Collection analytics (It’s not what you think)
I am in the middle of what my brain thinks is pure brilliance, though it reveals to me that my recollection of Descartes is shakier than I’d believed. But this sort of writing takes time to mature. There is hardly anything worse than half-baked philosophy, or at least reading it while sober.
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.
Filed under: Writing
Pages are now available on Google+
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.
Filed under: Internet,Libraries
AcBoWriMo: Academic Book Writing Month
I was just thinking yesterday about how something like NaNoWriMo was cool, but really not the writing I needed to be doing. (I routinely write the first chapter of a novel just to get it out of me. Chapter 2 usually proves to be more of a problem). Lo and behold, ProfHacker posted about Charlotte Frost’s idea to do AcBoWriMo, where you write an academic book in a month–with, of course, the caveat that academic writing is far different than novel writing. “[B]ut aren’t you just a little bit curious to know how much of a kick-start a dedicated writing month could give your book?” she asks.
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
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