My favorite part of Midwinter is the fact that it’s mostly sitting down at a table with like minded people talking about issues, whether they are practical projects or general theoretical questions. It’s also small enough that you have a chance to run into people, unlike Annual where you can’t even find the people you set out to meet. For instance, walking by the Networking Uncommons I spotted Andromeda Yelton, whom I met though this blog and talk to on Twitter fairly often but had only met at Internet Librarian karaoke, where it’s hard to talk about web development.

I attended the Library Linked Data IG meeting on Sunday, which was a nice mix of people and ideas. Linked data is something I know about a lot more in theory than in practice, so it was good to get an idea of what some of the practical issues are. One concern/issue is bringing the library linked data world into the rest of the semantic web world–we have the coolest data, so we need to be a part of the conversations. Another issue is actually consuming linked data in libraries, which doesn’t have as many tools or examples available but is something that is more appealing to administrators.

Another topic was how to share information about available tools and data sets in something like a clearinghouse. One potential on ALA Connect is linked from the ALA page above, but the DLF already had a Zotero group, so that’s another potential. I mentioned to someone or other I was going to put myself through Linked Data bootcamp before Code4Lib in a few weeks so I can get beyond the beginner stage. I know I always say I will blog about things and then never do (silly clothing catalog is one major example), but maybe I will blog about this.

Either way, in the future will definitely try to attend Midwinter.

I like the idea of this book, but I didn’t like reading it. His argument is that by keeping everything that we’ve done online that we risk two things: first, that adolescent foibles and drunken late nights will be held against us potentially forever, and second that to forget makes us in some way more human and we have to retain that. To be honest I skimmed almost everything regarding the second argument and so may be stating it poorly.

While it is in fact the case that it’s easier to find out people’s shady secrets when you can find them online, I don’t think this has changed society in any fundamental way. All human cultures have some sort of taboos that if people break they try to keep it quiet. Modern American culture doesn’t have the same sort of shame culture that Ancient Rome, Victorian England, etc. had anyway. I am sure I am wrong, but most cases of blackmail are for criminal offenses, not drinking pictures or sexual escapades. Now that DADA has been lifted this will probably take care of a lot of one of the remaining huge incentives to keep sexuality quiet–not that this doesn’t exist in a hundred other little ways in other arenas. Either way, there are things that people want to keep secret for sure, but a lot of other things that just aren’t a big deal for other people to know.

But I digress. It is well known by now that before job hunting you better clean up your digital image. I don’t see that as a problem. You can easily live a private life about which your employers know nothing, digitally or physically. The major issues arise when it comes to the intersection of personal and professional–what if you use your social media accounts for work purposes, for instance? Standards for institutional social media are changing, partly due to these sorts of conflicts. Some organizations push for more open communication, some shut it down completely.

He proposes some solutions to these problems such as digital abstinence and expiration dates for information. They are already technically possible, but I didn’t buy his argument that it was necessary to even worry about the problem. There have been a number of books on this topic lately, and this is just not the best treatment of it.



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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This volume is edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, and each chapter is written by someone else, so the “by” in the bibliographic data should really read “ed.”. Anyway.

This work examines people’s personal relationships with technology through three formats: memoir, ethnography, and case report. In each case, the point is to understand how the technology either builds or elides a sense of self. Not surprisingly, results show that participative environments help people to build a sense of self, though this is frequently pathological. In other cases, the technology masks people’s humanity, usually with deleterious effects; the chapters on addiction and disease are the most striking examples of this. In these cases, a life and death dependence on technology such as in the case of dialysis can quickly lead to despair or feeling like a cyborg. It seems to me that a frequent criticism of Sherry Turkle is that she tends to see the pathological in people’s relationships with technology. My personal view on the matter is that she might be right, though of course I don’t change my own behavior to account for it. But even when new social or learning spaces are created as technology advances, we have to recognize their limits. The chapter “Cyberplaces” by Kimberlyn Leary had the example that most resonated with me. Melissa has just discovered that her “knight” in a medieval online RPG is really a 15 year old boy. He insists nothing has changed about their relationship. Melissa feels differently.

Most clinicians would not fault Melissa’s comment for showing a lack of imagination but would find it a healthy adaptive response. She has come to an important realization, absent in much of the over-enthusiastic literature on cyberspace: the computer makes multiple selves possible–but only to a point. Melissa can live on the surface, but at a critical moment, the need for depth returns. (pp. 89-90)

I am sure we could all name a similar “critical moment” in our own lives.

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My reading of late has been fast and furious, because I set myself the task of reading 100 books in 2011. I am up to about 90. One of the things I hope to write about more is the collection of ideas just for the sake of collecting them. 100 is clearly an arbitrary number, particularly since if I have my way I will be much of the way through A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is about 5000 pages long–so far. And yet the urge drives me forward. I want to do it just to say I did it. Well, why do people climb Mount Everest anyway?

I am also creating a database of all my clothes. This is part of the same project (I think) that talks about collecting ideas just for the sake of it. Clothes are the same way. I am “doing analytics” as I like to say on my clothes to prove to myself that a wardrobe of which 25$ is t-shirts in middling condition clearly needs no more t-shirts added. Why conferences thought they were doing me a favor by providing t-shirts instead of tote bags I have no idea. I did promise to share my template with all of you, but I have to figure out how to do it.

So there you have it. The most mundane take possible on the research and writing that’s been driving me along for awhile now. More later, I promise.

You’ll have noticed that all recent library conferences have had presentations on “Using Google+ in the Library” or similar, but they all were missing something. You could use Google+ as a librarian, but not as a library. As of yesterday, that’s changed.

I found some good step-by-step instructions here on how to make a page, or you can follow along on Google+ official help. I am still unclear on the advantages to a Local Page vs. a Company, Institution or Organization page. This seems to me very much like the old Facebook page vs. place argument. If they are exactly the same thing and you only have one location maybe you should make a Local Page rather than a non-profit or organization page. I made the decision to make an organization page, which hopefully wasn’t the wrong decision. (I actually did make a place page as well, just in case, but didn’t do anything with it yet). Facebook eventually made it possible to have both at the same time, so this might be coming soon.

There also is no info that I could find on how to add additional administrators, though I assume this is coming soon. I will add it to the library’s social media repertoire slowly, since not all our librarians are on Google+ anyway yet. We don’t get many reference questions over social media yet, but we do get a few and have a librarian assigned to monitor social media each day. I could see scenarios in the future where we had hangout office hours for distance or commuter students or really anyone who wanted to do a hangout, since that’s so easy in this platform. But that will have to wait until we get more people on board, and figure out if any of those constituents are even using Google+.

Update: Just a few pointers–this works the same way as Facebook, in which you have to have a personal account to create a page. But like Facebook, your personal page is completely separate. You either use Google+ as yourself, or the organization page. You also cannot follow anyone until they follow you, unlike Google+ for individuals.

So in the spirit of fun and GTD, I am going to give it a shot. Plus I just joined a faculty writing group at Dominican, so I am in the mindset of improving the volume and quality of my writing. I am thinking  500 words a day is totally doable, but to get to the full 50,000 words in a 30 day month requires 1,666 words a day.  Considering that it’s already November 2, this may be challenging. Plus I don’t have any projects that require quite that length in the pipeline. I do have several shorter projects due in November, plus a number of longer projects partially completed. So rather than planning to “do things over winter break” (hahahahahhaha), it’s not a bad idea to just suffer through November and enjoy more of December for fun, as several people have pointed out.

In November I have 750 words worth of writing due to two different publications, a white paper that needs to happen soon, and two articles I would like to at least draft (both are outlined already). That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 words. Not to mention I could always blog more! So let’s say 20,000 words to be generous. That’s 666 words a day. I have written 600 words for a book review draft (it’s pretty rough yet), and this blog post will end up being about 400 words. So that’s 1,000 words. I feel like that’s cheating, but then again, it’s not nothing!

Anyone else participating in any of these “write such and such many words of…” memes? Do other people accomplish things in different ways? Or are writing groups the only way to do it?

Writing Progress Chart

Take a look! And then don’t yell at me cause I should have already finished migrating the blog to Drupal. “Finish migrating something to Drupal” is the story of my life.

Even more exciting: the presentation won the “Risky Business” contest, as the project that most exemplified risk-taking and experimentation. I am honored by how nuts everyone thinks we are.

On the matter of slides, you will find that I am all over the place on where these things are posted. I hope to make this somewhat more streamlined in the future, but for the moment:

• Text of presentation
• Slides

You will note that the slides do not have a CC label on them, but they are also a BY-NC-ND, cause I’m a jerk like that. They do contain copyrighted and trademarked images for which I have no permission if we are to consider it carefully, and so I would like to encourage everyone to rely on the text if you care to cite me. These are posted on the ALA Connect site for LITA, and will shortly be posted on Dominican’s IR as well.

This is heavily adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe, another food-related standby.

One large onion, chopped

One red pepper (sweet), chopped

One purple potato (other colors would work), chopped

garlic to taste, minced

dried spices to taste, but definitely thyme and cinnamon, plus pepper and salt

handful of golden raisins

3/4 cup white quinoa (I think white rather than red would work better in this recipe)

1/2 cup red lentils (really should be red.)

1 1/2 cup water

Saute the onion in a covered skillet until very translucent and maybe just beginning to get golden. Then add the pepper and potato. Stir this all around and then add the spices and salt. Cook more, until soft and fragrant. You will want to deglaze the pan from time to time. Then add the raisins, stir again. Now add the quinoa and lentils (remember to rinse off, as quinoa is poisonous before washing!!!), stir to mix with the vegetables. Add the water, bring to a simmer, and let cook for 15 minutes. I served with some yogurt and parsley, but use cilantro if you have it.

Many faculty from Dominican present felt that it was in fact our duty to teach such virtues as coming to class regularly and on time–but that a class worth going to we wouldn’t have to entice students to attend. In this sense, we acknowledge (as I believe) that we generally live in a Model 2 grading world, in which grades and degrees are currency we can spend in life. We turn over a student to an employer with a stamp saying “this student knows certain material and will show up”.  I can absolutely see why Close has a problem with this; but the fact of the matter is, it pretty well describes the way many students see higher education.  Though not, I might add, those students who have completed my junior seminar.

I find this a fascinating topic because I personally have an unusual experience with grades. As you may know, I didn’t go to a school between the ages of 9 and 18, though I certainly got plenty of schooling. Grades were not a part of my  daily experience, and I managed to learn how to show up places on time and read books despite this. Perhaps it’s because my education was by turns extremely practical (many volunteer and regular jobs), and extremely impractical (learning Ancient Greek for the sheer joy of it).

It could be that I am unusual, but ultimately I don’t think grades can possibly create a certain type of person. A punitive grade might make someone briefly unhappy, but a grade describes a student’s attitude towards his or her education just as much as it describes a student’s aptitude. I got excellent grades in college partly because I did what was expected of me, but I did what was expected of me because I generally believed that it would result in me getting the education I was there to get. Maybe it’s only because I was taking the right classes at a college that was a good fit for me.

As someone who jumped in teaching college head first, I graded as leniently as possible my first semester, since I knew it was a learning experience for me as much as the students. Since I teach a seminar that requires engaging with challenging texts in an authentic way, I could tell which students were honestly trying and which were going through the motions. But I’m not sure most people in real life cares how much people care, as long as the work gets done.

Did you care about your grades in school? Why or why not? (I am tempted to grade all my internet friends on their level of engagement with my blog, so be forewarned).

1. Close D. Fair Grades. Teaching Philosophy. 2009. 32(4):361-398. Available at: http://bright.net/~dclose/fair-grades-typescript.pdf.