NT23: Thing 16: LT, part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

NT23: Thing 16, Library Thing

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

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

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

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

NT23: Thing 15 - Digg / Dugg

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

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

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

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

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

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

On my agenda for later, Things 15-17

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

Thing 14, Delicious

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

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

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

Thing 13, Tagging

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thing 12, Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

An Historian's Conscience

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

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

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

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

Thing 11 - Instant Messaging (North Texas 23 Things)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

iPod pondering, followed by a rant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ongoing re-cataloging

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


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

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

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

Texas Legislature Ajourned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2009

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

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

That perks me up some, for now.

Finally! Thing 10, Ning - a modest success.

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

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

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

Thing 10, addendum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thing 10, first attempt (Ning)

So, the NT23 Things blog gives this helpful suggestion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia is a great place to START, not stop.

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

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

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

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

Thing 7: RSS readers (in plain English)

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

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

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

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

North Texas 23 Things; Thing 6, Blog Readers

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

The Library is the Heart of a University.

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

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

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

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

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

Attended (sort of) A-Kon 20

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

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

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

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

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

Just started a new Delicious account.

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

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

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

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

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

an html test

This text is scratched out!

Wow, it worked.

Just finished Irreligion by J.A. Paulos

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

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

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

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

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

More later, perhaps.

Wordle interprets the Aggie Librarian

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

Kinda cool, I guess.



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

Bitter clinger...

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

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

but I do have to question this bit of advice:

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


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

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

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

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

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

Jingle-jangle jingle, and following other blogs.

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

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

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

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

Thing 5 - Image Generators

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

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

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

Thing 2, part 2, item 2

The last item on the thing 2 list is:

2) John Blyberg blog post here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In support of the Campus Personal Protection Act

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



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

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

A slightly vulgar Haiku....

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

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

Thing 2, Part One

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

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

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

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

4) Watch the video on this page (link)


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

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

Flickr's internal "Net Nanny"

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

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

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

Thing 4 : Flickr Mashup 3

Still goofing around...



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

Thing 4: Flickr Mashup 2

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

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

Thing 4: Flickr Mashup?

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

Actually, Holy crap, that looks cool!!

Thing 3: Flickr

Posting for that North Texas 23 Things.

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

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

Yeah, again, been there, done that.

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


NEXT!

Howdy fellow NT 23 participants.

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

Details here:

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

Yeah, been there, done that, NEXT!!

Taking a few potshots @ a couple of Educause articles.

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

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

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

Picking a few nits of my own; Dede first:

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

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

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

More nits:

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

So Web 2.0 = fuck Occam’s razor?

Really??!

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

What a parody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to Knauff and Kim, quote:

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

Including yours truly.

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

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

College dropouts.

Anyway, do continue...


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

It isn't PASSIVE, as I clarified above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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