Just a quick update...I had lost my password, been busy with work, found out my Ex not only lives in the same stinkin' town, but is now studying Library Science at the same place where I work (I must've inspired her, who knew?), and she's joined the same activist librarian organization that I sit on as a member of its coordinating committee; It's an organization dedicated to a Left/Progressive worldview, which is ironic since I know my Ex is NOT a Leftist, Progressive, or anything like that. She is anti-war, and doesn't like Bush, but that's not saying much these days. Her world view is probably somewhere between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. Maybe she's changed, but I'll never be convinced.
Anyway, I'm blogging from a hotspot downtown because my wireless network at home is acting screwy and won't stay connected for more than a few minutes--if that. This is still an improvement over yesterday, where it was completely offline...even if I brought the stupid laptop into the same room as the slow-as-molasses, crappy E-machines desktop I use as my "hub".
I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep thanks to the Diet Coke I drank to give me energy to keep fiddling with my home network, which I gave up on. I have a date with the Linksys guys this weekend, when I can devote time to it.
The cataloging gig is going well...still need to read the latest Thomas Mann critique of the Working Group Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control. I am a strong supporter of Mann, and look forward to his latest critique. It has generated a lot of AUTOCAT and RADCAT traffic, to be sure. In the meantime, I continue the quiet tradition of subversive cataloging founded by Sandy Berman...enhancing shared records with additional subject access not found on OCLC, but relevant to the work in hand as a finding aid.
Berman was/is a lot more braver than I'll ever be--but he was an inspiration to me in Library school and still is in my professional life.
Anyway, I feel badly about posting so infrequently. I had an idea for a post about a month ago but never got around to it. Will try to do better. Signing off for now.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
From Umployed to Newly Employed
As I alluded to in my last post, I've gone from being unemployed to being newly employed. I now work for a slightly larger academic library in the greater DFW Metroplex. I'm still in Texas, but a long ways from my native Houston. Houston's still where my heart is, and my long term plans now include a triumphal return to Houston, to one day finally land the cushy, prestigious Librarian gig at either Rice University or the University of Houston, that have thusfar eluded me at every turn.
My current objective therefore is to excel in the new job and gain enough valuable and varied work experience in my new Library to make myself attractive to bigger and better universities in Texas or elsewhere.
It was with some trepidation that I continued applying for cataloging positions alongside Reference jobs. And yes, this new job is a cataloging job, too. But it is ONLY cataloging, not Tech Services Librarian as before. So the scope of my responsibilities is somewhat more narrow. And what a difference a dedicated Library I.T. staff makes!! Yes, I am dealing with the same Voyager ILS as before at TAMUG, but this time, the damn thing WORKS! and when it DOENS'T, I have people who actually know how to MAKE it work, so I can get back to doing my job. There is admittedly a lot of overlap with my 2 copy-catalogers, as I do my fair share of the copy cataloging as well. But now that I am on the scene, all original cataloging shifts to me, and I have already done some, which was kind of a rush! I've even gotten to handle a Russian book and a German book! Pretty neat! I'm told that there will be music scores and other odder stuff on its way to me soon, all of which fills me with further trepidation but all of them are just good learning experiences, too. If I actually get to be any good at music cataloging, that would be a rare set of skills to acquire and should serve me well in future job search pitches.
I also answered a cataloging question from the Circulation desk about AUDN codes in MARC denoting the intended audience of a particular work. Since the institution of higher learning whose library I work in serves in part to train new teachers, it has a substantial children's collection in the lower level, so this particular fixed field in a MARC record becomes pretty important. The CIRC person was not familiar with it and was most thankful to me for pointing it out to her. It all boils down to cataloger judgment, of course, so let's hope most of the copy cataloging we download from OCLC for kids books first received their original cataloging from a school librarian cataloger who is conscientious enough to fill out the AUDN fixed field with care and due thought given to the audience beyond "blank" or "juvenile".
I'm still a little unsure of myself, but I have my copy of AACR2,R2 close by, and OCLC's BibFormats page (which I like the layout of better than LOC's MARC21 pages) is saved as a favorite in my Firefox browser, while I use IE to open the browser-based version of OCLC's main bibliographic Connexion database. I also downloaded the latest version of IE with tabs so I can open LC's Classification Web next to the OCLC Connexion display.
I'm planning to get on the Saturday rotation for the Reference Desk. I'm fortunate to now have a library job that affords me to the opportunity to do this, so I can get my feet wet in Public Services work while learning cataloging in depth, on the job.
A lot of my initial anxiety has gone away after having realized that our local iteration of Voyager actually works and would not be the bane of my existence. Also, I'm not nearly as obsessed with the collection and collection development here as I was back at TAMUG. It's in the hands of a team of dedicated professionals and sufficiently broad in scope to not overly pique my interest unduly.
I'm writing this in Houston, but will return back to the Metroplex after the MLK holiday.
It's too early on to speculate on future jobs, but the long-term game plan is still to work for Rice University or UH back here in Houston, either in cataloging or reference. It's a worthy goal, something new on the horizon to strive for, which I believe we all need ahead of us lest we get listless and bored. The concrete things I can do to realize these long term goals is to learn as much as I can on my current job, especially the "hard" cataloging of "strange" materials like musical scores, maps, etc. There's no point in running away from "hard" cataloging tasks, you have to jump right in there and do them, and learn. Easy to say, potentially terrifying in real life, but probably nothing really worth doing is ever easy, right?
I don't know how often I will keep this blog updated now that I am actually working again. We'll just have to see.
My current objective therefore is to excel in the new job and gain enough valuable and varied work experience in my new Library to make myself attractive to bigger and better universities in Texas or elsewhere.
It was with some trepidation that I continued applying for cataloging positions alongside Reference jobs. And yes, this new job is a cataloging job, too. But it is ONLY cataloging, not Tech Services Librarian as before. So the scope of my responsibilities is somewhat more narrow. And what a difference a dedicated Library I.T. staff makes!! Yes, I am dealing with the same Voyager ILS as before at TAMUG, but this time, the damn thing WORKS! and when it DOENS'T, I have people who actually know how to MAKE it work, so I can get back to doing my job. There is admittedly a lot of overlap with my 2 copy-catalogers, as I do my fair share of the copy cataloging as well. But now that I am on the scene, all original cataloging shifts to me, and I have already done some, which was kind of a rush! I've even gotten to handle a Russian book and a German book! Pretty neat! I'm told that there will be music scores and other odder stuff on its way to me soon, all of which fills me with further trepidation but all of them are just good learning experiences, too. If I actually get to be any good at music cataloging, that would be a rare set of skills to acquire and should serve me well in future job search pitches.
I also answered a cataloging question from the Circulation desk about AUDN codes in MARC denoting the intended audience of a particular work. Since the institution of higher learning whose library I work in serves in part to train new teachers, it has a substantial children's collection in the lower level, so this particular fixed field in a MARC record becomes pretty important. The CIRC person was not familiar with it and was most thankful to me for pointing it out to her. It all boils down to cataloger judgment, of course, so let's hope most of the copy cataloging we download from OCLC for kids books first received their original cataloging from a school librarian cataloger who is conscientious enough to fill out the AUDN fixed field with care and due thought given to the audience beyond "blank" or "juvenile".
I'm still a little unsure of myself, but I have my copy of AACR2,R2 close by, and OCLC's BibFormats page (which I like the layout of better than LOC's MARC21 pages) is saved as a favorite in my Firefox browser, while I use IE to open the browser-based version of OCLC's main bibliographic Connexion database. I also downloaded the latest version of IE with tabs so I can open LC's Classification Web next to the OCLC Connexion display.
I'm planning to get on the Saturday rotation for the Reference Desk. I'm fortunate to now have a library job that affords me to the opportunity to do this, so I can get my feet wet in Public Services work while learning cataloging in depth, on the job.
A lot of my initial anxiety has gone away after having realized that our local iteration of Voyager actually works and would not be the bane of my existence. Also, I'm not nearly as obsessed with the collection and collection development here as I was back at TAMUG. It's in the hands of a team of dedicated professionals and sufficiently broad in scope to not overly pique my interest unduly.
I'm writing this in Houston, but will return back to the Metroplex after the MLK holiday.
It's too early on to speculate on future jobs, but the long-term game plan is still to work for Rice University or UH back here in Houston, either in cataloging or reference. It's a worthy goal, something new on the horizon to strive for, which I believe we all need ahead of us lest we get listless and bored. The concrete things I can do to realize these long term goals is to learn as much as I can on my current job, especially the "hard" cataloging of "strange" materials like musical scores, maps, etc. There's no point in running away from "hard" cataloging tasks, you have to jump right in there and do them, and learn. Easy to say, potentially terrifying in real life, but probably nothing really worth doing is ever easy, right?
I don't know how often I will keep this blog updated now that I am actually working again. We'll just have to see.
Musings on reading & personal reading experiences.
Fair warning, this blog post today is not a scholarly treatise. It is a semi-focused bibliophile’s rant, railing against yet another assault on the sacred preserve of reading, especially the reading habits of children. I originally composed this in December, before I moved back up to the greater DFW Metroplex area to start my new library job. (more on that later).
My first 9 years of life I grew up in and around Columbia, South Carolina, and we trekked to Oran, Missouri, home of my maternal grandmother. It was never cold enough to snow (that nearly always came to Missouri AFTER Christmas, to my perennial childhood disappointment), but it did sometimes rain and sleet, and if we were really lucky, we got the Faux-White Christmas of lots of frost on the rolling hills of farmland up around Caledonia, Missouri near my paternal grandmother’s place. If you squinted and used your imagination you could BS yourself into believing it was snow. I think I experienced a genuine white Christmas, with actual snow on the ground that accumulated, maybe ONCE my entire childhood.
When I visited my maternal grandmother, I at least had cousins my own age to play with. But at my paternal grandparents, no such luck. Mostly a lot of adults having boring conversations that, as a kid, I couldn’t stand. I would sneak off to my guest room in the attic and curl up with a good book. I remember I once read one of Tom Clancy’s books…one of the ones not long after The Hunt For Red October…from cover to cover the whole night through, just could not put it down. My elbows ached from propping up in bed reading. So I’d switch positions until I got uncomfortable again.
I read so much on family vacations…in later years, as a grad student on winter break, I read more mature stuff like a book on the Vienna of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s day, or a biography of Arthur Schopenhauer.
We’d always start our trips in the wee hours of the morning, before sunrise, “to beat the traffic”, my dad always said. Usually I’d drift off back to sleep in the back seat. Then I’d awaken with the morning sun streaming in the car’s windows. Before long we’d stop for breakfast and when I came of age, had to do my own fair share of the driving before turning the car back over to mom and dad after lunch.
On those stretches of road where I was passenger rather than driver, my head was usually buried in a book. I read the whole Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series that way, much to the annoyance of my parents, who couldn’t understand why I was erupting into irrepressible belly laughter every few miles or so. They learned to dread buying me FAR SIDE comic book compilations for the same reason, too. My mom was one of those people who could just never “get” Gary Larson’s FAR SIDE; Her funny bone just wasn’t in tune with Larson’s bizarre thought patterns the way mine was and still is.
Sometimes I’d listen to music when driving, sometimes as a passenger in the front seat, sometimes there would be a good NPR program on that was worth listening to, but mostly unless I was behind the wheel, I’d read.
I look around me today, though, at contemporary children sitting in their parent’s SUVs, their eyes glued to smallish TV monitors built into the back of their parent’s front row car seats, watching the latest Disney animated epic, or playing video games or what have you. Sure, in my day, sometimes played hand-held digital football and digital baseball, even digital space-invaders, but these seldom held my attention for very long and I was usually back reading a book again before too long. But kids today don’t have a chance. Even if they wanted to, the lure of the screen is probably too much. Their attention span is shot, even shorter than in my day, and like their parents themselves, they’re deathly afraid of boredom—and without the joy of reading, or productive yet rewarding physical labor, or physical play, boredom can loom as a palpable threat.
A typical child today can ride with mommy and daddy from Texas to California and not once crack a book, I’ll bet. I can only hope that maybe the charm wears off, that one can only watch the Lion King and the rest of the Disney favorites on DVD only SO many times, one can win the hardest Call of Duty missions or Fantasy Superbowls only so often, before boredom creeps back in and the attractive cover of a book beckons. But this is way stiffer competition for books than the admittedly crappy handheld digital football & baseball old school electronic games of my day.
I just marvel at how much of my childhood, adolescent and young adult reading got done on the open road, or during the lulls in family get-togethers, either in Missouri or at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where one summer at a family reunion I finished a used copy of Journalist Hendrick Smith’s non-fiction personal narrative titled THE RUSSIANS, about the Russian people and his reflections as a journalist assigned to Moscow during the Soviet era. It was a tad out of date (his sequel, dealing with the Yeltsin era, THE NEW RUSSIANS, had already been published), but still an important piece of living history to read.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve taken one (of many) of Neil Postman’s cautions to heart, namely that eventually it becomes just as important to decide what NOT to read, what one can duly ignore without detriment, as it does to decide what one will take time to read. The bibliographic universe, just like the physical universe it exists in, is so mind-bogglingly huge it really is quite difficult to appreciate at first just how large it is, what its contours are, etc. It eventually teaches the folly of thinking one can read everything there is on a given subject; That may have been possible for the 18th Century scholarly gentleman, but it is no longer the case in our time. Reading and the production of professional texts has become too massive in scale to ever make it possible to read every last jot and tittle on a particular subject. You do what you can. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life is not lived. And what value is reading after a certain point if one doesn’t share what one reads, discuss what one read and what one got out of the experience? On the one hand the act of reading is a profoundly anti-social activity and yet can foster the deepest communities of interest, etc.
In relationships, it doesn’t matter if your partner also loves to read or not; that’s irrelevant, so not the point. The point is, are they able to keep themselves sufficiently entertained without resentment while you indulge your reading addiction. They may love books as much or more than you…but if they’re emotionally needy, none of that will matter and you will raise their ire immediately if you put a book in front of your nose and between your nose and theirs. They will never want to read when you do, however much you may encourage that. No, mutual love of books is wholly insufficient to keep a reading life going while in relationship. I hope I never finish another book in the same way that I finished Peter Sack’s Standardized Minds, namely cramming in a page here, a page there when my then wife went to the ladies room or took a shower without me (which was rare in itself), covertly putting the book away when she’d come back into the bedroom. It was crazy, no way to nurture a reading life. More of a measure of desperation, sort of keeping one’s reading life on crucial life support to keep it from dying out altogether, hoping someday it shall awaken once more from the coma it inadvertently slipped into. I did finish the book, though, and felt some smug satisfaction at having done so. It was one among a number of twisted little passive-aggressive emotional wargames we played with each other until the marriage broke up.
These days, people will examine my casual reading and ask “is that for a class?”, as if reading has instrumental value only; But this question is still better than one I have actually received… “Why are you reading?” Not, “What are you reading”, no, but “why”. I usually ignore the question, since anyone dumb enough to ask it is usually someone I want nothing further to do with.
I'm fortunate to have found work with a slightly larger academic library than TAMUG's, actually, as I'm able to continue my refined reading habits, most of which are seldom satisfied by the average public library fare. I can learn to make due, but much of what I like to read is of scholarly interest and too narrowly focus to fit within the collection development plans of the typical public library. Luckily one of the perks of my job is that I now have borrowing privileges again, and for the entire semester to boot, unlike at Rice U, where I had a mere month as a Friend of the Fondren Library. Since I no longer live in Houston, I've let my membership expire in that particular Library Friends' organization.I've managed to finish a couple of new books and may or may not post a review soon. One of them was Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus, which was a very good book, somewhat reminiscent of What's the Matter with Kansas, but told in first person, by Joe, moving back to the native rural Virginia of his youth after a full and colorful adult life lived elsewhere. The book is an attempt to come to terms with the contrasting working class consciousness's of Bageant himself and those of his neighbors and classmates who stayed behind in Virginia while Joe saw the world and got enlightened. Like I said, good book, but thoroughly and relentlessly depressing. The Empire has plenty of ripe fodder; fascism depends on the incurious who don't want to be bothered to think for themselves, prefer patriotic pieties to reasoned discourse, etc.
Bageant ties so much of this to the Scots-Irish (Ulster Scots, Borderers as they are otherwise called) immigrant heritage of America. Back in Ulster, their ancestors were the Bulwark of Empire then, too. Warlike, deeply religious, heavy drinkers, those who treat personal subjective political opinion as some kind of inviolate political high truth, as long as it "sounds right", and they're utterly resistant to any egg-headed investigation into the facts that might move them from "sounding right" to actually being more certain. Doesn't matter. I don't know how true this is, but Bageant's thesis is certainly provocative. Makes me glad, moreover, to be straight Scots (with some German intermarriage), and not Scots-Irish. I am a native Southerner, but through reading and education and life experiences have come to repudiate so much of unreconstructed White, Southern heritage and worldview.
At least I'm living close to a old friend who hails from California (UC Berkeley alumnus), we agree on nearly everything except guns (I am a TEXAN, after all).
Monday, December 03, 2007
Waffenrecht ist Menschenrecht
Some news: I recently interviewed face-to-face for a cataloger position at the Blagg-Huey Library of Texas Woman’s University, having been invited after doing well on a telephone interview with them a few weeks prior. I felt ambivalent driving up to Denton, Texas again, having fled Denton in the wake of an ugly, dissolving marriage on the rocks and eventual divorce, all while struggling to finish the rest of my MLS degree online. I got to stay in a historic home that was donated to TWU by a deceased faculty member and is now used as a guest house and presumably for swanky university-related shindigs and the like. The interview went ok, I guess, though I was probably less passionate than I was at the University of South Carolina earlier this year, and the lunchtime conversation had precious little to do with Libraries, whereas at the University of South Carolina, most of my formal meals with library staffers involved polite discussions of professional issues, past library work experiences, etc. It felt very collegial.
By contrast, the whole interview process with TWU struck me as a good deal less structured, less formal. I know the main reason I’m even being considered at all is that I have hands-on (albeit limited) experience with the Voyager ILS, and I also have the one EndUser Conference 2006 under my belt as well. It puts me one length ahead of both fresh out of library school candidates and also ahead of more experienced librarians who are familiar with other ILS’s besides Voyager and would have to play catch up to reach where I am with Voyager, at least in theory. I am wary of being once again the only MLS in the Cataloging side of things, though this time if hired I’d have 2 experienced copy catalogers, one of them with many years of experience, including with original cataloging under her belt. I would not be completely alone, the director reassured. Again, my ideal set up in a first library job would be in a larger department with co-equal co-workers I could turn to first, and bosses with a cataloging background. The head of Tech Services does at least have cataloging experience, though her emphasis, career-wise, has been with the acquisitions side of Tech Services operations, which is probably common for Tech Services administrators.
I may get offered the TWU position, I may not; if not it would not be the end of the world; If I was offered it, I’d probably accept, but I’d surely miss metro Houston, and though I find Denton ok, I make no secret of my distinct loathing of the greater DFW metroplex just down the road a ways.
Anyway, to kill time on the long drive up to Dallas, I had the good fortune to read the audio-book version of this book:
That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Independent Studies in Political Economy) (Paperback)
by Stephen P. Halbrook (Author)
· Paperback: 275 pages
· Publisher: Independent Institute (March 1, 1994)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 0945999380
· ISBN-13: 978-0945999386
The audio-book format I best enjoy when making those long commutes between Houston and Dallas. Halbrook demonstrates a very high level of erudition, especially in his marshaling of historical evidence for the intellectual history of the right to keep and bear arms, which Halbrook irrefutably demonstrates was always understood first and foremost as a natural right of self-defense pre-dating the US Constitution and merely recognized implicitly by the 2nd Amendment. He demonstrates the origin of the term "a well-regulated militia" as denoting the whole of the populace, armed against aggression, tyranny, and usurpation, either against criminal elements seeking to do harm to the individual, or to repel a foreign invasion. Indeed, in earlier drafts of what was to become the 2nd Amendment, it was more explicitly defined "a well regulated militia, consisting of the whole body of the people", which was later (regrettably, I think) deleted from the 2nd Amendment merely for brevity's sake, though in hindsight this was probably a mistake as later generations (and regrettably some ill-informed courts) have misunderstood the truncated version and made much mischief on its account. But in the framer's day there was no mistake about what "a well-regulated militia" (regulated in this sense meaning well-trained/drilled/proficient in the use of arms, incidentally, not ‘regulated’ as we understand that term today in usual political discussions such as EPA regulations, FDA regulations, etc), what this distinct whole phrase, actually meant--it meant the whole populace of the country, as opposed to a standing army; It also emphatically did not mean what the framers identified as a “select militia” like the National Guard, which they described as being staffed by an over-reliance on younger men without property or other gainful employment, e.g. without much else to do but train for military service, even if only part time, and in the process making the shopkeepers, prosperous gentleman farmers, etc, disinclined to military exercise--this probable outcome was also (rightly) regarded by the Framers as really little better than a professional standing army and just as much a threat to Liberty. So these Constitutional Framers, in contradiction to contemporary gun-rights critics and pushers of crackpot “collective rights” theories, most emphatically did NOT mean "something like the National Guard", as the anti-rights crowd would have it; That sort of specialized, select 'militia' was, in fact, explicitly rejected.
Admittedly the writing can tend to be a little bit dry, and it is a tough slog to work your way through this book, even in the audio-book format, but at least it forces you to keep moving forward at an even clip. I had initially started this book in paperback form, but found I had to switch to audio-book if I was ever going to finish it, as a way of forcing myself through the material, thanks to the aforementioned lengthy business trip to the North Texas region. It was ultimately totally worth it, and I'm glad to have the paperback as a reference work to refer back to later. As others have stated, this work is the definitive intellectual history of the origins of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and its subsequent legal history.
My feeling is, this ought not be a partisan, left-versus-right issue; I agree wholeheartedly with Halbrook here and yet I'm a libertarian Socialist and anti-capitalist Green. Halbrook agrees, incidentally, in the last chapter, citing, among others, the Black Panther Party (for that matter, he could have also cited the Weather Underground. Moreover, some hippies living in poorer urban areas did in fact carry guns for self-defense, their opposition to the Vietnam War notwithstanding)
No, it's a human rights issue that was clearly understood and accepted until roughly the late 1960s and 1970s, when a few poorly reasoned court decisions were made, and some very bad public policy, such as DC's gun ban; The reason the DC gun-ban was shot down recently by the DC Circuit Court is because the anti-gun argument is built on a house of cards and ought to be struck down, and I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree with the lower court ruling in this matter. A good ruling there will lay the groundwork for overturning the most restrictive bans in Chicago, Illinois, and then later the only slightly less ridiculous regulatory environment of New York City and San Francisco and Baltimore. Once we move onward from the DC case, future arguments will be able to push for “incorporation”, via the 14th Amendment, and make the Second Amendment the law of the land, keeping our self-defense gun rights safe not only from Federal Infringement but also from more local tyrants in our State capitals and behind the walls of City Hall.
The most interesting part of Halbrook's work is the ambivalence he highlights about the legal opinion of the status of concealed weaponry.
It has something to do with the nature and mindset of 19th Century society, I think, where open carry was preferred to concealed carry...Open carry was "manly" while concealed carry was "dastardly", "underhanded", etc. As a Modern, I do not share these opinions, and some courts have not either, but others have. I think Concealed Carry has been a boon for reducing crime everywhere it's been enacted into law in our day, and it actually serves as a better deterrent than open carry, since anyone, even women and the elderly, could potentially be carrying concealed. Halbrook seems to conclude that more and more courts are viewing concealed carry as protected by the 2nd Amendment. Concealed carry licensing should in point of fact not even be necessary--the 2nd Amendment (via “incorporation” through the 14th Amendment) should suffice country-wide--but we're sadly a long way away from that state of affairs, though the upcoming DC case is the proverbial crack in the gun-ban dam.
Honestly, what’s refreshing about this book is that it becomes plainly clear that you don't have to be a right-wing ideologue to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to accept our sucky for-profit health care system to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be an asinine global warming skeptic to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be anti-union or anti-abortion to be pro-RKBA. You just have to have a respect for the American legal tradition, understand what the lessons of history actually say, and understand that the right of self-defense pre-exists any constitution, as it is a fundamental human right that is merely recognized by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
My fellow Leftists who ARE anti-RKBA ought to read a little more history, because it should make them ashamed of the very racist roots of nearly all gun-control legislation, both in the 19th century--and in the 20th. As recently as the JFK administration, JFK, a northern liberal Democrat, would’ve most closely associated gun control proposals with Jim Crow laws.
There are Democrats, Greens, even Anarcho-Syndicalist Socialists who are quite proud to be pro-RKBA.
My recommendation is to read this book, learn the history, and if you find it compelling, learn to just say no to anti-gun policies and those who would disarm us. As a once and future Academic Librarian, do I support Concealed Carry on Campus? You bet I do. For students as well as faculty and staff. Including the Library itself, including on the job, whether working reference, or at one’s cubicle in tech services, or managing circulation.
Recently I’ve been doing a good bit of browsing on right-to-keep-and-bear-arms (hereafter rkba) issues. Superficial in depth, perhaps, but, I hope, respectably broad in scope. I am an internationalist at heart; I can’t not be. It’s in my blood.
most US gun-rights advocates (and, I would argue, their detractors, too) tend to keep narrowly focused on the issues in the USA, to argue about the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, etc This is completely understandable, as the most immediate fight is here on our own soil. The anti-gun/pro-control crowd likes to pride itself on being more worldly, more “international”, citing firearms restrictions in other countries. But in fact, as with the facts domestically, they do so dishonestly. In fact, crime in the United Kindom and Australia have gone up since the imposition of their draconian gun control laws. An honest examination of the true international RBKA struggle puts things in a much different light.
I wanted to know for myself if there were Europeans who take a pro-RKBA stance, or are the all hopelessly anti-gun zombies who will always ridicule “American gun culture”. If I may indulge in a long aside that is slightly off-topic, I remember once, for example, how shocked I was indeed to meet a pro-death penalty Canadian (Canada doesn’t have a death penalty anymore). I’ve gone back and forth on this issue myself over the years. I’ve argued against the death penalty on moral grounds, then more narrowly on more conservative, financial, cost-prohibitive grounds, and there is still a lot to give one pause when one considers whether or not American juries generally are really fair with equal application of the penalty regardless of the race of the defendant. I would agree that the evidence suggests they’re not able to apply the penalty fairly and impartially, and it’s an ongoing problem in our society. But just when I’ve about made up my mind to be opposed to the death penalty completely, some ultra-violent scumbag will lower the bar yet again and commit a string of crimes so heinous, with such wanton disregard for his fellow human beings that I want justice done, and that state execution of such a heinous individual is the only way to adequately serve justice. Vengeance wrong, you say? I don’t give a shit. The Canadian I met had gone through much the same thought processes and arrived at the same conclusion I did. She felt Canada needed to restore the death penalty, at least for the most heinous crimes.
Returning to the gun-rights issue again, there are fortunately other Canadians, too, who know full well what draconian gun laws like the UK have done for the UK, and would do for Canada if they adopted that course, and they don’t like it one bit. They already chafe at what successive Liberal governments in Ottowa have done to wreck gun-rights in the Dominion of Canada. Many are, as you would probably expect, from Western Canada, where the National Firearms Association (www.nfa.ca) is headquartered, in Edmonton, Alberta. Alberta is widely regarded as the “Texas” of Canada, for those who don’t know. What even Western Canadians (who can be a bit too francophobic, for my tastes) also possibly don’t know is that they have an ally in a fiercely independent minded Quebecois professor who is pro-RKBA named Pierre Lemieux who hosts a personal/political website at http://www.pierrelemieux.org/index.html . Professor Lemieux (not to be confused with conservative MP Pierre Lemieux, btw) has rather anarchist/libertarian views and is quite vehemently pro-RKBA.
He’s even written some provocative books on the subject in French:
Le droit de porter des armes (Broché)
de Pierre Lemieux (Auteur)
· Broché: 244 pages
· Editeur : Belles Lettres (8 octobre 1993)
· Collection : Iconoclastes
· Langue : Français
· ISBN-10: 2251390200
· ISBN-13: 978-2251390208
This book tackles RKBA head on and argues for gun rights and provides a philosophical defense for the right of self-defense.
His later book is a more generalized political rant, from a proud Quebecois viewpoint, but it also looks quite fun to read:
Confessions d un Coureur des Bois Hors la Loi (Broché)
by Pierre Lemieux (Author)
· Paperback: 160 pages
· Publisher: Varia (2001)
· Language: French
· ISBN-10: 2922245616
· ISBN-13: 978-2922245615
Canadian awareness is growing and there is also an activist site of note to be found at www.rkba.ca
The Germans are becoming slowly aware of the RKBA issue, too. I am reading on German blogs and internet forums a growing dissatisfaction with strict gun control and a realization that it does not reduce criminal activity but merely disarms law-abiding citizens. There are and always have been various shooting clubs and shooting societies in Germany and Austria, but none seem to be quite so directly politically engaged as the new Forum Waffenrecht, which tackles the issue head on. They are on the web at http://www.fwr.de ; I joined their discussion board to learn, to meet Germans who care about RKBA as much as I do, and, of course, to practice my German reading comprehension.
The Austrians, too, are becoming aware of RKBA and have even created their own pro-RKBA political organization dedicated to a liberalization of Austria’s gun laws. It is called the Interessengemeinschaft Liberales Waffenrecht in Österreich (ILWÖ for short), or the “Special Interest Group for Liberalized Gun Rights in Austria”, which is quite a mouthful but at least their URL is short and sweet and and can be found on the web here: http://www.iwoe.at/
They have the right idea:
The Swiss, by contrast, have always been way ahead of both Germany and Austria when it comes to gun rights, are widely admired by RBKA advocates worldwide, so I need not talk of the Swiss very much, other than to note in passing that Stephen Halbrook has written a few books about them:
SWISS AND THE NAZIS: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich (Hardcover)
by Stephen Halbrook (Author)
· Hardcover: 256 pages
· Publisher: Casemate (May 2006)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 1932033424
· ISBN-13: 978-1932033427
· Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
Target Switzerland (Paperback)
by Stephen P. Halbrook (Author), Alex Van Buren (Editor)
· Paperback: 352 pages
· Publisher: Da Capo (December 1, 2003)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 0306813254
· ISBN-13: 978-0306813252
· Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Have not read either work, though browsing the critiques on Amazon.com, I’d hazard to guess that in his emphasis to stress Swiss armed citizenry as a deterrent to the Nazi war machine, he possibly downplays other relevant factors like Swiss geography and its difficult mountainous terrain (something the USSR mostly lacked, but proved quite a stumbling block in Greece and Yugoslavia for the Nazi Wehrmacht) and their lack of abundant strategic natural resources. The conquest of Switzerland simply wasn’t worth it. Also, there was some Swiss complicity with the Third Reich, at least in the early stages of the war, and they were less than welcoming to all who fled the rising Nazi tyranny.
In any case, “Waffenrecht ist Meschenrecht”, to paraphrase somewhat Oleg Volk’s favorite slogan into proper German. Germans and Austrians are beginning to become somewhat aware of this. Gun control laws in Germany also have racist roots in so far as Jews were the target of disarmament legislation.
RKBA has a much longer way to go in the Spanish-speaking world, I think, but I did discover a few blogs out there that strike a pro-RKBA note; Most notably was this Argentine blog:
En Defensa Propia : Contra Las Armas Illegales y el Desarme Civil (In Self Defense: Against Illegal Arms and Against Civilian Disarmament)
http://endefensapropia.blogspot.com/
This Venezuelan blog, El Liberal Venezolano, also has an archived post directly addressing a pro-RKBA position, “Sobre el derecho a portar armas” :
http://liberal-venezolano.net/blog/index/2005/11/22/sobre_el_derecho_a_portar_armas
One individual has even put together a website containing an international directory of pro-RKBA groups, which is quite impressive and can be found here: http://www.afn.org/~afn18566/
What’s interesting for me in all of these blogs, forums, and websites of these individuals and social organizations is how these people in other countries, who don’t have the good fortune that we do to simply make direct reference to the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, have to go about defending the pro-RKBA position based on fundamental concepts of human rights and a right to self-defense. All of which exist in every human being prior to the US Constitution as a natural right, which the US Constitution merely affirms and guarantees. It also has a basis in English common law, and some Englishmen today are once again becoming aware of this and speaking out; see the website of The Great British Gun Ban Con, for example: http://members.aol.com/gunbancon/Main.html
The English experience was also tainted by sectarian prejudices against its minority Catholic population whom it only reluctantly, over time, came to trust with the possession of firearms. Similarly, the roots of modern gun control in the United States have very racist roots in the post-Civil War period of Jim Crow and the rise of the KKK. It took awhile for both societies to come to their better natures and recognize this fundamental human right as applying to all, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc, which is why RKBA is too important to be left only to the traditional Conservative base which foams at the mouth when “God, Guns and Gays” is invoked.
No, like it or not, my US Republican friends, you NEED folks like Pink Pistols (http://www.pinkpistols.org/ ), LiberalsWithGuns ( http://liberalswithguns.com/index.html ), and ProGun Progressive (http://progunprogressive.com/ ) on your side in the RKBA fight. This fight is bigger than your parochial conservative movement. Shit, I’m unabashedly an anarcho-socialist, and a ecological anti-capitalist Green and yet I’m pro-RKBA to the hilt.
Why? How can I maintain that? Because it’s about freedom, it’s about standing up for the common man. The wealthy will always have guns, regardless what the law says, just as women of wealth will always have access to abortion, even if it’s outlawed in the USA. RKBA is completely consistent with Left/Populist value systems if you analyze deeply enough and accept the facts and what is reasonable to conclude from the facts rather than engaging in wishful thinking. One statement made recently by “Lenin” of the UK blog Lenin’s Tomb I must say I especially love…basically to the effect that the Socialist struggle is the unflinching, gritty Realpolitik of the poor. And an unflinching, gritty Realpolitik of the poor and dispossessed must of necessity be pro-RKBA. Anyone remember the Ludlow Massacre? Anyone?
It’s inadequate, as libertarians and American conservatives to rail wholesale against “big gubmint” as an undifferentiated bogey-man. Rather, we ought to worry, truly, about the shadowy National Security State pulling the strings and serving higher interests, the real ruling classes, just behind the elected, visible government and its agencies and bureaucracies. It’s not enough for the people to seize the reigns of the visible, elected government. Former Chilean president Salvador Allende had done that; it wasn’t enough—and he learned that lesson a little too late to save his life.
If you’re going to talk like Mao, you better be willing to fight like Mao. The working class can’t resist counter-revolutionary, fascist backlash if it is disarmed. QED,
No, these are the kind of Dark Alliances that can bring about a Waco massacre, or lend the high yield stuff that really made OKC go “bang” in 1994. BATFE and the IRS are merely pawns…JBTs to be sure, but lower order terrors compared to false flag black ops that have no name. No Such Agency. Area 51. FEMA not being quite all it seems. REX 84. Central Intelligence Agency, Drugs, that “Mena airport thing” with related “train deaths”, the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, et. al. This is why I read activist Stan Goff’s books and blog, why I subscribed to Michael Ruppert’s From the Wilderness newsletter for over a year, and why I also keep and maintain a couple of SKS rifles, and a WASR-10. It makes you consider that IANSA ( http://www.iansa.org/ ) is not just some UN-based example of muddle-headed political correctness run amok, but rather more probably a politically correct sugar coating hiding a darker counter-insurgency / neocolonialist / neoimperialist disarmament agenda of trans-national elites.
Maybe you’ve heard of the book about Black Box voting. Good start but you don’t know the half of it until you see Daniel Hopsicker’s investigations—uncovering mob/organized crime connections to these shadowy corporations and their holding companies literally controlling our vote.
When you understand just how despotic the National Security State is, what it’s capable of, get the collusion between organized crime and the Intelligence community, and take to heart Ike’s warning about the military industrial complex, and the writings of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, and use all that as a touchstone for understanding what really happened in Dallas on 22 NOV 1963, and on the morning of 09/11/01, it makes you pro RKBA to the hilt.
Incidentally, the mob loves gun control and many former gangsters have penned rather sardonic commentary on their opinion of gun control legislation. Makes their own work—preying on the innocent—so much easier.
My contention remains that you don’t have to swallow a lot of right-wing crap to support RKBA. You can be a genuine progressive, against the war, for national health care, pro women’s right to choose abortion, pro civil rights for homosexuals to marry, etc, and *still* be pro-RKBA. Being pro-RKBA doesn’t entail supporting a lot of unrelated, odious crap you might strongly object to.
I say again this isn’t a Right versus Left issue (though it may be a Top [anti] versus Bottom [pro-RKBA] one). It’s most profoundly a human rights issue, as Oleg Volk contends and I agree.
Not that it’s necessarily easy to maintain a pro-RKBA stance in more mainstream Leftwing circles, even in Library circles, but it is necessary. Sometimes maybe I’m in the closet on this issue among fellow Left-leaning Library friends, but I’m working on the “coming out pro-RBKA” part. It’s also necessary for traditional libertarian & conservative RKBA advocates to acknowledge they do have allies across the aisle on this one issue of vital importance, because facts and reason bear out the pro-RKBA position.
Granted, most of the foreign sources I have quoted here are of a Libertarian or traditional Conservative bent. Most pro-RBKA voices in the United States are from those political persuasions also.
Keeping RKBA confined to those circles is one of the most effective elements of political control used by the powers that be today.
Thus it’s my view is that this issue rises above petty politics. You don’t have vote in any old GOP fool who’ll let moneyed elites loot the treasury and send countless young men from poor families off to die on some godforsaken patch of hell untold miles away from American soil just to affirm the RKBA. Or at least you ought not to have to feel you must.
Most Green party members are quite probably anti-gun, but actually it makes more sense to be pro-RKBA to pull in hunters, who have tended to be more and more sympathetic to environmental issues and are necessary allies in the struggle for ecological conservation. Probably a good many self-described socialists are also anti-gun, but this is sheer stupidity. Regardless what Lenin did once he came to power, he and the Bolsheviks would’ve gotten nowhere without the arms of enough deserting Tsarist soldiers coming over to their ranks, and bringing their Mosin-Nagant rifles and Nagant revolvers over with them. Socialists of anti-gun persuasion are just as much suffering from an infantile disorder as Lenin described in excoriating his Left-of-Center rivals back in his day. Mao Tse Tung moreover recognized that “political power flows from the barrel of a gun”.
As Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, who died a convinced Socialist, once stated "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
Sunday, August 12, 2007
A brief post on being a Freethought librarian.
Here in short is why I almost never apply to libraries affiliated with religious institutions, and would certainly never work for one that required any sort of "statement of faith" or similar pledge as a condition of employment.
Anyway, the main Freethought librarian who writes on and studies Freethought materials in North American Libraries that I know of is activist Librarian Earl Lee, who devotes an entire chapter of his work Libraries in the Age of Mediocrity (1998, McFarland) to this subject. I, for one, would love to see Lee someday expand this chapter into a full-length book on this topic; it’s a book that I’m sure Prometheus Books and other “Freethought” publishers would be interested in. Interestingly, Earl Lee is also a creative novelist and satirist, having penned a satirical response to the (in)famous Left Behind series, namely a sarcastically titled work called Kiss My Left Behind. This mirrors in some ways the literary path taken by Theodore Roszack, whose nonfiction work The Cult of Information was decisive in the shaping of my library career and my basic library science education as its foundation. Roszack has subsequently penned The Devil and Daniel Silverman about a down-on-his luck liberal academic & homosexual playwright who is invited to an ultra-conservative bible college somewhere in the Midwest to give a lecture. As fate would have it, an unexpected snowstorm traps Mr. Silverman at the College, forcing him to share close quarters with his hosts for much longer than expected, to the exquisite discomfort of both. I haven’t yet stopped to read either fiction work at any length; at most I’ve flipped through the pages of The Devil and Daniel Silverman, and browsed the reviews for Kiss My Left Behind online at Amazon.com, but if I decide to make time for some fun fiction in my busy reading schedule, I could certainly do worse than Kiss My Left Behind and The Devil and Daniel Silverman, I think. I like fiction that is of literary quality, but most of all I like fiction that is able to make me LOL and ROFLMAO. Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov, did this for me, as do the aphorisms of Karl Kraus, Libuše Monikova's The Façade (Die Fassade , orig. German title). Monikova was for me a powerful writer, an exiled Czech artist living and working in Berlin; She died far too young of ill health not too long ago. Her book of essays, Prager Fenster (Prague Windows), was as illuminating and thought-provoking as The Façade was side-splittingly funny. Czech Literature & Film are particular favorites of mine, especially the black & alienated humor often found therein. Though it's a formidably difficult language, I would still like to learn conversational Czech one day, and to be able to read all these masterful writers in their original language. What was unique about Monikova was that she wrote deliberately in her adoptive language of German. I did not read Die Fassade in German, though I could have. But the English translation was masterfully done, and quite hilarious besides. Karl Kraus is the Austrian answer to Mark Twain, or perhaps Ambrose Bierce, and has written some of the funniest one-liners in German that I've ever read. Continuing with the Austrian milieu, Jaroslav Hašek's Good Soldier Šveyk also passes the LOL and ROFLMAO tests with flying colors; Hašek was a colorful figure in his own right, with his own life history being no less outrageous than his famous character.
Though I typically prefer non-fiction to fiction, I do like my fiction to be boisterous, bawdy, irreverent, free-thinking, sexy & funny...qualities not totally dissimilar to what I desire in a lover, when I'm graced with one in my life. I'm grateful as all get-out to have grown up in and continue living in (so far) a decidedly secular country where that manner of living remains possible, and where the pursuit of happiness is enshrined as a legitimate life goal in the foundational documents of this secular Republic, at least in principle, however flawed in practice.
As a Library & Information professional, I am committed to supporting democracy and opposing tyranny; but that includes opposing the tyranny of the majority, when necessary. Libraries can and do and ought to foster community cohesion, serve as a focal point, etc. But librarians should also be prepared to comfort the loner alienated by community, those marching to beats of different drummers, etc. I belong to the Texas Freedom Network, which is committed to separation of church & state issues in the Lone Star State. I do attend services sometimes at my local Unitarian Universalist congregation--I'm especially keen on their Adult Discussion Groups, which is their version of "Sunday school", with the emphasis on social justice issues rather than obscurantist scriptural studies. But I also rather like the Houston Church of Freethought, whose coffee socials I attend regularly the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month, and I also am an avid follower of Houston-Area Atheist Meetups through Meetup-Dot-Com.
I have no problem with serving religious patrons, indeed I recognize the majority of my patrons will be most likely of one of the 3 major Abrahamic faiths. Libraries have collected "inspirational" religious literature in the past and shall continue to do so on my watch. But as Earl Lee has pointed out, the record is less consistent with Freethought materials in libraries, though I sense this is beginning to change; The waiting list for Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion was so long at all Houston area libraries that I decided to go out and purchase my own versions of the audiobook and hardcover volume (for later reference/research, as Dawkins does a lot of helpful name dropping).
With more and more news stories coming out of medical professionals--Physicians and Pharmacists chiefly--allowing their pet religious bigotry to trump their professional obligations, I have to wonder if its only a matter of time before some hyper-religious pr*ck with an MLS declines a reference request citing "religious objections". Perhaps it's already happened. I often wonder how librarians who work for Libraries affiliated with Catholic institutions handle requests for materials dealing with abortion, homosexuality, family planning & contraceptive practices, etc. Not sure I really want to know, which is why I'm never keen on applying to work in such places, no matter how desperate my Librarian job search may feel at times. To be fair, it is my personal perception that Catholic institutions are at least open to the possibility of hiring non-Catholics and less likely to demand rigid conformity as with the case of Protestant affiliated educational institutions. I've applied to a few assorted Cataloging positions at a limited number of Catholic educational institutions, though never called back for an interview. But all things being equal, I'd just as soon work for a library in a state-affiliated school or secular private institution or public library--city, county, regional or state-level.
As a product of the Enlightenment, the Library profession as we understand it in the Anglo-American world is antithetical to any form of encroaching Theocracy. Straussian NeoCons backing wild eyed Dominionists, aided and abetted by more moderate, soft-peddling mega-churchers like Joel Olsteen, or the immensely popular Rick Warren...and forming the popular base for a kindler, gentler, uniquely American Fascism is a recurring nightmare of mine. I worry about the long term material sustainability of literate, print-based culture in a future era of increasing energy scarcity, something pitifully few librarians seem even to be aware of, much less making contingency plans for, since high levels of near universal literacy and print culture preserved by libraries have been the bulwark of secular civilization for well nigh 200-some odd years; Loose that and its back to the Dark Ages--literally, as in increasingly difficult to keep electric lighting going, and figuratively, as in keeping the fire-in-the-mind alive and burning--loose all that and superstition, barbarity, and organized Religion win by default.
I don't know about you, but I prefer working in a modern Library proper to working in a scriptorum, with the added requirement of having to take on holy orders just to handle books; though the absurd vow of poverty still seems to be with us in certain LIS quarters.
As a Librarian, I'm mindful--and wary--of Church history. It was religious zealots who put the Library at Alexandria to the torch, and that was not an isolated incident either. Woe be unto any librarian, religious or otherwise, who forgets that.
I actually did not belong to the Atheist & Agnostic Student Association of Texas A&M back in my undergraduate days at Aggieland, because back then I shied away from the label of “atheist” and, if I called myself anything at all, I called myself an agnostic. Though I was basically an atheist from birth and remained one from early Childhood on thanks to having a Natural Science teacher for a dad, and an English teacher mom who was very lax in her religious observance, unlike her own mother, who’d been an avid member of the fire-and-brimstone Church of Christ denomination. My paternal grandmother was a sweet, basically moderately liberal Presbyterian (though viciously anti-Catholic), and held anti-war / anti-militarist views that I am more in agreement with now than I was in my teens and twenties.
My worldview has gone through many, many revisions in my years on the planet so far. My religious views & antipathies have largely gone hand in hand with revisions in my political outlook and are well nigh inseparable from them, and a full accounting of my personal intellectual history with respect to finally affirming myself as an Atheist would at the same time involve a recounting of the evolution of my political views, affiliations, changing loyalties, etc. But I don’t feel like recounting all that here, right now. I do really try to keep this blog topical and focused, so I don't want to stray too far from that. I go on at length about this personal history and related issues elsewhere.Anyway, the main Freethought librarian who writes on and studies Freethought materials in North American Libraries that I know of is activist Librarian Earl Lee, who devotes an entire chapter of his work Libraries in the Age of Mediocrity (1998, McFarland) to this subject. I, for one, would love to see Lee someday expand this chapter into a full-length book on this topic; it’s a book that I’m sure Prometheus Books and other “Freethought” publishers would be interested in. Interestingly, Earl Lee is also a creative novelist and satirist, having penned a satirical response to the (in)famous Left Behind series, namely a sarcastically titled work called Kiss My Left Behind. This mirrors in some ways the literary path taken by Theodore Roszack, whose nonfiction work The Cult of Information was decisive in the shaping of my library career and my basic library science education as its foundation. Roszack has subsequently penned The Devil and Daniel Silverman about a down-on-his luck liberal academic & homosexual playwright who is invited to an ultra-conservative bible college somewhere in the Midwest to give a lecture. As fate would have it, an unexpected snowstorm traps Mr. Silverman at the College, forcing him to share close quarters with his hosts for much longer than expected, to the exquisite discomfort of both. I haven’t yet stopped to read either fiction work at any length; at most I’ve flipped through the pages of The Devil and Daniel Silverman, and browsed the reviews for Kiss My Left Behind online at Amazon.com, but if I decide to make time for some fun fiction in my busy reading schedule, I could certainly do worse than Kiss My Left Behind and The Devil and Daniel Silverman, I think. I like fiction that is of literary quality, but most of all I like fiction that is able to make me LOL and ROFLMAO. Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov, did this for me, as do the aphorisms of Karl Kraus, Libuše Monikova's The Façade (Die Fassade , orig. German title). Monikova was for me a powerful writer, an exiled Czech artist living and working in Berlin; She died far too young of ill health not too long ago. Her book of essays, Prager Fenster (Prague Windows), was as illuminating and thought-provoking as The Façade was side-splittingly funny. Czech Literature & Film are particular favorites of mine, especially the black & alienated humor often found therein. Though it's a formidably difficult language, I would still like to learn conversational Czech one day, and to be able to read all these masterful writers in their original language. What was unique about Monikova was that she wrote deliberately in her adoptive language of German. I did not read Die Fassade in German, though I could have. But the English translation was masterfully done, and quite hilarious besides. Karl Kraus is the Austrian answer to Mark Twain, or perhaps Ambrose Bierce, and has written some of the funniest one-liners in German that I've ever read. Continuing with the Austrian milieu, Jaroslav Hašek's Good Soldier Šveyk also passes the LOL and ROFLMAO tests with flying colors; Hašek was a colorful figure in his own right, with his own life history being no less outrageous than his famous character.
Though I typically prefer non-fiction to fiction, I do like my fiction to be boisterous, bawdy, irreverent, free-thinking, sexy & funny...qualities not totally dissimilar to what I desire in a lover, when I'm graced with one in my life. I'm grateful as all get-out to have grown up in and continue living in (so far) a decidedly secular country where that manner of living remains possible, and where the pursuit of happiness is enshrined as a legitimate life goal in the foundational documents of this secular Republic, at least in principle, however flawed in practice.
As a Library & Information professional, I am committed to supporting democracy and opposing tyranny; but that includes opposing the tyranny of the majority, when necessary. Libraries can and do and ought to foster community cohesion, serve as a focal point, etc. But librarians should also be prepared to comfort the loner alienated by community, those marching to beats of different drummers, etc. I belong to the Texas Freedom Network, which is committed to separation of church & state issues in the Lone Star State. I do attend services sometimes at my local Unitarian Universalist congregation--I'm especially keen on their Adult Discussion Groups, which is their version of "Sunday school", with the emphasis on social justice issues rather than obscurantist scriptural studies. But I also rather like the Houston Church of Freethought, whose coffee socials I attend regularly the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month, and I also am an avid follower of Houston-Area Atheist Meetups through Meetup-Dot-Com.
I have no problem with serving religious patrons, indeed I recognize the majority of my patrons will be most likely of one of the 3 major Abrahamic faiths. Libraries have collected "inspirational" religious literature in the past and shall continue to do so on my watch. But as Earl Lee has pointed out, the record is less consistent with Freethought materials in libraries, though I sense this is beginning to change; The waiting list for Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion was so long at all Houston area libraries that I decided to go out and purchase my own versions of the audiobook and hardcover volume (for later reference/research, as Dawkins does a lot of helpful name dropping).
With more and more news stories coming out of medical professionals--Physicians and Pharmacists chiefly--allowing their pet religious bigotry to trump their professional obligations, I have to wonder if its only a matter of time before some hyper-religious pr*ck with an MLS declines a reference request citing "religious objections". Perhaps it's already happened. I often wonder how librarians who work for Libraries affiliated with Catholic institutions handle requests for materials dealing with abortion, homosexuality, family planning & contraceptive practices, etc. Not sure I really want to know, which is why I'm never keen on applying to work in such places, no matter how desperate my Librarian job search may feel at times. To be fair, it is my personal perception that Catholic institutions are at least open to the possibility of hiring non-Catholics and less likely to demand rigid conformity as with the case of Protestant affiliated educational institutions. I've applied to a few assorted Cataloging positions at a limited number of Catholic educational institutions, though never called back for an interview. But all things being equal, I'd just as soon work for a library in a state-affiliated school or secular private institution or public library--city, county, regional or state-level.
As a product of the Enlightenment, the Library profession as we understand it in the Anglo-American world is antithetical to any form of encroaching Theocracy. Straussian NeoCons backing wild eyed Dominionists, aided and abetted by more moderate, soft-peddling mega-churchers like Joel Olsteen, or the immensely popular Rick Warren...and forming the popular base for a kindler, gentler, uniquely American Fascism is a recurring nightmare of mine. I worry about the long term material sustainability of literate, print-based culture in a future era of increasing energy scarcity, something pitifully few librarians seem even to be aware of, much less making contingency plans for, since high levels of near universal literacy and print culture preserved by libraries have been the bulwark of secular civilization for well nigh 200-some odd years; Loose that and its back to the Dark Ages--literally, as in increasingly difficult to keep electric lighting going, and figuratively, as in keeping the fire-in-the-mind alive and burning--loose all that and superstition, barbarity, and organized Religion win by default.
I don't know about you, but I prefer working in a modern Library proper to working in a scriptorum, with the added requirement of having to take on holy orders just to handle books; though the absurd vow of poverty still seems to be with us in certain LIS quarters.
As a Librarian, I'm mindful--and wary--of Church history. It was religious zealots who put the Library at Alexandria to the torch, and that was not an isolated incident either. Woe be unto any librarian, religious or otherwise, who forgets that.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Aggie Librarian throws a bone to the techno geeks
Well, I had dismissed it as a silly fad/trend; I believed it was something all the young kids were into but something I had no use for. Then I heard about a colleague at work downloading MP3s of audiobooks from Houston Public Library. I did a little research. I noticed that Deutsche Welle, the German News service, had some of these here "podcasts" available. Some in English, some in German, some in other languages. Then I thought about the possibilities a little. Did some price comparisons, some shopping around online, and made my decision.
Giddy as a schoolgirl in love, I rushed out to my local big box store and up and bought myself an iPod. Specifically the iPod nano. More memory than the iPod shuffle, not quite as big (storage wise) as the latest high end model. Just in the middle, just Goldilocks right. I liked the GUI display, because I needed that interactivity to be sure I knew what the heck I was doing, for good or ill.
It was late Saturday evening when I acquired the thing, so I put it aside and went to bed; next morning I got up like it was Xmas morning to try out my new toy. Shame, too, since it was the first dry, sunny Sunday we've had in awhile in SE Texas...oh well. It took a little while to get things hooked up, charged up, fired up, etc. But with enough time, I downloaded bona fide podcasts from GERMANY. AUF DEUTSCH! EHRLICH! JA, also WIRKLICH!
I do sometimes listen to DW on shortwave radio. Sometimes it's really good, other times, the quality of the signal leaves a lot to be desired--and even when I get a clear signal, the program itself is sometimes boring; pretty mixed bag.
But the podcasts? Goodness! Crystal clear sound quality, and I can pick and choose between various programs...and not just Deutsche Welle, either but also Süddeutsche Rundfunk, and other traditional brodcasters turned "Podcasters". And I can listen at MY leisure, to a whole slew of quality German programming--and the best part? ALL OF IT FOR FREE. NOT ONE RED CENT! Wow.
Let the kids keep paying to download the newest Green Day album or whatever, I'm plugging into Deutsche Welle, et. al. for FREE and LOVING IT.
My only regret? Man, not playing with this sh*t sooner, because I failed to realize the true, non-standard artsy/humanistic possibilities beyond the commercial hip-cool hype.
Now, I remain dubious that there's much call for LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE PODCASTING "an sich", i.e. of and for itself, nor that Libraries can really do much other than podcast short PSAs like commercials, to those who might be remotely interested...brief library news like "the hours this week are...", "the speakers this week are...", or "the Fort Bend County Sierra Club meets upstairs in Room X of Library Y on Wednesday this week", etc.
I guess it's cheaper than real radio adverts, but how many potential users to you HONESTLY think you'd reach? I mean think about it--for the imaginary "typical" library podcast listener, you're talking about A) someone who actually knows what podcasting is, period--that cuts out a large chunk of the population right there. B) not only knows what it is but knows how to subscribe and C) actually cares enough about the local library to SUBSCRIBE to its podcast and listen to it among thousands of other podcast choices round the globe. Which means, basically unemployed librarians like me who are also ravenous bibliophiles AND moderately technophilic to boot. So yeah, *I* would subscribe to my local library's podcasts, if they had one. And maybe the handful of UNT SLIS students who live in the greater Houston Metro area any given academic year--maybe. If you put it on the library's web page, explained it, pushed it in your print newsletter, handed out fliers...maybe that number would inch up a tad, but...
On a different LIS tac, is podcast content worth cataloging? At an entity level, probably not. As a note field in a larger record for a resource, sure, we can catalog the RSS feed and put it as a link in a MARC record or something...maybe even tweak the ILS to make it interactive--give you an "iTunes" button to press, or at least a link to a page where you can do so...not everyone is swift enough to do the manual way of podcast subscribing (cutting & pasting the URL of the feed, etc INTO iTunes or similar software).
Podcasts, like weblogs, are fun because they change frequently. New content is regularly downloaded to iTunes and ready for uploading/synching onto your iPod when you plug it in to recharge the battery, etc. I do need to get a stand-alone charger so I don't have to reformat the iPod every time I want to recharge it. I know I could switch off the automatic update on the thing, but for now I don't bother. I also need to get a car charger. I also need to see if my other portable MP3 player/CD player's "cassette adapter" thingy will fit the iPod or not. If not I'll have to get an iPod compatable cassette adapter so I can listen to iPod content while driving as well; yeah, my car doesn't have an internal CD player, so the only way I can listen to CDs and CD-based audiobooks is by an external, portable CD player designed for use with car cassette tape deck sound systems. It's less than ideal, but it works...or works well enough.
Anyway, the librarian in me is mildly curious about podcasts, while the ex-German Studies Master's student in me... ist TOTAL BEGEISTERT! SUPERGEIL! MENSCH, TOLL!
Apple, Inc. probably never strongly considered, or at best only vaguely considered, as good advertising fluff, this particular, peculiarly transnational use of iPod...because it's not a monetized area of the Info-Economy (yet), but it is a profound tool for promoting the understanding, learning, and appreciation of foreign languages and cultures...while we can still keep industrial/hi-tech society running, that is, before the next, quite inevitable, dark ages of post cheap Petroleum. Petroleum Man's days are very numbered indeed. International Podcasting literally is a "last chance to see/experience/hear/feel", so don't miss out!
Another Quite Nice Thing about Podcasting is, unlike Ham radio and "pirate" radio, Podcasting is completely legal, basically free (once the requisite equipment is purchased, high speed internet connection set up, and correct software installed), completely unregulated, and basically an anarchic commune unspoilt by commercial diktat. I suppose among the Podcast cognocenti, if you're good enough, interesting enough, word of mouth gets around and your subscribers will come to you. Like blogs, though, you have to keep up the output or people lose interest and go elsewhere. Sure, if you were good enough--professional enough--people *might* pay for that content; But the thing I love about the Blogosphere, and about the Podcast universe, is that it often shows the proverbial emperor with no clothes on, i.e. the so-called Experts may be well paid and have a bigger megaphone, but reduced to a level playing field, their actual intellectual prowess next to autodidactically-inclined "amateurs" isn't as stunning as you might in fact imagine, and in fact are sometimes embarrassingly cut down to size. It shows up the real operation of illegitimate POWER in the world, revealing a bit more iron fist through the velvet glove than most of the elites are comfortable with. This is something, I admit, that my hero Michael Gorman doesn't quite get, doesn't seem to recognize the glass-half-full side of the argument. We Librarians by training tend almost instinctively to genuflect to "authorized sources of information" as a kind of Holy Grail. It's been the long term mission goals of PLG and SRRT to disabuse Librarians of that ultimately misguided reflex; We've had mixed results, but keep on trying. Sure, it's still a worthwhile yardstick, and a good rule of thumb, but practiced blindly it blinds one, too, to the role of (illegitimate) Power in the world. That's what we have to be on guard against.
Anyway, sure, there's a commercial side of MP3 production & sale, etc, but there's also a lot of content out there of high quality that is just given away out of love by those producing the material, whose primary purpose is to spread knowledge and enlighten rather than make money. It's a damn beautiful thing, so let's enjoy the heck out of it while it lasts. It's very much in the spirit of what Librarianship is about, after all. This instrument (the iPod) can teach, but only to the extent that we use it for such ends.
Giddy as a schoolgirl in love, I rushed out to my local big box store and up and bought myself an iPod. Specifically the iPod nano. More memory than the iPod shuffle, not quite as big (storage wise) as the latest high end model. Just in the middle, just Goldilocks right. I liked the GUI display, because I needed that interactivity to be sure I knew what the heck I was doing, for good or ill.
It was late Saturday evening when I acquired the thing, so I put it aside and went to bed; next morning I got up like it was Xmas morning to try out my new toy. Shame, too, since it was the first dry, sunny Sunday we've had in awhile in SE Texas...oh well. It took a little while to get things hooked up, charged up, fired up, etc. But with enough time, I downloaded bona fide podcasts from GERMANY. AUF DEUTSCH! EHRLICH! JA, also WIRKLICH!
I do sometimes listen to DW on shortwave radio. Sometimes it's really good, other times, the quality of the signal leaves a lot to be desired--and even when I get a clear signal, the program itself is sometimes boring; pretty mixed bag.
But the podcasts? Goodness! Crystal clear sound quality, and I can pick and choose between various programs...and not just Deutsche Welle, either but also Süddeutsche Rundfunk, and other traditional brodcasters turned "Podcasters". And I can listen at MY leisure, to a whole slew of quality German programming--and the best part? ALL OF IT FOR FREE. NOT ONE RED CENT! Wow.
Let the kids keep paying to download the newest Green Day album or whatever, I'm plugging into Deutsche Welle, et. al. for FREE and LOVING IT.
My only regret? Man, not playing with this sh*t sooner, because I failed to realize the true, non-standard artsy/humanistic possibilities beyond the commercial hip-cool hype.
Now, I remain dubious that there's much call for LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE PODCASTING "an sich", i.e. of and for itself, nor that Libraries can really do much other than podcast short PSAs like commercials, to those who might be remotely interested...brief library news like "the hours this week are...", "the speakers this week are...", or "the Fort Bend County Sierra Club meets upstairs in Room X of Library Y on Wednesday this week", etc.
I guess it's cheaper than real radio adverts, but how many potential users to you HONESTLY think you'd reach? I mean think about it--for the imaginary "typical" library podcast listener, you're talking about A) someone who actually knows what podcasting is, period--that cuts out a large chunk of the population right there. B) not only knows what it is but knows how to subscribe and C) actually cares enough about the local library to SUBSCRIBE to its podcast and listen to it among thousands of other podcast choices round the globe. Which means, basically unemployed librarians like me who are also ravenous bibliophiles AND moderately technophilic to boot. So yeah, *I* would subscribe to my local library's podcasts, if they had one. And maybe the handful of UNT SLIS students who live in the greater Houston Metro area any given academic year--maybe. If you put it on the library's web page, explained it, pushed it in your print newsletter, handed out fliers...maybe that number would inch up a tad, but...
On a different LIS tac, is podcast content worth cataloging? At an entity level, probably not. As a note field in a larger record for a resource, sure, we can catalog the RSS feed and put it as a link in a MARC record or something...maybe even tweak the ILS to make it interactive--give you an "iTunes" button to press, or at least a link to a page where you can do so...not everyone is swift enough to do the manual way of podcast subscribing (cutting & pasting the URL of the feed, etc INTO iTunes or similar software).
Podcasts, like weblogs, are fun because they change frequently. New content is regularly downloaded to iTunes and ready for uploading/synching onto your iPod when you plug it in to recharge the battery, etc. I do need to get a stand-alone charger so I don't have to reformat the iPod every time I want to recharge it. I know I could switch off the automatic update on the thing, but for now I don't bother. I also need to get a car charger. I also need to see if my other portable MP3 player/CD player's "cassette adapter" thingy will fit the iPod or not. If not I'll have to get an iPod compatable cassette adapter so I can listen to iPod content while driving as well; yeah, my car doesn't have an internal CD player, so the only way I can listen to CDs and CD-based audiobooks is by an external, portable CD player designed for use with car cassette tape deck sound systems. It's less than ideal, but it works...or works well enough.
Anyway, the librarian in me is mildly curious about podcasts, while the ex-German Studies Master's student in me... ist TOTAL BEGEISTERT! SUPERGEIL! MENSCH, TOLL!
Apple, Inc. probably never strongly considered, or at best only vaguely considered, as good advertising fluff, this particular, peculiarly transnational use of iPod...because it's not a monetized area of the Info-Economy (yet), but it is a profound tool for promoting the understanding, learning, and appreciation of foreign languages and cultures...while we can still keep industrial/hi-tech society running, that is, before the next, quite inevitable, dark ages of post cheap Petroleum. Petroleum Man's days are very numbered indeed. International Podcasting literally is a "last chance to see/experience/hear/feel", so don't miss out!
Another Quite Nice Thing about Podcasting is, unlike Ham radio and "pirate" radio, Podcasting is completely legal, basically free (once the requisite equipment is purchased, high speed internet connection set up, and correct software installed), completely unregulated, and basically an anarchic commune unspoilt by commercial diktat. I suppose among the Podcast cognocenti, if you're good enough, interesting enough, word of mouth gets around and your subscribers will come to you. Like blogs, though, you have to keep up the output or people lose interest and go elsewhere. Sure, if you were good enough--professional enough--people *might* pay for that content; But the thing I love about the Blogosphere, and about the Podcast universe, is that it often shows the proverbial emperor with no clothes on, i.e. the so-called Experts may be well paid and have a bigger megaphone, but reduced to a level playing field, their actual intellectual prowess next to autodidactically-inclined "amateurs" isn't as stunning as you might in fact imagine, and in fact are sometimes embarrassingly cut down to size. It shows up the real operation of illegitimate POWER in the world, revealing a bit more iron fist through the velvet glove than most of the elites are comfortable with. This is something, I admit, that my hero Michael Gorman doesn't quite get, doesn't seem to recognize the glass-half-full side of the argument. We Librarians by training tend almost instinctively to genuflect to "authorized sources of information" as a kind of Holy Grail. It's been the long term mission goals of PLG and SRRT to disabuse Librarians of that ultimately misguided reflex; We've had mixed results, but keep on trying. Sure, it's still a worthwhile yardstick, and a good rule of thumb, but practiced blindly it blinds one, too, to the role of (illegitimate) Power in the world. That's what we have to be on guard against.
Anyway, sure, there's a commercial side of MP3 production & sale, etc, but there's also a lot of content out there of high quality that is just given away out of love by those producing the material, whose primary purpose is to spread knowledge and enlighten rather than make money. It's a damn beautiful thing, so let's enjoy the heck out of it while it lasts. It's very much in the spirit of what Librarianship is about, after all. This instrument (the iPod) can teach, but only to the extent that we use it for such ends.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Crisis in Public Librarianship - some local stories.
There's been a good discussion on SRRT and PLG circles about an ongoing crisis in Public Librarianship, and luckily for me, I was able to contribute something to that discussion from our local media, specifically our local mass market "indy" rag, The Houston Press.
here is the original local Houston story I contributed to the discussion:
======================================================
"...Someone recently posted this article about Sacramento librarians
concerned that the Sacramento Public Library is becoming too 'pop-
fixated' :
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/190564.html
I am reposting it because what is happening at SPL is not an isolated
phenomenon. I have seen the same sort of restructuring taking place
at public libraries in PA..." [snip]
(-from a concerned SRRT member)
================================================
POST-SCRIPT: The "Give 'em what they want" vs. "Give 'em what they need" argument goes as far back as Socrates/Plato, who expressed dismay at the position of the philosopher in society, comparing his position vis a vis the huckstering sophist to that of the nutritionist versus the confectionery-maker in trying to sway little children. The Confectionery-maker has what the kids ostensibly want ("sweets and treats" ) but the nutritionist knows what the children need (a well-balanced diet, with sweets only in moderation). And yet the nutritionist very much has an uphill battle to persuade the children to take what he's offering versus what the candy-man has.
-JJR, aka "Aggie Librarian"
PPS: All of this is bound up with issues discussed at length by the latest books from John Buschman (Dismantling the Public Sphere) and Ed D'Angelo (Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library). One wonders if HPL Express would be a hip/new "innovation" *shudder* of the sort that ISC's otherwise sensible John Pateman approves of, rather than fuddy-duddy "old fashioned" libraries serving only "narrow middle class interests".
More "Let them Eat Pixels!", In my view. (-jjr)
here is the original local Houston story I contributed to the discussion:
A colleague and close friend responded with these observations:Houston Public Library, Fondren Southwest gets a mini-libraryAs told to Richard ConnellyPublished: June 21, 2007 (The Houston Press)
The Morris Frank branch of the Houston Public Library sits near the intersection of West Bellfort and Fondren, an area that's been ground zero for Katrina evacuees and ensuing problems with violence.It's a tough environment for a kid — or anyone who likes reading, we guess — to grow up in, but the city has good news: You're getting a new library!!Umm, just don't expect many books in it.The library system was planning a renovation of the Frank branch, which has foundation problems. They discovered, unfortunately, that new studies now place the building squarely within the 100-year flood plain."We'd either have to lift the building up 18 inches or build a two-foot berm all the way around it, and there wasn't enough money to do that," says Tim Douglass, chief of staff for city council member Anne Clutterbuck.There wasn't enough money to build a completely new similarly sized branch, so the neighborhood is getting what the Houston Public Library System is calling "an exciting concept" known as "HPL Express."What's an HPL Express? It's a rented storefront that holds about half the 90,000 items that the Frank branch currently has."It'll have all the popular books, it just won't have a plethora of books," Douglass says.But there'll be plenty of computers, says the HPL's Greg Simpson, and anyone who wants a book that isn't on the shelves can order it and pick it up a couple of days later.On the one hand, this idea sounds like an innovative way to stretch scarce dollars. On the other hand, it sounds awfully like Metro, which promised light rail to low-income neighborhoods but is now instead offering special buses that kinda, sorta look like trains."Could somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about, who doesn't understand the concept, who doesn't see the betterness they're getting, could they complain?" says Douglass. "Maybe, but the alternative is nothing. The alternative is closing the Frank branch completely.""I think it's just going to be a matter of us educating our customers how to use the facility," Simpson says. "But we're excited about it and think it's going to work great."Future HPL Expresses — including one in the similarly troubled Gulfton neighborhood — might offer only a "very small collection" of books. Future sites might be entirely book-free. But those sites will be in addition to existing libraries, not replacing full facilities like the Frank branch.Ah, what the hell — it's not like kids today are reading anyway. Maybe HPL should just set up a Facebook page and be done with it.
======================================================
Thanks for posting. This is something to be concerned about. We might call this HPL Express a Library Lite or a Fast Food Library. It appears it will function in a similar way that fast food functions to real food. I don't need to remind people on this list that customers love fast food, unfortunately it is not good for their health. And a library without intelligent books is not good for democracy.
This is a good illustration of a library getting out of the knowledge and education venue and moving to solely focus on entertaining (pacifying?) their "customers" with only popular works (known in some circles as crap or fluff). In theory, this HPL Express will feed the mind but it is really only full of empty calories. It will look like a library, but will most likely have none of those awkward resources that might actual assist a person in becoming an engaged citizen. I am betting that they will be sure to order a copy of Paris Hilton's autobiography as soon as it is published
-M
=======================================================-M
I responded thus:
Thanks, M! It is also an illustration of our disposable consumer-culture mentality....there is no longer a willingness, as there was in the age of the great Carnegie Libraries, which coincided with the historical Beautiful City* (?) movement of the late 19th and early 20th century (now championed by the New Urbanism school of architecture, of which James Howard Kunstler is a passionate devotee)...there is no longer that willingness to build structures intended to last beyond the lifetimes of those building it, to pass down that permanent building as a legacy for the ages, etc....
Thanks, M! It is also an illustration of our disposable consumer-culture mentality....there is no longer a willingness, as there was in the age of the great Carnegie Libraries, which coincided with the historical Beautiful City* (?) movement of the late 19th and early 20th century (now championed by the New Urbanism school of architecture, of which James Howard Kunstler is a passionate devotee)...there is no longer that willingness to build structures intended to last beyond the lifetimes of those building it, to pass down that permanent building as a legacy for the ages, etc....
There was money enough in HPL's budget to utterly renovate the downtown main Branch library (still ongoing as of this writing)...but the Main Branch library is in the heart of the downtown Business district, and has a not inconsiderable business clientelle, with a considerable ECON/BUSINESS section taking up most of the entire 2nd floor. So there are race and class issues that intersect here as well. The "either/or" choice posited is utterly false & misleading.
I suppose it would be also impertinent to ask if there is any Gates Foundation seed money propping up McLibrary projects like HPL Express storefronts, etc, since they will have "plenty of computers". Inquiring minds want to know.
There used to be a provocative show on KPFT 90.1, locally produced by some University of Houston faculty, called "Class Notes", which tackled local issues from a class perspective. Since its content was very intellectual, it did not have a broad appeal and perhaps because of its inability to raise more funding dollars compared to other programming (like World Music or Lone Star Jukebox or Democracy Now!), it was eventually dropped from the lineup. This Houston Press story would've been perfect for the "Class Notes" show to treat at length. I suppose we should be glad the Houston Press at least gave the blurb it did. I don't think the story even made it in the Houston Chronicle.
--JJR
*sorry, don't have a copy of GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE or HOME FROM NOWHERE handy to look this up and verify the name.
Incidentally, my own posting of the Houston Press story was inspired by an SRRT contributor who reposted this story to PLG/SRRT circles:
=============================================="...Someone recently posted this article about Sacramento librarians
concerned that the Sacramento Public Library is becoming too 'pop-
fixated' :
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/190564.html
I am reposting it because what is happening at SPL is not an isolated
phenomenon. I have seen the same sort of restructuring taking place
at public libraries in PA..." [snip]
(-from a concerned SRRT member)
================================================
POST-SCRIPT: The "Give 'em what they want" vs. "Give 'em what they need" argument goes as far back as Socrates/Plato, who expressed dismay at the position of the philosopher in society, comparing his position vis a vis the huckstering sophist to that of the nutritionist versus the confectionery-maker in trying to sway little children. The Confectionery-maker has what the kids ostensibly want ("sweets and treats" ) but the nutritionist knows what the children need (a well-balanced diet, with sweets only in moderation). And yet the nutritionist very much has an uphill battle to persuade the children to take what he's offering versus what the candy-man has.
-JJR, aka "Aggie Librarian"
PPS: All of this is bound up with issues discussed at length by the latest books from John Buschman (Dismantling the Public Sphere) and Ed D'Angelo (Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library). One wonders if HPL Express would be a hip/new "innovation" *shudder* of the sort that ISC's otherwise sensible John Pateman approves of, rather than fuddy-duddy "old fashioned" libraries serving only "narrow middle class interests".
More "Let them Eat Pixels!", In my view. (-jjr)
Saturday, June 09, 2007
De Lange Conference VI Proceedings now available
Got this in the mail, thought I'd share, since I attended this local shin-dig.
(and found people actually reading this blog--gaack!)
-JJR
======================================================
Dear Attendee,
The web site for the De Lange Conference VI Proceedings may be found at:
http://delange.rice.edu/VI/
In addition, many attendees have ask for the attendee list be sent out
via email to ONLY those who attended the conference. The information
that would be on this list includes name, affiliation and email only and
would be in the form of a PDF document. If you are opposed to having
your information sent out to the attendees, please respond to this email
by July 2, 2007.
Thank you again for making this conference one of the best we have had yet!
Sincerely,
De Lange Conference Committee
==========================================================
My affiliation will say "University of North Texas", since I was pressed for time and just put my library school affiliation instead of, say, Progressive Librarians Guild, which I'm actually a member of (I sit on the Coordinating Committee, in fact). PLG would've been better, I realized, but by the time I reached that conclusion the conference was already underway, the name placards already printed, etc. I did put "Alumnus, UNT/SLIS" but the Alumnus part got chopped off, making me look like a SLIS adjunct faculty member or a UNT Libraries professional librarian something, which was acutely embarrassing. Oh well.
It was worth going to, even though in the main it was still De-Pressing.
Good CV fodder, I guess.
(and found people actually reading this blog--gaack!)
-JJR
======================================================
Dear Attendee,
The web site for the De Lange Conference VI Proceedings may be found at:
http://delange.rice.edu/VI/
In addition, many attendees have ask for the attendee list be sent out
via email to ONLY those who attended the conference. The information
that would be on this list includes name, affiliation and email only and
would be in the form of a PDF document. If you are opposed to having
your information sent out to the attendees, please respond to this email
by July 2, 2007.
Thank you again for making this conference one of the best we have had yet!
Sincerely,
De Lange Conference Committee
==========================================================
My affiliation will say "University of North Texas", since I was pressed for time and just put my library school affiliation instead of, say, Progressive Librarians Guild, which I'm actually a member of (I sit on the Coordinating Committee, in fact). PLG would've been better, I realized, but by the time I reached that conclusion the conference was already underway, the name placards already printed, etc. I did put "Alumnus, UNT/SLIS" but the Alumnus part got chopped off, making me look like a SLIS adjunct faculty member or a UNT Libraries professional librarian something, which was acutely embarrassing. Oh well.
It was worth going to, even though in the main it was still De-Pressing.
Good CV fodder, I guess.
Rough stuff, real tough, Texas A&M
I'm sure there's more than one Maroon blooded purebred Aggie out there with an MLS who disdains an intentionally ironic, self-mocking 2%-er & godless commie bastard like moi squatting on the moniker Aggie Librarian. Fine, call go yourself the "Real Aggie Librarian" or something.
I do still bleed maroon myself, believe it or not, and I don't forget my humble beginnings at dear old Aggieland.
Here's where Aggies can go to check out the latest info on the most ridiculous Aggie-joke of an Intellectual Property lawsuit I've ever seen:
http://www.sawemoff.com/
Which is a battle between the University of Texas and this popular collegiate apparel vendor:
http://www.aggielandoutfitters.com/
(short URL is www.ao12.com )
As an atheist, I admit I'm not overly fond of the versions of the shirt that quote the bible verse out of the book of Psalms, but whatever. I know there are WAY more religious nutjobs in Aggieland than rational atheists, so that's just good marketing strategy.
I think the "Saw 'Em Off" 12th Man towel thing looks COOL. It's straight out of the goddamn Aggie War Hymn. We used to build Bonfire to express our burning desire to beat the ever livin', ever lovin' HELL outta t.u. (Which, as I never tire of pointing out, was a class-based resentment; Thanks, Dr. Resch, for introducing me to Uncle Karl, even if I resented the hell out of it at the time; it was real growth for me to find myself agreeing with ol' Karl & Fred way more than I expected I would)
Anyway, Watch out...and mark my word if the T-sips win this one, they'll go after our expression "t.u." next and any private vendor that dares sell t-shirts "defaming" their "logo" in that way; I mean, SERIOUSLY, WTF here!? I'm no intellectual property lawyer, but where the F*CK do STATE schools get off with this proprietary logo crap?? They ought to be goddamn public domain...our tax dollars go to support them and keep them OPEN, for fuck's sake. Private Universities, like Rice University (another of my Alma Maters), OK, I can understand THAT argument, were it at issue, but for PUBLIC universities? I just don't get it, but then again, I'm just a dumb Aggie, what do I know.
It amused (and annoyed) me to no end to watch my library school, the University of North Texas, go to enormous lengths to research and "rebrand" itself. There were SERIOUS meetings taking many months to find just the right "fit"; enormous funds were expended to better "market" the UNT "product" to its "consumers" (i.e. parents, students, employers, and UNT sports franchise fans). It was madness and folly from start to finish, but there it was.
As regards the Aggie Outfitters lawsuit, I do hope they (AO) prevail---not just because I'm an Aggie alumnus myself, but because UT-Austin's case is stupid and were THEY to prevail, the legal precedents set would be just awful and would take decades, maybe even a few generations, to reverse/overcome.
I do still bleed maroon myself, believe it or not, and I don't forget my humble beginnings at dear old Aggieland.
Here's where Aggies can go to check out the latest info on the most ridiculous Aggie-joke of an Intellectual Property lawsuit I've ever seen:
http://www.sawemoff.com/
Which is a battle between the University of Texas and this popular collegiate apparel vendor:
http://www.aggielandoutfitters.com/
(short URL is www.ao12.com )
As an atheist, I admit I'm not overly fond of the versions of the shirt that quote the bible verse out of the book of Psalms, but whatever. I know there are WAY more religious nutjobs in Aggieland than rational atheists, so that's just good marketing strategy.
I think the "Saw 'Em Off" 12th Man towel thing looks COOL. It's straight out of the goddamn Aggie War Hymn. We used to build Bonfire to express our burning desire to beat the ever livin', ever lovin' HELL outta t.u. (Which, as I never tire of pointing out, was a class-based resentment; Thanks, Dr. Resch, for introducing me to Uncle Karl, even if I resented the hell out of it at the time; it was real growth for me to find myself agreeing with ol' Karl & Fred way more than I expected I would)
Anyway, Watch out...and mark my word if the T-sips win this one, they'll go after our expression "t.u." next and any private vendor that dares sell t-shirts "defaming" their "logo" in that way; I mean, SERIOUSLY, WTF here!? I'm no intellectual property lawyer, but where the F*CK do STATE schools get off with this proprietary logo crap?? They ought to be goddamn public domain...our tax dollars go to support them and keep them OPEN, for fuck's sake. Private Universities, like Rice University (another of my Alma Maters), OK, I can understand THAT argument, were it at issue, but for PUBLIC universities? I just don't get it, but then again, I'm just a dumb Aggie, what do I know.
It amused (and annoyed) me to no end to watch my library school, the University of North Texas, go to enormous lengths to research and "rebrand" itself. There were SERIOUS meetings taking many months to find just the right "fit"; enormous funds were expended to better "market" the UNT "product" to its "consumers" (i.e. parents, students, employers, and UNT sports franchise fans). It was madness and folly from start to finish, but there it was.
As regards the Aggie Outfitters lawsuit, I do hope they (AO) prevail---not just because I'm an Aggie alumnus myself, but because UT-Austin's case is stupid and were THEY to prevail, the legal precedents set would be just awful and would take decades, maybe even a few generations, to reverse/overcome.
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