrawn, no question.

But, how about, say, water damage that warps a paperback front and back pages? Well, the responsible parties should be fined, yes, but withdraw from circulation? Is is still legible? Then no.

I was asked to have a look at a book by a librarian who was convinced she would never have let the book leave her library in that condition so the damage MUST have occurred when it was out on loan. I had to laugh when I saw it because I knew OUR copy in OUR library looked much more ragged and had already been sent out via ILL on multiple occasions. It's a very popular title, and a shame this librarian would consider restricting access to it because of such, to me, quite minor blemishes (stained pages). I've decided to defer the decision on this to my immediate superior when she gets back from vacation. I had suggested we could bill the library we last sent it to, but actually viewing the reported "damage", I had changed my view, since it was far less worse than I'd been led to believe over the phone. I'm glad I'm able to defer this matter to a superior for inspection, and plan to keep my opinions mostly to myself.

Of Librarianship and Asperger's Syndrome

2011-11-28T16:14:00.000-08:00

I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome in June of 2010. Because it is a recognized disability protected by ADA, which EEOC enforces, I believe I was able to remain employed with the public library system that hired me in a paraprofessional capacity. I had to accept a demotion along the way to Clerk, but I remain gainfully employed. I like my job, so the purpose of this post is not to complain about it; I have been shifted to working in Interlibrary Loan and enjoy it very much. One day I'd like to transition to being an full-fledged ILL Librarian in a University setting if possible; perhaps with some secondary Reference duties.

No, the purpose of this post is to reflect on the challenges faced by a person with Asperger's Syndrome, and just how unexpectedly inhospitable most libraries are as employers to persons with Autism/Asperger's.

I've read in some employment guides to people with Asperger's Syndrome that libraries and librarianship represent a potential career path to consider. I became interested in becoming a librarian before I was formally diagnosed. But I now take issue with the suggestion that libraries are necessarily a "good" place for an Aspie to work.

What I have learned, and what I realize looking back, is that libraries are highly political work environments, usually far worse than any so-called "office politics" that I ever dealt with in my previous Corporate employment gig. This is definitely where the person with Asperger's Syndrome is at a distinct disadvantage. Between our general social awkwardness, our struggles with small-talk, our seeming aloofness, seeming tactlessness and bluntness and literal-mindedness and our ability to piss people off without even meaning to, yes, the Library workplace is like a minefield for the person with an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Moreover, as Libraries have continued to re-define and re-structure the role of the MLS degree-holding Librarian, increasingly insisting that the MLS act as a de-facto MBA and that EVERY librarian with an MLS *must* be a manager of others rather than a solitary expert or professional in his or her own right...there is because of this a kind of discrimination built in at a unconsciously structural level against people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Management is really NOT our "thing". We suck at it. Books are already filled with case narratives of successful Aspies in technical jobs being promoted into managerial roles and then stumbling and falling because of their inherent difficulties in dealing with people that is part and parcel of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder; It is not a psychological phobia, it is a neurological problem having to do with how our brains are wired differently from Neurotypical (hereafter, NT) people. Aspies succeed where they can do highly individual, highly technical work requiring our legendary focus. They falter where they must be responsible for and manage others.

I suffered greatly due to my ignorance of my AS condition at my previous library employer, a major state university in Northern Texas. I had no clue I was an "Aspie" at the time. I grasped at straws, chalking up my difficulty in communication with my boss as having to do with my inherent introversion and guessing (incorrectly) that she perhaps was an extrovert. She wasn't, but she WAS definitely Neurotypical, and in hindsight, therein lay the biggest problems.
I also tried to understand our difficulty in terms of gender differences, hetero male and hetero female...and while this investigation did yield some results, the overshadowing reality of Asperger's looms large only in hindsight with enough perspective and distance. The gulf between us in terms of gender differences was miniscule in comparison to the yawing canyon between NT and Aspie.

It angers me now in hindsight to realize that what I suffered in North Texas that last year was de-facto job discrimination based on my Autistic condition, but because I was undiagnosed until AFTER I was long gone, and thus not able to disclose to that employer at the time my job was in jeopardy, I have no legal recourse against what amounted to blatant job discrimination against a person with a neurological disability.

There was a time in the past when probably a lot of old-school catalogers probably were undiagnosed persons with Asperger's syndrome. And since it is much harder to DX females with AS and since most librarians are female, the historical data just isn't there and can only be conjectured, and even contemporary data would be hard to compile and of limited use since on ethical grounds it could only be arrived at by voluntary, anonymous self-disclosure. I solicited such anonymous disclosure on AUTOCAT once, but only got a few respondents...only one person confirmed having received the actual DX and she had a similarly spotty/difficult job history as my own. Among working catalogers who did respond, some said that they felt they had "some" Aspergian traits but had not sought a formal DX.

Unfortunately, long gone are the days when the lone "Aspie" cataloger could go off to a cubicle by herself and catalog all day long with minimal interaction with anyone else. The job has changed due to technology, library restructuring, etc, nearly always all to the detriment of the cataloger with AS. The professional cataloger with an MLS is often the sole "professional" cataloger on staff and as such must report directly to a non-cataloger manager, such as an Assistant Director for Technical Services, frequently an acquisitions person, or directly to the Library Director in a smaller organization. There is, in my experience, little or no mentoring of new librarians trying to enter cataloging fresh from Library school.

Had I "known the rules" (another Aspie deficit), I would have "known" that the usual cataloger career track includes a lengthy apprenticeship as a paraprofessional "copy cataloger" who is expected to earn her MLS while full-time employed as a Copy Cataloger. Those who DON'T follow this track are at a severe disadvantage upon graduating. It's not just the hands-on cataloging skills, which are crucial enough, to be sure, but it's also the social networking, the vital face-time at state and regional library conferences and within one's own library system. Breaking into a career in librarianship is not unlike seeking exclusive membership in a prestigious country club. There are differing levels of membership and not everyone is allowed in.

I have applied for several paraprofessional positions in Adult Services Reference and also professional Reference positions (Librarian I) over the past several months and despite my actual job experience as a librarian, despite my two Master's Degrees from impressive universities, I keep getting passed over for these jobs by people who are younger, fresher out of library school BECAUSE they "knew the rule" and started working in the library system as clerks and paras before ever starting library school. They are "known" to their future library managers already, already have a job track record, etc, and slide easily and upwardly into these new Librarian I positions, whereas I am passed over despite my superior credentials, superior intelligence, general education, well-roundness and being better read.

Because I am an individual with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, it's probably believed that I am not able to deal with the general public in a Reference setting, but my exemplary customer service record at my corporate job belies this assumption.

Libraries are very political environments and very unforgiving of honest error. I admit on some technology applications my skills were lacking and at my previous job I often sought the aid of the E-Resources Librarian who was far more skilled at such things than me. She was always polite and willing to help and I would repeatedly thank her and apologize for being such a bother, etc, which she would waive off with a laugh. I only later learned that I caused her lots of added stress to her already stressful job and she would blow up at my boss (who was also her boss) behind my back, complaining about me. This again is another NT vs. Asperger's divide. My colleague behaving like a predictable Neurotypical, while me, the Aspie, dealing honestly if naively and taking things at face value. I can't help thinking "If helping me was really such a stress-out for her, why didn't she just TELL me to my face to go jump in a lake or dammit-go-learn it myself?"; Perhaps if my boss had not intervened first, eventually she would have...and it would've caught me completely out of the blue, with no warning, same as my then Boss's very suddenly negative annual review that precipitated the beginning of the end of that job.

I know in my adolescence I always admired individuals who were forthrightly blunt and didn't sugar coat things, who were unafraid to speak the truth, no matter how ugly or uncomfortable. Hell, I still do.

I'm so put off by and unnerved by the oft two-faced nature of so depressingly many Neurotypicals. It seems their guiding Modus Operandi, and it's difficult to conceal my contempt at times.

I feel like the ideas I've scribbled down here could be honed and polished into a half-way decent essay, as I feel it's an area ripe for investigation, discussion and eventually, activism. I should probably re-launch this blog and call it "Aspie Librarian" (unless of course there already exists such a thing...should probably check that, eh?).

Australian psychologist and researcher Tony Atwood, who specializes in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Asperger's Syndrome in particular, has written:

"You don't suffer from Asperger's (syndrome). You suffer from other people."

That's certainly true, even, or perhaps especially, in library workplaces.

Blog on Hiatus, indefinitely

2011-03-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

The Aggie Librarian blog is on permanent hiatus until I am actually hired back into a full librarian position for a different library system with a far less draconian social networking policy.

Academic Freedom and its absence.

2010-12-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

You only appreciate Academic Freedom once you no longer have it. It has been a difficult shift for me, transitioning from being Librarian I (Cataloger) at a sizable state university in northern Texas to being a library worker (under)employed in a large county public library system in SE Texas. Our county has passed a very draconian "social media policy" that very strictly prohibits me from accessing any website that is not directly work-related on my personal workstation, including library-related blogs, much less keeping touch on the pulse of popular culture through websites like BoingBoing.net; I can't even take 30 seconds out of my workday to place a personal ILL request from my own machine (something my boss only recently jumped my shit for). Even discussing this social media policy here semi-anonymously is probably skating on some thin ice.

If I were still with a university employer, this kind of draconian shit would not fly; Our tradition of Academic Freedom would be respected and tolerated. We would be free to download any tool, etc, that would make us better librarians more in touch with our patrons, etc. But since I'm a library worker drone, I'm not supposed to think big or even think like a librarian. I'm a "non-practicing" librarian under-employed by a public library system.

Not only that but things came to a head with my cataloging responsibilities. All I care to say at this point is Thank God for the Americans with Disabilities Act or else I'd be back out in the cold, unemployed again at Christmas time. With ADA, I was at least able to hang on to my full-time employment; The director and county HR made me an offer...accept demotion from Library Paraprofessional to Library Clerk II, and you get to keep your full-time status (with slight pay cut) and keep benefits.

My cataloging duties have been stripped from me entirely. I can finally stop beating my head bloody against a brick wall trying to satisfy an ueber-perfectionist boss who can never be satisfied, who keeps moving the goal posts, and whom I realized far too late had long ago ceased being an honest broker in all of this. I know I did a good job on my final truck of books, but my boss gave me a ridiculously short time limit to work on the material so she could next complain about productivity (moving goal posts, as I said), even though it is a specific reasonable accommodation that a person with Asperger's syndrome be given additional time to complete assignments.

I'm grateful to my job coach/advocate from a local organization known as The ARC. Although originally conceived as an advocacy organization for individuals with mental retardation, they have expanded their umbrella to include those of us with Autism Spectrum Disorders, such as Asperger's syndrome and "classical" autism. Though at times I have found myself butting heads even with her, and I do feel some slight disappointment that we did not fight harder to prove I can do cataloging just fine with reasonable accommodation. The fact is, I could do my cataloging utterly perfectly but so long as my boss was the ultimate judge and arbiter, she could say it was the worst cataloging she'd ever seen and NOBODY would question her, second guess her or try to verify if she's actually being honest or not. There's no neutral "cataloging court of appeals" I can turn to to prove her wrong. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The only positive here is that my ILL duties have slightly expanded. I am getting to learn even more about the ILL process, and the skills I pick up along the way might make it possible for me to start doing ILL professionally in a university setting someday...that would be ideal. As for cataloging, I tend to view RDA with a jaundiced eye, as a sign of collective insanity. I just don't care anymore. In a fit of idealistic furor, I requested via ILL tons of books explaining DDC for me, but after my forced compromise that deleted my cataloging duties, I returned them all to the library, since I would no longer need any of them.

To paraphrase a great Native American warrior, "I will catalog again no more, forever".

I did apply to a few other cataloging positions while all of this was shaking out, including a Librarian I (cataloger) position with a different county system on the far north side of town, but I didn't even get a phone interview out of that, nor even a rejection letter. I did get an interview offer from a minor Texas university in Kingsville, Texas for a "Metadata librarian" position, but truth be told I'm pretty apathetic about "new emerging metadata". I really couldn't care less about it and I'm afraid that would probably show through on an interview. I let them know thanks but no thanks, I'm not interested in the position with them anymore. If it was a plain-jane cataloging job, I would've gone for it, but since the emphasis seemed to be on the "new emerging" Metadata aspects of it, I said aw screw it. Plus I just don't feel like moving to Kingsville, to be honest. I'm happy with my little rut here in SE Texas, and maybe I'll jump on a better ILL position in an academic library somewhere later on down the road.

My only goal at this stage is to make it 5 years to get "vested" with the county and have a pension to add to my social security benefits. To be able to inherit my parent's home someday and continue living in it, able to keep up with the property taxes, basic living expenses and modest entertainment expenses. Winning a wife & kids optional at this point. I really don't feel any great urgency to ever remarry, honestly. I accept I'm probably stuck in this part of Texas for the long haul.

I would eventually like to move in a public services direction, willing to become just a paraprofessional in Public Services to begin with, working my way up and back to Librarian I rank someday. Going Tech Services was a huge mistake, especially for someone with visual-spacial deficits that come with many people with Asperger's syndrome. Hindsight makes that perfectly clear now. It will be a long hard slog to re-invent myself as a Public Services (Reference) librarian. ILL is sometimes classified as public services in some libraries, so that may be my best avenue for long-term planning. I do want to engage in face-to-face reference work someday, too. Although I am an "Aspie", my particular disorder is exceedingly mild and mostly makes me quirky and awkward, but I manage fairly well in most areas of my life. I've learned intellectually what most NT's pick up intuitively on a great many things. There are some areas where that classic Aspie "literalness" remains an issue, with respect to language and the way questions are put to me. I pay very close attention to language...ask me a factual question and you will get a factual answer; I'll ignore or miss any emotional subtext that isn't explicit. Ask me a speculative question I'll speculate. But ask me a factual question but intend that I speculate is totally barking up the wrong tree with me. It just won't "compute" for me and I'll probably piss the person off without meaning to; this has happened in my own family. My dad gets frustrated with me and says I'm "splitting hairs", etc, implying that I'm worrying over distinctions without a difference. My dad is, by contrast, a "lumper", lumps things together that he thinks are related therefore close enough to conflate. I disagree. I'm not splitting hairs, I'm not obsessing over distinctions without difference, I'm trying to speak as precisely and exactly as possible because precision in language *matters*....matters enormously to me, in fact. Hell, I obsess about semantics. It's my favorite hobby. I get enormously irritated with people who are inexact and imprecise about the language they employ.

"That word, it doesn't mean what you think it means."

Story of my life, at times.

I also remember some interesting...discussions...between my boss and myself over subject headings...remember thinking "oh, you're one of THOSE catalogers" (the kind I hate). It was also a contrast between the Academic way of looking at things and the Public Library way. Precision is more important in Academic context than public ones. Public Libraries value consistency over pinpoint accuracy. Public Libraries are "lumping" institutions, while Academic institutions are all about proper splitting. It was hard for me to try and switch over to the Public Library style of assigning a call number, subject heads, etc. I did think I was getting the hang of it, but that's all in the past now and no longer my concern.

The irony is that my former immediate boss for cataloging and I were in complete agreement over the questionable wisdom of RDA, and also doubting the correctness of the decision to drop the 440 field, which we retained for local practice.

This boss is still my department head and so I do still ultimately report to this person, but I have an intermediate boss, a Library Paraprofessional who handles ILL Borrowing, while I back her up on Borrowing and do the Lending side from our own collections. Together we are the ILL team for the system. As I said, I do greatly enjoy the work.

With things slowing down before the holidays, I often had to "invent" work to make myself look busy when the real boss would come strolling by...stuff like taking inventory of our printed labels and printing up new ones that we were running low on for uncataloged YA and Juvenile paperbacks, for example. Or ILL branch stickers for inter-office memos, etc, or cutting up new individual TexShare labels from existing printed strips. There wasn't much physical processing left to do (and already 3 clerks working on THAT), so I got creative in finding other work to do that wouldn't rob work from others. I also blacked out or white-labeled the used padded envelopes we use for ILL sent via USPS. Normally I do this as I'm preparing an item for shipment, but to kill time I did them nearly all in advance, which will put me in good stead next week while my new immediate Para boss is away on vacation and I'm covering ALL of ILL for the whole system for 4 days. I think between my normal duties plus her own duties this will keep me busy the entire day for the next 4 workdays...at least that's my plan.

Just trying to survive and not piss off the department boss and draw unwanted attention to myself...hoping someday to transfer out into Public Services with a more sympathetic boss and into role where I can directly see that what I do makes a difference and helps real people in their lives. That's the aspect of working for AIG, Inc. that I miss most...that palpable sense that what you're doing saves lives, makes a real difference, etc. Cataloging is all too abstracted from all of that face-to-face reality. It requires a good deal more faith, I suppose; a willingness to live on faith of a kind, that kind of goes against my grain.

I'm slightly better off this December than I was last December. My weight and physical appearance and overall health are much better, and I'm still gainfully employed (albeit underemployed) in a library setting, none of which was true last year at this time.

I no longer have to consider Law Enforcement as a serious alternative to library employment. I no longer have to consider Paralegal training and work as an alternative to library work. I no longer have to consider Law School as a means to radically re-invent myself. I just have to hang on and do the best I can in the job I'm in. I finally feel a margin of stability that I've not felt for quite some time, and that's a good thing.

Happy Holidays to all of you and I may (or may not) blog again in the new year. The existing social media policy where I work definitely has a chilling effect on my willingness to talk about anything work-related beyond general issues affecting ALL libraries, not just my own. Just remember, anyone considering a move from Academic to Public libraries....cherish your Academic Freedom now; you may miss it dearly when it's gone.

Sometimes you gotta take a step back to go forward.

2010-07-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when an unemployed librarian has to ask himself, would you accept a paraprofessional position as a stop gap measure, a chance to get back in the game?

Actually, I answered that question the day after I left my last professional job with a resounding "Hell yeah!" and have been applying left and right for professional as well as paraprofessional jobs alike. My only differentiation was that I did not apply outside Texas for paraprofessional jobs while I did for librarian jobs.

I had thought maybe I needed to re-invent myself as a Reference person, that I'd just gotten off to a bad start in Tech Services, that my Asperger's syndrome (not recognized until this year) had undone me in two library jobs but now I that I knew I was an "Aspie", there was something I could do about it.

As of this morning, I'm happy to report that I'm climbing back onto the Tech Services horse that threw me. Sort of. Yesterday I interviewed for a paraprofessional position in a local county-level public library system. In truth, I'd sent in so many applications to this system over the past few months, each time getting passed over, that I'd kind of lost track which position it was that I was now being called in to interview for. I went to the library prepared to sell myself as a born-again Reference assistant, but my librarian interviewer began by telling about her past and her experience and it was all technical services, so I quickly put two and two together and realized I was now interviewing for a paraprofessional job in Technical Services (they use a different term in this library, which is what threw me at first). I did a quick mental "game change" in my head and I was ready.

The interview went well, I thought, followed by the mandatory tour of Tech Services, which looked the way a Tech Services workspace should look...in the basement, with high cubicles for everyone. Lots of people busy with their appointed, self-directed tasks, etc.

When the tour was finished, I expected a handshake and a "well, thank you for coming in and we'll let you know, yada yada yada."

Instead my future boss turned to me and said "So, I'd like to offer you the position. You don't have to give an answer right away." After processing what she'd said, and recovering from the initial shock, I said "I accept!"

The job will entail working 1/2 of my time doing Interlibrary loan requests (outgoing, from our library to requesting libraries), while 1/2 the time will be spent on copy cataloging. My future boss also comes from an Academic library background; she lost her last Academic library posting owing to a reduction-in-force layoff, so I think she maybe sympathized with my plight. She also went out of her way to talk about having had bad library managers herself and learning a lot about what NOT to do...which this morning makes me wonder if she knows my previous bosses reputations better than I first thought. She also lamented how Cataloging is not required by Library schools anymore and how important mentoring within the profession must become to make up for this deficit. All of this was definitely music to my ears, as I've had such a rough time with finding *anyone* to properly mentor me as a budding Cataloger.

I definitely welcome the chance to learn ILL, as well, as that's such an important part of library work. I will also be in a position to learn DDC22 & WebDewey up close and personal, which I've never been exposed to before.

The best thing about this position is the potential for promotion from within, which this county library system definitely endorses. There are a few key retirements coming up and once those are processed my future boss intends to one day upgrade my position to Librarian I, and since I already have the MLS in-hand, I would be first in line for the job if I wanted it. So it's not a dead-end job at all but one with room to fully recover as a professional, working librarian. The pay will be similar to my old AIG payscale, which I can live with. I plan on continuing to live with my parents, who are getting up there in age. They're not elderly yet, but they're not far from that age bracket, either. I'm an only child and feel obligated to look after them, and a job that lets me stay in this area is for the best. I had been looking to join the local metro police department if this job come through. Looks like that won't be necessary now. Staying at home means I'll continue to eat healthy, have minimal expenses as far as room & board, and can devote most of my first year's salary to massively paying down my student loan obligation(s). It would sure be nice to be frugal and clear my remaining student debt in a single work year, have that final debt burden lifted from my shoulders finally.

I was getting pretty desperate and had even taken the LSAT recently in Shreveport, Louisiana. I got my scores back; they were not great but better than I thought. I scored high enough to probably get into at least 2 of Houston's 3 major ABA-accredited Law schools, namely South Texas and Texas Southern. I was a bit under the mark for the best school here, namely the UH Law Center. I had also been toying with the idea of a Paralegal certificate through Rice University's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies either in lieu of or as a prelude to law school. Now instead I will be focusing on being the very best paraprofessional I can be and rehabilitating myself as a Catalog librarian once again. Seems I've been typecast as a Tech Services person, so you gotta play the part the director gives you, and once the house lights come up, stand and deliver.

I'm deliberately not naming this public library system, just suffice it to say it's geographically convenient. And my new boss seems so much more approachable than my old bosses. She wants me to come to her for mentoring, and I plan to take her up on that offer. My new boss believes in the value of good cataloging, even in public libraries where so much of it comes in the door pre-cataloged by vendors. She's been effective at convincing the system director that vendor cataloging quality is not up to local standards and that it pays to have in-house professional cataloging to edit and tweak and maximize the local database's effectiveness, etc. I definitely aim to support this mission in any way I can.

It's a bright new day for my renewing library career.

Confronting AS: Asperger's syndrome and my misadventures in Libraryland

2010-04-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is not going to be an easy post to write, and may go through several edits before I'm done and satisfied with the final version, so please bear with me.

I had a rather awkward conversation with my mother last week; it was right before dinner, and she was hesitant to broach a "big" topic at such an inopportune moment, but I said it as ok. She asked me if I remembered how my ex-wife had, when we were married, declared that she thought I was ADHD? I said yes. Well, although we no longer believe that, ADHD is sometimes a common mis-diagnosis given to children with Asperger's syndrome, which is a milder version of autism. My mom being a retired teacher librarian, she had been exposed to AS kids in her school and a lot of their behaviors reminded her of my childhood and adolescent behavior. We sat and read the Wikipedia article on Asperger's syndrome, as well as the WebMD article. I sat back and thought about it and agreed it was at least a plausible hypothesis.

I next turned my attention to books, like this one:

Asperger's From the Inside Out: A Supportive and Practical Guide for Anyone with Asperger's Syndrome (Paperback)
~ Michael John Carley
# Paperback: 272 pages
# Publisher: Perigee Trade (April 1, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0399533974
# ISBN-13: 978-0399533976

It was available at the local branch of my county library system, so I walked over and checked it out and devoured it in only three days. I gave it to my mom & dad to read as well, while I next moved on to:

22 Things a Woman Must Know: If She Loves a Man With Asperger's Syndrome (Paperback)
~ Rudy Simone
# Paperback: 112 pages
# Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Pub; 1 edition (May 15, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1849058032
# ISBN-13: 978-1849058032

Although written by a woman, for women, I benefited from reading this, and it shed new light on the hows and whys of my first marriage failing as it did. Sure, my Ex had plenty of her own issues that she brought to the equation, but it's also clear neither I nor she understood some of the underlying AS behavior traits that were to be expected if I'm neurologically wired as an AS person.

When I think back to my early years, especially my first stint as a graduate student at Rice University, where I was the most erratic and least emotionally stable, the signs of AS are clearer. Ditto my year abroad in Germany, which, while an awesome experience, was often a profoundly lonely time, at least with respect to the other Americans in Tübingen, and the fact that though I made German friends, there was always an unspoken polite distance maintained. Such friendships could never be as close as with, say, my High School friends back home. We talked, we enjoyed each other's company, but there was a lack of emotional intimacy, a gulf I did not know how to bridge.

Foreign languages have long been an obsession of mine, and the appeal of The Foreign to an AS person is obvious. Foreign languages are like an embassy where we can obtain temporary asylum, since all foreigners are equally strange. In other words, nobody notices that you are weird in a foreign country, because in the eyes of natives, all foreigners are a little weird, both Neurotypicals and Asperger's people alike.

I also understand better what I found so appealing about the anime series Welcome to the NHK. The story centers around a twenty-two-year-old hikikomori ("recluse") who gets aid from a strange girl who seems to know a lot about him, despite never meeting him before. A common theme throughout the story deals with the hardships of life and how people must deal with them in their own way.

I found I could really relate to the main character Tatsuhiro Satō, especially his manic inner monologues. Granted, Tatsuhiro Satō is an extreme case, but it seems evident that the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan is a logical expression of autism and Asperger's in that society. Japanese society is especially dependent on proper etiquette, elaborate rules of social conduct and niceties...so much so that austistic Japanese naturally seek to flee open society and shut themselves away so as to not have to deal with such anxiety daily. Eccentricity is mildly tolerated in the West, even cherished in some circles, but far less so in Japan, where social conformity is key.

One autistic girl writing on the web whom I came across stated that the reason she loves Anime so much is because the characters' exaggerated facial expressions are much easier for her to read and understand. I definitely think she's on to something.

In the library workplace environment, I can see that I was under the apparently mistaken belief that Academic librarianship would be more like a university teaching job, where eccentricity is accepted or at least tolerated and sometimes cherished...you'd think AS and a cataloging job would be made for each other...people often regarded as intensely interested in a narrow subject--hm, sound familiar, my Cataloging brothers and sisters? But in fact Libraries tend to be more like 9-to-5 office jobs, especially in many Tech Services departments that literally are 9-to-5, and ruled by no-nonsense Acquisitions people who are strongly business-minded by necessity. These kinds of jobs can be perilous for AS people, since it requires navigating socially...i.e. the job is less important than how well you relate to others. This can be hard on catalogers on the spectrum, unless they have a senior cataloger in a managerial position who understands them, sympathizes with them, and defends them in the face of uncomprehending, unsympathetic superiors from an Acquisitions background. It can be hell on earth if you are the solo cataloger in your outfit and you're also on the spectrum.

I recall with acute embarrassment an argument I got into with a Reference colleague that made its way back to my boss and got me in hot water. We were discussing suspected anomalies in the OPAC's search results. My Reference colleague insisted something was wrong with the OPAC, using Keyword search. I reproduced her results and did not find them anomalous but rather the best you could expect using such and imprecise search method, and that even this crappy method yielded usable records that one could use to further refine the search. I tried to explain this to my Reference colleague, who snarled back defensively that she knew how to search, she was just giving an example of what students do...I advised her good, then teach it to them. I really did bend over backwards to be as polite and tactful as I can...I could have been a lot lot nastier, snarkier, etc, but I restrained myself. It didn't matter. She still blew her stack and ratted me out to my boss, who came down on her side against me, even though on the technical question at issue, I was absolutely right. That didn't matter, I was being "disrespectful" of a senior colleague, despite the fact that I was smarter and understood the operation of the OPAC better than she did. She claimed she was looking at an anomaly, and I knew better. I finally told my boss, if the catalog is yielding bizarre results, then let the Reference staff come up with the evidence for that, and really pursue it, in cooperation with Systems people who really understand the Database side of it, because I'm just not seeing what they claim to see. My main job is the integrity of the MARC records themselves, not how the OPAC retrieves them, etc, which is the proper purview of Systems, with input from Public Services. If I do my job with the integrity of the MARC data, and Systems keeps the database running properly, everything should come together fine. My boss kept insisting that I was responsible for things that just don't fall under the traditional understanding of what catalogers do and what they're responsible for. I spoke to other heads of cataloging who agreed with me, contra my boss. But because my boss was my boss--and not because she was right--I am out of a job and she is looking for a new Librarian I to impose her misguided will upon. Her ignorance as a librarian doesn't matter, she has the power, and that's all that mattered in the end.

I don't know if being diagnosed formally with AS would have afforded me any protection in my last job or not; Likely not, but I could have availed myself of the ADA and also the Employee Assistance Program more effectively. I could have demanded more forcefully to have my station moved to somewhere against the wall instead of the dead center of the room, for starters.

It's hard not to feel bitter having walked away from a corporate gig that played so well to my AS abilities and wandered into two separate library jobs that were both minefields with unseen social pitfalls. I was genuinely happy working for AIG, on three separate occasions. While for libraries, the initial joy quickly wore off. I found contentment in cataloging itself, buried in the work, but not all the other stuff a librarian has to do...most Catalog Librarians are as much managers and administrators as they are technical specialists...and increasingly more so on the managerial end and less so on the technical expertise end. I also enjoyed fielding the periodic reference question pertaining to library cataloging forwarded to me by Reference colleagues trying to help Library school students at TWU. I enjoyed talking to patrons one on one at length, much more so than I enjoyed talking to colleagues. I nearly always took my lunch alone...going off campus or to the student union. Most everyone else brought a lunch and ate and talked in the employee break room, while I almost never did. I guess I was hoping that as a Cataloger, my eccentricities and lone wolf mindset would be understood and accepted by other librarians, but I was horribly wrong. It all seemed to come back to bite me in the rear. I like other catalogers, but not others nearly as much.
I like catalogers whom I respect, who have professional opinions similar to mine.
I find many (though certainly not all) Reference people to be shallow and ditzy. They may be able to look things up in gifted ways, but they don't understand with much depth what they're looking at afterward.

I do think gender differences played a role in my professional downfall as well, if only insofar as women cement the bonds of their relationships through talk, and since I didn't talk much of my own volition but preferred to send written reports, my boss felt alienated from me, and I from her as well in reaction to her reaction.

AS explains some of it. So does my INTJ rating on Myers Briggs, while my boss was an ~~extrovert~~. Update: Ok, she was an introvert, I later learned, but she was definitely neurotypical and not AS like me.

I'm trying to understand more about Asperger's syndrome without become obsessed about it, too...which would be pretty "meta". ;-)

The more I read, the more it rings true, and the more it seems I would probably benefit from a clinical diagnosis rather than a speculative self-diagnosis like I have right now.

I've also discovered that a fair number of my closest friends, all staunch atheists like me, are also on the autism spectrum, from fellow Aspies to high functioning Autism. I speculated jokingly if perhaps there's a link between AS and atheism, or if it is a case of Neurotypicals being more easily seduced by religion's emotional appeals than we are. One friend was genuinely terrified by an online exam that pointed her being far off the average and well into "high functioning autism" land. I tried to comfort her and encourage her to face this bravely, but right now she seems bent on a path of denial and preferring not to know. We tried to talk about our experiences with psychotherapy, but she had some rather misguided notions about what therapy entails, what it's capable of, etc. I said it was hard work, therapy, and if she wasn't willing to do said work, then her conclusion that it was a waste of time and money was correct. She said everything a therapist did she could do herself at home. I countered that a good therapist will call you on your bullshit, demolish your rationalizations and force you to be intellectually honest, and that it sometimes hurts, but it's healthier in the end. She remained unconvinced so far.

I understand her fear...she's a science educator--a very, very good one--but also in fear of her job with all the cuts to teaching jobs rolling around Texas these days.
She doesn't want a clinical diagnosis to be a hindrance to her or have it open her up to discrimination and harassment. Which I do understand. But if a science teacher urges students to seek the truth wherever the evidence takes you, isn't it a little hypocritical to not take your own advice when it comes to your mental health?
I think so. I'm trying to face my probable Asperger's syndrome without fear and without shame. I understand it makes finding gainful employment anywhere, not only libraries, difficult...but it's better to know than not know. Knowing, I can compensate. Indeed, on many levels I already have.

I'm still trying to reinvent myself as a Reference librarian, even if AS would seem to "naturally" predispose me to continue working in Cataloging. I think the Cataloging profession is losing its collective mind with RDA, and that FRBR is fatally flawed at a basic philosophical level. It's a good time to get out of the way of the wave(s) of stupid currently convulsing through the profession.

Well, more later perhaps. This is your crotchety cataloger, Aggie Librarian, signing off for now.

My cranky cataloger side is showing.

2010-04-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Might want to make sure you're sitting down and that your blood pressure is under control before reading this. --JJR

Saw this first on LIS News posted by Blake; original post here.
The piece is titled DDC Is Killing Our Libraries.
It could alternatively be titled "I wish my Library was an iPad"

...this gem excerpted from the below made me want to scream and filled me with a near-blinding rage; see if you can see why...
(quote)

So when (not if, when) we get rid of DDC, we are going to need a new system. So what should it look like? The basis of the new system I would suggest needs to be the basic concept of “Don’t make me think!”

Yes, heaven forbid we ask people to think anymore; that's just inhuman.

"Instead of a 200 year old system that doesn’t make sense, we need a new system that just works."

It does work, and it does make sense; you're just a lazy idiot who refuses to accept responsibility for his own learning, pandering to other like minded lazy idiots. -jjr

Sorry, I know, I know... what we have here is a very cranky Academic Librarian and Cataloger who is between jobs and also recently has come to understand he probably has Asperger's syndrome reacting with a School library administrator from a Reference background. Sparks are bound to fly.

Truth is, I don't much like DDC myself; I much prefer LCC, which is what I've used ever since my undergrad years and all I've ever used in doing original and advanced copy cataloging.

Nevertheless, I will strongly defend it against people with nothing to offer by way of a viable alternative.

Fair warning, anyone who starts out their argument this way:

The Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) is broken. I am not going to entertain any sort of conversation on this point, it is just a fact you need to accept. Accept it, and move on. One of the incontrovertible facts that clearly demonstrate the brokenness of DDC is that we have to teach DDC, and that is the focus here.

Is someone who probably doesn't have the evidence to back up their claim and is declaring victory as a fait accompli and hoping you won't notice the hand-waving going on...nothing to see here, ignore the straw-man behind the curtain, move along.

Luckily he gets taken to task much more tactfully than I can manage in his own comments section...

He does backpedal a little, stating:

"Now I am certainly not a taxonomer, so these are just some thoughts to get things flowing,"

I don't know about getting things flowing, but I am a cataloger, and this gets my blood pressure up, to be sure.

Sweet Jesus, can we not keep dumbing down Library Systems under the banner of "facilitating access"!!??

For a refreshing take, a blast from the past, have a look at what noted Author James Michener once had to say about how to use a library.

Note especially this gem; he counseled his readers and fans thus,
saying, "Every time I go to the library, I make a beeline to the card catalog. Learn to use it. It's easy."

Change "card catalog" to OPAC and I still think it's a valid statement. It only sounds quaint because people have gotten lazier and lazier; Smart phones, dumb people. For frack's sake, people, PLEASE take some responsibility for your own learning. Yes, we in Tech Services could/should do a better job educating and communicating about how Library systems, specifically library classification systems, actually work...We Catalogers have to do it, have to get out from behind our desk and head OUT to the stacks, with LCC or DDC bookmark guides in hand, because our Reference colleagues are too often preoccupied with other Web 2.0 matters to care about the minutiae of cataloging and classification themselves, much less passing it on to patrons, who in turn wallow in ignorance, utterly ignorant of what the spine labels mean. We have to push back against Reference personnel prerogatives and aggressively demand wall space for posters with the Classification scheme spelled out in some detail, whether DDC or LCC. If DDC and LCC are increasingly regarded as irrelevant it is up to US, in Tech Services, to push back and show that the library still rests organizationally on these tried and tested schemes. We aren't cataloging in a vacuum, we catalog for a reason, but if we fail to communicate that reason to our wider patron base, we will indeed be swept aside by the iPad idjits. We can't count on our Reference colleagues to spread the gospel as it were; they're too beguiled by Web 2.0 and Digital Imaging and Digital Literacy to pay attention. I'm reminded of the line from Star Wars, Episode III, "So this is how Democracy dies, to thunderous applause."; Substitute the word Democracy with "library cataloging and classification" and you have the essence of what is at stake. Catalogers, if this distresses you, quit moaning, quit complaining, get up off your feet, grab a big red book, and go ride the circuit, preaching the LCC or DDC gospel!!

When I took the time to explain to TWU undergrads about the LCC system, what it means and how it works, their eyes lit up with a new understanding and they were very grateful to me for having revealed this bit of library arcana to them. It shouldn't be arcana at all...time was Reference librarians were well versed in it as well, but that is no longer the case. With the rapid pace of new technology I can excuse this lapse--I really can--but what it means is that we Catalogers and Tech Services people have to pick up the slack and get out there and educate people on why we do what we do and how it can concretely help them--because NOBODY ELSE WILL DO IT...not administrators, not Reference staff, nobody. You want to see the face of who will keep cataloging alive and relevant into the 21st century...look in the mirror. It's up to you.

Don't think you won't meet opposition and resistance--you will. When I tried to promote this in my last library, I got significant pushback from my non-cataloger Tech Services manager. They just weren't interested in library advocacy for traditional classification systems. Bibliographic instruction was too passe, in their eyes. In retrospect I should have pushed harder, should have been relentless in my advocacy. I felt hesitant to do so as a brand spankin' new cataloger, and the only professional in the entire Tech Services cataloging unit (I had two paras under me). I always felt queasy being THE cataloger as a mere Librarian I, too. Nobody should have to suffer through a position like that. It's unethical for a library to keep relying on Librarian I's to be THE cataloger and just rely on burnout and attrition rather than do the right thing which is hire someone with 10+ years experience who can actually manage an entire department and set its priorities competently, etc. It's unethical to set up a job to fail and just burn through Librarian I's every few years to save money. Sure it saves money, but it also is devastating psychologically to those put through the grinder in that way. I am hoping against hope that I can find a position in a large enough cataloging unit to be managed by a senior cataloger, or failing that, at least have a cadre of experienced fellow catalogers who can support each other and offset each others' strengths and weaknesses; Alas, the economy being what it is, I am forced to consider new positions that are much like the one I just left...THE one cataloger in charge of a few paras and students. I hate it, but I have to keep my hat in the ring now that I find myself unable to return to my former employer, AIG, for obvious financial reasons on their part.

Well, here endeth the rant for now. More later, perhaps.

Two libraries, two policies.

2010-03-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm what ALA classifies as a "non-salaried Librarian" which is their euphemism for "unemployed", or at least it better be, since that's how I re-upped my membership this year, with that category, which is slightly cheaper than "regular member". I was pretty bare bones with my selection, joining only RUSA and SRRT and letting everything else slip by the wayside, even ALCTS, because with RDA, I regard the cataloging profession as having lost its collective mind and I want out of that noise. I'm trying to re-brand myself a Reference librarian but it's a tough sell.

Last week I needed to go downtown to do some personal research on depreciation of firearms, using the Blue Book of Gun Values, which HPL central has in its reference collection. As a gun owner, I also have a Texas CHL, but I knew from past experience that there is a 30.06 sign posted on the front entrance to the library, which renders all CHLs null and void; a concession to property rights, basically, but pretty squirly when exercised by public institutions, I think. Anyway, I went downtown disarmed (something I would not normally do), parked in the basement garage, brought a sack lunch and my laptop. I worked through the morning doing my research, updating my MS Excel file, etc. and then stopped to break for lunch; I went downstairs with my laptop and my sack lunch and sat on the plaza and ate. There were a couple of bicycle cops on the square, some Mexican workers, and a band of African American young men who were eying the cops warily. I deliberately avoided eye contact but I also stayed aware of where they were relative to me at all times, and I admit, I became uncomfortable when they drew nearer to me and the group got larger. A third policeman emerged from the library on foot, to talk with his colleagues. Again members of the crowd of young black men noticed the police and shared information about where these officers routinely patrol, etc. I finished my sandwich and diet soda, picked up my laptop, and headed back inside the library.

Maybe I was just being paranoid, and maybe these young men were just socializing innocently in downtown Houston. But I felt on guard and uncomfortable the whole time, especially being disarmed as I was.

I live out in the Suburbs on the edge of town. My local branch library, of the county public library system, do not post 30.06 signs, and I have entered the library carrying concealed numerous times, just going about my business. These libraries also do not have groups of young men idling around their entrances, either. They feel completely safe, while the central city library does not. Yet it is the Central Library that disarms the law-abiding permit holder. Yes, the day I was down there, there was an elevated police presence inside and outside the library; I had seen the foot patrolman doing rounds inside the library before he came out onto the plaza during my lunch break. But I've also been inside the library when there were only unarmed security personnel who are not law enforcement officers. There's no non-awkward way to leave one's carry piece in the garage, then come back to the garage and return to the plaza on the surface carrying; the easiest way would be to pass through the library but that is illegal, and walking up the exit ramp would look suspicious at best, even though it's the only legal way to exercise your carry rights when visiting HPL central. If I am going somewhere that prohibits my CHL via a 30.06 sign, I tend to go disarmed altogether. I know some people carry and then disarm in their vehicle before entering such structures, but the more gun handling you introduce, the greater the risk of an ND, or at the very least drawing the attention of passers-by who might call 911 to report "man with a gun". I do usually keep a "glove box" gun for personal protection, but it's never a carry gun that I could use for concealed use outside of my vehicle.

Library administrators need to know--but do not know--that 30.06 signs in Texas disarm only the law abiding, and that criminals with guns ignore such signs with impunity. It's a "feel good", "politically correct" measure that in reality protects no one, least of all patrons or staff. I want to bring this to the attention of the Director of the HPL system, but on the other hand, since I periodically seek employment with them, I don't want my name flagged as a "gun nut" and have that as a mark against me when I send them a fresh copy of my resume, etc.

My local Teachers Credit Union also posts a 30.06 sign; again, someone should talk it over with the manager, but I don't want to be the one to do it; I've voluntarily agreed to curtail my political expression for the sake of domestic peace; Due to my economic circumstances, I'm living with my parents, and they don't want to suffer any blowback from my otherwise outspoken political opinions, and I understand and respect that. The CU normally has an armed law enforcement officer sitting at a desk in the lobby, so I could understand why a bank manager might feel justified in posting a 30.06 sign. But even still, if a hardened criminal wants to rob the place, the 30.06 sign isn't going to make them bat an eye. The first thing a determined armed robber would do (assuming they "cased" the place beforehand) would be to barge in and shoot the peace officer first, then hold up the place. I know it must seem unthinkable, but security experts need to be able to think the unthinkable. If the uniformed officer goes down, and you've got a 30.06 sign posted, your staff and customers are then sitting ducks. If you don't have a 30.06 sign posted, there may be a customer with a concealed weapon who can take the robber by surprise if the opportunity presents itself. It is a second line of defense, potentially. Not a sure thing by any means, the customer might decide discretion is the better part of valor and allow the robbery to proceed. Or he might try to surprise the robber but fail and get himself shot. Introducing legal concealed weapons only improves the odds on the part of victims, it is not an iron-clad guarantee that the "good guys" will win.

There's an alternate sign that both of these institutions could use, and that is the sign barring *unlicensed* concealed carry, which includes a hefty fine and jail time, but does not affect legal CHL permit holders. By targeting criminals specifically, it does everything these managers are trying to do without the unconsidered negative consequences of a 30.06 sign, namely disarming the law-abiding.

I have attended two state library conferences in recent years, and at every one of them I was carrying concealed. I felt safer in the downtown areas while doing so, I used deep concealment methods so as not to alarm anyone, and I kept my mouth shut, except when having lunch with a non-library friend who is himself a CHL holder and asked casually if I too was carrying, which I confirmed. Nearly all of my Facebook contacts who are librarians are utterly afraid of guns, won't own them, etc. I accept that's the way it is, but I wish it were not so. It makes us look like hypocrites when we work so hard to defend 1A freedoms but shy away from 2A freedoms.

Alan Dershowitz, who also does not like guns, at least has the intellectual honesty to state:

"Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

I'm eagerly awaiting the final decision of MacDonald vs. Chicago from the Supreme Court, and at least from the transcript of the oral arguments, there seems to be cause for hope that the absolute ban on handguns in Chicago will be struck down and the 2nd Amendment will be incorporated against States and Localities, a ruling long overdue.

I also recently joined an internet forum called "The Liberal Gun Club", and also began listening to a podcast (unrelated) called "The Liberal Guncast". Both are excellent sources for technical information sharing about firearms with none of the odious right-wing cultural politics that tend to infect NRA publications and other forums. The Liberal Gun Club is a great place to meet people who realize that supporting gun rights does not commit you to a whole host of truly obnoxious Right of Center political positions. Max of the Liberal Guncast rightly states that armed self-defense ought not to be a Right vs. Left issue but a core American value untainted by partisan bickering. I agree. Sebastian of the Pro-Gun Progressive Blog (now defunct) used to argue that it wasn't so much Right vs. Left as it was Totalitarian mindset vs. Pro-Liberty/Freedom mindset, and that there are Left and Right "flavors" of both. I still keep up with Seb on Facebook, but I really wish he would go back to regular blogging. Still, I'm one to talk, eh? My updates here are once in a blue moon these days, I know. I have created a separate blog on VOX dedicated exclusively to Anime and Manga, and I even eschew my library persona on VOX and talk purely as a fan-boy. It's kind of liberating, in that respect.

With that, I bring this somewhat rambling and ranty entry to a close; More later when I have something else to grouch about in Libraryland.

For the Anime Geek & career musings.

2010-01-29T06:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to mention that I've just now discovered Mozilla Firefox 3.6's "personas", or skins. I'm now using a version of "Firefox Girl", an Anime style "Fox Girl", a cute redhead with fox ears and a school girl uniform and a fox tail, lying on her side across a globe of the earth. Ueber-cute and very 'moe'.

I also was compelled to download Google Chrome on my bedroom desktop, which also has a variety of 'skins'; I chose another Anime themed 'skin' for Chrome; I can't read the Japanese characters, but it's probably based on an Anime series, one I'm not familiar with. It features 4 Anime girls, one blonde and three brunettes from light brown to black hair, and different eye colors and various facial expressions.

The reason why I downloaded Chrome is because my earlier version of Firefox was taking forever to load; Chrome was/is much zippier, it was like having a new computer. Luckily I was able to import my saved passwords, etc. into Chrome from Firefox. I then removed Firefox and reinstalled the latest version, 3.6; Firefox is now "playing nice" again and launching more reliably now. Chrome is still a tad faster but I use both now interchangeably.

I experimented with the free software Xtranormal State. It is a good software, but the problem is, the program is so large that it majorly slows down my bedroom desktop hard drive. I will rely on the Xtranormal website from this point on, as I have been doing. I removed Xtranormal State and my computer is back to its old self.

I had problems with an earlier version of Xtranormal State on my Desktop; it was a buggy, early version. I'm going to uninstall it and reinstall the latest version, I think.

I wish I knew how to link two hard drives together; I have a desktop PC in the closet (my mom's old one) that we don't currently use. I know some people use older PCs as servers for websites, etc. That's beyond my current knowledge of how to do it, but another one of those things it would be probably valuable to learn how to do for the future, especially if I continue my career in libraries.

I've been doing some out-of-box thinking, though, and even considering a transition to working in law enforcement. I need to get into better physical shape anyway, and trying to meet/exceed the police academy minimum standards for my age/height would be a laudable goal. I'm also looking into a local Kung Fu dojo as a way to get more limber and flexible, and also revamp my self-defense skills. Whenever I do Yoga, I find myself longing to get back into full-fledged Martial Arts. I'm not considering law enforcement flippantly; I have been pondering it for a long time now. I know people say police are underpaid, but compared to the salaries librarians make, cops earn good pay. Of course, there's the downside of being more likely to get shot at or stabbed, and dealing with the worst scum of the earth on a daily basis. More than a few old NJROTC comrades from my High School ultimately became cops over the years. Not saying I will, too; I'd rather get another library gig.

But I also think to myself that a good, steady civil service job in law enforcement...something I could do for a solid 20 years then either retire or move on to something else (i.e. maybe take law school classes at night and eventually graduate and become an Assistant District Attorney) might not be a bad thing. I'd have to start out as a patrolman, but I'd have ambition to move up and become some kind of plainclothes investigator. Maybe even Texas Rangers or FBI after that. It's a career path I never would've considered with Bush Jr. still in the White House, but with Obama as president, it's no longer unthinkable for me.

Someday I really despair of really making it as a librarian as a career. Libraries so far for me have been cruel and arbitrary places to work, with no feedback and then one day your boss decides she doesn't like you and you're out on your ass. And actually your boss has been seething all this time but like a passive-aggressive little b*tch she doesn't tell you, the onus is on *you* to figure it out, like in a bad relationship. I hate it. Reminds me of my failed marriage a little too much.

As a good friend and colleague (who is a woman herself) wrote to me: "Women can be jerks; if they don't like you, they can twist and manipulate things to get you fired."; Not saying what happened at Tdub was necessarily reverse sex discrimination, just saying that being male in that environment put me at a disadvantage; I was no doubt "tone deaf" to a lot of the emotional subtleties flying all around me, which no doubt cost me time and again.

I grow more convinced that Cataloging is a dead end for me. I need to make the jump to Reference work, but I also need an employer willing to take a chance on me as well. I've also given some thought to teaching English in China (and eventually, Japan) for a few years. The future remains wide open.

On technology self-education

2010-01-21T15:22:00.000-08:00

I have had a harrowing 24 hours which I have just gone through after attempting to properly fix our home network to allow remote printing. That was the original aim, to permit, say, my Dad, to print from his laptop (which he actually uses as a lap-top, in his easy chair) to my basic printer on my Desktop PC, which is not the main hub of the network. What I ended up doing was knocking my own desktop offline and borking the its Internet connectivity such that I couldn't get back on! It turns out my Linksys-G Wireless adapter driver was corrupted (I learned the next day, after phoning the angels & gurus at SugarLand PC) and had to be reinstalled. First we uninstalled then reinstalled the adapter itself, then reinstalled the driver software using the install wizard and the original CD-ROM that came with the ancient Linksys-G adapter...at long last, success! And no need for a Geek house-call. I even got the Weather Channel Desktop application to function correctly, and my adapter was reposition in such a way that the signal strength it receives is up to 90%, up 30% from 60% in its original location.

Still no remote printing capability at this stage--I did tinker a little further before finally giving up on that. It's not critical, but it is something I would like to learn correctly some day, so that we can enjoy a *proper* home network that takes full advantage of what networking capability can do for users...especially laptop to desktop cross communication.

I created a new account on |biblios.net, the LibLime answer to OCLC Connexion; all well and good. But what I'd really like to do is download and install the Koha ILS on my Desktop to play around on, but this requires stuff like Perl and Apache, stuff that I've scarcely got the foggiest idea how to install or operate. Likewise, there is a client version of |Biblios similar to OCLC Connexion Desktop Client and it integrates with the Koha ILS but also requires Perl and Apache and the aforementioned extras that I've got no idea how to set up either.

But I think it would be worthwhile spending the money and time to learn how to install the Koha ILS and related |Biblios client version if only for the learning experience itself at a systems level. I might even be able to play with MARCedit and see how well it plays with Koha (or doesn't). It all takes time (which I have) and money (which I don't)...and patience and possibly a willing teacher. But I would have to view it at least abstractly as a worthy investment, a set of skills once learned that might serve well in a future librarian job whether in an academic, public, or school setting.

Also have an offer to do some distance cataloging of electronic resources on a contract basis, one gig at a time. It looks pretty complicated, but I think I should force myself out of my comfort zone and give it a shot. Not like there's really any other way to stay current with cataloging and cataloging skills, whatever my misgivings about RDA and what the future of cataloging and librarianship may hold for us all. I'd also gladly take an underpaid paraprofessional Reference assistant gig at this point as an in-between kind of job...which is kind of sad for someone with two Master's degrees, which is hardly unique among professional librarians.

But I'm dubious of my ability to boot strap myself to techno-know-how. I do feel like I will need a tutor or at least a paid consultant to get going with a project like setting up a fully functioning Koha ILS on my home PC that is web-accessible from the outside world, etc. Just an ILS to play with for training purposes, the way some library schools are beginning to do to teach cataloging fundamentals.
Also intend to play around on Biblios. Maybe find bib records for books in my personal collection and catalog ones that don't have records there, down to assigning an LC Classification number. Self-teaching in cataloging is an agonizing process if you don't have a reliable mentor, as I often haven't. Cataloging is a dying art in part because new catalogers aren't being supported properly, at least if my example is any indication.

Anyway, I'm grateful for the broadband access I do have through my old fashioned safety net, i.e. my parents. Sometimes I really am a walking stereotype.

Manga Mad - a documentary.

2010-01-21T14:54:00.000-08:00

Just finished watching this very fine documentary on Japanese Manga & Anime culture.

What is fascinating to me are the similarities and differences between how Manga culture functions in Japan versus America. Japanese use Manga as a way to temporarily escape their very stressful work and school life. Americans use it that way sometimes, though in my case it was more to escape boredom rather than stress.

The documentary emphasizes how mainstream Manga culture has become...one statistic states that up to 40% of the Japanese reading public reads Manga in some form. Another stat is that 60% of the Animation sold in the world originates in Japan.

Manga and Anime function as the collective unconscious of the Japanese people, allowing them to express deep emotion and live vicariously through the lives of characters who can do outrageous things that they could never do in society in real life.

My feelings don't wax as extreme, but they have been deeply moved by many of the Anime and Manga stories I have been exposed to.

The concluding remarks were most interesting, reflecting on the pivotal importance of politeness and restraint in Japanese social discourse; it isn't nearly as blunt or direct as in English-speaking countries (USA, Great Britain). It made me remember, too, that Germany is the polar opposite of Japan, insofar as for German children, they are taught it is more important to be factually correct than to be polite. The Germans in particular pursue an unflinching Exaktheit in their social discourse that is jarring even to English speakers, and would be positively mortifying in Japan.

Newly unemployed

2010-01-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

As of 15 December 2009, I resigned my position as Catalog Librarian at Texas Woman's University. As of 26 December 2009, I vacated my apartment near campus and moved myself and all my worldly possessions back to my parents' home in Sugar Land, Texas, with some of it going into storage on my Dad's rural property in Splendora, Texas.

I may ruminate on what happened, what went wrong in a later post. Suffice it to say if I hadn't resigned, I would have been fired anyway. Which, in hindsight, I should have forced them to do, because that way I would have qualified for unemployment compensation, whereas now I don't. Which I think is a crock, but whatever.

I sent off my first cover letter and resume to a major university just today, first of many on what will be quite a lengthy job search I have little doubt. At the very least, I now have 2 solid years of job experience behind me that no one can take away from me. Maybe that will be enough to let me get my foot in the door closer to home.

I feel the urge to re-invent myself as a Reference Librarian, since this whole cataloging gig just doesn't seem to be panning out for me. If I can't get a senior cataloger for a supervisor, someone willing to mentor me, then forget it, I'll be calling it quits as a cataloger. I'm done working for non-cataloger jerks. I'm done being the only professional librarian in either all of tech services or at least all of cataloging. I'm done being point man. I'm done being expected to transform myself into some kind of mind-reading Niezschean superman on the job.

For now, I'm learning more about/playing around with Google Docs as a way to post and distribute my resume online. I also updated my AggieNetwork profile, though I think it's mostly of dubious value for a prospective librarian. Unless you're a "typical" Aggie (Christian, Conservative, Republican) working in Business or Finance, the Aggie Network can't do sh*t for you, really.

My boss and I ultimately came to an impasse over what constituted reasonable work expectations for a Librarian I, Cataloger. My boss was making demands of me that were more a fit for the Librarian III skillset, yet TWU is unwilling to pay the salary it takes to attract a Librarian III. The position was NOT advertised as "Head of Cataloging" and yet that is de facto what the position entailed.

As I've said multiple times now, Tdub was trying and continues to try to get away with doing cataloging on the cheap. They don't want to hire an experienced cataloger like they should, so they keep burning through Librarian I's desperate for the work experience every few years or so, regardless of the toll it ultimately takes on individual lives and psyches. Now they are back to having only 2 Cataloging Assistants, with one set to retire in May. They are knee deep in an authorities correction project that is now without a professional cataloger to lead it and seemingly don't care. I really hope their decision to run me off comes back to bite them in the ass.

Was faulted for not involving myself more in Dublin Core Metadata via ContentDM, but Special Collections could never make clear what they wanted or needed from me exactly. Lesson learned is to just inject myself into whatever Metadata stuff is going on to show that I have an interest and am "doing something", even if I don't know what I can really contribute, I guess.

Tdub also just plain has a cult that has some very weird ideas about how keyword searching *should* work versus how it does work. Reference staff claim all kinds of strange search anomalies, yet I found not one shred of evidence to support these claims myself. Lacking an Systems Librarian until October 2009 helped these weird ideas foster and grow. Public services working in concert with Systems is who should be trouble shooting the OPAC, not Cataloging. We insure the integrity of the MARC data, etc. How the catalog searches the bib records, etc, is up to Systems, with input from front line Reference folk. My boss kept wanting to put it on my shoulders and I kept balking at the proposal. I consulted a former head of cataloging at a MAJOR Texas university and she basically agreed with me, and her testing of our OPAC also revealed no anomalies. Towards the end my boss's constant harassment kept me from getting serious cataloging work done, or at least made it much harder than it needed to be.

When I wax philosophical, maybe it was high time I had moved on anyway. I'd learned all I was going to there, I think. My boss also wanted me to be an extrovert like her, when I'm definitely an introvert. She claims I lacked "Big picture" vision but I'm the one who added 8000 new holdings to WorldCat in my re-cataloging project, stuff that was "hidden" from the world and put TWU in violation of its contract with OCLC, I might add. I definitely left Tdub in better shape than when I found it.

Part of my problem is that cataloging is so remote and abstract, while I need more immediate feedback telling me I really am making a difference and helping someone. Reference work gives you that, and cataloging really doesn't. It's what I loved about working for AIG International Services the past 10 odd years, too. I knew I was making a real difference in people's lives right then and there. Cataloging you may make a difference 5 to 10 years in the future, or maybe long after you leave or long after you die. It's too removed from present day realities.

My thoroughgoing skepticism of RDA did not win me many friends either, I'm sure. My boss would ask about RDA and I would always answer the same: "not ready for prime time". Every talk I attended in 2009 on RDA was the same--frustratingly vague. Frustratingly vague at the start of 2009, and frustratingly vague at year's end as well. I also have deep philosophical issues with FRBR, especially its notion of a "work" in the abtract, which drives me up the wall, as there is no such animal. There is always an Ur-Text somewhere. I'm just too much of a hard nosed materialist to buy the Platonic notions that FRBR seems grounded in.

Attitudes like that do not get you counted among library movers and shakers, regardless how true they might be.

I have an opportunity to do some long distance contract cataloging, probably of electronic resources, and I'll probably be doing that part time while I look for work full time, but right now my copy of AACR2r2 and my copy of the Big Red Books (1992 edition) and my DDC21s are up in a shipping container in Splendora, TX. When the current arctic blast is over and warmer temps come back, I'll plan to head up there and retrieve my trade tools from deep storage.

Had to sell off a lot of books to make shelf space in Sugar Land. It was hard but necessary. Fact is I'll never have the personal oak wood wall to wall private library of my childhood and adolescent dreams. It's just never going to happen. I accept that now. May yet have to cull more books, like the East German kids books I saved from the discard pile and try to get a few pennies for them.

I'm pretty broke and having to cut corners and save money wherever I can. Don't have a lot of free time for blogging, but plan to keep it up as I keep myself informed about the state of the profession, or at least try to.

Later, folks.

Fixing misuse of 246s; thoughts on ILS shortcomings.

2009-11-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Recently we have been tasked by our Library Director with fixing some past cataloging practices. In the past, our Catalogers helped our Special Collections department with highlighting local special collections in the catalog. I understand why they did what they did, but the method chosen was a flagrant violation of cataloging rules and misuse of MARC coding. Basically the 246 field (alternative title) was selected so that Special collection titles could be inserted here and would appear as an indexed, hyperlink-clickable title heading. It was a functional choice, a cheat, a short-cut. I understand completely why it was done.

In point of fact, the idea of local collections, near as I can tell, as such, falls through the specifications for existing MARC coding. I'm not opposed to the idea of having an clickable field in the OPAC display that is indexed and enables the user to access all the books in a local collection simultaneously in a results list. The problem is twofold. 1) there is no concise, already existing MARC tag that really captures this information; there needs to be. The only solution I see is coding some 901-907 field to capture this info and index it. 2) even if the info is successfully captured in a MARC tag between 901 and 907, the local ILS has to be able to index this information and display it, and this requires systems-level savvy that previously was lacking, which is why I suspect the 246 was opted for originally.

I don't currently know if Voyager is capable of indexing and displaying MARC tags 901 through 907. I would need to investigate this with my Systems Librarian. Our interim solution has been to code the "local collection" details in the 590 local note field. This makes them searchable only by means of careful keyword searching, done via quotation marks. It's not ideal but it nominally works. What it can't do is give you a clickable link that is indexed. A locally defined 901 through 907 MARC tag could, in theory, allow for this. I suspect Open Source ILS'es might more easily enable libraries to make better use of the 901-907 locally defined MARC tags, making them indexable and clickable.

This is what should have been done to begin with. But that would have required having a full-time cataloger and a full-time systems librarian who worked closely together and better understood the rules...a situation that hasn't been an accurate description of our personnel situation at our library for quite some time; until now, that is.

Learning more library tools.

2009-11-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to learn more Library tools commonly used in Tech Services. I am wading my way through Error Reports generated by our vendor BSLW. With the gracious help of my E-Resources Librarian colleague, I've been learning the basics of using Voyager Select, MARCedit, and Record Reloader to do global-style edits to multiple records simultaneously. This enables me to do big fixes without having to do record-by-record editing, which is much slower and plodding.

I finally am getting the hang of this, and am now less dependent on my E-Resources Librarian colleague to make these kinds of large set edits. I know my colleague was always glad to help, but I'm relieved I don't have to keep asking her for every one of these jobs. It IS complicated, and it definitely deserves its own chapter in the Cataloging Manual because it's so essential to database management. I'm looking forward to writing that chapter, with plenty of screen shots.

I even managed to fix badly-coded MARC tags...610s that were mis-coded as 650s, or moving obsolete 440s to updated and validated 810s. It's also useful for updating children's LCSH to "adult" (i.e. standard) LCSH. Some of this is challenging because adult LCSH splits the terms into two distinct headings, and these have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis...which is a little frustrating, but it's also why it requires a professional cataloger such as myself to make those judgment calls.

The Error Reports also uncovered badly misspelled headings; even 500 field notes that were accidentally mis-coded as 650 subject tags. The original basefile reports also hoovered up a lot of records that no longer exist in the database due to withdrawal projects, etc. I've begun to clue in on what records are likely to be currently bogus and just skip over them; I'll mark through bogus bib numbers with a colored marker, usually at the start and finish of a suspected string, as a visual clue to myself that those which fall in between are also likely bogus.

I'm trying to approach some of these questionable headings with the ethic of "First, do no harm". I notice that on the theses and dissertations, some of the topics addressed are so specific that it falls between the cracks of LCSH. I try to test if I can re-code them as MeSH and achieve validation that way, or of not convert the field to a 653 rather than delete it outright. I tend to tread lightly in the area of natural science, in areas I'm less familiar with. I try to focus on topics I know best first.

I've also noticed that some things were coded as 650s that are more properly classed as uniform titles in the 630 field. Not all uniform titles have authority records but if it is justified by the chief source of information you keep it.

I'm saving the serials error reports for last, because that will get very complicated and difficult.

With less material coming into our door for cataloging, this more intellectual work of database cleanup combined with quasi-authority work is basically our fallback. We now have the opportunity to work on this because of the dearth of incoming materials and it will improve the performance of the catalog. I look forward to working with our new Systems Librarian to improve catalog performance and tweak the result sets, etc.

Backstage Blues

2009-10-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm mulling over the original basefile reports we received back from our vendor, BSLW. To their credit, they have greatly helped clean up the catalog and improve our records, both bibs and authorities. However, there are limitations to what their automated processes could achieve, and I am currently juggling the error reports of things that were unable to be changed via automation but will require human scrutiny. I'm a little surprised at the limits, to be honest, and though they did take care of the lion's share of work, what we have left over isn't exactly kittens either.

We've also had 3 quarterly updates since the original basefile was run back in February as well. The procrastination is entirely my fault, not least for my not fully understanding what we needed to do; and even when I did understand it seemed so overwhelming that I dithered for a long time, not sure where to even begin. I mistakenly dove into the most recent quarterly reports, only to be gently corrected by my boss that we needed to attend to the original basefile reports first, that everything we did there would impact the later quarterly error-reporting updates.

I'm focusing for now on umatched headings...subjects (LCSH) in the 6XX fields and Names (with emphasis on Personal Names, MARC fields 100/700 in particular). There's some jaw droppingly bad cataloging fudges to be found from past ages, too. Yet more evidence of what can happen when your library administration thinks they can coast by without hiring a full time Catalog librarian for years on end.

We've also initiated a major cleanup effort to fix records that were making improper use of the 246 alternate title tag. It had been pressed into service as a hot-link to unite local special collections. I was actually sympathetic to our special collections personnel, trying to think of ways to both please my director and accommodate their needs (earning me the ire of my immediate superiors in the process). But ultimately we had to toe the line and come down on the side of scrupulously correct cataloging and relegate the local collection information to a 590 MARC tag (local note), with special formatting, findable via keyword searching in quotation marks. We fixed most of these today---We, as in, with the help of our E-resources librarian and resident Technology expert; for some reason MARCedit and some related tools aren't working on my machine right now, which makes me even more dependent on my E-resources colleague. There's still a few major collections yet to fix, especially the Women Airforce Service Pilots archive collection, which has more than one "creative use" of the 246 tag (e.g. they are all wrongly used) that will have to be regularized.

There's also quite a lot to do as a result of the 440 field becoming obsolete, and the fact that our E-vendors keep coding their records wrong by making use of this field instead of the more appropriate 810 field for series corporate names (like Ebsco, JSTOR, Project Muse, et. al.). These keep showing up in the quarterly reports.

We're also facing down a severe budget crunch for the remainder of this calendar year until at least February of 2010. Our newly approved library fee kicks in for Spring 2010, but we won't see any benefit from it until the Spring semester is well underway. Because our acquisitions budget has dropped to nearly zero, in a way, it's the best time to be taking on all these authority control projects since we otherwise would not have the time to devote to them full time in the way that we currently do.

We also finally hired a new Systems Librarian and I am so glad to have him on board. I have to cut my employer some slack on this one, though, since the last Systems person was on extended leave, dying slowly of a terminal illness, and the position could not be filled until she passed on. Even when she did pass, our director really had to negotiate long and hard with the university administration that despite the fiscal crunch this position was essential to library operations and needed to be filled ASAP; We are so very fortunate the Chancellor agreed and approved the position. Maybe now we can seriously begin addressing shortcomings of the OPAC and resolving some mysteries around searching and recall, especially in the "advanced search" features. It's an evaluation that's long overdue. But it will probably be an easier task to tackle once we've done the BSLW authorities cleanup first, I suspect. We also need to resolve and understand why there are so many duplicate authority records and what we can do to delete the duplicates so that only one record exists in the catalog. This will entail me learning the ins and outs of MARCedit, I have no doubt.

I am growing as a Cataloger, but not without a lot of angsty growing pains along the way, days where I feel completely overwhelmed and feel like I have no idea what I'm doing or what I should do next. I sometimes welcome days where I get to train other staff or handle the occasional odd reference query pertaining to Cataloging or Metadata. I feel less self-conscious doing those things, actually.

We're also retraining one of our acquisitions staff to become a copy-cataloger, something she will probably end up doing almost full time once our current Senior Cataloging Assistant retires at the end of this Academic Year. She seems to be catching on fast and has a lot of experience dealing with Bibliographic records in MARC21 format(plus prior experience in ILL). It's doubtful the library will allow us to hire a replacement for the retiring employee, so we will all have to shift around and retrain a bit to compensate for the reduction in force via retirement. Some of the other acquisitions clerks may have to pick up the slack as the more experienced one transitions over to Cataloging from Acquisitions.

Side note, completely random--it seems my machine is the only staff PC where one can read international fonts correctly on the staff side of the ILS. I must have more international fonts than anyone else, etc. It's strange. The OPAC displays these characters correctly on a browser, but on the staff side only my machine does.
Which by default means I get to handle all the "weird" cataloging.

We will also soon be scrambling to do our self-evaluations, to prove how we met our goals or at least tried really hard to meet our goals and perhaps met other goals not originally specified but no less important, blah, blah, blah. Not only do I have to wear my manager hat as a librarian, I also have to get on my own butt to churn out MY paperwork for MY boss. It's going to be pretty stressful around here until all that paperwork is done and signed in triplicate, etc, then we can all go home for Thanksgiving with a clear conscience and relax for half a week.

I really don't have time to blog actively right now, as you can well imagine, but writing this post has at least given me a little much needed clarity and resolve.

Apologies for the long silence; enjoy these videos while you wait.

2009-10-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

This is a new phenomenon sweeping YouTube, and especially among those of is in the online Atheist community who deeply appreciate science. These videos fill me with awe and make me choke up with emotion as much as an inspiring hymnal does for religious people.

(features Neil de Grasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Richard Feynman, and Carl Sagan)

The above is actually a second installment. The original work that kicked off this phenomena was called "Glorious Dawn", featuring astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and the late Carl Sagan...

This first work is actually on my iPod. The artist who composed has generously been making the MP3 available for free download.

Very creative use of an Autotuner...apparently giving birth to this new genre of online music. There are also satiric songs poking fun at politicians, etc.

More on library stuff in a bit, just wanted to share these for now.

This and that

2009-08-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well, whew, done with the North Texas 23 Things, and just ahead of the deadline, too.

I've been working hard this week on cataloging an entire book truck full of Children's Gift Books that we received from our SLIS Department, from a SLIS faculty member who is a official reviewer of new Children's materials, which she regularly donates to us afterward, at the end of summer. We have a children's collection owing to the fact that we have a SLIS program geared towards training future School librarians and also Public Librarians who may have to work with children as part of their primary work responsibilities. These donations are of value to us because it allows the library to acquire very recent titles at no cost, so that we can devote the money we otherwise would have spent acquiring these titles on other things, like more academically rigorous material such as new monographs, or another electronic subscription that we otherwise couldn't afford, etc.

It's not hard (copy) cataloging, just tedious; one has to be especially mindful of subject headings; We do not use LC Children's headings, but rather use the Adult headings with subfield $v Juvenile literature for nonfiction and $v Juvenile fiction for works of fiction. I often listen to music while copy cataloging mass quantities, to help pass the time. Or I listen to other YouTube videos of somewhat longer content, especially monologues from my favorite fellow users. It can be more entertaining than television at times, especially at home. Yesterday while finishing up the book truck, I caught up on a political research podcast that I'd fallen behind on in recent months. It helped relieve some of the drudgery. Unlike adult monographs, children's book cataloging can turn into drudgery because they are so small and there are so many of them that can be crammed onto a book truck. Last week I cataloged 113 titles, and that was only 1 side of my truck. This week I've knocked out 132 titles on the opposite side of the truck in question. I also had to physically remove little round stickers from the back cover that had been applied by the SLIS reviewer(s) but that are no longer needed.

There are probably more children's books requiring my attention besides these, and then beyond that there are always the un-cataloged vault materials that need attending to, etc. Job security, right?

Also have other projects in the works, and trying not to freak out about them.

Anyway, more later, perhaps.

Thing 23: Reflection

2009-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

For the 23rd Thing of the North Texas 23 Things, we are asked to reflect on what we have done so far.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of North Texas 23: A roundup of Web 2.0 technology! You’ve worked hard to complete each of the 23 Things. For this final Thing, take a moment to think about what you’ve done. What was your favorite or least favorite Thing? What was challenging for you? What did you learn? What new technologies will you use in your library? Write a paragraph or more, reflecting upon your experiences.

I think my most favorite thing was probably the Flickr Mashups and Image Generator(s), since that is one thing I had wanted to learn more about. I really like the parodies of the ubiquitous "motivational" posters, usually called "demotivational" posters because unlike the corporate, mass produced product, they are frequently sarcastic and critical. You can also do your own virtual "Read" posters that way, too, which is pretty cool.

Many of the other "Things", however, I was already familiar with, so it wasn't much of a learning experience, just a nod and a shrug. "Yep, been there, done that.", etc.

Obviously, I'm also a big fan of Xtranormal.com, which, though it was not a part of the NT23, probably should be.

I was least impressed with Ning, and didn't see the point of it at first. Only later did I find out that a social network that I was interested, and later joined, called Atheist Nexus, was in fact part of Ning. When I went to sign up for Atheist Nexus, it already recognized my e-mail address and asked for my Ning password, which I supplied, and thus my Ning info pre-loaded itself into my presence on Atheist Nexus, including my somewhat goofy nickname Aggiememenon. Ning is still "meh" to me, but I'm slowly getting the hang of Atheist Nexus and beginning to enjoy it somewhat.

I'm also glad that I already had this library-related blog in existence and didn't have to create a brand new blog just to participate in NT23. I don't update very often, but still, this blog sometimes comes in handy to explore my latest musings on the profession and Higher Ed in general, from time to time.

GoogleDocs is pretty cool, but it turns out that SharePoint, a new information management intranet system that TWU is adopting, will have most of the same capabilities of GoogleDocs. For all I know, SharePoint's functionality was partially inspired by GoogleDocs (or vice versa, maybe). In any event, the GoogleDocs demo fired my imagination, and I plan to exploit SharePoint's own GoogleDocs-like functionality to revise how we keep and update cataloging statistics. Rather than manually crunching the stats by hand from paper report forms supplied to me by my cataloging staff (always a pain!), I will move this Excel file online to SharePoint and have my staff directly update their own stats themselves each week, and I will just check the online document to make sure everyone has kept up and submitted stats in a timely manner. I may keep the paper forms alive for a time, as a backup, but I do foresee the potential to go "paperless" in this area. If people still want something to physically write on, maybe we could develop a laminated sheet and update with erasable china markers or something for the weekly tallies. Or perhaps a whiteboard and erasable markers? I can definitely see the need for a physical tally, if only to keep things straight in one's head, rather than relying on an online-only interface. But saving paper could help save money for the library, so we need to think of ways to compromise to make this work out best for everyone.

NT23 Things has been a worthwhile workshop, even if I was already familiar with over 50% of the material. I still learned things of value by participating.

NT23, Thing 22 : Developing your own 23 things @ your Library.

2009-08-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

In Thing 22, we are asked the following:

Think about your own library for a moment. Perhaps everyone from your library participated in this program. Perhaps you are the only one. Regardless, write a paragraph about how you could adapt this program to increase the technology skill level among the staff at your library. Even if all staff at your library has gone through this program, there is so much more to be learned.

We seem to have good participation from our reference staff, and even a few people in tech services, like me, also participated. The 23 Things is a good, brief introduction to Web 2.0 technology, but much of it I was already familiar with from just being a citizen with an internet connection who already pays some attention to what is going on. But as discussed at TLA this past year, it's important for librarians to take time out of their work week to review blogs and take the pulse of what's happening in technology and information; not only from ALA sources but also places like Wired.com or BoingBoing.net, for example. I recently subscribed to the print edition of Wired Magazine using my "Coke Rewards" points, an online customer loyalty program created by the Coca Cola Bottling Company where users can input a code and rack up "points" which they can apply to various rewards great and small. One of these awards was the subscription to Wired Magazine. I normally wouldn't shell out the cash for it, but since I had plenty of points to spare and not much interest in most of the smaller awards on offer, I decided to go for it. I also got some coupons for free movies at Blockbuster (rent one, get one free and also a stand alone free movie offer). I don't use Blockbuster very often anymore, since I mostly watch Japanese anime via Netflix for my primary entertainment, but I do use Blockbuster to watch some of the newest Hollywood releases that I didn't see on the big screen.

Wired Magazine is great, but Wired.com is better for fast-breaking news, obviously. I also get an email alert from the Dallas Morning News's computers & technology column. I also get local headlines via email from the Denton Record Chronicle. I try to stay at least nominally aware of what's going on in the community and the world at large. During the run up to the Iraq War and the initial American invasion, I was definitely an internet news junkie, relying heavily on foreign sources and alternative news to get a fuller understanding of what was going on beyond the accounts given by mainstream TV news and PBS/NPR. I still am a news junkie to some degree, but not quite as intensely as when I was in library school.

The NT23 Things is a good way to introduce technology to library staff, and to encourage "technological literacy" among staff members. The most important factor for success, I think, is commitment and follow through beyond the initial "Gee whiz" enthusiasm. Otherwise you end up with lots of sizzle and no steak. A library blog can be a good way to disseminate information, but if it is seldom updated, users will ignore it and forget about it. Beyond internet technology, we are looking at using Digital Picture frames to display library info (fines, hours open, etc) in a dynamic fashion that will be more eye-catching.

Keeping abreast of current technology is essential to being an effective librarian, whether one works in Reference or Tech Services, Acquisitions or Cataloging, ILL or circulation. Technology impacts us all, and we have to help patrons mediate technology to fulfill their information needs.

Thing 20: YouTube

2009-08-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

I found the most helpful YouTube search term to be "library services"; The term "academic library" yielded results that were ok, but the first few results seemed to be more visual tours of various libraries. The search term "library services", on the other hand, yielded more useful information that patrons could potentially use.

Such videos would serve patrons best if integrated into another platform, like a library's blog or at least its homepage or a link from its homepage. Just having your library videos "out there" on its own YouTube channel is not enough. You have to "push" them where your patrons are most likely to see them. Still, hosting them on YouTube is a good idea, since it frees up server space on local computing networks. Librarians do need to be mindful of copyright restrictions on background audio content, however. If you upload a video with a popular song from a recording artist as the main or even background audio content, it's highly likely that YouTube will find out (via automated process or user flagging) and either take the video down or at least silence the audio. Luckily, YouTube offers an "audio swap" feature if you should make this common user mistake. This will allow you to provide a substitute audio track with music specifically licensed for broadcast on YouTube; if your offending audio content was background music with a voiceover, you may have to completely rework your audio track so that only the voiceover plays, or swap the audio for a licensed track, re-download the modified file, and the add the voiceover manually with editing software, then re-upload the file.

It is also possible to create simple animations via the free website Xtranormal.com and then publish them to your YouTube channel. These might be useful for short animations describing library hours of operations, fine rates, checkout periods, etc. You could even use a particular character over and over and use her as the library digital spokesperson or mascot. Get creative! If you link your Xtranormal account together with your YouTube channel, the result is usually seamless interaction and it is easy to upload from Xtranormal to YouTube. You can also remix Xtranormal animations with live action for a library Q&A or FAQ type of video with actual patrons. Patrons could ask a question on camera, and this could either be answered by a staff member on camera, or else via an animated character.

YouTube is an amazing platform and many think of it as the "public place in cyberspace", sort of a virtual Hyde Park or other Free Speech Zone. However, YouTube is a owned by Google, a corporation. It has its own "terms of service" and rules. Most of these are common sense, but in more heated areas of public discourse, on hot-button topics, abuse of the rules has led to charges of censorship; Some terms you may hear include "false flagging", "false DMCA", etc. "False flagging" is a term used to describe a situation where a video is unfairly "flagged" as offensive, when the content is in fact fairly innocuous, but the flagger merely strongly disagrees with the content of the message. This restricts the video to users who are willing to confirm they are 18 or older. When done maliciously, it is a way to restrict the target audience of the video. "False DMCA" means filing a knowingly false DMCA copyright claim against a video, which forces YouTube's hand; They must immediately pull down the video; that's the law and they have no choice. It is possible to file a counter-notice if the video can be claimed to be Fair Use, or if the person who filed the DMCA did not actually own the copyright for the alleged infringing material. YouTube will restore videos if it is determined a DMCA claim is without merit; if someone gets multiple DMCA claims filed against them within a short period of time, this can lead to one's channel being suspended; not a good thing. It should be noted that filing a false DMCA is very serious business, as to knowingly file a false DMCA claim is to commit perjury under U.S. law. See the case of YouTube user "Venom Fang X" for an instructive lesson in this, especially the video "Venom Fang X apologizes to the Internet". VFX is/was a virulent "Young Earth Creationist" and notorious for all the censorious abuses of YouTube, especially the false DMCA claims.

I've been observing the ongoing "Culture War" on YouTube between the "Young Earth Creationist" Christian YouTubers (and some other religious creationists, but mostly those of the Christian variety) and YouTube's Atheist community. The YouTube Atheist community is often at a tactical disadvantage because they take the high road, while their opposition frequently resorts to "false flagging", "false DMCAs", and also something else called "votebotting". A "votebot" is a piece of software that generates massive amounts of negative (or positive) "votes" on YouTube (one star to five star) and drives down (or up) a video's visibility on YouTube. The YouTube Atheist community has repeatedly suffered "votebot attacks", where some or all of their videos are subjected to a flood of one-star "sabotage" reviews via these automated processes, effectively "burying" their video, making it very difficult for users of YouTube to find by merely surfing YouTube.

Full disclosure, I am not a disinterested observer, but an actual minor partisan in this conflict; I'm usually too camera shy to appear in person, but I do create polemical Xtranormal animations for our side. Most of the videos on my channel are old footage from my High School years, and old home movies at Christmas time, etc, but my more recent work has been my Xtranormal animations. Obviously if you are going to create YouTube videos for library work, you should create an official YouTube channel for your library rather than relying on the personal channels of library staff. You want to clearly separate the Library's videos from the personal videos of library staff, where opinions expressed may or may not accurately represent the view of the library or the host institution of that library.

In conclusion, YouTube has great potential for explaining library services to patrons in a fun, entertaining, and visually stimulating way. Use of comedy is definitely recommended, as in the video embedded above.

NT23: Still to be done...Things 20, 22, and 23.

2009-07-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

Still on my agenda to complete in the NT23 are Thing 20 on YouTube, Thing 22 on Developing your own 23 Things for Your Library, and Thing 23, Reflections on NT23.

Thing 20 on YouTube I will probably try to work on this evening, when I'm more at liberty to peruse YouTube on my own free time. I've watched a scant few library-related YouTube videos in the past, but it will be interesting to see how much the YouTube universe has expanded for libraries and librarians over the past several months and years.

For me anymore, I sometimes have more fun spending an evening watching YouTube videos than I do watching Cable TV, especially if there's nothing but re-runs on, and I've run out of rental Anime DVDs for the time being. I'm a subscriber to several prominent "YouTube Atheists" including dprjones, AronRa, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, etc, and watch with interest their trials and tribulations and ongoing culture wars with YouTubers who are hard-core creationist and/or homophobic Christians. It makes for very entertaining theater, I must say. I even take potshots in the culture war by uploading some animations from Xtranormal.com; Take a wild guess which side I'm on. I'm far too camera shy to appear on camera myself using my own face/voice...at least not without heavy special effects to obscure my face; I wish MovieMaker had a way to distort and alter voiceovers beyond simply speeding them up to x2 as fast or slowing them down to x2 as slow. If it can do this, I haven't yet discovered that special effect yet. Maybe it's available as an add on. Or maybe there is OpenSource video editing software out there that I need to check out and use instead of Windows MovieMaker. I don't know.

This isn't related to anything and is completely random, but I'm very annoyed that it's become increasingly complicated to create and play picture DVD slideshows on a standard DVD player. I recall when my girlfriend and I once bought a basic DVD player back in 2002 or 2003, and it was very easy to simply pop in a DVD-R or DVD-RW with only .jpeg files on it, and the DVD player would instantly play them as a slide show on the TV screen. That was the coolest damn thing we'd seen that whole year.

I have subsequently never been able to reproduce that. I even recently burned a picture CD at home using special software; it's supposed to play in DVD players but it doesn't--neither on my new DVD player or in my PS2. It only plays on my computer, which is like, big freakin' whup. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I suspect it's beyond the capability of a PS2 to do that, but I was really hoping my new DVD player (which is built-in to my new small-screen HDTV LCD 19") would be capable of handling it, but nope, no dice. My aunt and uncle have produced workable picture DVDs with edited music and credits that have pretty great production values, nice transitions, etc. If they can do it, so can I...but I just lack the time and motivational drive and funds to do it properly, I guess, plus all I have to work with are my photo album(s) on Flickr. I haven't taken any trips recently I'd like to showcase or anything else notable like that.

Anyway, it's getting about time to clock out for the day. More postings about Thing 20, on YouTube, a bit later on perhaps.

NT23: Thing 21, Podcasting.

2009-07-29T14:19:00.001-07:00

I may do more than one posting on this topic, depending on how in-depth I want to go. I myself listen to several podcasts each week. My experience with Library-related podcasts are very limited however.

I found I really enjoyed the LibVibe podcast when it was still around; LibVibe was a brief, 15-30 minute weekly podcast devoted to breaking news in the world of Libraries and Information Science. I actually liked it better than the podcast associated with the blog "LIS News" which I follow periodically. I have an RSS live-bookmark in Firefox devoted to the RSS feed for LIS News, actually. The podcast for LIS NEWS is called LISTen; it's pretty good, but often pretty tech-y, too, and if you're a non-tech person it can sometimes be a little overwhelming. Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I don't.

I even at one point downloaded the Audacity software and the MP3 extension mentioned. I had at one time considered becoming a guest contributor to a gun rights podcast that I followed out of Indiana with some frequency. I really only wanted to do one guest podcast on gun rights in Canada, something I had by that point acquired more than just a passing knowledge of, and thought might be of interest to other listeners of the podcast. I gave it a few dry runs, but found it was a lot trickier than it looks. Turns out I'm a bit of a perfectionist (go figure) and really REALLY dislike the sound of my own voice, and also, it probably helps to write a script and learn it until you can deliver from the script like a real voice actor and not SOUND like you're just reading from a script. So anyway, I still have the software loaded onto my desktop computer, but I haven't touched it in many months.

I can see how there might be good potential in doing library podcasts, but I would think a library would probably want to keep it pretty brief. Also, you would have to update often enough to hold the interest of listeners, give them a reason to devote space to your podcast on their podcatcher hardware/software as opposed to another MP3 of music or whatever. I like the idea of a down-loadable walking tour of the library. It is also possible to do video podcasting, though this is more complicated, since not all podcatcher hardware screens are capable of replaying video; only the more advanced iPods (8 gig and up) are capable of doing so, for example. And even then I can't always load video content onto my 8G iPod. Some of the formats are incompatible. I can watch them in iTunes, on my PC, but not on my iPod, for example.

I also like the idea of recording book talks and releasing them on podcast, but of course, this would require the written permission of the author; you wouldn't want to surreptitiously record a book talk and then release it on the library podcast without first securing permission from the author featured in the book talk.

Librarians could also interview students with digital voice recorders, compiling audio content containing students' frequently asked questions and complaints, followed by a voice-over of the library director or a reference librarian later addressing these questions and concerns. It should not take the place of a physical Q&A board in the library, but rather, it should augment such an existing feedback system already in place.

Podcasting is another Web 2.0 technology that *could* potentially impact and enhance library services, but it would depend on librarians providing quality content on an ongoing basis, along with a responsive patron base who comes to value such content from the library on a recurring basis. Library podcast content must be not only of high quality but also actively promoted to students, competing for their time and attention in an increasingly hectic academic work/study environment. As with other Web 2.0 applications, what a library can get out of Podcasting depends very much on what librarians are willing to put into it.

I think that's all I can think of to say on the intersection of Podcasting and Libraries.

As far as generic podcasts go, my favorites are German-language news media podcasts (usually actual excerpted re-broadcasts from radio & tv), which I tend to listen to of a morning while getting dressed for work, and also a select number of interrelated atheist, humanist, skeptic types of podcasts, including Chariots of Iron, the Non-Prophets, American Freethought, Dogma Free America, FFRF's Freethought Radio, CFI's Point of Inquiry with D.J. Grothe (who is also a Facebook friend of mine), and Reasonable Doubts, just to name a few. I will listen to these podcasts while doing chores (such as folding clothes after taking them out of the dryer, or washing dishes), or while just lounging around on my couch playing Playstation2 or doing nothing in particular. I also have a cassette adapter that lets me plug my iPod into my car's tape deck (hey, it's a 2002, so cut the lulz) and listen to podcasts while I drive around town running errands (grocery store run, post office trip, etc). I even sometimes listen to my favorite podcasts when going out to eat (though sometimes I prefer to read).

To my knowledge, there aren't too many general interest library podcasts besides LISTen these days. There are a few others, but I'm still missing LibVibe, which was by far my favorite.

NT23: Thing 19, GoogleDocs

2009-07-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is an experiment with GoogleDocs. I've watched the instructional YouTube videos and I can definitely see the advantages for online collaboration and the reduction of email clutter, which is always a good thing. In library applications, I would imagine this being of greater use to large libraries with large numbers of staff members, while work in a relatively small academic library. Still, we have branch campuses in Dallas and Houston, so GoogleDocs might offer us advantages for communicating and collaborating with our librarians at those campuses in ways we have not considered previously. It is an exciting time to be involved in Librarianship, and workshops like NT23 show us these kinds of Web 2.0 tools that we can use to help us do our jobs as LIS professionals better.

It would also be a handy way to inexpensively keep a resume online instead of constructing one as a webpage and paying money to a ISP.

You could also save your PowerPoint style presentations online and free yourself from the worry of loosing your jump drive en route to your next presentation event, etc. You could also embed the presentation in a web page or blog later; Kind of cool, eh? As long as you had a computer you could use with internet access, and as long as you had your username and password memorized (or written down), you're home free.

GoogleDocs is definitely thinking outside the box; a good way to reintroduce a fairer division of labor, etc, especially with spreadsheet questionnaires, which was the coolest thing by far that I saw in the intro videos.

Could potentially be helpful in sharing circulation statistics as well as cataloging statistics across the library.

Also helpful for those who can't afford MS Office on their home computer and aren't tech savvy enough to download open source alternatives like OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems.

Those are my tentative thoughts on GoogleDocs and its potential for work in the LIS world ahead.

NT23: Thing 17 - LibWorm

2009-07-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it's certainly better than using Google. Nice way to tightly focus search results to get a gist of the current chatter in LIS circles on topics of interest to library and information professionals. I even saw results from this blog pop up, which was frankly a little embarrassing, but I'm very self-conscious in that way.
I guess I should think "hey, neat!". But on the other hand, I update so infrequently, I was a little surprised that I turned up in the first page of results on some queries, as high as result number 3 in one query. Odd.

I'd probably still use Databases and peer-reviewed journals for "serious" research and publication (such as, say, for tenure requirements, if I had that here, which I don't).
But still, as a quick way for measuring the "pulse" of the LIS world, LibWorm delivers the goods, I'd say. Nifty tool. Thanks, NT23, for introducing me to it.

NT23 : Thing 18, Wikis, an addendum.

2009-07-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

Completed Thing 18 on Wikis.

My sample wiki page here.

It also has 2 "sub-pages". It was a little tricky because I had to pick a name for the sub-pages that noone else had used or else it wouldn't "take" (I tried multiple times before figuring this out). Maybe just a hiccup with the pages, who knows.

We also use a Departmental Wiki at work, and I have fooled around on the LIS Wiki and in Wikipedia itself. Wikis can be good for collaborative efforts, but for example a library Wiki would need to be restricted to staff members only, or at least certain parts of it would need to be walled off from patrons. Most staff wikis tend to be internal documents, not intended for public display and consumption, much less editing.

Wikis are based on the logic of the "wisdom of the crowds", or more simply, "two heads are better than one".

NT23: Thing 16: LT, part 2

2009-07-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, found the upper limit for Library Thing; freebie members are limited to 200 books. If you want to add beyond that to your personal profile, you have to pay for it. So rather limited compared to Amazon.com in that respect. LT pulls their info from LoC and Amazon, after all. It costs them money, so naturally they have to have a subscription model to absorb beyond 200+ items, to pull paying members in, because once you start adding books you find it hard to stop.

The site is a little buggy at times, especially shuffling books between collections, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, even after repeated attempts.

I next went to join groups of possible interest, though as yet I have not encountered an upper limit on those, but I suspect it also probably exists on Freebie accounts.

It does seem like it would be a valuable tool for reference librarians, acquisitions and collection development librarians...again more so than someone in Cataloging like me.

I have my Freebie account and will have to mull over if I think it is worth my upgrading to a paid account; Will it really enhance my professional skills enough to justify the investment? Hard to say.

I won't be upgrading anytime soon, though I'll consider it again maybe come Fall semester.

NT23: Thing 16, Library Thing

2009-07-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, so in truth I already had a LibraryThing account long before I started the North Texas 23 Things, but also true is the fact I did next to nothing with it. I did have a dust-up with the LibraryThing head honcho when he dissed the Dewey Decimal System, and he came on and joined AUTOCAT and promptly got his *ss handed to him by the more experienced catalogers there, IMHO. Fun was had by all.

But yes, LT is fun to play around with and certainly easier to manage than "Wish Lists" on Amazon.com, which is where I have been storing my "for future reading" book lists; This has worked as a crutch, but over time this becomes unwieldy as the lists become increasingly huge and difficult to navigate easily.

LT offers a way out of this conundrum, at least in theory. I'll have to play around with it more, but it seems like a fun, harmless diversion for bibliophiles. It will never replace rigorous cataloging standards as practiced in libraries, however.

Will publish more later on LT if anything inspires me further.

NT23: Thing 15 - Digg / Dugg

2009-07-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

So anyway, I gave Digg.com a try; It was easy enough to set up a Digg account via Facebook, actually, which was awfully convenient & painless.

I poked around on Digg, "dug" a few stories, which then appeared on my Facebook 'wall'. I even found a story I had read earlier on Inside Higher Ed this morning which I decided to "dig" as well. It had only 1 Digg, but at least it was there, and I added my Digg as well.

It seems to be inspired by the whole "wisdom of the crowds" Meme that's going around these days, and seems to have some validity too it. The most active users are apt to be the most techno-savvy and for bleeding edge technology news, Digg is probably very useful. Ditto stuff that is all around "Cool". But I can't say that it's necessarily more interesting than, say, BoingBoing.net, for example. I bet the editors at BoingBoing.net probably use Digg.com as a research tool, among many others, but for the end user, unless you have a home built PC running on Linux, or have similar levels of techno-moxy, I don't know if the lay user will find much that is appealing about Digg. It's like a massive web-wide popularity contest. Sometimes it pays to heed the word of the Vox Populi Digitalis, other times, less so.

As a lay user looking for "cool stuff", I'll let the editors at BoingBoing do their work on my behalf and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Regularly perusing BoingBoing keeps me hip and cool. A nice antidote to BoingBoing on the other hand is the blog Stuff White People Like, which holds up a fun mirror to my own existence and lets me laugh at myself. It's scary how much SWPL pegs me, deflates my ego, undermines my hip pretensions, nearly every time.

Reference librarians will probably find Digg.com more useful than I do as a cataloger, since they deal with the public much more directly. No doubt it can be helpful at the reference desk as a jumping off point.

Anyway, on to the next "thing". Digg/Dug/done.

On my agenda for later, Things 15-17

2009-07-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

I will get to things 15-17 a bit later on. Right now the library staff are all pitching in to go count volumes on the shelves so we can compile accurate statistics. Everybody has to pitch in, including Tech Services, so I've got to be signing off here and lending a hand the rest of the day. Toodles!

Thing 14, Delicious

2009-07-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

Been there, done that. Broke down and set up my Delicious account not long after Texas Library Association annual conference 2009, user name "Aggiememenon". It was convenient to consolidate my bookmarks from all my home PCs, and from my Work PC. But I don't tote my laptop around very much, so I really don't have a huge use for Delicious, but I could see where it would be handy for people who move around a lot for their jobs (Consultants, etc) or Reference staff who don't have assigned terminals, etc.

I do have my own Desk in Tech Services that I sit in every day, so it's really not that much of an issue for me. I didn't even bother to bring my laptop to TLA this year, too much hassle to tote around. While a few lucky people had iPhones and iPod Touches, most did not. I'm envious of the people who have the smaller notebooks, those seem more portable and handy/useful.

So again my reaction to Delicious is mostly "meh". I see how it could be useful to some people, but as a practical matter it has little to offer me.

Thing 13, Tagging

2009-07-07T11:15:00.001-07:00

Yes, I use Flickr, and yes, I use tagging on my photos. I also add tags to other people's photos to aid in their being found by other users. I have mixed feelings about allowing user tags into the catalog. I guess I'd be okay with them if they were indexed separately from LCSH and could be excluded from searches at the user's discretion. Those that want to find "something, anything" will be happy, and more serious researchers will appreciate being able to tune out the "noise".

Slightly OT, but I recently offered some Metadata consultation for our Special Collections, who host various Digital Image collections. They typically use the Thesaurus for Graphical Materials (TGM?) controlled vocabulary but expressed some dissatisfaction with it when it came to one of their newer collections. I showed them what traditional LCSH had to offer via LC's ClassWeb, and they were impressed with the expanded range of descriptors that they could put to good use.

I'm also learning more about "tag clouds" and how to interpret them, but I confess I still don't really use them all that much.

I still like the old OPAC default display and I hate it when libraries install new "Discovery tools" that either bury or remove the default OPAC. I hate OPACs and Discovery Tools that don't index subject string searches to make them list browsable but only generate and re-generate such searches as keywords; I don't care if that's how "most" users prefer or if most users "don't care", *I do*.

For sites like Flickr, tagging is admittedly fun to play around with. I think LibraryThing sort of gets into that as well, but I haven't played around with that site. The advantage of tagging is that the terminology is up-to-date, while LCSH always lags behind a little, of necessity. I've also floated the idea in the past of Amazon marketing their SIPs and CAPs Metadata to libraries, or making it available for free in exchange for an Amazon link; I suppose a clever programmer could just mine the data from Amazon.com outright, but I'd rather get their permission and acknowledgment first. SIPs = Statistically improbable phrases and CAPs = Capitalized phrases/words. These give you good "snapshot" metadata that convey more of the "aboutness" of a book. This metadata is much more valuable than the anemic, vague "subject cataloging" provided by Amazon.com itself. Amazon.com also allows user tagging, besides the SIPs and CAPs generated from the actual text of the book proper (provided to Amazon by the publishers). Amazon also allows "user images" of their products, which is especially useful for non-book items like toys and tools. User interactivity is definitely a sign of the times. Some libraries also link in Amazon.com book reviews straight into the display for bib records in their OPAC. With enough clever programming, this is easily done, though it is frequently a "hack" rather than a vendor-supplied feature. The only vendors flexible enough to permit this are the Open Source pioneers like Evergreen and LibLime (Koha). Before you "hack the OPAC", you do definitely need to know what you are doing, because you could stand to really royally screw things up, too.

Tagging has its place, but it is no replacement for professionally chosen Controlled vocabulary; it is an augmentation of existing Metadata schemes.

Thing 12, Twitter

2009-07-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

So I signed up for Twitter and started "Following" a few people. A bit later on, some people started "following" me. I don't Tweet much, or very often. Neither do they, though sometimes I get an annoying flurry of email alerts from Twitter, but mostly not.
My user name over there is Aggiememenon. Twitter seems like Facebook for people with chronically short attention spans. It's like the ADHD sufferer's social network tool.

As if said before in the past, it might serve limited useful purposes in limited contexts, like live-blogging an event in real time, or using it to communicate at an event where simply calling the person would be a breach of etiquette (such as both of you attending separate sessions at an academic conference, yet needing to relay important information to each other in a quick burst of text).

But day to day, I just can't be bothered to fool with Twitter much. I don't even log into Facebook nearly as much as I used to, and only once in a blue moon will you catch me online at MySpace. I've been adding more stuff to my YouTube channel lately, mainly unused NJROTC footage that I can add new music audio tracks to, and that sort of thing. I don't even bother to upload the unedited footage to Facebook, since it's utterly boring without the music soundtrack.

I've also been having fun with the animation site Xtranormal.com and finally broke down and bought a premium account, so that I can create more diverse animations, which I also upload to YouTube as well as the Xtranormal site itself, where these animations are "born". I could see a library doing an Xtranormal video animation explaining library services, for example. You can sign up to have your Xtranormal animatons "tweeted" on Twitter (and YouTube allows the same thing), but I don't bother. I don't have enough "followers" to care.

To those who "get" Twitter and use it effectively, my hat's off to you. I suppose a library could sent out "Tweets" advising about new books arriving from cataloging, or when books are returned that were on hold, etc. I'm not gaga for Twitter, but in limited doses I suppose it has its uses.

An Historian's Conscience

2009-07-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

As I make my way through our re-cataloging project, I know I'm handling a lot of mundane materials that are probably candidates for weeding (like many books on the sport of Golf from the 1940s through the 1960s); but every now and then I uncover a gem that we've been hiding from the world, such as two multi-volume sets of Documentary History of the American Labor Movement, one published in the Nineteen-teens, the second edition published in the late 1950s. Both sat in our online catalog for years with very minimal records and the generic subject heading (651) of "United States."; Holdings were NOT attached in OCLC, so WorldCat did not reflect our ownership of this item. I have brought in the full catalog records from OCLC and attached our holdings, so now the world knows we own these sets, and also, our patrons have better bibliographic access to these two multi-volume sets.

Basically, I helped to recover a fragment of American memory. These are the kind of things that keep me going, that affirm to me, yes, this project is worth seeing through to the end. Recovering buried history. It is my conscience as a historian, more so than merely as a librarian, that drives me forward in this endeavor. If I did not have my background in History, I question whether I would be as relentless and zealous in finishing this re-cataloging project. There were other catalogers before me who saw fit to ignore the problem or felt it was too overwhelming to tackle, or just didn't care, or most likely, some combination thereof.

In a related vein, yesterday at Recycled Books, I bought an old used NRA publication from 1969, written by the then National Rifle Association president, titled To Keep and Bear Arms. I bought it not that I expect any particularly new or useful insights for the ongoing debate today necessarily (though sometimes this is the case, by serendipity) but as a record of American intellectual history, the history of ideas. Published in 1969, this book would have come out in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968. It also notes that the author's grandmother once broke up a KKK rally by firing her .22 LR pistol in the air. The book also bemoans the decline in basic marksmanship in the U.S. military and it's alleged toll on the Vietnam battlefield as a result. While that probably overstates the case, it's an interesting wrinkle in military history, too. The book is important to me for the way it captures a snapshot of the American Zeitgeist, circa 1969. While no library would collect this book if they didn't already have it, and while a Public library would be right to weed it, an Academic institution by contrast would be well advised to retain it. The book may no longer serve its original practical purpose, but it serves as a snapshot preserving human culture and history from the time it was produced, like a fossil stuck in amber. It has become a cultural artifact. I am also re-cataloging old nutrition and hygiene manuals published by British and U.S. government agencies. While virtually useless for their original intended purposes today, again, these anachronisms serve as a window to the past, reveal the way the medical profession once thought about things, and serves as a contrast to present practices.

Recorded History is no less than the Foundation upon which Civilization is built. The good librarian must also be a conscientious Historian.

Thing 11 - Instant Messaging (North Texas 23 Things)

2009-06-22T14:55:00.001-07:00

My first experience with "Instant messaging" was playing around with Internet Relay Chat (IRC) back in the late 1990s. I used to hang out on #germany (channel Germany) a whole lot, mostly to practice interacting with native German speakers online; it was a fun way to waste time; I'd sometimes have a beer in hand while logged on from my apartment in the Old Grad House on South Main in Houston, while I was still a graduate student in German Studies at Rice University.

I later watched over the shoulder of my friend Jase, who was an "early adopter" to America Online (AOL), and which had its own chat rooms exclusive to AOL users.

Today I sometimes use the "chat" feature of Facebook, which I was previously unaware of until a friend of mine from High School messaged me from her home in Alaska one evening. It kind of took me by surprise.

I also used to instant message a woman I was dating while working at AIG, via AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). This was technically against company policy, but evidently quite popular among bored night shift people. I had no idea, until this woman insisted I get on AIM so she could message me.

I also participated in online chats in Library school in the WebCT software platform, with varying degrees of success.

I find IM a somewhat frustrating mode of communication, though if you think IM is confusing, try Blog TV!! That's like IRC/IM and Live Video all rolled into one big confusing mess. It's like IRC but with eveyone having a webcam and a microphone.

Currently I have downloaded to my home PC (and work PC) the chat software from Google, namely Google Talk. I use my real name on it, John Ronald. I think that's my Google Talk user name, but I'm not 100% for sure. I basically got it because I have a photographer friend out in California who likes to chat, and I like her, so I broke down and did it. If I had it to do over again, I probably would've gone the Meebo route.

I know I have colleagues working in Reference and virtual reference is a big thing, being available a certain number of hours a week for live "chat reference", as opposed to traditional F2F reference or plane jane email reference. I'm told it can be somewhat stressful, especially if you get multiple patrons hitting you up at one time with multiple reference questions. In the world of cataloging, we really don't use IM software that much. Email usually suffices. I have of late purchased a web-cam, as well as screen capture software, so that I can take a digital moving image of a book or other information object in hand and show it to a more experienced cataloger, say, and also show a screen shot of my ILS, or a part of ClassWeb, or whatever, and ask for advice in areas where I feel "stuck". I haven't done this yet, but I do plan to do so the next time I have to tackle a particularly thorny cataloging problem while handling original cataloging or advanced copy cataloging.

I'm not crazy about IM as a way to communicate. I'd rather either talk on the phone or email or write a regular letter. IM can be useful for conveying short, discrete bits of information, but it's not the forum best suited to long philosophical discourse. The level of conversation almost never rises above that found on your typical internet message board, if even that. I accept that IM has found a permanent place in the delivery of Reference service, and that this is on the whole a good thing, but outside of that context I rarely use IM in any form anymore.

iPod pondering, followed by a rant.

2009-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know, or hadn't thought about it, there is more than one way to use/enjoy an iPod besides with the standard earbuds jammed in one's ears, which is a method I almost never employ in public, and seldom in private, either.

I own an iPod (two of them, in fact) and though I have a little music on them, what I mainly use them for is to listen to (and watch) audio (and sometimes video) podcasts, mostly on topics of personal interest, but also from European news agencies like Deutsche Welle and the BBC (great way for me to keep my German-language listening skills sharp, I subscribe to many German, Austrian and Swiss news podcasts).

My car is a post-2000 Honda Civic but actually has a tape deck and not a CD player. I do have a CD-to-Tape player/adapter, which I was forced to buy when I could not buy a cassette tape version of one of Sarah Vowell's works that I wanted to listen to in audiobook format. When I listen to audiobooks, I prefer audiocassettes, but it is increasingly rare for publishers to offer that format anymore; I was happy that David Sedaris's last book was still available in cassette format, which is perfect for my car's tape deck.

While I listened to Sarah Vowell's book on CD, I noticed that the cassette-tape adapter that plugged into my portable CD player would also fit into the base of my iPod, I decided to try a little experiment. I copied the next audiobook into my iTunes library, added it to my iPod, and found it was much easier to listen that way than having to pull over and park to change a CD on long trips. I plugged the adapter into my iPod and the digital audio was able to play just fine over my car speaker system. I also listen to podcasts this way on the go, much more enjoyable than commercial radio or talk radio (except for maybe NPR).

Also, around my apartment, I have saved old computer speakers from past computers I have owned (most new computers you buy these days come with brand new speakers, so rather than throw out the old speakers, I found a way to re-purpose them), and I use these as stand-alone iPod stations that I can plug in my iPod to and have it play those German-language news podcasts while I'm doing chores like washing dishes, or folding laundry, or getting dressed for work in the morning. I also enjoy listening to Barnes & Noble's "Portable Professor Series", which is similar to (but less expensive than) The Teaching Company's lecture courses on CD (with The Teaching Company, I still obtain those on cassette tape whenever I make a purchase for myself, on those rare occasions when I find a bargain item I really like on sale).

There are also professionally made "docking ports" for the iPod that can give you stereophonic sound comparable to a "boom box", etc, but I'm satisfied with my low-tech work-arounds (old computer speakers, my car tape-deck & cd-to-tape adapter re-purposed as an adapter for my iPod to play over my car sound system).

Still, as long as the cassettes are in good condition, I'm perfectly content to continue checking out books-on-tape from the public library and listen to them in my car's tape deck on my commute or for long trips. At the 2008 Texas Library Association meeting, I listened to a number of children's librarians note that cassette tapes are much hardier and stand up to more wear and tear from kids than do CDs; One library actually hauled out old portable cassette recorders from the 1970s and began circulating them with books-on-tape for parents whose cars (and homes) only have CD players.

I remain highly skeptical of the "all digital future" for many reasons, and remain convinced the printed monograph book remains the true cornerstone of a genuine, well-rounded, humanistic education (which, I know, elicits snorts of derision from those in technology fields and sometimes those in the natural sciences as well). I use new technology, sure, but I also remain mindful of "low tech" work-a-rounds and methods. Another example: I'm always about 1 system behind on gaming consoles. I bought my PS1 when the PS2 came out. I waited to buy a PS2 until after the PS3 came out, and because it also saved me from buying a stand-alone DVD player. I get to enjoy the technology eventually (albeit a bit behind the trendy curve) without breaking the bank. I also added a DVR system to my cable television hookup, which gives me more flexibility in planning my social activities (and is admittedly simpler than programming a VCR), and I also subscribe to Netflix (I'm a huge fan of Japanese animation movies and tv shows in English translation). But I'm also mindful how much all this digital technology cuts into my available time for reading, so I have to go out of my way to carve out quality time with books from my busy schedule, time to still the digital chatter and distraction and devote myself to the printed word, in solitary reflection. I also realize I'm not nearly as disciplined in this regard as a colleague at a neighboring institution, who reads even more prolifically than I do. I'm kind of a "moody" person and if I'm not in the mood, I just won't pick up a book or stick with it for very long. I have to mentally prepare myself for sustained reading. It's always rewarding when I do, though, and there's seldom a feeling of satisfaction that quite matches the feeling I have upon finishing a good, informative, well-written book. The kind of (mostly nonfiction) books I read always have people scratching their heads and asking if I am reading it for a college class and when I say "no", they look completely baffled.

I'm also highly skeptical of California Governor Schwarzenegger's call for digital textbooks for California schools, which I view as a "cure" whose effects could end up being worse than the "disease" (budgetary shortfalls) it seeks to cure.

Perhaps I'm a walking anachronism (gee, I'm only 38, a Gen X member, who had a personal computer at age 12, an Apple ][+ with dot-matrix printer and without a modem, and my family owned an Atari 2600 gaming console before that; On my old Apple ][+ my favorite games were text-based adventures like Zork, Planetfall, etc; I did eventually graduate to games with better graphics like Ultima III, which is how I learned to type since the game makes use of every key on the keyboard for a function in the game) and our up and coming users may by in large feel like they "no longer need" the physical versions of books, etc, but I say we will be a society worse off if that ever becomes the reality and the norm. When my grades would slip in school, my Dad limited my "screen time" the old fashioned way...he took away the computer plug-in cord.

I view it as part of my ethical duty as a librarian to stand up and speak out on behalf of the virtues of "traditional" reading, with book in hand, even if it makes other people point and LOL or ZOMG! ROFLMAO, etc.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me if you all read this all the way through...it turned out a bit more ranty than I intended, but such is the nature of much blog fodder, no?

Library of Congress Agents Ask Lawmakers to Give Them Back Their Guns - Political News - FOXNews.com

2009-06-11T10:44:00.001-07:00

Library of Congress Agents Ask Lawmakers to Give Them Back Their Guns - Political News - FOXNews.com

Posted using ShareThis

File this under "I had no clue". Who knew that LoC had investigators that packed heat?! How cool is THAT!! Give 'em their guns, back, Obie!

Seriously, what a dickish thing to do to Federal investigators.

Ongoing re-cataloging

2009-06-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

I'm currently engaged in a long-term re-cataloging project that began last summer and, with any luck, will be concluded this summer. We truly are bearing down on the last remaining affected records. Apparently some time in the mid 1980s, as our library building opened in 1986, there was a rush to move all the books from the old library to the present one. Evidently in the old library, not everything had made it into the online catalog yet and were still controlled by card catalog. In the rush to get everything moved over and into the online catalog, a stop-gap measure was employed, namely student volunteers were used to create "brief" records, just to hurry up and get the item into the OPAC quickly, and I supposed it was imagined they would go back and fix them after the fact. The road to hell being paved with good intentions, these records have remained unfixed until, you guessed it, I came along. Here is a brief example of what I am talking about. (please click on the image for a larger view)

The record on the right is a "brief" record, created by a nominally trained student, on the fly. The record on the right is the actual Library of Congress record that I ended up replacing it with. Look at the subject headings in particular. This would be Laugh-out-loud funny, except for the fact that the record on the right sat like that in our catalog for YEARS and YEARS until I replaced it with the DLC record just recently. I also ended up having to update our holdings in OCLC so that they now show up in WorldCat. In other words, unless you searched our OPAC directly, nobody in the world would know we owned this book by just checking WorldCat.

I've been working on this re-cataloging project since last summer, when it was spun out of an authority control project and became the main focus after we decided to outsource our authority work to a vendor, Backstage Library Works, who have done an admirable job. I've concluded my first manual sweep of the catalog searching by author last name. Most of the offending records had either a blank or 19uu in the fixed fields for date, which made them easier to spot and isolate from legitimate records. They also were distinct in that they had a mysterious 035 $9, which is a nonstandard subfield; these were products of a database migration, from the previous ILS to Voyager, but no 035 $a (i.e. OCLC number). We commissioned a special report from Backstage to find all the records thus affected (all records lacking 035 $a); Backstage found approximately 14,000 records matching this criteria, about 3% of all our records; However upon closer examination, many of these were "false positives", as the Backstage report also yanked in ALL materials on Reserve, ILL, and even Acquisitions brief records. In the reports I have reviewed so far, only about 15-20% of the records (if that many) are true hits. I am now manually sweeping through the Backstage special report, once again separating proverbial wheat from chaff. I would estimate that the actual record count remaining to be fixed is no more than 6,000 records. Many of them either lack a 1XX field altogether, or have a 110 or 111 field rather than a 100 field, and thus would never have turned up in a Personal Name search. I'm glad to be restoring full bibliographic access to these items and thereby enhancing the functionality of our catalog, and also making more of our holdings accessible to scholars through WorldCat and potentially ILL. No doubt some of the materials I'm handling ought to be weeded, and so, it could be argued, I may be wasting my time with some of them, but that's not my call to make; our weeding tasks are a separate process handled by acquisitions, so I don't worry about it very much. Sure, I sometimes feel silly re-cataloging, say, a Phys Ed book from the 1940s, but on the other hand, when I'm re-cataloging tomes of History (D's, E's and F's) or Art books (N's), Literature (P's) or Music (M's), I feel a sense of gratification in conducting this restoration work. As I've alluded to jokingly before, it's sort of a "faith-based" initiative; I have to proceed with the belief that restoring full bibliographic access to these items will be useful someday to someone somewhere, but never knowing if that will ever be true or not in actuality. So much of what Libraries do are "just in case", for the long term, versus the "just in time" mentality of the Web-centric world.

The nit I'm picking with the above record is simply that the Boxer Rebellion in China had nothing to do with the sport of Boxing; it was simply a slang Western description of the rebel Chinese faction, who emphasized athleticism and martial arts prowess. I'm sure the student who added that LCSH was only trying to help, but in so doing displayed her ignorance of history, and mislead multitudes of library patrons until this year. No longer, thanks to me.

Texas Legislature Ajourned.

2009-06-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Texas Legislature adjourned May 31st; some Higher Ed bills were passed, which I have no comment on yet. One TSRA-backed bill was passed, allowing Texans to purchase firearms in non-adjacent states. The more substantial bills (parking lot firearms storage and campus personal protection act) did not come up for a vote this session; They will have to be revived next session. Damn. I really had a good feeling about those bills at the start of the session. It also means I still have to come and go to work disarmed, while armed criminals roam free. What's a piss-ant weapons charge to a thug willing to commit armed robbery and/or murder; the only ones who obey the law are the law abiding like yours truly. That's the perverse nature of nearly all so-called "gun control" laws.

When I worked for my previous employer, the parking lot thing was a non-issue since my company did not own/control the parking complex, merely leased space for its employees to use. The company had no right to inspect my car or control what I carried in it. After car-carry became legal in Texas, I started keeping a .38 revolver in the glove box, and a semiauto rifle in the trunk. Our campus police similarly have stated they do not care if we keep firearms locked in our vehicles, but they have to enforce the law against concealed carry in university buildings.

I don't know what kind of legislative horse trading took place this session behind closed doors, but maybe in order to pass the other Higher Ed bills this session, the Campus Personal Protection Act was allowed to die quietly this session, to ensure bipartisan cooperation on the other bills. It's a disappointment, to be sure, but that's just how the legislative process works, and like they say in football, there's always next season, or in this case, legislative session. I'm afraid more idealistic goals like "open carry" will have to wait until we maximize the reach of Concealed Carry first, and pass the "Parking Lot Firearm Storage" bill similar to legislation recently enacted by the Oklahoma Legislature and upheld by the courts in Oklahoma. It's funny to see conservatives squirm and bicker over this last one, since to some property rights are so sacrosanct they trump even individual self-defense rights. Since I don't own any property, don't plan to own property (except if I inherit my parent's house in the suburban hinterland of Houston someday, which I fully expect to have to sell as quickly as possible--I sure don't want to live there or have to pay property taxes on it for very long), I'm sometimes rather contemptuous of property rights arguments, and I think personal self-defense rights are sacrosanct and trump ANY one else's property rights considerations. Or you can take the tac that one's own body is the ultimate form of property right, which is a nice bone to throw to the other side in this capitalistic, nominally democratic Republic we inhabit. Uses their argument and logic against them, as it were.

So as the cliche has it, it's literally one step forward, two steps back for self-defense gun rights in Texas this time around.

Oh, and a small piece of good news, via the Texas Freedom Network:

TFN Statement on the Senate’s Rejection of Don McLeroy’s Confirmation as SBOE Chairman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2009

The Texas Senate today failed to confirm Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education. The 19-11 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for confirmation. Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller is releasing the following statement:

“Watching the state board the last two years has been like watching one train wreck after another. We had hoped that the Legislature would take more action to put this train back on the tracks, but clearly new leadership on the board was a needed first step. The governor should know that parents will be watching closely to see whether he chooses a new chairman who puts the education of their children ahead of personal and political agendas.”

That perks me up some, for now.

Finally! Thing 10, Ning - a modest success.

2009-06-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Finally managed to subscribe to a few library-related NING social networks (pending approval), but it crapped out on me again when I tried to sign up for the last one, "Got Books?". The website must have been having issues this morning, because now the search engine works again. How bizarre.

Anyway, with any luck the Ning Mods will approve me to join their library related network grouping(s).

What I'll get out of doing so remains to be seen.

Thing 10, addendum

2009-06-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

I think the site must be experiencing bugs, since it's not functioning currently as this tutorial describes it:

North Texas 23: Thing 10, attempt Two (Ning)

2009-06-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I went ahead and took the plunge. Here's my Ning profile. Still not finding any explicitly library-related or librarian created groups out there. The suggestions were pretty off the wall; I finally joined the generic group "Geeks!", but once I joined it, I could not figure out how to Navigate back from "Geeks!" to what I term "Ning central". That is User-Friendliness FAIL, folks.

I am seeing now that Ning is like a Meta-Social-Networking tool, a Network of Social Networks, each an independent little Fiefdom all its own, customized by their creators, etc.

Ning is not for newbies or sissies; seems aimed at web-savvy geeks who already know what they're doing. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, if anything, but I am not finding ANY library-related Ning groupings out there, not a single one. If ALA has a Ning presence, someone let me know, o.k.?

Some of the groups are pretty broad, like "Geeks!", but others seem incredibly narrowly focused, too.

Initial impression post sign-up: Me no likey Ning.

Thing 10, first attempt (Ning)

2009-06-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

So, the NT23 Things blog gives this helpful suggestion.

Go to the main page at Ning.com, and you will see a search box at the bottom of the page. Enter keywords for activities of interest to you. If you enter the search term “library,” for example, you’ll see the ALA network about halfway down the results page. Some networks require you to sign in to view content. ALA’s doesn’t. Ideally, on whatever network you choose, you’ll at least be able to view a list of members, see photos and videos, and read forum and blog posts.

Righty-o, tried that, got nowhere. I would cut and paste screenshots, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to do that. I infer from my various attempts that non-member searching has been disabled. Kept returning "no results" for keywords like Libraries, ALA, Libertarian, Objectivist, Socialism, Librarian, etc. Yeah, right.

So I decided to browse the Ning blog instead.
My instant impression is that it looks like it's heavily dominated by commercial interests, even more so than either MySpace or Facebook, aimed at the Yuppie demographic. I guess the only way to explore further is to take the plunge. No doubt other library "movers and shakers" already have. If I recall correctly, at TLA 2009, The Librarian In Black was less than impressed with Ning, or didn't exactly sing its praises at any rate.

I'll mull over it some more; I may eventually join just to see "what up?", but really, how many "social networks" need one join, really? There's even an entity out there that describes itself as a kind of "Facebook for Atheists" and I'm like WTF?! Meetup.com not good 'nuff for ya? Not a regular commentator on Pharyngula or GiFS? Maybe it's cool and all but the exponential explosion of all these myriad networks...ugh, you can't belong to ALL of them.

North Texas 23: Thing 8 & 9, Facebook & More Facebook.

2009-06-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

I've been on Facebook for about a year now, ever since I accepted my current library job.

I'm of course a "fan" of ALA and other library groups. I'm even a Facebook administrator for the FB page of Progressive Librarians Guild.

I've gotten so many friends on Facebook, some professional, some from High School, some from previous jobs, etc, that it's really a diverse crowd. I actually find I am less boisterous or outlandish on Facebook because of the potential to royally piss off at least *some* of my FB friends. I have been retreating back to MySpace where I know fewer people in "real life" and thus feel more at ease to really speak my mind when I need to spout off. I don't make any reference to this blog on Facebook, and would not have mentioned my Facebook presence here if not for the requirements of the North Texas 23 Things project, nor will I mention it again anytime soon. Although I know I have regular readers of this blog (and am always slightly surprised to meet readers in person, amazed that anyone actually reads or listens to my rants here), I do find I avoid making overt linkages between my various online presences, whether on Blogger, or MySpace, or Facebook, or YouTube. I also recently started an account on Film Rookie under a screen name. Film Rookie is a YouTube-like video sharing site but newer and apparently less overtly censorious. I hold back from doing live personal rants on my personal YouTube channel because 1) I'm extremely camera-shy and self-conscious, especially about my own voice and 2) because one of my aunts just subscribed to my channel. If I do any live video rants in future, I plan to somewhat anonymize myself using camera special effects, and only upload it to Film Rookie and not YouTube. I'm an out-of-the-closet atheist to my parents & most of my friends, but not to my various aunts and uncles or cousins. It just doesn't come up in conversation. I guess my aunt on YouTube knows now about my atheism (I have some Xtranormal animation videos that admit as much and I didn't feel like taking them down), I'm going to refrain from posting live on-camera responses rants except in the form of animations from Xtranormal on YouTube.

Because two of my old High School friends who are Christian ministers are also Facebook friends, I tend to tone down the rhetoric over there, at least on my status updates. I used to have a big red Dawkins "A" on my front page, but it got buried in the last Facebook format update. Still, it's right there in my "info" page for anyone who bothers to look. Another High School friend handled his info on these topical questions more elegantly; For "Political views" he put "yes" and "Religious views" he put "No."; Wish I'd thought of that. Oh well.

And yes, I do think that Facebook, MySpace et. al. does make the job of a COINTEL type gov't program much easier, as we end up doing much of their work for them. Perhaps the Miranda warning needs an update for the 21st century; "anything you say or write, online or off, can and will be used against you in a court of law". No doubt unscrupulous prosecutors may quote you out of context, etc, to paint you in the worst possible light. This is some of the down side/dark side to all the boon of social connectivity these networking tools provide. The question you must ask is, is it worth it. I guess I'm a bit of a fatalist when I say, for me, "yes". I'm an "information professional", I have to be "out here", to show basic competence in these web tools, to "be where the users are", etc. It's what I do. I can't not do it, whatever (valid) reservations I may have that might keep someone else offline entirely. These are the choices I've made, and the compromises as well.

I blog here semi-anonymously under my initials, but as readers who have sought me out face to face at Library conferences know, I'm not hard to find in real life.
I've been posting very prolifically of late, but I often go for long stretches at a time where I have nothing new to say or have no motivation to write about whatever. Truth is I blog for me and me alone. If you subscribe to this blog expecting regular output, I promise to disappoint you eventually. Do not put me on your RSS, it won't be worth it. I get visited by Google spiders way more than human readers, I suspect. That's cool, I don't mind, I probably wouldn't read me either--too irregular.

I'm looking forward to the items on the NT23 Things that are actually NEW to me.

Wikipedia is a great place to START, not stop.

2009-05-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

I suspect that Wikipedia is really taking off as a ready reference source in the business world for one main reason--it's (nominally) free. We used it extensively at American International Assistance Services (AIAS) in Houston, Texas. Before that AIAS had a subscription to Microsoft Encarta but let it expire. Wikipedia became the default reference resource by default, and in the main, for the kinds of articles we consulted in it, mainly foreign country info, it was pretty darn reliable. It was also good for information about diseases and injuries to give our assistance coordinators a lay understanding of what our clients needs were, when coordinating between the AIG Medical staff and our contracted Travel agent. I don't know if contributions to the Wikipedia Foundation non-profit are tax deductible, but they should be, and it is in the best interest of businesses to contribute to it, not only for the potential tax break, but also to support a valuable resource for all users.

Wikipedia is a fun way to pass the time on a slow, boring night shift. I used to look up obscure articles on British militaria, aviation, etc, and general articles on Eastern Bloc small arms, etc. It may not be as good as a subscription to Britannica Online, but it's nice for the Middlebrow person interested in self-improvement and self-edification; Though it may seem these values sound a bit dated, I still actively put them into practice, and Wikipedia is an excellent starting point, but by no means should people stop there (as younger generation is often tempted to do). Editorial control has improved over the years, but sometimes gets over-dominated by editors whom I call "Notability Nazis" who delete a lot of rich content about local info because they deem it "not notable enough". I tend to be more "Inclusivist" in my views. Wikipedia's "Talk" pages can also give one a feel for the status of the current debate on controversial issues, especially articles flagged for lacking NPOV (Neutral Point of View). Wikipedia is always a "permanent beta", always under constant revision. I only once tried to submit a complete article to Wikipedia, and it was quickly flagged for multiple failings. Luckily more capable editors stepped in and re-wrote it properly and now it exists in usable form (it was a frivolous article about the third person shooter game Syphon Filter 2 on the Playstation console). I mostly make small edits; a sentence there, a grammar correction there, a link here, a paragraph revision there. But I'm proud when these stand the test of time.

I also play with other Wikis out there, but Wikipedia is the ground breaking original. We also have a restricted departmental Wiki in the library (for Technical Services) that I only just recently joined early in the week last week. It is connected to the library-wide Staff Wiki, and it will all be integrated with the new Sharepoint system in the near future, which is still in the process of doing a "soft" roll out on the TWU campus. I've no doubt the NT23 probably has some upcoming things on Wikis; I don't expect to see much new, but I'll give it a try.

Ideally, Wikipedia should lead users back to the library, to continue their research started on Wikipedia, as the graphic above, featuring Wikipe-tan, the Wikipedia official (anime-style) mascot, seeks to demonstrate.

Thing 7: RSS readers (in plain English)

2009-05-31T11:21:00.001-07:00

Good explanatory video on how RSS works and truly is the more efficient way of keeping updated with new content on the web. As I stated, I already use the Firefox add-on that lets you subscribe to pages and keep updated with the feed. I only subscribe to a very limited number of blogs that I follow very regularly. I also subscribe to a lot of LIS-related blogs, but in truth, I only actively follow a fraction of those. I'm subscribed more out of a sense of duty, that I *should* consult them, more than actually being interested in really consulting them all that often. I probably should just shift these to Google Reader and free up some space on my Firefox toolbar.

I would think you'd have to be a serious news/net junkie to actually NEED something as sophisticated as Google Reader to manage all that content, though. For me, really, Firefox does the job adequately, most of the time. Some blogs have links to other blogs, and that's how I get there, i.e. the "old" way. I follow one gun rights blog, Say Uncle, because he has a huge blogroll that serves as a gateway to other gun rights activism blogs that I follow less regularly. "Uncle" is plenty entertaining himself, and makes for a good "gateway" to the rest of the gun rights blogosphere.

So really, I use a combination of "old" and "new" to keep up with "what's new" in the world of news and blogs. Remember that a "feed" URL is not always synonymous with the "main page" URL; this is a common mistake that I've made myself numerous times. You sometimes have to dig around to find the "feed" URL, as sometimes the Firefox add-on won't be able to find it automatically (though in most cases it can). Now that I have an active Google reader account, I may start using it where I find the click-button newsreader options on certain pages.

For the time being, I'm sticking with the Firefox add-on for my top-ten blogs, but may use Google Reader to aggregate my lesser-consulted blogs and keep that content updated and ready to view should I chose to consult it. One option I positively hate is using the RSS reader option in MS Outlook. I did that once by accident and it really overwhelms MS Outlook pretty easily. I do NOT recommend the RSS reader featured in MS Outlook.

North Texas 23 Things; Thing 6, Blog Readers

2009-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

I guess this works pretty well; I'm already "following" other blogs on my own blog here (see sidebar), and Google Reader imported these subs immediately. I also added the North Texas 23 blog, and my own, per the instructions given for Thing 6. My own preference in Blog Readers, though, is to use the live subscription links in Firefox, which I can consult on the fly as 'drop down' menu items. I will probably continue to use this option in Firefox instead of switching over to Google Reader anytime soon.

The Library is the Heart of a University.

2009-05-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Phoenix Training at Southern Methodist University on this past Friday was pretty good, and I'm glad I went. Aside from the Keynote address, however, it was all pretty free-form and largely unstructured, basically a morning and afternoon "rap" session of all the attendees. The morning rap session was a general discussion about the keynote address and its implications for all of us. The groups were distributed at random, by attendee last name, so we had a mix of Reference, ILL, Tech Services, and Administrators. The afternoon talks were self-selected "Special Interest Groups", and I attended the session on Original Cataloging and Metadata, which was a session attended by fellow catalogers and metadata librarians. We talked some about ContentDM and MARC and other topics of current interest. I thought about bringing up RDA, but couldn't find an opportunity to slip it into the conversation. We were just getting on a roll when it was time to conclude and join an afternoon tour group.

There were actually two tours that we took, one before lunch and one in the afternoon. I opted to tour the Fondren Library (the main campus library) in the morning and the Art Library in the afternoon.

It was a little amusing to me as a Rice University alumnus to find another Fondren Library in Texas. I had done my SLIS student practicum in the Tech Services department of Rice U's Fondren Library way back in Fall 2004.

The Southern Methodist University campus was very beautiful, but my camera died early on in the day (I had rechargeable batteries in it, but had forgotten to recharge them the night before). Anymore I've pretty much decided that if you're serious about digital photography, you have to buy your batteries FRESH, the very day you plan a photo shoot. Too much time elapses between the time you put in new batteries and the time you pick up the camera to do a photo shoot to do it any other way, I'm discovering. You should also always bring a cheap, disposable analogue camera as a back up. Even in an age of digital photography, I still love to shoot with Black and White film with a disposable camera. Sure, you can always do ersatz "B&W" photography with a greyscale filter in digital editing, but it's just not the same; not to me anyway.

Now that I know better how to get to and from the SMU campus, I have resolved to go back one Saturday in the summer and plan to spend an entire Saturday exploring the place (and its surrounding neighborhoods). I will be one happy shutterbug that day. There's even a La Madeline restaurant right next to campus where I can get a hearty "French Country Breakfast", my favorite of their menu items. It really is a very nice looking, exclusive part of Dallas that reminds me a lot of the Rice U. and Museum District parts of Houston. Too bad it's a nominally religious institution, while Rice U. is unabashedly secular in nature.

Attended (sort of) A-Kon 20

2009-05-31T09:40:00.001-07:00

I attended, well, more like, gate-crashed, A-Kon 20, in Dallas, Texas yesterday. I've had a rough week with not getting very much sleep at night, and after an exhausting day at SMU for library training on Friday, I stayed up later than I prudently should have watching the rest of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid including the bonus OVA found on Volume 4. By the time I was done it was past 1am, the Convention was to kick off at 9am sharp (i.e. less than 8 hours), plus it takes awhile to drive from Denton to Dallas. This year's A-Kon just kind of slipped up on me unexpectedly. I had meant to pre-register for it but forgot. I was exhausted and decided I didn't need to spend all day down there, so I slept in. I even returned my rental copies of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid to Hastings Books & Records, had a leisurely lunch, etc, before heading down to Dallas. I had missed the Q&As with voice actors Chris Patton and Vic M, which were the morning highlights, and the only thing that was of major interest to me was the talk on "Anime and Education" (being the Higher Ed geek that I am) late in the day (like around 5:45pm). I had gone fully intending to pay the $35 entrance fee, but when I saw the huge, snaking line for site registration, I had second thoughts. I should back up a little, though. Before I finally reached the on-site registration area, I had made it to Dallas, parked in West End, and rode the DART train over to St. Paul Station, which by my calculation, was the closest DART station to the convention. I was a little fuzzy on where to go once I got there, but upon spotting a girl in a nurse's outfit with pink hair, and her friend in an all-black ninja costume, I figured I'd just follow them, which I did, and they led me to the right place. I had fun taking pictures of the Cosplayers gathered outside, and eventually followed some of them up an outside staircase and into one of the Sky Bridges, where I found surging crowds of Cosplay people and just sort of mixed in with the crowd. I consulted maps and found my way over and down to the registration area. But I realized there was actually a lot to take in and enjoy in the "free" areas of the hotel as well. I wandered around the artists and comic book vendor tables and booths, enjoying the sights and sounds of the event, not to mention the ever changing crowds of people in beautiful, eye-catching costumes, especially the fan-girls. I would say as a rough guesstimate that I recognized maybe 1 in 20 costumes as characters from Anime I had either seen personally or was at least familiar with. One fellow had a Desert Punk costume that was spot-on, and I liked the Trigun cosplayers (pictured above). I saw more than one Seras Victoria a.k.a. "Police Girl", Alucard's sidekick from the Hellsing series. Lots of Full Metal Alchemist Cosplayers, as well as Naruto Cosplay. There were even a few Star Trek Next Gen people and Jedi wandering around. There were some Japanese people in attendance, but not as many as I had expected. Some were in traditional dress, others in t-shirts and jeans.

This one girl (of several) was conducting a fighting demonstration with a bo stick and striking these lighted poles that made a sound when they came on, and another sound when she successfully struck the lighted part of the pole. Very impressive. I did manage to see voice actors Chris Patton and Mike McFarland (of ADV and FUNimation fame) at the autographs table, but the line for autographs was fairly long; If I'd thought of it, I would've brought my boxed set of FUMOFFU for Chris Patton to sign, but alas, I didn't have it on my person. I bought an Anime-themed mousepad for my laptop (which I'm looking at right now), as a souvenir to show I'd actually been to A-Kon. My digital camera was also acting wiggy during the conference, and I swapped out batteries, but this didn't help. I got some okay shots but missed others because I'd line up the shot, push the button, and the camera would just inexplicably die on me, just shut down without warning. I'd take out the batteries, put them back in, jiggle the on switch, and it would be fine...though sometimes it would wig out x3 in a row before going back to normal. Very disappointing. Makes me wish I'd brought along an analog camera as a back-up.

So no, I didn't attend the "Anime in Education" talk, didn't feel like spending $35 just for that. I had plenty of fun without spending more than the cost of parking ($5), a day pass on DART($3), and the mousepad ($10). And of course the cost of gas and car wear-and-tear driving from Denton to Dallas and back to Denton yet again.

I also saw that if I'd decided to wear my kilt I would have fit in just fine with the Cosplay crowd (I saw a number of men in Highland gear). I am looking forward to A-Kon 21, and next year I will be pre-registering. I was glad that Chris Patton and Mike McFarland came up from Houston for this event, but kind of disappointed that Chris Sabat and Carrie Savage or Colleen Clinkenbeard (all local voice & directing talents from the DFW Metro area) did not put in an appearance as far as I know; this thing was practically in their back yards.

There's also an upcoming Anime Fest in Dallas around September that I will be looking into. I always love Film Fests, and an Anime Film fest sounds kick ass.

Just started a new Delicious account.

2009-05-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

I attended a College of DuPage rebroadcast of their Library 2.0 presentation featuring Steven Bell & Aaron Schmidt.

It was a good presentation, though it's showing its age a bit (2006).

Still, it did inspire me to go ahead and create an account on Delicious, and I came up with the clever Username of "Aggiememenon". Get it? Play on words with Agamemnon and Aggie and Meme (or "mind virus", as hypothesized by Richard Dawkins) and 'non', as in nonbeliever, nontheist, non-stamp-collecting, etc.

I also re-created this username on the Library Success: Best Practices Wiki and also good ol' Wikipedia itself. I used to have an account on the LIS Wiki but I've long ago forgotten what it is. I may go with Aggiememenon there, too.

Anyway, that name just tickles me, wish I'd thought of it sooner.

an html test

2009-05-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

This text is ~~scratched~~ out!

Wow, it worked.

Just finished Irreligion by J.A. Paulos

2009-05-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading John Allen Paulos's Irreligion last night. It was a good, fast read. Paulos is the mathematician turned popular writer known for his earlier works such as Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. He bemoans the state of mathematical knowledge among the public at large.

In Irreligion, Paulos sets his sights on the arguments for the existence of God, and what he views as their shortcomings, from his perspective as a mathematician. He also destroys creationist twaddle over complexity and probability.

I obtained this book through ILL and read it in roughly 2 days. I am now turning my attention back to Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason.

It's a long Memorial Day Weekend, but I have zip all planned, I'm mostly kicking back and being lazy, and using my leisure time to read. I'm also planning on installing a USB hub at work, and a digital webcam on my work PC. I'm debating whether to install the newest equipment at work, or install the newest at home and take the older equipment from my apartment and set it up on my work PC instead. I haven't made up my mind yet.

I also finished the Anime series Gungrave, which is a bizarre mix of sci-fi, horror, and a mafia gangland story and a tragic love story of star-crossed lovers all rolled into one. It was pretty good, though the cover art is misleading...the sci-fi elements don't enter into the story until the last few volumes, the mafia backstory takes up the bulk of the series. It's described as the kind of Anime director John Woo would do, if he were an Anime creator instead of an action film director. I can sort of see that, yeah.

More later, perhaps.

Wordle interprets the Aggie Librarian

2009-05-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here is what a word-count "tag cloud" of this blog would look like, via Wordle.

Kinda cool, I guess.

This is how Wordle interprets the Library Juice Blog put out by Rory L.

Bitter clinger...

2009-05-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

To borrow a phrase out of the 2008 campaign rhetoric, from the Obama side, I am a "bitter clinger"; not to guns and religion (in my case, um, it's guns and irreligion ) but BOOKS.

A colleague passed along this bit of wisdom from a "Green Libraries" blog; Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of having libraries meet LEED standards and all that good noise, avoid using toxic carpeting, etc, that's all good.

but I do have to question this bit of advice:

“Consider the Kindle 2: It’s expensive and may upset some reading purists, but the Kindle 2 is an eco-friendly reading tool. Purchase one for the library to spread awareness to readers.”

Um, yeah, until it breaks and ends up as highly toxic e-waste in a landfill, whereas a regular old hardback or paperback book is much more “biodegradable”. *roll eyes*

Not to mention the pollution created in generating the electricity necessary to keep this device's batteries charged and operational. That's not environment neutral either.

Reading purists = library "innovation" change-agent parlance for those pesky “normal people.” – “bitter clingers” to their "outdated, organically based bibliographic storage and retrieval technology..."

question: is it possible to do strikethrough text on Blogger?

2009-05-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

I have a question; Is it possible to do "strikethrough" text on Blogger? I see that on other blogs and I think it's a pretty cool blogging convention; it basically says, yeah, I wrote this, but then I found out I was wrong, or my info was incomplete, and I'm posting a correction. Literally says "scratch that, here's the real dope". I looked through blogger help and there's no easy button to do it, as you CAN do with Bold or Italics. (which would be a nice widget, Blogger.com!!--hint, hint!), but I think you just have to code it in raw HTML, which I don't know how to do. Would appreciate it if I could find out how.

Jingle-jangle jingle, and following other blogs.

2009-05-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

I just added some other folk's blogs that I am now officially "following", i.e. read regularly. Some are LIS-related, others not. I don't know if ya'll can see them on the public side or not, or just me, on my "dashboard". Still trying to figure this stuff out, bear with me.

I also had to give a brief oral presentation on what I saw & did at TLA 2009, on behalf of the assembled library staff. I was really nervous and waited until I was the last one; I think I managed to pull off an acceptable oral presentation, despite not having as many (read: any) visual aids, unlike my reference colleagues.

I did learn about a neat new software application called "Jing", which is quick and easy screen capture program that can be downloaded here. It's pretty darn cool, and I can already think of how I can use it as a cataloger, either to come up with a tutorial on how to do database cleanup, especially fixing holdings data, or a way to ask complicated questions about the LC tables in Classification Web which confuse the heck out of me. So many times I'll come up with a potential call number for an item and then hit a funky table in ClassWeb that I really don't know how to cope with, and no one I can readily turn to here and ask about. Now I can screen capture that, send it to some experienced catalogers I know at other institutions, or to AUTOCAT at large, and get a response. Sometimes it's just easier to show rather than explain in writing, y'know? You can also upload these screen capture videos to YouTube, and narrate them, which is cool. I may also get a webcam for my work PC so that I can show elder catalogers the book in hand that I am considering and they can see why I am considering the call number in question, etc. Not a perfect solution, but something I think is worth giving a go, especially as I'm still learning the cataloging ropes myself. If/when RDA ever rolls out, I will probably need the help of others bigtime then as well.

With enough knowledge and experience, one day I'll be able to "give back" to the community in turn.

Thing 5 - Image Generators

2009-05-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've played with Typogenerator before, on long boring night shifts while working for that big international insurance company everyone loves to hate these days.

It's fun, but again, nothing new to me. This North Texas 23 really is for überN00bs...where do they think we've been, in a cave for the past 9 years or something?

Oh, and, just because I can, let me say, RDA SUX!

Thing 2, part 2, item 2

2009-05-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

The last item on the thing 2 list is:

2) John Blyberg blog post here.

Meh; strikes me as more Lib/Web 2.0 boosterism; lots of sizzle and not a lot of steak. Yes, I've seen cool things at the Texas Library Association that are Web 2.0-ish and have potential for libraries. Neat little collaborative projects in the local community, etc, etc. Good things to take note of, be aware of, stay abreast of.

I've said before myself that I'm really excited about Open Source for ILSes, and eager to see what effect Koha and Evergreen will have on the marketplace. Putting control over ILS development back in the hands of librarians(catalogers) is a good sign and a good thing I can see coming out of Web 2.0 as translated into Libr 2.0; True dat.

I know some libraries have successfully hosted "gaming in libraries"; I still view it as a questionable use of resources and not convinced it's something we should necessarily be behind.

You can also do Libr 2.0 horribly, horribly wrong. At a nearby institution of Higher Ed, it is standing policy that if a book is available as an ebook, it will be collected *only* in ebook format; End result? The shelves look increasingly unappealing, filled only with "old" books. Some administrators claim this is mere "misperception" on the part of our users but I disagree. This is the WRONG way to do Libr 2.0, and I'll tell you why.

Ebooks have their place in academic library settings, especially in weighty reference materials never meant to be read straight through, or for items that are high demand, high circulation, or to expand your collection to cover subject areas you otherwise would not collect in based on your curriculum. It's like a value added bonus. It does not give you an excuse to stop collecting the latest monographs in print in your core content areas. If your shelves are perceived as only containing "old/outdated" information, your clients will judge your whole library on that basis and your support will fall off. You can have the most amazing ebook collection in the state, but if your physical collection looks like it hasn't been updated since the late 1980s...you're in trouble. In politics, perception is everything. Keeping support for libraries and library funding is very much an exercise in political economy. Out of sight, out of mind. You HAVE to keep bringing in SHINY NEW MONOGRAPHS to put in your patron's faces. Despite what the techno-boosters would have you believe, people DO still LOVE books, still associate BOOKS *strongly* with LIBRARIES, and we fail to serve them when we don't live up to their expectations. Yes, print journals are increasingly online only, for good reason, and I have no serious objection to that. But monographs, that is, sustained discursive prose in a bound codex, remains to my mind the backbone of a real and genuine education.

There are some that claim this view is out of date, the millennials won't accept it, blah blah blah. Hogwash. I've got a colleague who is a History scholar, with an emphasis in "Conflict studies" (a bit more nuanced than "Military History"), and he can tell you first hand about so-called "New Scholars" who clearly have relied only on internet and online resources and seem never to have lifted a book from a library shelf in their lives; The result? Scholarship that is shallow, facile, superficial, and keeps annoyingly "re-inventing the wheel", which makes the real experts alternately groan, laugh, and want to cry out in despair. I've encouraged my friend to publish on this topic in article or book form, but he ruefully observed that the people who most need to read his debunking would never get exposed to it unless it was available in electronic format. "It's like they discover fire anew, everyday", my friend observed, with a quiet *facepalm*.

Yes, I've seen the budgetary figures, I know now that libraries spend much much more on electronic journal subscriptions than on monograph collections, but this doesn't tell the whole story of what libraries are and what they are (or ought to be) about.
If you don't weed or keep your physical collection up the date, not even the latest technoglitz will give people enough reason to darken your doorstep. They'll just head on down to the Apple Store instead. Web 2.0 can surely deliver us great "value added" products and services to enhance our core mission, but if we ever turn our back on said core mission, with idiotic policies like "Let them Eat E-Books, Whether They Like It Or Not, One Size Fits All", then we're sunk and beyond hope.

Part of the reason I got let go from my first library job was because I cared to much about the state of the physical collection and ordered a lot of new books. My then director was mostly miffed at the cataloging backlog this created and only saw it as a problem and added headache; She didn't see any positive benefit at all, but the students did, as well as some faculty, who remarked on the high quality and "interestingness" (to borrow a Flickr buzzword) of all the new titles coming in.
Needless to say, my Director won out and I was shown the door. Again, this is the wrong way to do Libr 2.0!

Luckily, the physical collection where I presently work is in much better shape, and it helps my morale that the building I work in actually looks like a library is supposed to look like. The Reference staff are much more friendly and approachable here than in my first job, and they genuinely care about our physical as well as electronic resources.

Anyway, I look forward to finishing the North Texas 23 Things, even though a lot of these things I've already explored on my own for a few years already, pre-dating my career as a librarian. This post concludes my discussion of Thing 2. Apologies again for getting a little out of order. I knew I would have more to say on this Thing than on the others, so I appreciate your indulgence of my detour.

In support of the Campus Personal Protection Act

2009-05-21T08:01:00.001-07:00

The following video presentation is my creation and my own personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer or the State of Texas.

I also did a "Read" poster on Flickr once, holding a hardcover copy of Kates & Kleck's book ARMED in one hand, and my Ruger Mk II in the other. I'd like to re-do it with a more practical carry piece (I didn't own anything but that target pistol when I first made that image), and maybe a different book.

I'm a Librarian who supports the entire Bill of Rights, including the 2nd Amendment.
I'm in the ACLU and the NRA and TSRA, as well as the Texas Freedom Network.

A slightly vulgar Haiku....

2009-05-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

Fuck I have to pee;
So quickly fills my bladder.
Goddamn Diet Coke.

(Describes a commonplace workday situation more than I'd like to admit)

Thing 2, Part One

2009-05-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, some brief thoughts on the articles and video content for Thing 2 of the North Texas 23 Things....

1) Video, Stephen Abram, who is Vice-President of Innovation at Sirsi-Dynix.

Lots of glittering generalities; does some name dropping, but unless you know what he's talking about re: the dropped names, and are "in the know", you are left asking yourself, whiskey tango foxtrot, over? Guess I have to google that stuff to learn more of the context.

3) Read this webpage about Web 2.0 (link)
Good overview of Web 2.0, though no specific mention of the use of Web 2.0 in Libraries; this you have to infer, using your own imagination. I dunno, I guess you could "tweet" overdue notices and "your book is now in", hold-for-pick up notices; If you used an open-source ILS like Koha, I bet you could customize it to do these tweets automatically rather than make a circ clerk do it manually. There, how's that for Lib 2.0 thinking and innovation? But I'm just a dumb Aggie, what do I know...

4) Watch the video on this page (link)

Yeah, it was pretty good, but at the end I found myself asking, in German, "Na, und?" (Yes, and...?); Tried to "think about Lib 2.0" as I watched, as the frame for the link suggests, but came up kinda blank. I also dispute its characterization of text vs. digital text just a little bit. "Regular Text is linear"; uh, no, it doesn't have to be. I was doing "hypertext" linking with my World Book Encyclopedia set as a young lad in the early 1980s, jumping from article to article as this and that caught my fleeting interest. I was reading "Which Way?" Books long before Hypertext started; Back in graduate school I laughed at "hypertextuality" in a PoMo course and even bought my professor a cheap paperback copy of a YA "Which way?" book and plopped it on his desk and said "there---Hypertextuality. Direct your own narrative. Not new."

Since I've already read 3 outta 4, I'll go ahead and read the essay @ #2, and comment on it in a separate post a bit later on.

Flickr's internal "Net Nanny"

2009-05-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

I posted this photo to my Flickr account. The original title I gave it was Yomiko, Cataloger Bad Ass. Evidently this cheeky title was enough to get the image tagged as "unsafe", and irony of ironies, I cannot add the image to ANY of my librarian-related photo pools, and only ONE of my anime groups. That is ironic beyond words.

I've renamed it Yomiko, Cataloger?, but that did not appease the Flickr gods. None of my tags are remotely offensive, but this is now a marked image, it is "dangerous" and "subversive" and not ready for prime time. The skirt of this statuette is actually removable, but I don't intend to ever confirm this personally. I know I'm sliding from mere Anime fan towards Otaku with this acquisition, but I promise it's my one and only statuette, and I think she's perfect for a librarian to own, wouldn't you agree?

UPDATE: I tried re-uploading the raw source file with an innocuous name and minimal tagging, but Flickr still flagged it as "not safe". Go figure. Yomiko is just too hot to handle, I guess...more woman than Flickr knows what to do with.

Thing 4 : Flickr Mashup 3

2009-05-20T15:26:00.001-07:00

Still goofing around...

Yo soy un atheo. No creo en Dios. Pienso que no hay dioses/as. Las religiones del mundo estan mentiras fabulosas.

Thing 4: Flickr Mashup 2

2009-05-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, let's give this another shot, hope it works.

That's one of my High School NJROTC self-portraits, "Warholized". Cool.

Thing 4: Flickr Mashup?

2009-05-20T14:58:00.001-07:00

I bet I didn't do this right...

Actually, Holy crap, that looks cool!!

Thing 3: Flickr

2009-05-20T14:50:00.001-07:00

Posting for that North Texas 23 Things.

I know, I know, I'm jumping around. Thing 2 was on Web 2.0, and I don't feel like ranting about that just yet.

Basically, Thing 3 asks you to either poke around Flickr and blog about your impressions, or go crazy and start your own Flickr account.

Yeah, again, been there, done that.

I even have a paid account, so I can have more photos online and no restrictions on uploads. Totally worth it.

NEXT!

Howdy fellow NT 23 participants.

2009-05-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

I've decided to go ahead and participate in the North Texas 23 Web 2.0 learning workshop doo-hickey.

Details here:

First thing of the 23 things was...guess what...set up a BLOG!

Yeah, been there, done that, NEXT!!

Taking a few potshots @ a couple of Educause articles.

2009-05-14T10:05:00.001-07:00

I felt the need to post a few off-the-cuff responses to a couple of recent articles published in Educause, relating to Higher Education.

The first one is called A Seismic shift in epistemology by Chris Dede.

The second is Business cards for the future by Joshua Kim and Barbara Knauff, both Learning Technologists aspiring to become "Educational Change Agents".

Picking a few nits of my own; Dede first:

>>In this Classical perspective, experts with substantial credentials in academic fields and disciplines seek new knowledge through formal, evidence-based argumentation, using elaborate methodologies to generate findings and interpretations. Premier reference sources, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and curricular materials, such as textbooks, embody “authenticated” knowledge as compiled by experts and transmitted to learners. Epistemologically, a single-right-answer is believed to underlie each phenomenon, even though experts may not yet have developed a full understanding of the systemic causes that provide an accurate interpretation of some situations.<<

No, No, No, Wrong. What a simplistic caricature of “classical” knowledge. Can you say “Strawman”?

“Single-right-answer” epistemology is what underlies standardized tests
& the like and has been the bane of educators for some time, rightly pointed out & sharply criticized by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, et. al. since the late 1960s.

More nits:

>>In contrast, the Web 2.0 definition of “knowledge” is collective agreement about a description that may combine facts with other dimensions of human experience, such as opinions, values, and spiritual beliefs<<

So Web 2.0 = fuck Occam’s razor?

Really??!

And as if moral/social values never colored research before the advent of the web.

What a parody.

Even the selection (or non selection) of certain facts to weave into a narrative betrays a value judgment. It’s inescapable.
And doesn’t require Web 2.0, either.

Dede quote:
>>Advocates for a Web 2.0 view of knowledge, expertise, and learning would challenge each of these three precepts of formal education. Many have documented politically motivated inaccuracies in textbooks, including biases against minorities and women, interpretations that privilege the perspective of the dominant subculture, and omissions of material about the contributions and interpretations of diverse groups, such as people of color. Experts may sometimes “speak truth to power,” but too often “experts” are anointed, funded, and rewarded to provide rationales for politically expedient actions. <<

Many who are not “Web 2.0 Advocates” (whatever that means) have been doing the same for years with old fashioned BOOKS and primary sources, too. Howard Zinn, James Lowen come readily to mind.

Web 2.0 doesn’t have a corner on the market for revisionist corrective.

As for the last point about Experts being anointed, funded….yeah, again, nothing new here. Well noted problem, didn’t require Web 2.0 to see it.

Geeze, Chomsky & Hermann’s Manufacturing Consent has been in print…how long now??

Neil Postman was attacking the same deficiencies in the “Classical Model” since before ARPANET really kicked off.

I admit, I’ve got mixed feelings about Postman’s proposals in Teaching as a subversive activity and, for all its shortcomings, I can’t say I haven’t gotten some mileage out of “traditional” learning, at least at the Post-secondary level (i.e. lecture courses, etc), as I’ve already discussed. I think Postman's revolutionary proposals were correctly aimed at Primary and Secondary Education. It's just that there isn't the political will to implement them.

Quote:

>> the response of most educators is to ignore or dismiss this epistemological clash. Many faculty force students to turn off electronic devices in classrooms; instead, students could be using search tools to bring in current information and events related to the class discussion<<

They could indeed, but in point of fact they’re often SCREWING AROUND AND NOT PAYING ATTENTION/NOR DOING WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO DO.

Reasonable people can agree/disagree over how much this (student’s inattention) is the fault of the teacher/professor. It often is, especially in a secondary ed setting. I have more sympathy towards Secondary ed students rammed through our school system, especially with the greater number of standardized tests they get hit with these days. One Left critic of the No Child Left Behind Act that I know derides it mockingly as the “No Child Left Alone” act. I get where Postman is coming from in Teaching as a subversive activity, or at least I think I do.

College students I have much less sympathy for; In college, you submit to lectures from people who are much smarter and better read than you. You have to pay attention this time because the final isn’t going to be multiple guess like in High School, it will be essay-based. You have to express yourself, support your arguments factually, etc, and can’t expect to be able to BS your way through it. Those are the rules, you’re paying to be here, nobody put a gun to your head, and if you don’t like it, get the hell out. The rest of us don’t have time for your whiny, self-important b*llshit.

It’s too bad Postman passed away in 2003, I would’ve loved to have gotten his take on Web 2.0 advocates promoting his ideas/criticism as their own but adding the high tech “Twist” to everything. Building a Bridge to the 18th Century was good, don’t get me wrong…I guess Neil would’ve ultimately said something like “everything you criticize about real, existing US secondary and post-secondary ed has merit, but it isn’t high technology alone that will get you out of this mess. Sometimes unplugging is the right move; slowing down, listening & talking is the right move.”

Why do I sometimes feel like I was the only one who actually enjoyed my traditional upper-level history lecture courses?

I really liked the way Dr. C.D. put together a lecture on Early Modern Europe, it was engaging and interesting to listen to. I also took his Russian history to 1890 class, and had had him for World Civ I (ancient civilizations like the Hittites, etc). Dr. C.D. is one awesome lecturer and I hope he's still going strong at TAMU. He made me refined history buff that I became.

Even the token TAMU hardcore Marxist Dr. R. got more and more interesting the closer we got to the 20th century (his lectures on Medieval and Renaissance culture were bloody awful to sit through, though). He started making more sense and becoming irresistible to listen to from about the French Revolution onward; We had to read excerpts of the Marx-Engels Reader from that class and after years of knee-jerk badmouthing Marxism that I learned from being a militant, clueless young Reaganite, when confronted with Marx face to face, I found I had no serious objections to what he was writing/saying by in large, and that was deeply unsettling back then.

It was my getting a "C" in my Senior History seminar that convinced me more than anything that I wasn't cut out for grad school in history, though. Though I soon found out I really wasn't cut out for literary studies after my first few seminars at Rice U, either (I wrote too much like a historian and had to re-train to write/think like a lit-crit person, which was painful. I've since gone back to writing in "Historical" mode, since that's the way I'm most comfortable with).

I admit, I can see in hindsight why my senior seminar professor thought my final paper sucked, but I really couldn't piece together how to make it better, either.

I like lecture courses because I like to sit and listen to what smart people who have read a hell of a lot more than me actually have to say, to give ME more things to think about than I would otherwise come up with on my own.
That's not passive--it's still interactive!

Higher Ed works, or at least worked well enough for me, and I don't want to see it f*cked with.

On to Knauff and Kim, quote:

>>We understand that in pushing for a new model of postsecondary educational
delivery, we are taking a stand against the old model of faculty-centric, lecture based courses. We are challenging a system that has worked very well for many
stakeholders and institutions for many years.<<

Including yours truly.

>>We firmly believe, however, that change is inevitable, primarily because
new cohorts of students steeped in the norms of knowledge creation, information
abundance, and constant communication and collaboration will no longer
accept the traditional lecture model,<<

There's an old fashioned word for people who come to college and refuse to accept the traditional lecture model...what is it now...um...oh yes, we called them

College dropouts.

Anyway, do continue...

>>in which they are passive receptacles of scarce knowledge.<<

It isn't PASSIVE, as I clarified above.

>>Learning/instructional technologists will have an essential role to
play in the transition to a more participatory model of higher education.<<

Go work your magic at the Primary and Secondary levels and leave Higher Ed alone, please.

Secondary and Primary Ed in the United States are deeply flawed, especially the culture of standardized testing, but I don't know that a techno-fix is necessarily the answer.

The main problem with Higher Ed is so many students coming to college woefully unprepared and underprepared for college level work, plus the cultural ethic that everyone who is successful must go to college; the biggest pervasive mythology is that you can study whatever you like in college and still come out and do whatever you want so long as you set your mind to it. True enough for trust fund babies attending Ivy League schools perhaps, but not for your average middle and working class student attending the nearest State U.

If I had grown up under the German system of Higher Education, where my education was state funded rather than on the backs of my parents, who knows what I might have become. As a 5th year senior, I took my last advanced math class, a pre-cal class. For the first time in my life, I scored a 100%, on my final exam no less. For the first time in my life, I actually felt like I had a grasp of mathematics, and was no longer terrified of the subject. But that was the end of my math requirement, and it was not financially feasible for me to press forward in mathematics, even though I was developing a desire to do so. I later took a research methods class in Library school that was very statistics oriented and it darn near killed me, having to resurrect those long forgotten math skills, but I did finally "bootstrap" my way to an A- (after first having to take an incomplete to have more time to work on the class). Many of the problems of Higher Ed are structural like this, not because of a lack of technology in Higher Ed.

Open inquiry models, where the teacher is facilitator and guide and lets the students pursue their own interests and mostly asks Socratic questions...that sort of experimentation belongs at the Secondary level and below. Neil Postman offers a challenge to all teachers who think they know something to please write a book about it. Well, many college level instructors have done just that. They've earned the right to be a talking head, the sage on the stage, and some of us want to hear what they have to say.

No actual lecture course I've ever enjoyed sitting through was ever as passive as these newer theorists would have you believe. It may not work at the secondary and primary levels, fair enough. But it does work in Higher Ed, along with reading books and articles (yes, sometimes online) and writing and basing arguments on evidence and research, subjected to relentless peer review and criticism. A pursuit of Truth does not mean "looking for the one Right Answer" as Dede mistakenly conflates it, and which would make Neil Postman do a proverbial "facepalm".

Headine: Bills Favoring (Concealed) Guns on Campus Advance in 2 States

2009-04-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

From Today's Inside Higher Ed:
=============================================================
Bills Favoring Guns on Campus Advance in 2 States

Legislation to permit those registered to carry concealed weapons to carry them on college campuses is advancing in Missouri and Texas. In Texas, the House Public Safety Committee has now approved a measure that appears to have the support of a majority in the House of Representatives, The Houston Chronicle reported. In Missouri, the House of Representatives voted Thursday to lift a ban on carrying concealed weapons on campuses, KOMU News reported. In both states, legislators favoring concealed weapons on campus say that students would be safer if they could respond to a threat. But in both states, some legislators and most campus safety experts say that guns pose unique dangers on campuses, where students are not necessarily mature and may be tempted to use firearms while drunk. In the words of Missouri Rep. Chris Kelly: "College boys love things that go boom. What we don't need is beer and college boys and firearms."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/10/qt#196182
==============================================

*Aggie Librarian does the Happy Dance*

Hot damn, that's a news item I'm glad to see. Earlier in the week I got a broadcast email from a library colleague who noted the faculty senate was discussing this legislation and what our university's response would be; She asked for all staff who supported the measure to email her. I did so. May have been alone in doing so, and I hope not, but I stated that I fully support this legislation.

Of course, the Hoplophobia is running high in the comments section of Inside Higher Ed; One even mixes it with conspiracy theory, saying it's a clandestine assault in the ongoing war against public education in Texas. While I would agree with the poster that higher education funding IS under assault, as are science standards in the public schools (both situations I deplore), legalizing CHLs to be able to exercise their constitutional right on campus as well as off is a GOOD thing. These measures have failed in other states, but according to the Houston Chronicle article, this bill has a good chance of passing in the Texas Legislature, and I for one am thrilled. Why should Utah's state universities enjoy more constitutional liberties than we do in Texas? Last I checked the headlines, the blood was not flowing in the streets around the Harrold ISD school district in Texas either (Harrold ISD made the decision to allow teachers with CHLs to carry concealed while on duty if they want to).

Of course, the tired old Canard about 'drunken frat boys with gunz' is getting tossed around again. Texas has had concealed carry on the books since 1994, and has seen a reduction in the crime rate. Expanding concealed carry to state colleges and universities is highly unlikely to coincide with a wave of violent crimes on campus, any more than the original passage of Concealed Carry back in 1994.

It's already a crime for a CHL to consume alcohol while carrying, and it's illegal for a CHL to enter a premises that derives 51% or more of its sales from alcohol purchases, legally defined as a "Bar". Campus carry won't change those provisions.
Reckless gun use is still a crime and would continue to be a crime. It is a crime to fail to properly conceal in Texas. A Texas CHL must currently be 21 years or older to possess a handgun or even buy handgun ammo. Career criminals frequently carry guns that it is already illegal for them to possess--they don't give a damn about piss-ant "weapons" charges; these are thugs who are intent on much worse. Prohibitionist laws impact only the law-abiding like me. If someone tries to launch a murderous rampage in my library, the only thing I can currently do is try to escape the building as fast as I can, hide in the stacks, or under my desk, or (literally) throw a book at said hypothetical gunman. OED vs. Gun...not the best odds of survival. Gun vs. Gun...raises my chances to about 50%-50%, give or take, depending on the tactical situation. And if I survive that encounter by stopping the threat, then I save not only my own life but potentially dozens more.

This law, if passed, would also mean that many of our non-traditional age commuter students could legally carry a pistol in their purses or on their persons and have a better chance of surviving a violent attack or preventing rape altogether. My university is traditionally majority women, and was for most of its history a single sex school for women only. I can only hope with time that the injustice of disarming citizens 18-20 years old will only become more glaringly obvious if the Campus Protection Act passes the Texas Legislature. But in any case, for the graduate student coming to campus for night classes after work and staying in the library until closing time doing research, not to mention library staff (who are also mainly female) that have to close up around midnight to go home, our campus will be that much safer after this law is passed.

The main thing I would benefit from is convenience in my after-hours routines, if I'm wanting to drop by campus to either get a little work done or use the ATM in the student union. Since normally outside of work I carry virtually everywhere permitted by law always, if I do need to swing by campus I have to make a point of going home first to disarm and then heading back disarmed to campus so that I can legally enter campus buildings without breaking the law. Current law is stupid, but I still obey it because I'm a law-abiding citizen. The existing law inconveniences only me, not the career criminal, who ignores it and actually favors restrictions on good citizens like me, because it makes me a more compliant/easy victim for them to attack.

I am sort of agnostic with respect to the Open Carry debate. In principle, I have no opposition to OC. In practice, I think it would still freak out way too may people. Even if OC were legal in Texas, I would still prefer concealment as my personal choice, and most definitely in a work setting. In a legalized OC world, I might OC if I were, say, out riding a bike (where effective concealment could be a real pain in the *ss--literally), or maybe stepping outside to take out the trash (nowadays I just slip a .22 LR "mousegun" in the pocket of my cargo shorts, which i otherwise store in its case near my bathtub).

I think we will get to OC eventually, but it could take a few more years or even a decade. I would also be ok with getting there via baby-steps, starting with licensed OC first. OC with a "Texas militia badge" embossed with Sam Houston's face, our state's most famous militia leader, to be worn on the gun belt in plain view with a shape distinctive enough to NOT be mistaken for a LEO but to be clearly identified as "good guy", Joe Citizen. Only to be worn when OC-ing, too.
Some people think there should be badges for CHLs who do carry concealed but I strongly oppose THAT. It defeats the point of--carrying concealed, e.g. the element of surprise that keeps criminals less sure who can fight back, which in turn keeps us all safer.

Anyway, I'm delighted that Missouri already passed their law, and I hope Texas is able to follow suit very soon. Once it's law, I think it would be political suicide for an Texas Democrat to push to repeal it. People don't like to give up new freedom once they gain it and get to enjoy and exercise those freedoms.

Any campus shooting is a tragedy, and also a "Black Swan" event. But as the old saying goes in the gun rights community, better to have your gun and not need it than to need it and not have one. Just because a wreck is statistically unlikely doesn't mean you should not wear your seatbelt.

It also occurred to me walking to my car today that the prohibitionist logic runs something like this: Because rape is a horrible crime, and because all men are at least potential rapists via 'date rape', and because pedophiles walk among us, then ALL SEX SHOULD BE BANNED. FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE, naturally. Clamp down on sex offenders by making everyone a sex offender, in other words (*facepalm*).

The exact same "logic" (i.e. illogic) is operating when it comes to campus gun bans or gun banning in general (like in those islands off the coast of Europe formerly known as Great Britain--and sadly the Republic of Ireland, who darn well should know better, as should my ancestral Scotland, who got to experience firearms confiscations in 1715 and 1745). Such laws don't deter criminals and only harass and harm the law-abiding.

Other states are actually ahead of Texas (Utah, Alaska, Vermont) but we're finally starting to live up to our Lone Star Image in the popular imagination...in good and bad ways. But this way is a good way, even if my fellow Lefties disagree with me on this one.

Kudos to my State senator, who co-sponsored the senate version of this legislation, and to my state rep, who at least voiced lukewarm support and whom I will hold accountable next election if she fails to vote for this.

TLA wrap-up, some brief thoughts.

2009-04-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

The Texas Library Association 2009 conference concluded today; I attended a highly technical talk given on the MARCedit program by its creator, which was pretty cool. Much of the discussion was WAY over my head, but it was good to be exposed to the material. I also got an informed opinion on how to handle MeSH headings, and it was good advice that I will heed, and MARCedit can help manage it.

In general, I actually got a lot out of a few Web/Libr 2.0 talks this time around, not least because the speakers didn't trash library traditions or hector us to "evolve or die!" or anything like that. THAT approach usually gets my back up and puts me on the defensive. This was not the case. The presenters I watched, both prominent Library bloggers, let their humanism show and I very much appreciated their re-affirmation of core library values and commitments. It put me at ease to hear them describing wanting to use technology to re-connect people back to the reading life of books, and to foster community around reading experiences. I really needed to hear that, and it did not go unnoticed.

I will probably soften/moderate my criticism of Libr/Web 2.0 from now on by way of response. I'm enjoying reading Slow Reading by John Miedema; Mr. Miedema is a self-professed former proponent (or at least believer in) of the all-digital future, that print would be rendered obsolete by technology, etc. He no longer accepts that view, while I never did. Some of his revelations are almost amusing to me as a result. I'm glad he changed his views, but I can't help snickering sometimes at why he ever thought that way in the first place. While no doubt some of his revelations were profoundly significant to him, to me they often produce a "well, duh..." response. Still, like I said, I'm glad he turned around and joined the Humanist side contra the ueber Technocrats.

I continue to be deeply impressed by LibLime, and their support for Koha and now Biblios.net; They are shy to say so, but Biblios.net is basically an open source bibliographic metadata web Database that could potentially rival OCLC. In any case, I'm thrilled by the SLIS-educational potential of both Koha and of Biblios.net; I'm thrilled that new catalogers just graduating and seeking jobs can now use Biblios.net to build a profile of sample records and save them in Biblios.net to present to potential employers to demonstrate a knowledge of the rules and an ability to apply them. They could even get creative and catalog their own YouTube videos. That would impress me if I were looking to hire a new MLS as a Catalog librarian. It's an exciting time to be in libraries, definitely.

I thought about getting up early to attend the NextGen Reference talk, but I just couldn't drag myself out of bed this morning. I'm not sure if anyone from my institution even bothered to attend TLA. If they did, they did not attend any of the sessions I did, nor did I see any of them in the hallways of the GRB between sessions, nor on the Exhibits floor. I did see a TWU graduate student from the SLIS program whom I have been mentoring of late; this student decided to do her practicum with our tech services department. I helped her with the cataloging aspects of tech services, eventually letting her do original cataloging on a VHS tape, and also assign LC subject headings to some Texas State Documents that lacked them, which was a good intellectual exercise.

It was a very worthwhile conference, and I'm very grateful my director and assistant director gave me the leave time and funding to attend. I plan to head back to North Texas by Sunday. I am doubtful that I will attend either the next TLA in San Antonio, nor the next one after that in Austin. I will go again when it swings back around to Dallas, assuming I'm still in the same position by that time, which I probably will be, if all continues to go well.

I remain skeptical of RDA and am going to continue researching the topic; I got some good tips at TLA of some RDA skeptics besides Michael Gorman (who I nevertheless adore and respect). LC treats RDA like the US Gov't treats AIG...as "Too Big To Fail". Psychology of past investment, all that. We'll see.

TLA Preconference - RDA

2009-03-31T16:29:00.000-07:00

In a word: Disappointing. Very long on theory (most of the morning), rehashing much of what I already got from my last RDA workshop. I found myself nodding off intermittently. I found the breaks in between sessions more informative, listening to colleagues chew over FRBR/RDA, many with their own private "WTF?" moments amongst themselves and their intimate colleagues. I made mental notes of who around me seemed to be having issues and philosophical objections similar to my own thoughts.

The morning session seemed devoted to a type of RDA cheerleading and futurist hype and enthusiasm. All well and good but I wanted to see the Demo and examples set for the afternoon, as well as the implementation guidelines. I walked down the street for lunch to the Home Plate Bar & Grill, right next to Minute Maid Park and grabbed a burger, fries, and a fountain drink. I skimmed my copy of Slow Reading by John Miedema while I waited for my food, and during the slower parts of the presentation, too, to be honest.

The Demo turned out to be merely more power point slides, this time of screen shots of what the working RDA Online product is supposed to look like; The actual database is still behind schedule, still not online yet.

The Examples were okay, but riddled with annoying typos and errors...some due to rule changes enacted after the packets were put together, but some just...ugh. Ms. Tillett apologized for the "minor typos", but I could only do a "facepalm" after awhile, since there are no "minor typos" in cataloging, only cataloging errors. As examples showing the difference between RDA and AACR2r2, they were inconsistent.

Some of the changes I have no objection to, like ditching the "rule of three" and listing ALL authors credited on a multi-author work. I can even (maybe) live with adjusting title punctuation to match exactly what appears on the item in lieu of time-honored AACR "Sentence punctuation" style. I'm less thrilled with ditching abbreviations. On the surface, to an English-only audience, this sounds like a great idea at first, but when you think about it in an international context, do we really want to deal with full phrasing in so many foreign languages, or a unified system of abbreviations that is truly international, especially the latin ones. I think this will make more of a mess of things than we currently deal with.

As one colleague summarized near the end of the day, this has always been about display issues from vendors and how much (or how little) of the encoded MARC data they use and how they choose to display it, regardless if the MARC data was input using AACR2r2 or RDA. I still remain unconvinced of the need for such a radical revision of the cataloging code if we're primarily talking about a display issue in OPACs that already don't take full advantage of what MARC can do now, informed by AACR2r2. But LC seems determined to push ahead come hell or high water and will implement regardless, which is a truly frightening prospect on some levels. OCLC is also on board, which will drag the rest of us along, ready or not. Ms. Tillett did confirm that "Work" level records would be treated as their own new kind of Authority record, managed by LC in cooperation with OCLC. Which I kind of suspected would have to be the case.

The discussion kind of bogged down in the afternoon. I still fail to see why authority controlled Uniform Titles as currently exist in AACR2r2 don't already meet the FRBR goals that everyone is so passionate about, which leads one to question the need for the theoretically problematic "work" level records proposed by a more strict interpretation of FRBR and realized by RDA. There was a lot of nice talk about resource sharing and cooperative cataloging and "future search tools" but not much substance at this stage. I'm glad LC is at least going to be testing this stuff before releasing it more generally. I have my doubts as to how thorough the testing will be, who can comment on the results, and if their comments will be given any weight, or if RDA will be implemented regardless of the results because it's "too big to fail", i.e. too much time and money and effort has been poured into this enterprise and there's too much psychology of prior investment to really let it go, as the Working Group Report as much as recommended some time ago (specifically it was counseled to "suspend work on RDA"), but which LC brusquely brushes aside as an unthinkable option.

I got the sense, too, that what's really driving this decision is the perception that this can make current copy-cataloging practices even more efficient and cost-saving by going with RDA by linking and by eliminating as much redundancy from the system as possible. Never mind that redundant systems are not always a bad thing--ask USAF pilots who fly the A-10 about that.

I'm writing this post only a few hours after the meeting broke up, while it is fresh on my mind. My opinions at this point are highly subjective, I'm just getting ideas down in pixel form while they're still percolating in my head. I may revise my positions later.

The afternoon Q&A after the "examples" session ran so long that we didn't have time at all to touch on RDA implementation recommendations whatsoever. That was really disappointing, though I do think the Q&A was valuable and important. I'm a little sour at their calling the "Demo" a Demo. It's not a demo unless it's online and live. What we got, in effect, is an artist rendering of a demo, not the demo itself.

I don't know that I'm any closer to writing a professional article, either in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly or some other related professional periodical; I still am acutely aware that I'm a lightweight when it comes to cataloging theory and practice. But I'm afraid I left today's session with yet more questions than answers about RDA. RDA = Resource Description and Access. Also known to some as "Retirement Day Approaches" or to us young'uns as "Real Disaster Ahead". It may be that it's pointless to quibble about the philosophical shortcomings of FRBR, as Ms. Tillett asserted that other nations had been successfully using the model for years (though I would have appreciated viewing some concrete examples of this). But with RDA, I still have a lot of misgivings and remain skeptical. I'd like to withhold final judgment until the RDA preliminary alpha and beta testing are complete and the results published and critiqued.

RDA's vagueness still leaves me ill at ease and in some ways seems almost to run against the logic of FRBR. In some ways, after it was explained to us, it seemed--at least to me--that SOME existing AACR2r2 practices come closer to the FRBR ideals than RDA does. I remain perplexed, sad to say.

It was worth attending this pre-conference, by all means, but I was disappointed by the actual delivery. Like I said, too much time spent on theory and rah-rah, not enough time on the demo, on concrete examples, and on implementation recommendations and planning. It's all so @#@$%! speculative still.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Interestingly, Aggie Librarian got to sit next to an actual Texas A&M main campus cataloger who was very nice and amiable. Quite pretty, too. I learned that TAMUG personnel are a back in Galveston and no longer in B/CS. So it seems they got back to Pelican Island on schedule. Well, good for them. I also heard that budgets are tightening at TAMU (as expected) and that most catalogers these days are focusing on archival materials, which is more or less the same story for me up in Denton, since, as with my TAMU colleagues, it's the main source of original cataloging that we have on hand to deal with. Unlike them, I still pitch in to do plenty my own copy-cataloging and re-cataloging, too. But thank goodness for unique archival materials to keep our skills sharp.

Copyright, Copyfight

2009-03-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite tags on BoingBoing.net is "copyfight". I religiously follow all BoingBoing blog posts tagged with this. It's a topic I care about passionately, even if I don't always fully understand it and always feel like I'm playing catch-up.

As much as the Aggie Librarian hates to admit it, he stumbled into a copyright boo-boo when enthusiastically digitizing and uploading an old video yeabook project done by his High School graduating class of 1989. Being silly kids, of course they just added whatever audio content they wanted, mostly popular music of the reining Zeitgeist. It was a video made by friends, for friends, it was never intended for world-wide distribution. Enter the Internet, and the digital conversion of raw VHS footage into editible and uploadable .mwv format, and throw in social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Long story short, my offending videos got yanked--eventually. MySpace is far and above the most rigorous; Facebook found the offending content eventually, and found it again when I tried using a non-descript title and vague caption description. YouTube took by far the longest to locate and disable the same video. MySpace notified me of my error immediately, as did Facebook, when they finally took action. YouTube, most distressingly, disable the video without so much as a peep...not an email, not a comment, nothing. It took me awhile to realize that video wasn't showing up on my channel and go digging for it and find out what the issue was (well, I kinda figured what it would be, but...); Anyway, I found it--this takedown must have been awhile back because current YouTube practice has been modified; now, YouTube will merely disable the audio, leaving you with a silent movie. This was kind of crappy, but at least you could, in theory, record your own voiceover commentary or something.

I had read only in passing about YouTube's "Audio Swap" functionality and assumed it meant you could use it to record a lame-ass voiceover or something and didn't investigate further. When YouTube finally disabled my offending video, I investigated the Audio Swap option because YouTube presented it to me as the only way I could get my video reposted again on my channel. Fine, I said, and clicked on the button.

I was surprised how sophisticated the choices were for Audio Swap. In short order I found a peppy Pop tune that I could use legally as a substitute audio for my video. Since the video contained lots of images of senior prom, I chose a song called "Beautiful People", since this seemed apt; a lot of the girls who went to my High School and were featured in the video were indeed hot. It wasn't the 80s classic tune that was our Class/Prom Theme song, but since that was under copyright and since the licensing fees to use it were outrageously expensive, the generic pop tune was the best compromise I could reach.

I soon realized that the "Audio Swap" functionality could be used for ANY video I had uploaded, not just my one posting with a copyright violation. I had a lot of content that was long and frankly not very interesting from an audio standpoint. I was involved in NJROTC in High School, and my mom videotaped a lot of our events, which I have subsequently digitized. Basically it is of our Male Armed Drill Team marching around doing Exhibition Drill, different meet after meet. If you can hear the commander at all (assuming he's not drowned out by construction equipment, or high winds), all you here is standard military cadence, and the relevant commands given to execute each move. It's interesting maybe the first 2 times you watch, but after you've seen one and enjoyed its nostalgia value, that's about it by way of interest.

I realized I needed to kick these videos up a notch, as the Cajun chefs say. I decided I needed music with a driving beat; I experimented with both Heavy Metal and Dance Electronica/Techno samples from YouTube's vast generic music files. YouTube lets you preview and sample various selections before finally picking on your ideal choice, so you can pick just the right music to synch up with the on-screen action. Once you've made your match, you click on a button to swap out the original audio for the music, and within an hour or so the audio conversion is done and you've got your newly minted music video...your image content happily married to YouTube-kosher audio content.

Of course, the coolest aspect of all this is the fact that of course none of this audio content was just created ex nihilo. No, these are pieces of music composed and performed by small, up-and-coming indy bands. They clearly enter into a special contract with YouTube to grant limited license use of their material for its customers; In return, YouTube supplies an automatic link to iTunes for viewers of the video to go and purchase the song if they like what they hear. YouTube does this automatically and the owner of the video content doesn't have to do anything, it's an automatic (required) feature of the "Swap Audio" feature.

What is hilarious about this is that newer bands are reaping the benefits of a new market that older, "established" musicians and mainstream record labels have stupidly priced themselves out of completely. This generic music isn't famous, but I'll tell you, it's not bad either...it's actually reasonable quality stuff and I really have enjoyed sampling the various tracks trying to find that perfect fit between my visual content and the audio content on offer. I feel like a professional videographer doing this sh*t. It's way cool. It gives the new band lots of exposure, and lets them "go viral" easily. If a lot of YouTube users like their stuff and use their music over and over in their home movies, the tunes will prove catchy and people will buy their downloads and CDs and forget about/bypass the major record labels with their old business models built on traditional, highly restrictive copyright. It's a win-win, it's a beautiful free market solution to a stupid situation that warms the heart even of this crusty old socialist.

Maybe someday the big stupid dinosaurs like the RIAA will catch on and start offering their content for limited online use at something like a reasonable rate...say twice the cost of a regular internet download on iTunes for limited exclusive use of their audio content on 1 social networking site at a time, just click a little paypal-type button and you're done. Hell, I ended up buying a digital copy of that mainstream tune that got yanked from my original video because I remembered how much I loved the song.

Some progressive recording artists are surrendering to the inevitable and creating their own free YouTube channels, like Billy Joel. He knows people want his content, so fine, he just puts it out there on his channel...not everything, but enough to hook you in.

The Audio Swap option, created as a lawsuit dodge alternative by YouTube is a compromise; You don't get the stuff you hear on the radio that everyone knows and has known for the past 30-40 years...but in exchange you get new and innovative stuff that NOBODY knows about but will positively LOVE once they hear it. I'm serious! My "view" counters on ALL my videos with "swapped" music audio have spiked since I successfully completed the swaps. People love this! It makes my videos more interesting and watchable, and it gives the bands in question great viral exposure to a wider audience that would otherwise not have been possible through more traditional means. It runs counterintuitively to the way copyright is supposed to work and protect artists and I absolutely love that.

Don't get me wrong, even these generic bands should have the right to sue the pants off of other bands that pirate their stuff and pass it off as their own. That's just not cool...unless they improve on it and do it better than you then hey, sucks to be you. Like people complaining about how Maldroid ripped off from Joy Division to do "He Said, She Said". And I'm like, so frickin' what? Maldroid did it better, end of story. Their song is just plain a better song, more listenable, etc. Joy Division has street cred, they've been around way longer and became the basis for New Order, yada yada, but on that one song, I'm sorry dude, but Maldroid wins it.

There is still a place and a role for copyright. I hate that the Japanese anime industry is suffering because of hacker fansubs that undercut their product; it also takes money from dedicated English dub actors, who are very cool people--definitely a bummer and not a cool thing to do. The Japanese studios should sue the crap out of the unscrupulous pirates. I love that they're doing more adult/mature content these days but maybe they need to re-diversify and capture back some of the kid market as well, to have solid footing. We adult Otaku love our stuff alright, but they need to keep their audience base wide and diverse to stay viable. Catering exclusively to Geekdom is a path to ruin, I'm sad to say.

Anyway, I've been eager to blog about this since last night; finally to commit this to writing.

FRBR really is FUBAR

2009-03-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

I attended an informal local workshop on RDA this morning, and now I can more clearly say what I long suspected; FRBR is FUBAR, from the bottom up. I better understand now that FRBR is sort of Platonist in its view of the bibliographic universe, which explains my almost instinctual inherent dislike for it, since I myself am undoubtedly much more Aristotelian (and materialist) in my Outlook. FRBR insists on a Platonic Form-like Abstraction called "The Work", which then filters down from there to Expression, to Manifestation, to Item. As a good Aristotelian, I junk all this higher "form" nonsense out the window and start with as my starting point the real object in my hand or before my eyes, which can be apprehended by my six human senses. That's been the basis of cataloging recorded information for over a century. What good is an abstraction like "The Work" anyway, that isn't already adequately addressed by the feature of Uniform Title in AACR2r2? (answer: none)

One is struck by the irony that the name Resource Description and Access was chosen over AACR3 because the intent was to make it more "international" in scope, less explicitly "Anglo-American" in name; And yet by replacing standardized Latin abbreviations and other notation in AACR2r2 with full English phrases, RDA is in actual content far MORE "Anglo-American" than even the AACR2r2 it seeks to supersede.

I also find it laughable that bad RDA structure and bad writing can be excused with "but it's supposed to be hyper-linked online!", or that it will be better than the version of AACR2r2 that currently comes bundled with Cataloger's Desktop, pooh-poohed as "not user friendly". Fine, that's a programming issue that you can fix without revamping the entire cataloging code. Same with the abbreviations; a vendor could tweak programming to allow a user to "mouse over" those abbreviations and get a fuller explanation if the need it...the full latin words spelled out plus an English gloss (or other language depending on the main users' language needs) for the same. This can already be done in OCLC records to identify libraries by their 3 digit codes, and I'm sure an OPAC vendor could incorporate the same or similar technology.

Supposedly RDA is superior to AACR2r2 at handling electronic resources, but I've yet to see a compelling example that I find convincing. I laughed out loud and said aloud twice "this is supposed to be an improvement!?" The haphazard structure of RDA compared to the clean orderliness of AACR2r2 is simply laughable.

The lecturer today predicted that with RDA implementation we might expect 5-6 years of "happy chaos" before things settle down again. In other circles, this is colloquially known as nothing short of a revolution. It's the kind of comment that makes me want to grip my copy of AACR2r2, dig in my heels, and say, all Charleton Heston like "From My Cold Dead Hands!!"

But then, I'm a Texan...and we always like to re-fight the hopeless battles like the Siege at the Alamo. Though sometimes we win our San Jacintos against all odds, too.

But at bottom, it's the inherent Platonism of FRBR, which underlies RDA, that I have my issue with. There's no such thing as "The Work" in the abstract...and some FRBR proponents and theorists even agree with me on this point. Where we disagree is whether this abstraction is even useful or not. To the FRBR folks, it is. To me, it isn't. All that exists are individual, particular items. We build and share our cataloging upon that. Even Homer's Odyssey, in the original Greek, is based on some particular surviving manuscript *somewhere*, not just floating out in the ether somewhere. We deal in the subset of RECORDED information within the total information universe. If it's not recorded on some medium of some kind, it's irrelevant to us. Relationships are already established and traced in AACR2r2 by means of Uniform Titles, which are controlled and can be referenced. Restructuring via FRBR yields know advantages that I can think of, and is so vague and subjective it isn't "Functional" at all but rather Dysfunctional. DRBR is closer to the truth, if FRBR is forced on libraries. Dysfunctional Requirements for Bibliophile Rubes.

Oh, and the obligatory cheer-leading for the Death of MARC at the end of the talk that is of course par for the course. Ok, sure, maybe MARCxml will be a useful next step, but I don't see the core MARC standard ever going away completely. Just too cost prohibitive to shift on a worldwide scale.

These speakers even admitted that cost consideration was not within their purview. Well, ok, but somebody DOES need to consider that before going forward with implementation of this dreck. These decisions do have financial implications that aren't to be made lightly.

I left the workshop wholly unconvinced of the necessity of RDA, with a deeper understanding of its philosophical errors, and a more robust appreciation for AACR2r2. I remain a hopeless, book-bound Neo-Luddite on these matters, I suppose.
It provides some measure of comfort that my take on this is basically in line with senior catalogers on AUTOCAT whose opinions I hold in the highest regard but who are also largely ignored by the Joint Steering Committee, more or less.

I'm all happy for the info scientists to go develop new metadata standards for their precious electronic resources and digital images and whatsits...where I draw the line is when they go dicking around with the bibliographic control of monographs that is tried, true and tested and does not need to be f*cked with. First, do no harm, as another profession puts it. FRBR will actively wreak havoc and turn centuries old cataloging principles on their heads, and so will RDA.

For now, best to just batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. I think the other side will collapse from their own hubris and internal contradictions, but there's no guarantee. It may take an outside influence, like an energy crisis, to shock enough library leaders into reconsidering the all-digital future pipe dream.
Only time will tell.

That's all I've got for now, Aggie Librarian over and out.

Herding Cats, or organizing the unchurched.

2009-02-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

I've been in this little college town for over a year now, and while I was initially encouraged by the existence of such organizations as the North Texas Church of Freethought, and the Free Thought Alliance (FTA) of UNT, I found that NTCOF, based out of Irving, Texas, was just a long darn way to drive, even only once a month. Same was true of many other atheist/agnostic/freethought groups in and around the DFW Metroplex. I found myself unwilling to drive out to Plano, or Arlington, or Fort Worth, or downtown Dallas, just to participate in these groups. It was all just too damned far from "Little d". Even here in "Little d", the UNT chapter of Free Thought Alliance, though I did enjoy attending one or two meetings and one or two parties, their limitations as a campus-based group--and not my campus--became readily apparent. They meet 5pm sharp, on the UNT campus, which is extremely inconvenient for someone who doesn't get off work until 5pm, and whose own campus isn't on the same side of town as theirs. The practical reality is I'd be 30 minutes late at best, each and every time, and that got old. They also hosted stuff on the UNT campus during the week and during working hours, which, while ideal for on-campus students, were impossible for those not attending UNT or working as a UNT staffer.

While my campus, TWU, has more Christian groups than I can count on both hands, I don't think they have a single atheist/agnostic/freethought type group of any description. Women, lamentably, tend to be more religious than men, which is especially unfortunate considering just how misogynistic the "Big 3" Abrahamic religions have been for most of their history. FFRF publishes a little tract detailing just how bad religion is (and has been) for women, actually...something I always remember when I see a spontaneous bible study either on campus or downtown...especially a group of women being led by a guy evangelist.

Anyway, more out of exasperation than anything, I decided to take the plunge and found my own Denton-centric "Meetup.com" group for Atheists. I didn't include Agnostics in my group description for a couple of reasons. One, because I once married a wishy-washy agnostic who ended up reverting back to something resembling the Fundamentalism of her youthful upbringing, making our already eventual difficult divorce that much uglier. Two, because a lot of people say "agnostic" out of a sense of politeness when "atheist" really is the more accurate word for their real worldview. Three, because technically speaking, agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive positions. Case in point, I am myself an agnostic atheist. Meaning that sure, I don't know for absolute certain that there is no supreme being/god thing, but at the same time I lack any kind of active belief in such an entity. I'm skeptical of religious claims, critical of religious moral systems predicated on the necessary existence of a divine law giver, etc.

The stubborn, fence-sitting agnostic who feels superior to self-proclaimed atheists and believers alike is a confused, self-absorbed poser who I just have neither the time or patience to deal with. They're trying to maintain an artificial position of absolute neutrality that is simply untenable, in part because it relies on a distorted definition of what atheism is so that it can contrast itself with a straw man rather than the real deal.

I had to pony up a stiff start-up fee for a six-month run, about $72 bucks, so yes, I will be charging a minimal fee at meetings (one buck per person per meeting) until I recoup these costs. There seemed to be a core cadre of people interested in this meetup, and wanting it in Denton, but for months nobody (including me) was willing to pony up the cash and the organizational moxie to make it happen. Well, I finally stepped up to the plate and took a swing. It remains to be seen if I can hit a home run or I will strike out with this group concept. I emphatically do not want to steal any thunder from FTA over at UNT. I love those guys, and I think they do great work for their core base, but it just wasn't working out for ME personally, and I want to connect with other nonbelievers in similar circumstances to my own...working adults for whom UNT-FTA isn't practical, and for whom it's too far to go to Plano, Arlington, Dallas, etc. I've had one committed member join...from McKinney. Ok, not precisely what I was looking for, but if we're closer than any of his other options, he's welcome to come out here. I just really hope we get some actual Denton residents to show interest and more importantly SHOW UP. I'd like to see us patronize local Denton businesses wherever possible and avoid chain places. That has nothing to do with my atheism, of course, it's just good citizenship and keeping money in the local economy rather than sending it out of the community, something I feel is kind of important from an economic point of view.

I'm also founding this group because I've just noticed more and more bible studies popping up at local coffee houses that I haunt, and they annoy me. Around Christmas time a church group came around passing out pamphlets and claiming to want to sing Christmas carols, but printed in the pamphlets were none of the crowd-pleasing holiday favorites that everybody knows but rather all were explicitly Christian religious hymns. I thought this was supremely annoying and I made a point of utterly ignoring them and continuing to talk to my friend during their "concert", and to crack jokes poking fun at religion. If they'd stayed with mainly secular seasonal songs that are classic American favorites, even this crusty old atheist might've joined in, but their having to bash everyone over the head with overly religious songs...forget it.

There are few things as disappointing as seeing a really pretty girl out in public who you're moderately interested in pull out a bible while in a circle of her girlfriends and you realize it's a bible study group. This has already happened to me at least once so far. Even the same girl lighting a cigarette instead isn't nearly as much of a turn off as that. If the girl's pretty enough, and charming enough, I can forgive the smoking. I've kissed smokers, and yeah, it's kind of yuck, but it's still a kiss, and a prolonged, lingering kiss is pretty damn awesome, even from a smoker. But I don't care how hot or good looking a girl may be, if she's got religion on the brain she's damaged goods as far as I'm concerned. Hellbound, promiscuous sluts are way more my type. ;-) But only if they're bona fide atheists, not the "mad at God" emo-chick/faux "atheists"...I don't want a young lady to hop in the sack with me because she's mad at God for hating her gay male best friend or let her kid sister die of a horrible disease or in a car accident or something. Such people may call themselves atheists out of confusion, but such persons are just as likely to revert back to a modified theism as to really become a mature, rationally-grounded atheist. When I finally rid myself of any last vestige of the God delusion, I found myself incredibly at peace. If the world was f*cked up, it wasn't because of the will of some divine being, but because of the actions and inactions of ordinary people. Instead of waiting for holy deliverance, one had to get off one's duff and do something in the world.

I do have a close friend at UNT, who also works in the library world, and who is also an atheist, and we do hang out together a great deal, but at times it feels like it's just the two of us against the world, and I'd like to know there's more than just two atheists in this little college town for frak's sake. Also, I learned that UNT's FTA has "Officer's Meetings" which welcome general members which are held at a time and place that actually *does* work for me, so actually I will try to start showing up to that, and won't schedule my Meetup.com group to conflict with that. On my Meetup.com group, I specifically encourage UNT students to seek out their campus FTA *first* before joining my Meetup group. TWU students I tell to go ahead an join the Meetup.com group, because I don't think we have any similar campus group at all.

I thought about calling the group "Denton Secularists" or "Denton Secular Alliance" or some variation thereof to avoid the Atheist label, but then I said no, I want to go ahead and embrace the scarlet "A"; Only time will tell if this was a tactical mistake or a wise marketing decision or not.

Higher Ed bill in Texas that I support.

2009-02-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece of legislation I'm keeping tabs on and that I would very much like to see pass, eventually if not this session:

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SB 1164 by State Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio)/ HB 1893 by State Rep. Joe Driver (R-Garland) Campus Personal Protection Act would repeal the Texas Penal Code ban for the possession of handguns by concealed handgun licensees (CHLs) on certain college and university properties currently prohibited by law. Individuals who have passed extensive state and federal criminal records checks, completed rigorous training requirements, and been issued licenses to carry handguns for self-defense by the Texas Department of Public Safety should not be prohibited from protecting themselves in so-called "gun-free zones" that currently exist around post secondary educational institutions in Texas. The House Law Enforcement Committee was charged with studying this issue over the interim, and their report is available at www.house.state.tx.us
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Current law says your CHLs is invalid on the premises of any school, including universities, and "premises" is defined as being inside any building. As a practical matter this means I'm barred from entering any building on campus if I am otherwise legally carrying concealed. As a matter of law, I could walk all around the campus with my permit and concealed handgun and so long as I never entered an actual building, I'd be obeying the statute. As a practical reality, when I do carry and am on foot, I stay away from campus entirely. Even though I would be perfectly within my rights driving through campus while carrying concealed, I tend to avoid it, obey the speed limit exactly, etc, to reduce the likelihood of being stopped by a campus police officer who may not understand the finer nuances of the CHL statute and what it allows and what it doesn't.

It means that I walk to and from work disarmed. I can and do carry everywhere else permitted by law, but currently work is not one of those places. I know I'm not the only library staff member who thinks this is nutty, but there's a marked reluctance to talk about this issue in any kind of organized way. Our student body is probably either too apathetic, or uninformed or mis-informed to organize around this issue. Our faculty, especially the nursing faculty, are openly hostile to such a measure, based on pacifistic and delusional attitudes all too common to the medical profession, sad to say. In sum, I don't think enough pressure can be mounted from below upon university administrations, but rather that their hand will have to be forced by the legislature.

Until then, I will continue to obey the law, however much I may personally disagree with it. I admit I was skeptical of concealed carry when it was proposed in the 1990s. But when Bush signed it into law and not only did the streets not turn into the OK Corral nor run red with blood and crime rates actually dropped, I reconsidered my position(s). In hindsight I think passing Texas's CHL statute into law was the only really good thing Bush did as governor, and the late Ann Richards's vetoing of the same legislation the one thing I can say I didn't like about her tenure as governor. I first started getting interested in firearms when I was a librarian down in Galveston, Texas, working for TAMUG. I purchased a Mossberg 12 gauge for home defense (which I still own and maintain for that purpose), and my first "deer" rifle, a .30-.30 Marlin levergun. It was on sale at Wal-Mart, which was preparing to get out of the gun biz at the time. Down in Galveston, though, I was still too chicken to purchase a serious handgun for personal defense, or unwilling to spend the money. At that time I'd only ever shot a .38 snub before, and mostly only my .22 LR Ruger Mark II. I had no experience with platforms like 9mm, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP; I was fearful of the recoil, etc.

I've come a long way since then, now owning at least one handgun chambered in the most popular calibers on the US market, both semiautos and revolvers. I've taken all of them to the range, become familiar and comfortable with their operation, and though it's not hard to do, I was only 2 points short of a perfect score on my CHL marksmanship test. Still looking forward to getting into more IDPA stuff this year, preferably close to Denton. I don't practice as much as I'd like to...I have debts to pay and ammo's not cheap these days.

Anyway, I've written to my state rep and state sentator in my capacity as a private citizen of the State of Texas, to urge them to support this amendment to the CHL statutes. I think it has a decent chance of passing, and Rick Perry has made noises in the recent past of being in favor of such a change to the law. I hope TSRA holds him to it when the time comes.

This change, for me, has a higher priority than the more controversial proposals out there to go back to legal "open carry" for handguns, which hasn't been legal in Texas since probably the 1860s or so, and its prohibition is said to have played a small role in the final gunfight that fatally wounded Texas outlaw and legend Sam Bass. Still, Texas is one of the few states in the union that criminalizes the open carry of handguns. Technically you can already legally openly carry long guns in Texas, but its not a practice I would recommend. I could sling my Marlin .30-30 on my shoulder and walk to the grocery store; I wouldn't do that, of course, even though technically it isn't illegal in Texas. OC for handguns is illegal, and so is "failure to conceal" for a CHL holder; If your sidearm "prints" on your exterior clothing, for example, you could be cited for failure to conceal. This can be tricky in Texas in the summer, but not impossible to avoid.

While I'm not necessarily opposed to OC for handguns in principle, as a practical reality, even Rick Perry has cold feet on the issue. Its time hasn't come yet, I feel, and I'd rather see CHL expanded and improved first, as far as legislative priorities go. Even if OC were legalized and campus carry permitted *including* OC (and we're a LONG way away from that yet), I would still opt to go concealed rather than open as a matter of personal preference. I can be safe, and keep others safe, but avoid freaking people out unnecessarily. I can see why some business owners might like to be able to OC, just like gun store employees already legally can. And I think Texans would get used to it eventually. But until it becomes legal and then so commonplace as to scarcely merit a mention, I prefer to legally carry *concealed* where the law allows. It's working on expanding that "where the law allows" part that is of chief concern to me right now.

I did put in a good word for OC to my state rep and my state senator, but I don't expect much traction on that issue yet.

Currently reading...and a rant

2009-02-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

Currently reading _The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable_ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and also Neil Postman's classic _Teaching as a Subversive Activity_. There's a nice confluence between where I am in Taleb's book and where I am in Postman's book, especially on issues about perception, knowledge and language.

Very cool stuff.

Been very busy, sorry for the long silence and dearth of recent postings.

Finally renewed my ALA, TLA, and PLG memberships, in that order.

Looking forward to TLA at the end of March/start of April. It's down in Houston this year, which means I can stay at Mom & Dad's place for free. Nice.

There's also an local workshop on RDA being done by UNT-SLIS on Monday. TWU has decided to let most of our small Tech Services Department attend as well.

I went out to UNT's Discovery Park to familiarize myself with the territory, as I'd never before driven out there before. The property used to belong to TI but was recently bought by UNT. Basically it is the home for the College of Engineering, but SLIS is now out there, too, evacuating their former home in the old ISB in the heart of the main campus.

The hype, of course, is to symbolize SLIS's growing technological and scientific acumen. Walking on the actual grounds you can see it for the sham it really is. While all the other departments in the building are clearly delineated and defined, with appropriate signage on their front doors, declaring their identity, the School of Library and Information Sciences, while it is identifiable (albeit spread out) on the building floor plan, is not at all readily identifiable just walking around on the 2nd floor. Especially amid all the impressive mechanical engineering equipment in and around the building, visible through Plexiglas walls, exposed pipes, etc, the SLIS department seems woefully out of place, seemingly stuck there as an afterthought. The "Information Scientists" rubbing shoulders with all those, ahem, real scientists, must get kind of embarrassing; maybe that's why SLIS doesn't label their front door like everybody else.

UNT SLIS, which exists to produce ALA-accredited Masters of Library Science (MLS) to become working professional librarians, and trains teachers to become state-certified School librarians...whose students are frequently non-traditional age students, even by grad school standards...who frequently work full time and attend classes in the evening, on weekends and online...many of the Library science books of the former SciTech collection have now proudly been moved out to Discovery Park, which has its own Library (curiously divided into two unconnected sections inside the same building)...that is closed on weekends. Way to foster that information access there, guys...at least OUR library science collection IS available on weekends in Denton, so teachers needing to come to check out books on weekends can at least come to our library with their TexShare cards and not be totally hosed. The callous stupidity of this just really infuriated me today. The image is more important than reality...the hallmark of the recently concluded G.W. Bush era, I should note in passing. Yes, yes, I know more and more information is available online, yada yada; Things were bad enough when I was in UNT-SLIS from 2002-2004. If I were just now beginning my MLS instead of working as a librarian, the current farcical situation resulting from SLIS's recent move to Discovery Park would have definitely helped me overcome my male ego issues and today I would be enrolling at TWU instead to get my MLS. I've always long had a preference for the way TWU-SLIS was organized, in its recognition of the humanistic aspects of librarianship, even going so far as to offer a longer degree program specifically called "Master of Arts, Librarianship" (MALS) that I think truly captures what is essential in becoming a librarian. UNT was already techno-fetish crazy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but now...now they're plumb off the deep end into delusional fantasy land. I didn't think they could get much worse in the early 2000s, but boy was I wrong. The poverty of my imagination at that point, being unable to conceive how much more pretentious and silly UNT-SLIS could become is really unforgivable. I should definitely have known better.

Although I wish sometimes that I worked for a larger university, in a larger metro area with more culture, an abundance of foreign language departments, etc, I still love that I can walk to work. I still love that I work in a beautiful building that actually looks like a library is supposed to look. I love that every day I'm working to make its collections more accessible not just to its students on campus but to the world at large through WorldCat. I love that I sometimes get to tackle reference questions, especially surrounding cataloging & classification issues.

Hard to believe the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival will soon be upon us again, and after that the Texas Scottish Festival in Arlington, and Scarborough Faire down in Waxahachie. I enjoyed these last year and look forward to going back to these events again this year. Denton's a pretty neat little place, I have to say. I plan to stay put for awhile.

From this morning's Inside Higher Ed

2008-12-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

A rare post wherein I agree with the Pope--sort of.

From the news in brief on this morning's INSIDE HIGHER ED newsletter:
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Pope Benedict XVI used a speech at the University of Parma Monday to warn students about the dangers of technology. According to Vatican Radio, “Pope Benedict said today’s younger generations are exposed to a double risk, largely due to the widespread use of new technologies: On one hand, noted Pope Benedict there is a danger that the students’ capacity for concentration and mental application on a personal level are reduced; on the other hand there is a danger that the students isolate themselves in an increasingly virtual reality.” The comments came in a speech on the reform of universities in Italy. The pope said that those efforts would succeed only if individuals involved first focus on “reforming ourselves, correcting that which could damage or obstruct the common good.”
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Benedict is certainly correct about a reduction in students' capacity to concentrate, especially the fortitude to tackle lengthy, discursive prose text. While Benedict would prefer students devote such concentration on, say, Thomas Aquinas, and I would recommend some Karl Marx, Baron d'Holbach, or the speeches of Robert Green Ingersoll, I think we would both agree that book learning remains a key element in maintaining learned civilization, whatever shape it takes.

As a Freethinker and Atheist, I couldn't help but note this little irony:
"on the other hand there is a danger that the students isolate themselves in an increasingly virtual reality"

Yes, including the "virtual reality" known as Religion. The "World according to Religion" or the Christian Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, is the oldest "virtual reality" simulation known. The Enlightenment was a rejection of that and a return to the direct observation of the natural world propounded by the best of the early Greek philosophers. What's interesting about the Greeks are the structure of some of their arguments. The literal prognostications of, say, Democritus, are, as we now now, a little off; but the structure of their argumentation is remarkable in its close approximation of modern scientific understanding.

In one of my Introduction to Philosophy texts from long ago, I remember one of the pre-Socratic Greeks theorized that people came to be when their body parts, originally separate...eyes, ears, arms, legs, all started to work together cooperatively then eventually fused into one organism. This account seems laughably absurd on its face, but beneath the surface, it is not that far, structurally, from describing how current biological scientists today theorize the first single-cell organisms with their various internal structures working in concert came to be, and then eventually cells clustering together into colonies giving rise to multicellular organisms. The Greeks may have believed that the heavens were a dark curtain and the stars were holes in that curtain through which light shone through at night, but they were able to very accurately predict the circumference of the earth using direct observation of nature. Direct observation of nature tells us there's no way this planet was created in a mere 6 days.

Greeks like Epicurus, and later Romans like Lucretius, were, I think, beginning to lay the groundwork for a rational, scientific world view. Sadly, it was a project that would be put on hold for nearly two thousand years because of the distraction of the "virtual reality" of organized religion, which plunged humanity back into superstition and darkness, until the stirrings of the Renaissance, the emergent Scientific Revolutions of Western Europe leading up to the Enlightenment and the world-shaking political revolutions in America and in France in the 18th century, none of which would've been possible without the development of movable type and continued lowering of cost of production of printed materials. Sadly, the world has reached a point of diminishing returns in this respect. Whereas a political tract or pamphlet could help spawn a revolution in the 18th century, such an exercise today is lost amid the chatter. It's just such a busier, more bustling, more highly distracted world. And it wasn't the tracts themselves that stormed the Bastille, or stood up to the Redcoats at Lexington and Concorde, or stormed the Winter Palace, but flesh-and-blood human beings moved to action both by printed words and gifted oratory; usually oratory inspired first by wise and moving words in print.

One of my textbooks in library school opened with the following joke: "It used to be said that a thousand monkeys, typing on a thousand keyboards, could, given enough time, reproduce the works of Shakespeare; The Internet has proven this simply isn't true."

LOL, but the joke is on us.

Discovery Tool product pitch, thoughts on.

2008-11-25T09:52:00.001-08:00

I attended a product pitch by a Serials Solution rep, touting their new “Discovery Tool” interface, which promises to take our basic catalog into Library 3.0 territory and giving users the web experience they truly expect nowadays. As Montgomery Burns once said about Marge Simpson’s portrait of him, “I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.”

Not to say I don’t have complaints, but let me sing the praises first. One feature I positively loved is the Call number box that sorts a keyword string’s results into how the search breaks down by call number of books in the library. That is truly breaking new ground and I really like it. If we adopt this product, I would definitely want that feature activated. I also like the book jacket images, iconographic identification of format (book, sound recording, etc), links to Google Books where full text is available for older, out-of-copyright public domain items, regular links to ebook vendors’s Full Text Content for the E-resources held by the library, etc. It also has a tag cloud feature. I’m not very good at interpreting or using tag clouds, but one of my colleagues in ILL swears by them, so I’ll take her word for it that it’s a good thing and move on.

Grumpy cataloger that I am, I did have to ask if it allowed for call number browsing? No, it doesn’t. Ok, does it allow browsing by subject heading? Again, no. It doesn’t allow browsing by subject heading because it doesn’t *really* make use of controlled vocabulary per se, but rather, breaks down the subject heading into its component parts and uses them as a keyword string. The average user probably won’t notice or care, but this irks me to no end. Functionally, it does seem to still pull up items that share that subject heading, as it would if it really operated on a controlled vocabulary basis. But what this prevents you from doing is getting a bird’s eye view of the library’s holdings by subject, which is what you can get from a traditional OPAC display, and which has valuable uses to the research scholar. Likewise, I find call number browsing to be a very powerful tool, and indeed necessary for original cataloging since you have to be sure, when assigning a new call number, that it will actually fit in your current shelflist. You have to be able to call-number browse to be able to tell. It also is another way of accessing the information, allows you to investigate fine shades of meaning and difference just as if you were physically browsing the shelf, only remotely. But the Serials Solution Discovery tool doesn’t let you do this either. Why? According to the representative, “well, our user surveys showed that nobody really searches that way”. Resisting the urge to pound my fist on the table and say “I don’t give a sh*t if the ‘average’ (often clueless) user doesn’t do that”, what I did say was “look, I love all the new bells and whistles…you’ve got a lot of great new things here; but I don’t want to see you bend over backwards to cater to the most common denominator SO MUCH that you DUMB IT DOWN and really unintentionally hurt EXPERT users who actually know what they’re doing!!”. I did have to say the latter aloud, because I felt it had to be said (the former I said under my breath, but within earshot of a few colleagues). I did have the temerity to ask if many institutions keep their old OPAC display available as an option, if it’s possible to switch off all the bells and whistles and go back to bare bones bibliographic basics, i.e. just the books on the shelves and nothing else please. She allowed that yes, the majority of institutions still kept their old OPAC public displays available as a search option, “for recalcitrant older faculty, people still wanting to hold onto a security blanket.”; Or grumpy catalogers who think there are some redeeming features of OPACs worth preserving in the Discovery Tool that may not be supported by “user surveys” but remain important to Reference Librarians and Catalogers who know what they are doing. While Roy Tennant may cluck that only librarians like to search while everyone else likes to find, the better one is at searching in different ways, usually the better a librarian is at finding things faster than the untrained user, which is where we keep our edge and relevance, by knowing even obscure, seldom used methods that still yield results. My point is, user surveys can only do so much, and vendors who employ librarians (I hope) should fall back on their professional librarian know-how and preserve methods even if every user survey says “nobody does that”, if the librarian knows that there are expert researchers who DO, even if they are, in the words of the number-crunchers, “statistically insignificant”. While the Serials Solutions “Discovery Tool” is probably “good enough” for most users, it could still potentially fail or at least frustrate an expert user because of its total dependence on keywords underneath the hood. The main difference between this system and, say, Amazon, is mainly richer metadata, cannibalizing LCSH to use as raw keyword metadata rather than as true controlled vocabulary in a classic IR sense.

Extensive research would be needed to isolate and identify these stress points and weaknesses in the Serials Solutions Discovery Tool system. I know that I am always frustrated to find libraries that have pitched the OPAC altogether in favor of one of these “Discovery Tools”. Sometimes you just want to shut off the “bells and whistles” and enjoy the sound of silence, metaphorically speaking, and confine your search just to the books on the shelves in the building and nothing more. Libraries that disallow one to do this are NOT always saving the time of the reader. Controlled vocabulary serves to tune out excess noise and focus searching; Controlled vocabulary with copious “see” references are a godsend. Though sometimes the LC and OCLC gods fail, and it puts the onus on the conscientious cataloger to supply the “see” references that should be in the authority record but just aren’t.

I’m sure that Thomas Mann could offer a more cogent critique than I can; I’m still just a novice cataloger myself. I got into cataloging accidentally, sort of with the realization that nobody around me was interested and moreover that “f*ck, somebody’s got to do it!” and so at the last minute I did my student practicum in Tech Services rather than Reference work, and that decision has shaped my career down to this point.

I’m all for change that improves, that makes sense, that isn’t stupid. I’m against change that stultifies, dumbs down, downsizes, problematizes, and sacrifices quality for throughput speed, etc. I’m currently reading RADICAL CATALOGING, edited by K.R. Roberto, listowner of the RADCAT email list, which exists as an alternative forum to the stuffier, more formal AUTOCAT, to which I also belong as a professional necessity. There are a lot of great essays there, and I hope, someday, to make future contributions to a tome like this after I’ve got more work experience under my belt. I’m closing in on one year of full employment with my current library, and my performance evaluation went very well. I was very nervous going in, but pleasantly surprised at my good marks. I needed that after the ungraceful debacle and my first library employer’s. Ironically, with the latest upgrade to Voyager, it does actually have a “dumb down” feature I approve of, namely that you can force a record to overlay another by command, without relying on tripping the duplicate detection profile. If I’d been able to do that (and if I’d been able to print my own labels at my workstation like I can today), I would’ve been able to save/keep my last library job by freeing myself from utter dependency on my copy-cataloger and her lazy student worker; which I think she was afraid of. If I had become completely autonomous, I think my former copy cataloger was afraid my hyper-productivity would make her look bad in comparison, and to be fair it probably would have. Heck, last weekend I still came in on a Saturday to knock out some re-cataloging, mainly because I was bored. I listened to music videos on YouTube on my headphones while humming along doing the re-cataloging. It’s mostly pretty easy, straight-up copy cataloging, though sometimes I do hit some bibliographic snarls that make me glad I’m a professional librarian doing this and not a clerk. I have both the know-how and the authority to make judgment calls that a clerk wouldn’t be able to make. Still, this is a big project, and I’m looking forward to training one of our electronic resources clerks how to do basic copy cataloging, using the re-cataloging stuff as a good starting point before she tackles any new acquisitions. Even though it’s now possible to force a record to overlay by command, I still want this person to learn how to trip the duplicate detection, since there’s no way to know if other OPACs don’t still rely on duplicate detection profiles to overlay records. I’ve done the overlay by command myself, but I’m still not used to it, so I mostly still stick to tripping the duplicate detection, which is what I finally learned how to do here. It’s also possible to “merge” records now, so that you can keep the best of both (like a good 520 or 505 contents note, for example). I’ve also been more active at adding local 590 notes for things like bookplates and handwritten messages from the author, etc. Not the kind of thing you want to put on a universal OCLC record, but something that could be of interest locally, to your catalog users.

I guess I’m only really opposed to “dumbing down” when it hinders or eliminates a more sophisticated technique that was useful but obscure. Just because something is obscure, little known or little used, doesn’t mean it’s not a powerful way to do things that ought not be abandoned. I still believe in the old heresy of Bibliographic Instruction. I’d also like to see us get more vigorous in promoting the LC Classification System with the same vigor as public libraries promote the DDC. More posters, more bookmarks with the skeletal LC Classification scheme, etc. I’m embarrassed to admit how ignorant I was of the LC Classification system until I got to grad school the first time and learned that German lit was found under “PT” on the 2nd floor of Fondren Library. Oh, and as an undergrad, our professor told us the Russian History was “on the 6th floor” of Evans Library. It was under DK, but I don’t know if I clued in on that or not. Of course I knew how to write down a call number and go look for it in the stacks, and I guess I knew in the back of my head that the numbers probably also had to mean something, since by serendipity I always found such cool stuff in and near where I was looking that were on similar, but slightly different takes on the subject or subjects. I knew that I liked a lot of the books in the “H” and some in the “L”, too, but it wasn’t until library school that I figured out what these meant. I think people would be interested in this, if we would only take the time and effort to tell them. It’s too cool to leave hidden as a secret librarian code.

In my next post, I plan to ruminate on the ill effects of the business model on the way libraries are run, and how funding cuts and speed-ups that sacrifice quality can lead to a vicious circle…or rather a downward spiral of increasing “good enough” mediocrity. Unless I change my mind and decide to blog about something else.

Doors closing, Windows opening

2008-10-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

The most recent issue of Texas Library Journal honors the libraries and library workers of the Texas Gulf Coast who bore the brunt of Ike's fury and helped and continue to help their stricken communities in the storm's aftermath. I bow my head in quiet observance of a moment of silence to honor those colleagues, especially those currently without a functioning library to call home, many of them close personal friends and recent associates.

The Aggie Librarian counts himself lucky that he is no longer a Sea Aggie. That problematic stint at TAMUG lasted only 6 months, and I felt on pins and needles the whole time I resided along Seawall Boulevard that Fall, Winter, and early Spring. I always knew in the back of my mind that an Ike was possible.

Ironically, with the latest upgrade to Voyager, EX LIBRIS has mercifully dumbed down and made much more intuitive the record overlay process such that it is actually a command now and not dependent on one's duplicate detection profiles, which was my utter nemesis back at TAMUG, when I didn't understand that until I attended ENDUSER 2006, which, by then, it was too late. I also now have sitting on my desk my very own label printer, and rather than an external program, we make use of Voyager's own label printing utility. Had I had this set-up back at TAMUG, able to print my OWN labels without dependence on our very unreliable student assistant, as well as a dumbed down Voyager allowing me to very very easily overlay records, etc, had I had those things in place, I would never have been fired, but I would now be sitting, if I was lucky, in a B/CS apartment with very little furniture, maybe a laptop, and trying to fit in and transition from being a Department head to being just another cataloger, and being very worried, uncertain about my future. The TAMUG website optimistically predicts a return to campus by this Spring 2009, but I am much more pessimistic, I think it will take at least 1 calendar year to recover if not more.

It was quite a shock and blow to loose my then job at TAMUG in the early Spring of 2006. For a time I was uncertain if my library career prospects would ever recover. But looking back, I am so grateful to have been let go from there before Ike finally came. I was sitting in Denton, Texas when Ike came, and Ike veered off before it ever reached my humble town. It brought only a few light rains, and more importantly helped lower our temperatures to give us our first taste of real Fall weather this year; while my parents sweltered for 42 hours without electricity, I enjoyed some of the nicest, coolest weather we've had in many months.

I'm currently working on multiple projects, but the most fun has been recataloging a subset of old books that somehow got lost in the shuffle, and were hastily added to the catalog from card data, with the intention of being overlaid later with fuller records. However, this was never re-visited by anyone in a systematic fashion until me. OCLC must be wondering why our collection is growing so unexpectedly, and why we seem to be adding so many antiquarian works. Of course, we're adding nothing, really, just making visible what we've had for years and years that sadly have been off OCLC's radar until now. By attaching our holdings to OCLC, we make these older, sometimes rare works visible to the wider world, accessible via ILL, and by downloading and overlaying the temporary bibs with full LC-generated cataloging in many cases, we provide fuller bibliographic accesses, with richer records at not only the local level but also the WorldCat level. This project itself was spun out of a Name Authorities control project, which we will now be turning over to a 3rd party vendor to finish, while I stay focused on the re-cataloging project. I am going to have this vendor help in identifying these records, all of which will be lacking an 035 $a field; they will either have an undefined $9 field, or no 035 at all. Once we have a better handle on the scope of the problem, I can ascertain if I need to enlist the aid of my copy cataloging staff; I suspect that I will, but for now this remains a solo project.

On the occasions when new books DO arrive, I set aside the re-cat project and attend to the new materials right away. I catalog them, affix bar codes, and turn them over to our student assistant for quick end processing and to get these material onto the library shelves, available for checkout, as soon as humanly possible.
The new books always have top priority.

The new books always had top priority at TAMUG, too, but because I was never able to get myself set up to do proper, independent cataloging and processing, I was always at the mercy of someone else, which got me ultimately terminated in the end. My copy cataloger at TAMUG viewed me with suspicion, and I think she was afraid that I would do my job too well and take her job away. I do believe she passively sabotaged my position there, though perhaps it wasn't even a conscious act. But I do believe it was an act of perceived self-defense, however factually wrong it was.

In any case, I am doing my best to make myself valuable to my new employer, and I feel markedly more secure in my present job than I ever did back at TAMUG. I never felt comfortable living on Galveston Island...I always felt like my life could be washed away without warning. Luckily that happened to me metaphorically first before it had a chance to happen to me literally.

Still, I bear them no ill will. I hope the Jack K. Williams Library survived with only minimal damage, and I hope the collection itself survived without water damage...hell, I helped build and enhance that collection, dammit. Of course I want it to survive. I know that the Rosenberg Library, Galveston's public library, was much harder hit and sustained considerable damage, though at least it to is still standing. I know that the bridge to TAMUG was damaged, and the road leading to that bridge was washed out, so the only way onto and off of Pelican Island right now is probably by boat. Until all of that basic infrastructure is repaired and power restored, those books will have to go into remote storage to protect them from the elements, lest humidity and heat take their toll. I would not want to change places with my former director for even double her current salary. Of all the staff, I would probably have made the transition to B/CS the easiest. I know it must be a real hardship on the remaining staff, with so many so close to retirement. My thoughts are with them. If TLA sets up some kind of fund for them, I would probably donate something.

I also look at the metaphorical storm clouds on our economic horizons, and I don't see much cause for hope regardless who becomes president after the November elections. I'd like to believe I'd be the "last cataloger standing" in the event of any downsizing, but it's not a theory I'd like to put to the test by any means. I'd certainly feel overwhelmed if I lost my 2 copy catalogers. If the economy continues to crash, and if we have students needing to drop out to work full time just to feed themeselves, enrollment will drop, funding will drop, and salaries will be cut back for those not made redundant outright. I plan to start buying MREs and beef jerky at the next couple of gun shows I attend, if any are to be had. I'm content with my current personal arsenal, so at least I'm not jonesing to make a firearms purchase at any of the recent gun shows I've attended...though I was tempted by a pre-ban Norinco Tokarev TT-33 re-chambered in .38 Super, and by an M-1 Garand that was going for a mere $579 (one day special). Those were very tempting, but they are not practical purchases but collector's luxury items. Besides, I'd rather have a TT-33 chambered in the original 7.62x25 Tokarev round. .38 Super is just as hard to find as 7.62x25 Tokarev ammo. And I've already resigned myself to having to wait a long time before I can ever afford an M-1 Garand, and maybe I never will be able to. Doesn't matter. I'm happy with my SKS/WASR-10 combo, and my AR-15/Mini-14 combo.

Owning guns and knowing how to operate them is going to be increasingly a necessity as civil order breaks down in the wake of economic collapse and decay. That's just reality. Libraries ought to stock up on how-to books on Permaculture, gardening, recycling, capturing rain water, etc, even academic libraries.

Once upon a time the students of the then Texas State College for Women (TSCW), now TWU, raised crops and chickens. They were partially self-sufficient with respect to their own food supply, even incorporating agricultural rituals into the school's traditions, with such yearly events as the "husking bee", to coincide with the corn harvest, etc. Call me crazy, but I predict that within our lifetimes, some of these traditions will, of necessity, be revived. The A&M of Texas A&M will cease being a meaningless signifier as it currently is, and will in short order revert back to the original meaning of Agricultural and Mechanical. It will do so because the people of Texas will NEED it to do so in order to survive. The exportation of our industrial base abroad will prove a near fatal error in the end once globalism dies for lack of cheap energy to make it run efficiently. The local and communal will re-assert themselves in competing (successfully) for our attentions, and the world will become once again the truly big place it actually is.

I try not to think about these things all day...but rather just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep on cataloging the books, new and old, as they come across my desk, and just try to stay focused on doing a good job. My next task is to acquire emergency food rations and continue servicing and paying down all outstanding debt. Eventually, if I can pay down my debts sufficiently well, I can begin thinking about long term investment in tangible wealth like gold and silver. The stock market is going to be a boondoggle and basket case for a long time to come until the economy settles back down and starts accepting physical reality and reforming itself, so that it no longer postulates infinite growth on a clearly finite planet. Until we change the way money works, we really change nothing.

The longer we push Suburban sprawl, the more resources we squander, the more pollution takes a toll on the environment, the more erratic and violent earth's weather patterns become, etc. All one vicious cycle after another, spinning faster and faster in a death spiral. While I don't think humans will die OUT as a species, some degree of die OFF is probably not avoidable, as a mater of nature and population pressures. If economics calls itself the dismal science now, just wait until the Long Emergency stretches on past the lives of the current generations.

The Dumbest Generation will prove utterly not up to the task, I'm afraid. Fewer and fewer people remain alive with a living memory of the last Great Depression and the skillsets learned to survive it. We are in for a rough time ahead, we X'ers and Millenials both; We're both unprepared, but we X'ers at least grasp HOW unprepared we are, I think...or at least some of us do.

Belated Book Review: M. Bauerlein's THE DUMBEST GENERATION

2008-10-06T21:20:00.001-07:00

This review is rather delayed, and I apologize for the long silence between posts. The Aggie Librarian has been busy re-cataloging lots of books that have been sitting in our collection without holdings affixed to OCLC, an oversight that was to have been corrected "someday", and that "someday" just happens to coincide with my becoming the Catalog Librarian at my institution. I've also goofed off a lot on weekends, watching oodles of Japanese anime, and gone to the occasional gun show here in North Texas (Fort Worth, Dallas, Mesquite--the 3 biggest), dragging along a colleague from a neighboring institution.

Anyway, without further delay, I provide for you my review of Mark Bauerlein's THE DUMBEST GENERATION, which I had the pleasure to read just before school started back up.

As a 30-something, nominally Gen-X, somewhat traditionalist Librarian (Cataloger), weary of repulsing time and again the charge of the All-Digital Brigades proclaiming Lib/Web 2.0, or by now 3.0, ad infinitum, there is much in Bauerlein's critique here that is music to my ears, and I appreciate his compilation of statistics aimed at deflating the hype of Web 2.0 enthusiasts.

However, by about the middle of the book, Bauerlein's own ideological biases begin to overshadow the book, and it's clear he's got his own axe to grind. Like other Right-leaning intellectuals before, he is out to demonize the 1960s, which for him are the habitat of the Ur-Dumbest Generation, i.e. 60s Youth Culture (an estimation I emphatically do NOT share). He casually cites Leo Strauss without further attribution or explanation, which set off immediate alarm bells for me. I know damn well who Leo Strauss is, and while the quotation Bauerlein cites from Strauss is not objectionable, the corpus of Strauss' philosophical work is, in my view, quite odious and not at all in harmony with the American Democratic tradition that Bauerlein expresses such sympathy for elsewhere in his book. He similarly casually mentions David Horowitz without giving much background or context to this highly controversial turncoat ex-Trot.

While Bauerlein and I might agree in common on the philosophical outlook and valid cultural criticism of Neil Postman, he would probably balk at further mention of heroes in my pantheon, men like Paulo Freire, Michael Parenti, Peter McLaren, Richard Brosio, or even James Loewen.

Bauerlein insists on a CAUSAL connection between radical 60s youth culture and the techno-addicted Dumbest Generation of the present moment. While I will agree with Bauerlein on the general sequence of events, I dispute strongly the causal connections that he asserts. He seems to be of the opinion that radical 60s youth culture imploded from within, and that its radical rejection of the past (as if alternating iconoclastic/iconodule dialectics aren't a common feature of cultural history) is what ultimately doomed its ability to continue, thrive and reproduce itself.

He approvingly cites such "voices of moderation" as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Irving Howe...voices urging the US to stay in Vietnam, mind you. Yes, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who would later rationalize arming the forces of Usama Bin Laden in Afghantistan, to use radical Islam as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and raise the stakes in the Cold War by giving the USSR a taste of the Vietnam experience...regardless of the potential for Blowback that eventually contributed to Sept 11, 2001.

So, it was the 1960s young intellectual's own fault that they allegedly did not endure...As if, say, the sheer exhaustion of the American body politic in the aftermath of the Agony of the Vietnam war, the heightened cynicism about government in the wake of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cover-up scandal, the general malaise of the later 1970s, and the gathering Right wing counterattack that blasted into the open with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980—As if none of that might also have had an impact on the long term viability of 1960s radical intellectual culture, which came under withering backlash assault from the mid 1970s onward. Regretfully, thus, Bauerlein is long on assertion but short on evidence in these final sections of his book. He detests the internet-addicted "Dumbest Generation" that is the object of study in the first part of the book, and also detests 1960s youth culture...and desperately wants there to be a connection, but I don't find his arguments for causality even remotely convincing here.

I also felt he undermined his general case against the so-called "Dumbest Generation" proper by focusing in on and excoriating a young artist for failing to bow down and worship at the altars of the great artists of the past. While I myself deplore the ignorance of basic history among all Americans, and have a healthy respect for the intellectual history of our reining political philosophies and their detractors, in the realm of the Arts, the Artist, it seems to me, is always under the burden to make something new, to be distinct, etc. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. Abtract Expressionism claimed to be taking on Michaelangelo; And I agree with art critic Robert Hughes's sucinct prouncement on that artistic agenda: “You lost.”

Still, the Dada movement in Germany and Switzerland of the early 20th century, or the Wiener Sezession before them in the Fin de Ciecle of Emperor Franz Joseph's Austria-Hungary were no less rejectionist of traditionalist “academic” art, yet no one today would deny their greatness in hindsight. Sezession artists were quite scandalous in their day, the blatant depiction of sensuality scandalized the Vienese burghers while thrilling the Parisian art scene. Dadaists, in a flush of furious creative impulses, proclaimed a doctrine of Anti-Art, by which they meant Anti-academic, anti-stilted, hidebound traditionalist art which they felt was tainted by association with the corridors of power which unleashed the calamity of the Great War. French Impressionism, so beloved by contemporary middle class Americans today, was itself profoundly radical and controversial at its outset. Of course one must learn the basics of painting, of color, of contrast, etc. But artistic taste is highly personal. I do enjoy visits to museums, and as the saying goes, I may not know much about art, but I know what I like, and what I like less. I respect the technical talent of earlier realist painters, but their works don't move or speak to me very much. So where Bauerlein sees impudence, I see independence that, in an artist at least, we should recognize, respect and nourish. Would it be too scandalous to bring to this youth the art of the Harlem Renaissance of the 20s? Something with which, as a young black American, he might more easily relate to than Rembrant? He might reject that, too, but no artist can expect to make a name for himself merely aping the style of what has come before.

I don't disagree with Bauerlein's general thrust in what he is trying to argue, but I do strongly deplore his selection of the visual arts as a forum to bolster his case, which I think falls flat at this weak point. Perhaps I err in showing preferential, even deferential treatment to artists and artistic temperments. So be it; I admit I am guilty of these biases.

I think Bauerlein is also willfully blind to the wider political economy implications of cultural production, the increasing corporatization of the University, the growth of (mostly right-wing and well funded) Think Tanks creating an quasi-alternative, policy-driven intellectual world that seeks to supplant the traditional academy. Bauerlein buys completely and uncritically the right wing canard, promoted by hacks like Roger Kimball, and Horowitz, et. al. about the campus being utterly dominated by the Left. Even when discussing the real, existing Left-leaning professoriate, He seems not to know either Cary Nelson or Michael Berube or their promotion of community outreach as a legitimate exercise for professors to engage in apart from basic research and which ought to count towards tenure considerations. He claims to see redemptive value in the Culture Wars but can't seem to name the major players on the side opposite his or describe many of the recent events in those struggles. No discussion of Stanley Aronowitz, or even Alan Sokal. Where Bauerlein wants to grill 1960s youth culture, my own inclination is to lob grenades at the wayward excesses of relativizing, irrationalist Postmodernism. I happen to think George W. Bush is the most vulgarly Postmodern President in US History. Frederic Jameson identified Postmodernism as the cultural condition of Late Capitalism, and I believe that point still stands. It's sobering for me to realize that the landmark motion picture THE MATRIX came out nearly 10 years ago, yet still seems like it was released only yesterday. But at least Bauerlein and I can agree that, while both of us know these names and the ideas behind them, we are correct to fear that many of our readers, both of his book and this review, won't have the foggiest idea what either one of us is talking about, and we can agree that THAT is a deplorable state of affairs made ever worse by the distractions of the technophilic, neophillic, multitasking Infotainment screen-media culture.

A personal favorite Genre of Music.

2008-07-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Celtic music, Traditional and New Age. I love Fiona Ritchie's Thistle and Shamrock NPR's radio show, the Irish Aires show on KPFT, and the Celtic-themed editions of Hearts of Space by Steven Hill. Unfortunately, in Denton, on radio, all I can get is Ritche's show on KERA 90.1 FM (the greater DFW Public Radio station). I can get Irish Aires online, from KPFT's website. Much new Celtic music is going increasingly online.

And as I've expanded into playing around with MP3s and players like the iPod, I've discovered great resources like the website Songhenge and this podcast by Marc Gunn:

Great stuff! When I was a graduate student and recently graduated alumnus of Rice University, I did my turn as a bartender in the graduate student pub on campus in the basement of the old Chemistry building. Before they got all hi-techy and computerized their sound system, we used to have a CD player hooked up to the speaker system, and I would go visit Houston Public Library downtown and go select 3-5 new Celtic music CDs from various artists I had yet to listen to and then inflict these tunes upon my bar patrons. More often than not it was a success and patrons really liked the music. It transformed the whole atmosphere from an ordinary basement bar into something more like a cozy Irish pub, if only for the hour I was on duty as a bartender. I think our Guinness sales went up slightly when I was on duty, too. I think technically what I was doing was in violation of traditional copyright law, as we, the volunteer staff of the place, did not have the "performance rights" to the songs, but this to me is one of the more dick-headed perversions of Copyright law. Promoting such non-mainstream music in such a venue is only likely to pique interest and INCREASE music sales, but intellectual property lawyers don't give a sh*t about such cultural enhancements that improve the community even while they skirt the law a tad. I frequently had bar patrons come up and ask to see the album cover and sometimes the liner notes, which I gladly provided. This was admittedly back in the mid 1990s, when the Celtic New Wave was roaring at rip tide (it has subsided a bit since the early 2000s). I still love it, but my family origin is Scottish, so I have personal reasons to stay connected to this music.

Special Hell

2008-07-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater. — Shepherd Book (from the Firefly Episode OUR MRS. REYNOLDS)

...or people who steal shiny new books from Libraries.

We recently goofed and slotted for "Main Reference" a new (2008) GRE Prep book that actually needed to be sent to our Main Reserves, where we can control the use more tightly. These are evidently high demand items, and all the previous GRE Prep stuff is in Main Reserves. But, it came from acquisitions flagged as "Main Reference", so I (copy-)cataloged it, my student assistant did the end processing, and off it went to Circ, from thence to Main Reference, where it "sprouted legs" and walked out the door never to be seen again. Painful lesson learned, and that some people are just ruthless sh*ts. Yes, you to belong in that "Special Hell", if it existed, my dear Library thief.

We would've lost more of them if not for the fact that the copy records in OCLC are lacking 050 fields and my ClassWeb access is STILL down (2 weeks now) and I was too lazy to go poking around on LC and elsewhere for older editions from whence to crib a suitable call number.

I'm also taking my time cataloging a 2 volume set of American Women writers. I'm doing an original record that piggy-backs on an existing record for Vol.1 which has an extensive 505 field contents note. I feel obligated to supply an equally exhaustive 505 for Vol.2, but it's taking a goodly bit of time to transcribe page after page from the TOC in Vol. 2. I may also be fudging the rules a little bit in the 245 field, since thought the set has 1 main editor, the secondary editors differ from vol.1 & 2; I combine the statements of responsibility into one with an [and] between the incongruous names. The 505 transcription is even more tedious work than my ongoing NAF project, or at least it feels that way. I'm also progressing my way slowly through an online course designed to teach me how to catalog Integrating Resources (and how they specifically differ from serials). This past Friday I spent all day with an AMIGOS trainer learning the basics of ContentDM. It was okay, and good to play around with training software where I couldn't do any real lasting damage while I learned to set up a hypothetical digital image collection, etc. Much of the controlled vocabulary for images comes from LC-TGM (Thesaurus for Graphic Materials), since the "subject cataloging" for images tends more to be an extension of descriptive cataloging. More "what is" than "what it's about", per se.

It was a good way to spend Friday as our ILS was totally down (even on the user side) because they're upgrading to a new server. The ILS will probably remain down through a goodly part of Monday, which means I can't make any progress on the NAF project, so I'll resume the 505 transcription and re-save the bib workform in the save file. I'm over halfway done, but it's just such a tedious slog, can't be done in one sitting. I'll also log in to the online course and get caught up on the next module, etc.

Mein Foto

2008-07-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

Photo added to blog (with paint/digital filtering), proof that yes, I was indeed an Aggie. Once an Aggie, always an Aggie. This photo was taken my fish year, at Parent's Weekend, way back in the Spring of 1990. I was a young 'un then, and had no idea about wanting to one day become a librarian. When this photo was taken, I still had my heart set on becoming a Naval officer, my coke bottle thick glasses eventually dooming that prospect, but I didn't know that then. Back then, I had a tentative offer of a 3-year NROTC scholarship and was wrapping up a successful if otherwise unremarkable freshman year in the Corps of Cadets. There was still a Cold War on, as far as we knew, because there was still a Soviet Union and Gorby was still the man at the helm over there. That summer I would journey to Germany for a 5 week trip (2 weeks classroom instruction, 3 weeks travel around German-speaking Europe). By then I had already switched my academic major to German, along with History as a double-major, the disapproving frowns of my Naval Science advisers notwithstanding. I eventually was NPQ'd for the scholarship, returned to life as a civilian student, then went on to grad school, first for my MA in German Studies at Rice U, then eventually to UNT for my MLS, and the rest is history.

My first academic major at TAMU has been Political Science, but after my first Poli-Sci class, which was deathly boring, I dropped that major like a hot rock and became a History major. I added German later. I might've been happier had I done my MA in History rather than German Studies, but c'est la vie.

Back then, TAMU was using the NOTIS system for their OPAC interface (not that I would have known the term OPAC back then). It was an amber screen, menu-driven system. Although my High school still used a card catalog and the Dewey Decimal system (which I confess I never really learned all that well), I really didn't find the NOTIS system to be all that difficult to use. I may not have known what the call numbers meant, but I was able to find my books fairly easily. I did eventually learn the Russian history books were in the DK's up on the 6th floor of Evans Library. When I got to Rice U, I learned the German books were in the PTs on the 2nd floor of the Fondren Library. I found that I liked hanging out in the H's a lot, too, and sometimes the DD's (German history). I now know the basics of LC fairly well, at least what the leading letters mean, at a glance. I know some parts of DDC, but not the whole thing in any case, not from memory anyway. I still find DDC to LC conversion tables helpful where they exist.

Rice U. had a primitive web-based OPAC called, I believe, WebCat. It worked fairly well, and was certainly more aesthetically appealing than the old Amber-screened NOTIS system at Texas A&M. I don't know if they still have it, but when I was a graduate student, the Fondren Library had retained its card catalog, but hadn't updated it since 1986, according to the signage at the time. I don't remember if Texas A&M in those early days still maintained a physical card catalog anymore or not, but I'm thinking probably not.

I really wasn't an avid library user as a kid; I do remember attending a kind of summer camp activity thing at the Walter branch of HPL back circa 1978 or so...little did I know then that the HPL Central branch had just opened a scant 2 years prior. During High School mom would sometimes take me to HBU's campus library to do research, but she understood the library search tools better than I did...good ol' Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, etc. I just know I enjoyed pulling the bound periodicals from the shelves and reading things like Life Magazine from the 1950s and 1960s. I thought it was so cool that somebody kept these old magazines around like that so many years later.

I didn't really become an avid library user until I got to college, as an undergraduate. My library use expanded in Grad school, as I became more aware of the overall layout of the collection as ordered by LC classification. Before I went to library school, I once had an apartment that was only 5 or so minutes from HPL Central downtown. I practically raided their media library for the best of the best in documentaries, educational films, etc. I checked out and read books avidly, audio books too. That period in the late 1990s, circa 1998-99 was my heaviest period of personal public library use, when I really fell in love with HPL central, and to a lesser degree Harris County Public Library's West U. branch.

I've yet to visit the main Dallas Public Library, but have been to Fort Worth Public Library's main branch. While at UNT, I did sometimes go over to Denton Public Library. It's ok, but just can't compare to HPL's offerings, nor even Fort Bend County Library system's offerings for that matter.

Now I work in a library. At long last, I feel like I have a job with a real future, not just marking time and paying the bills, like at my last corporate gig. It was fun there, but it was ultimately a dead-end job. Which I didn't care about in my mid-to-late 20s, but as mid-to-late 20s became mid-to-late 30s, it was clear to me it was time to move on, and Libraries was the best way I could figure to get back into Academia some way, some how. It seems to have worked. I feel like I'm making a difference here, enhancing scholarship, contributing to the greater good. It's a good feeling. Signing off again, la la land calls. ZZzzzzz.

Another AV review (brief)

2008-07-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Just a quick shout out to note I really enjoyed another title in the Portable Professor series from Barnes & Noble, specifically Deborah Tannen's He Said, She Said, which is a lecture series based on her previous books and academic research on the different linguistic speaking styles of men and women and how they communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other. It was very eye opening to me and I had lots of "aha" moments all throughout, remembering past incidents with my ex-wife and ongoing dynamics with my mom. Sometimes Dr. Tannen's research leaves you feeling a little despondent, like there's no way around the impasse, but I do think she's right that at the very least it's better to understand what's going on than to not understand it. It makes a Meta-critique of the language act(s) possible, though it's not always possible in the heat of the moment. It's also much easier to catch other's faux pas ("oh, that was really insensitive") than it is to catch your own, but I guess you learn with time, and even learn to think of better things to say that are more productive responses than the "typical" response one would make, as influenced by one's gender.

Tannen was recommended to me by a library colleague at a neighboring institution, who had read her books and found them very helpful and revealing, and this is a guy whose advice I trust when it comes to reading material. That advice was solid gold in this case. I downloaded the contents of the entire lecture series from its component CDs onto my old iPod Nano (1G) and listened to it the whole drive down to Sugar Land, Texas from the DFW Metro area, roughly a 6 hour drive, depending on traffic. My only complaint about that is that when the tracks were downloaded into iTunes, the naming conventions of the different chapters were inconsistent, and so I had to be vigilant to make sure I was listening to the lectures in their proper order. At least the lectures were internally consistent with each other, so no problem at that level, but because of the naming conventions used, Lecture 10 would line up in sequence before Lecture 7, for example. I would wait until I had open road ahead of me to hop around the tracks to get the next lecture set lined up properly and started. If I could, I would try to time this with my rest stop breaks, with the car fully stopped. If I was in the middle of heavy traffic, I'd just pause my iPod and either go silent or punch out the adapter from my tape deck and listen to the radio softly instead.

This would be a handy method for "reading" library books-on-CD as well. Library audio content that is already in MP3 format typically does NOT work with the iPod but will work with any other MP3 player. I resisted going to iPod for some time until I realized I could download podcasts of foreign language news content, especially German material, with better audio quality (and later video) that short-wave radio broadcasts on Deutsche Welle just couldn't match; their own Podcasts over the web were that much superior, and since I was listening asynchronously, I could listen at my own leisure, when and where I wanted to, and I still do. My bigger iPod (8G) is what I use for this now, since the video content (RTL news, Tagessschau, and other nightly news broadcast video from Germany) takes up a lot of memory, much more so than mere audio content.

I liked having the whole lecture series compacted onto my iPod Nano, because it was a lot easier to scroll through the iPod menu than it would've been to constantly be swapping out physical CDs into and out of my CD adapter/player, which plugs into my tape-deck. I use the exact same pseudo-cassette adapter thingy for both devices and it works just fine in each. I also have some spare computer speakers that I have set up on my nightstand so I can plug in either iPod and simply listen to the content aloud while I'm getting dressed, doing chores, surfing the web or whatever (it's easier than sticking in ear buds when engaged in physical activity). This is a much cheaper work-around than getting an expensive docking port w/ speakers for one's iPod, or more sophisticated adapters that broadcast your iPod to the car's radio on an open channel (which is what you'd have to do if you had only a CD player and no tape deck). I like my low tech work arounds, personally.

Well, time to sign off for me. I managed to stretch this post longer than I thought I could. I'll sign on again, as I feel like it or have something to respond to or get off my chest, and as always I'll pledge to try to keep it Library related, or at least Higher Ed related. If I don't keep my blog(s) semi-topical, they get too unfocused and end up going nowhere. This blog was built on the ruins of earlier abandoned blogs and even earlier abandoned static websites, now lost to the mists of ancient cyberia.

Fun philosophical fisticuffs...

2008-07-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

Currently participating in a rather fun bit of philosophical fisticuffs on AUTOCAT between a Web/Libr 2.0 true believer and the big guns of AUTOCATland. I normally sit on the sidelines, or toss a grenade and run. I guess I sort of provoked our interlocutor to wander into AUTOCATland, sort of like a military reconnaissance scout launching a feint attack on a larger force, which gives pursuit and is lead into an ambush as they cross in front of our biggest guns, which open up on the invader. After the initial salvo, I swung back around and made a strafing run. Ah, such fun. I've been getting off-list private messages of support, back slaps, etc. Our interlocutor is a prolific poster, however, so it may have to wait until the weekend for me to respond at length over there.

I will probably be able to attend to this blog more now that I have a working Desktop PC at home in my bedroom and don't have to rely on my laptop. I love my laptop, but damn do I hate laptop keyboards. If I have to type anything over a paragraph on one it's just plain painful. The conflict averse are playing kissy-make up on AUTOCAT right now, with the list traffic slowing up a bit, but I'm not ready to make nice. I do think I've made most of my major points already, but half the fun is responding to the overblown rhetoric of my opponent. I don't have time to go into the details here, but it may be fodder for future postings.

The Weeding (& Reading) of History in Libraries, reconsidered.

2008-07-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

I recently finished an audio lecture series (Portable Professor by Barnes & Noble) delivered by Professor James Loewen, author of the landmark history book Lies my teacher told me. Loewen is a sociologist by training, but has long experience teaching history, and particularly the history of race relations in America. This is evident because the most outstanding, most eye-opening (to me at least) set of lectures delivered by Loewen in this series is the two part lecture titled The Nadir of Race Relations in America, 1890-1940. The lecture series itself is entitled Everything you've been taught is wrong: Fact, Fiction and Lies in American History, consisting of a grand total of 14 lectures on CD, plus a bonus CD of samples from other lectures in the Portable Professor series.

Loewen does far more than recount notable facts and dates and the exploits of great men in American history. He goes a level deeper to give his listeners an education in the nature of historiography itself. As a librarian, it has made me reconsider my attitude towards the weeding of Academic library materials, at least in the subject of history. At more than one point Loewen stresses not only the importance of primary source material (which every historian at least pays lip service to), but also points out that in relation to secondary sources, many times it is the older sources, closer to the time of the actual events described, where the more straightforward and honest, less embellished accounts of history can be found (and give clues on where to look with regards to primary sources). This sort of goes against the grain of our training in contemporary librarianship, where NEW is assumed nearly always to be inherently BETTER. And in Scientific and technical fields, this does tend to hold true. But this "insight" is potentially damaging when misapplied to the humanities, and particularly the field of History. Loewen's lectures really opened my eyes to the LIS implications of his research. I will think twice before recommending some older, dusty history series be chucked out because it's "too old" and "nobody" reads it. Loewen's own research patterns contraindicate this, and we ignore the needs of "expert" library users like Loewen at our peril, especially in academic libraries. I happen to have had the chance to physically handle these older history books very recently in my current ongoing Name Authorities project I am working on.

One byproduct of this NAF work is that periodically I will encounter a bibliographic record, usually of older materials dating from the TSCW or even "College of Industrial Arts" period of my current institution, where the record is basically incomplete/temporary, and seems to have been hastily added from a catalog card long ago and never upgraded; Often no holdings listed in OCLC, and some of these short local records even lack adequate LCSH's. So I physically pull the volumes, look them up in OCLC (frequently able to do so by LCCN, but generally only for materials published since the 1950s, mostly in the United States). With enough digging, I am usually able to find these missing materials, import the proper record, attach our holdings in OCLC, and overlay the brief record with the robust, full record that should have been there to begin with. Some of the brief records don't even fully match the book-in-hand their barcodes relate to (dates are wrong, a later second edition record is used for a first edition work, etc). It's kind of a mess that has been long overdue for this kind of cleanup, and I'm grateful to take a break from rather constant copy-cataloging and original cataloging during the regular semester to get this done.

When I first handled these books, my inclination was at first "ugh, why do we even still keep these around", but upon listening to Loewen's lectures, I have a deeper appreciation for these rarer books, and also an appreciation of making my home institution a better library citizen, by attaching our holdings and announcing to the world that these sometimes rare resources are available through I.L.L.

Of course, such work does require, for lack of a better word, something of a leap of library faith. You can't know for sure if any of your detailed, behind the scenes work will directly benefit anyone specific. It might not even matter in your lifetime. You're handling a collection that is bigger than yourself, something that will outlast you, but you have the awareness that decisions you make now will leave footprints later, directions taken now will either help (or hinder) research in the future. That's a humbling realization, and keeps one striving to do good and avoid doing harm in cataloging work.

My only criticism of Everything you've been taught is wrong is the lectures that touch upon Kennedy and the early 1960s. This is Loewen weakest material; though that said it's still better than many standard textbook accounts. Loewen also offers a criticism of Socialism early on that may well apply to certain total forms of state socialism, but do not hold true across all forms of Socialism. My own Socialist views are tempered by an anarcho-syndicalist/radical democratic streak. More Rosa Luxembourg and less Lenin. Loewen glosses over this distinction, painting with an overbroad brush. But these criticism are really minor. In the main, Loewen does a fantastic job of deconstructing, well nigh demolishing the Triumphalist/Nationalist (not to mention Neo-Confederate) View that dominates in the teaching of American history today at the secondary, and even the undergraduate collegiate survey course level.

As someone who lived though the ending of the Cold War as a young adult, I'm leery of the way history books are teaching this geopolitical drama to the younger generation who were too young to have any meaningful memory of it. I saw TOP GUN in High school, I watched the Berlin Wall come down on live television. It was very real, lived history to me, and people like me were in a unique position to critically re-examine the Cold War and realize just how much of a chimera and a charade much of it was. We were too young to be committed Cold Warriors (either pro or anti Soviet), so our views were still malleable, but the Cold War was also lived reality for us in ways it wasn't and can't ever be for those who come after us. It's not impossible for them to gain the same insights, but I'd assert it will be more difficult.

Heck, some of the Freshmen that will be starting this Fall will have no personal memory of the O.J. Simpson trial, let alone Rodney King and the ensuing L.A. Riots circa 1991. They were too young for these events to have any real meaning for them, and if they have any knowledge at all of the events, it's from immediate family and extended relatives who may talk about the events, or maybe they stumbled on a YouTube clip about it, or a Wikipedia article, or got curious about this stuff watching VH1 on cable.

It makes me glad to have cataloged a lot of ephemera we collected on VHS tapes which we inherited from the Minerva Center, a think-tank in Washington DC that studies topics pertaining to women and the military. Many of them were recordings of live television news programs and talk show discussions about 1980s-1990s debates surrounding women in the military, the Tailhook scandal, and Clinton era revived debates about gays and lesbians serving in the military. These are important pieces of history, too, right down to the corny 1980s television commercials in between the news segments.

Librarians, especially Academic Librarians, need to cultivate a finely attuned sense of history and historiography to fully treat their collections with the respect and care they deserve. I think most Librarians do make that effort, though with some Web/Libr 2.0 advocates I do wonder.

I would definitely recommend Loewen's lecture series as an audiobook acquisition even for Public libraries, and I am currently investigating other lecture sets in the Portable Professor series. Our local Barnes & Noble is having a clearance sale on them and I scooped up a bunch of titles for myself lately. I understand these will never be popular enough for B&N to keep on their in-store shelf-space and fully expect these to be internet-only available items. But these are items worth of consideration by collection development and acquisitions librarians. Precisely the kind of stuff we ought to be promoting that, though they will never be a commercial success at B&N, are nevertheless vital to the intellectual health of the nation. This is part of why Libraries differ from bookstores, and why we can and must exist peaceably side by side.

Mixed feelings about the renovations at HPL central

2008-07-09T21:47:00.001-07:00

I took a personal tour of the newly renovated central branch of the Houston Public Library. I have to say, elated as I was that my old main library was back in operation again after a long hiatus, well, it's like that awkward feeling you get when a girl you secretly like changes her hairstyle...for the worse. You're tongue tied. You can't REALLY tell her what you think and so you say "looks great", or something equally innocuous. It would be too gauche to say "I liked the way you had it before", even if that's how you really feel.

In the case of HPL, it's not as though I necessarily liked the "before" better than the "after" picture here (you all are shocked, I can tell). No, it's just that after all the facelifts, nips and tucks, you'd think the result would be better than it is.

In no particular order, the biggest changes...the Elevators--gone. No big loss, really, as nearly half of them tended to be out of service at any given moment and you had to walk up them anyway. They've been replaced by a central stairway and elevator.

Children's library--was in the basement, now on the very top floor. Not so crazy about this change either, because it displaces the media library that was on the 4th floor. More on that in a minute. Anyway, so you're making the kiddos either ride the elevator or climb a lot of stairs, and heaven forbid if the elevator ever konks out. Lots of tired, surly kids going up and down those stairs, through the center of the building, making noise that can be heard all over the building, since it's an open and exposed staircase. My personal preference would've been to keep them in the basement, as always.

The basement itself is now 100% enclosed staff workspace, and a white, clinical void for patrons, with one lone security guard. The parking garage is similarly transformed. The public elevator is now the staff elevator. The new public elevator is located in a sterile, white room, encased in Plexiglas, with one lone security guard at what looks like a lectern, and an automated ticket teller machine (heaven help you if you don't have exact change, since the guard can't.). I know this saves from having to have the security guards put in a shift as the gate teller, and that it had been like that even before the renovation, but I still don't like it.

More staff reductions on the first floor. The good news, more check out lanes, on BOTH sides now. The not-so-good news--all nearly 100% automated with exactly 1 circ clerk to handle any issues (like fines & blocks, etc) and one security guard.

Media Library...abolished; VHS holdings--gone. I can sort of understand that...I myself switched to DVDs after I broke down and bought a PS2 (i.e. when the PS3 came out--I'm always a generation behind on Playstation units; I was enjoying the hell outta my PSX when PS2 was all the rage). But what really gets my goat is that I *KNOW* they didn't replace all the VHS holdings with equally ample DVD holdings. These are MUCH reduced today. Ironic for me, the notorious book snob, to complain about HPL's Media Library policies, but I love AV media, actually; It's just that I prefer the more elevated discourse of educational Documentaries, Human interest films, Artsy and Foreign flicks...i.e. the stuff most Blockbuster outlets will at most devote one aisle to and would prefer not to go near with a 10 foot pole if they could.
Libraries can do a great service in picking up that slack, and sometimes they have modest successes.

Their audiobook collection also shows signs of heavy weeding...all CDs now, no audiocassettes that I saw, though I could be wrong. It was certainly CD-dominant if not 100%. Again, sign of the times, not that much of a surprise. I was glad that they had more titles from the Teaching Company and in principle the fact that all the titles were in DVD format shouldn't have been an issue, but...Look, I know the Teaching company offers ALL their lectures on audio as well as on DVD, but some titles make a LOT more sense on video than others...like Mathematics topics or Art appreciation topics, something with a visual element as a legitimate part of the material, not just filler material for the voice overs. Which is what they were stuck with with the titles they selected...a series on Shakespeare, another on Hitler, etc. These are primarily lecture courses, mind you, so you won't be seeing moving visual clips from Leni Riefenstahl on the Hitler lecture, I bet. What HPL has done is virtually guaranteed that nobody will check these DVDs out. Even I would hesitate whereas if they were audio-CDs, I wouldn't hesitate to check them out. An Audio CD is something I can burn onto my iPod and take with me...a DVD isn't. I'd prefer cassettes for my tape deck in my car, but again, that's the latent Luddite impulse in me. I have a CD adapter of course...I decided I wouldn't pass up Bill Bryson or Sarah Vowell's latest on audio over a mere formatting quibble. Though I must say I was delighted to be able to order David Sedaris's latest work When you are engulfed in flames on audiocassette. That was totally bad ass, thank you David, thank you thank you.

Library geek that I am, of course I had to stroll through the 000's, to check out the LIS material. Still pretty robust, though I wish they wouldn't have weeded so much of Alternative Library Literature, the biennial anthology. They ditched all but the last volume, 2000-2001, which is a shame because the earlier volumes had lots of good material as well, some of it quite timeless. They also had updated DDC22's, having replaced the earlier DDC21's they did have. I did finally get a used copy of the DDC21 for my own curiosity. But on the whole, the LIS collection at HPL has undergone some shrinkage, and that's also unfortunate.

In the Foreign Language collection, the library has nearly abandoned bibliographic control altogether. It's a Dewey-Free zone. Now just a basic language code (SP, Fr, G, Ru, Vo) and the first 5 or so letters of the author's last name, alphabetized. The selections for the German books were fair-to-middlin'; some pieces of belle lettres and pieces of translated English bestseller crap from the US and UK (too much of the latter for my taste). I suppose I should be happy they still HAVE a foreign language section and that some stupid nativist English-only bunch of nutjobs hasn't lobbied to shut it down yet.

The plaza of the Library has been festively painted with geometric square and rectangular patterns in primary colors. It's ok, but doesn't really move me. I was upset that they'd removed the metal sculpture out front. It's not gone completely, they just moved it up a block to front Smith Street, but still, it looks out of place next to the more classical building design of the older branch of the library where the Texas state documents, genealogical and local records are kept. That modernist piece of sculpture clashes completely next to this building, but I'm glad it was preserved in some form, though they should've just left it where it was.

Also, as a concealed carry permit holder, I noticed the library is a 30.06 regulated "gun free zone"; It always has been, actually--it just irks the sh*t out of me now that I'm more aware of the issue and have a stake in it. The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas also has a 30.06 sign. As if signage there would've made a difference back on November 22, 1963, but I digress.

I guess the best thing I can say about HPL Central branch is, I'm glad you're back in operation, baby. Not sure about the new look, but I guess it'll grow on me eventually.

Name (& subject) authority work in E-books

2008-06-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

I am working on an ongoing Name Authority project for the summer and have noticed that for our Electronic Books, there are very few records where we have an existing record in the NAF for the author in the 1XX field of these E-book records.I found out from my Electronic Resources Librarian that this was not normally part of the Electronic book workflow. I have requested to be updated about all new E-book loads so that the authority work can get done at the time the records are added, just like with regular print books.I have also noticed that especially with E-books, some of these vendor records get rather creative with their subject headings and especially their use of subdivisions; either they completely ignore the scope notes or just start seemingly making up their own subdivisions willy-nilly. Sometimes I will take time to fix/repair them into proper subject headings that follow the rules (often requiring breaking the single heading up into a couple of distinct headings, etc), other times I'll just let it stand as is. Sometimes the 1XX from the vendor-supplied record does not jive with the 1xx in the authority record from OCLC, and I have to cut & paste in the correct(ed) heading into the (local) bib record so it will link up correctly with the authority record I'm about to import from OCLC.I seldom encounter the same problems with copy-cataloging print monographs; It seems to be a quality control issue mainly with E-books; That said, it's not a BIG problem, most e-book records are just fine; it's just the phenomenon is quite a bit more noticeable when contrasted with monographs. It's admittedly hard to resist a little pop-psychoanalysis here; Do Electronic resources catalogers who work directly for vendors (instead of in libraries) feel special, like they're entitled to willfully flaunt subject cataloging rules/guidelines that the rest of us "ordinary" (i.e. mainly monographic, higher ed institution embedded) catalogers have to follow?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Unfocused Bibliographic Rant

2008-05-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

Stringing together a few disparate items and commentaries, somewhat interrelated. Sort of.

Comment to a like-minded colleague...

(Me, then quoting) ...More wisdom from on High at LC:

>"a future for bibliographic control that will be collaborative,

>decentralized, international in scope, and Web-based*change will

>happen quickly, and bibliographic control will be dynamic, not

>static."

Translation: "The Future of Bibliographic control will be one enormous, raging Clusterfuck" (tm).

Or "Bibliographic control??? HAAH! We don't need no steeenking bibliographic control..."

Or "Let them eat wikis..."

then this one; quote first, then comment

-----Original Message-----

From: AUTOCAT On Behalf Of [X]

Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 2:11 AM

To: AUTOCAT

Subject: Re: (reaction to) Letter from Deanna Marcum and Joint Statement on RDA

I ... think it is completely in line with the

excellent recommendation of the Working Group to "Redefine the Bibliographic

Universe" to include all potential partners who create bibliographic

information ("metadata") into this scenario. I would like to point out here

that it is not we who are the ones to define the bibliographic universe,

it's our users who define it. They can now search all kinds of databases

just as easily (or as I have written elsewhere, *more easily*) than our own

databases.

The "bibliographic universe" to an increasing number of people is defined by

Google and Yahoo and not by us. This is an amazing transformation that has

taken place in only the last 10 or 15 years! I can imagine that many

metadata managers (many of them vendors) would much prefer to fit into the

"bibliographic universe" of Google and Yahoo than into the one we proclaim.

I believe that if we are to have a chance to convince these other "metadata

groups" that they need to be included in our own "bibliographic universe,"

these groups must feel as if they have some sort of a say in the situation.

We can't just say to them, "this is what we do, and if you want to cooperate

with us, do as we say, otherwise...!" That is not cooperation.

But I believe that somewhere, somehow a type of agreement could be reached

where we can cooperate to the extent where all can become more productive

and increase quality at the same time. I know that Mike thinks otherwise,

and he has far more experience in these matters than I do, but I fully

confess that I'm a dreamer! Behind these dreams however, is the conviction

that the "bibliographic universe" of our users and that of traditional

library catalogs must begin to merge. Otherwise, our users will opt for

Google/Yahoo, just as they do today.
======================================================

This is a library manager/administrator, too, which is what worries me the most.

He states... "We [libraries] can't just say to them [online content providers, etc], 'this is what we do, and if you want to cooperate with us, do as we say, otherwise...!' "

Actually this is exactly what we should do. The above missive is to me so wrongheaded, based on such a skewed picture...We call it the *Bibliographic* Universe (rather than, I dunno, the "Infoverse") because, much as the techie heads hem and haw, discursive prose books still form the basis of a solid, thoughtful education; That is still very much "our thing" (i.e. Libraries), and Google, et. al. can just suck it, frankly.

The online resources can augment such education, no doubt, and are welcome and have their place...if the so-called "digital natives" want to get "something", "fast", by all means let them Yahoo-it and Google-it to their heart's content. No skin off my back. If they find what they think they need, great, wonderful, glad to hear it. If they eventually get frustrated and realize they need help, we [librarians] will be waiting at the Reference Desk down at the library, like we always have been. We will not dumb down our search tools or degrade the quality of our bibliographic data just for your sake, though we may give you a simplified interface as the default setting.

I realize I'm railing against prevailing, possibly inevitable trends, but prevailing trends seem to be such a gathering dirty snowball of stupid (or teh st00pid as the 'net nerds say) I can hardly help myself.

Names above have been disguised to protect the misguided.

=====================

My like-minded friend also related this to me...

"...Tried to interject Neil Postman into the meeting on the topic of “critical thinking” and was told that the age of the renaissance man was gone and we should only be concerned about knowing what works for our immediate work and personal life; the vocational vs. scholarly argument. The example of understanding “war” was summed up as being completely explained by pictures and “Band of Brothers” as opposed about reading books of sociology, history, anthropology. ….. "

I asked him straight up, "Did you respond appropriately with deep, mocking laughter?"

(rhetorical question—I know the real power relations of his workplace aren’t exactly favorable)

Just because we can’t reasonably know truly “a bit of everything” like the Renaissance men of the 18^th century, it does not therefore follow that we abdicate on understanding at all beyond narrow, instrumental vocational needs…you can still come to understand a great deal. The human mind yearns for understanding once more base needs have been satisfied by the paycheck…

Since when, by the way, was the age of the Renaissance Man repealed? Was that one of the secret provisions of the USA Patriot Act that I missed? I hear they also went and repealed Godwin's Law, too. Must've been the paragraph after that one. Nobody read the damn thing before voting on it anyway...

Anyway, on the social front, I enjoyed hanging out with the UTD Skeptics and UNT-Freethought Alliance End of Semester Bash. Good to meet fellow atheists, agnostics, etc. But also a reminder about Marx declaring something to the effect that that "criticism of religion is the beginning of critical thought"; Freeing oneself of religion is but the first step, but many seem to rest on their laurels after that, as if that was all that need be done, not recognizing powerful cultural myths (often nationalistic), that, though ostensibly secular, hold just as much power over the mind and often stand in, in place of critical consideration of unpleasant facts, wherever such deliberations may lead...

Anyway, I do look forward to their resuming campus activity in the Fall. I'm going to miss that group this summer. I guess I will take up again with the North Texas Church of Freethought, maybe check out some programs with Texas Master Naturalists and Texas Master Gardeners.

I'm definitely looking forward to the ELUNA Conference in Long Beach, California, which will be her very very soon.