Internet - The Greatest Procrastination of All

Last week a friend on Facebook linked an interesting article by a writer who went a full month without using the Internet for anything. In this age such a venture seems absurd as we're all increasingly Internet reliant. Having continual access to Google can be a boon. For example, recently some friends visited Portland and during the entire time we were together they were never separated from their iPhones. I appreciated this continual link in that we easily and quickly located tapas for dinner (link to place). However, the younger of the two spent a ton of her time interacting with her screen instead of with the people around her - texting and messaging and emailing. It's interesting to me that such a powerful convenience tool can so easily become the greatest time suck of all.

This time suck wasn't so much of a concern for me when I used my old computer. The thing was cranky, clunky, and crashed within minutes of loading a YouTube video. Between that and the fact that I found myself tired from staring at a computer screen at work all day, I rarely logged on at home. And I accomplished so much. I read constantly (averaging about 3 books a week, even when my daily commute was reduced). Since this was before I could stream Netflix through the XBox, I rarely turned the TV (okay, except between 6 and 7 pm to watch the same 5 repeats of Family Guy). I wrote letters, cleaned the apartment, cajoled my husband for a fencing lesson etc. I never felt particularly bored and I continually got stuff done.

This all changed this past September when I started my online MLIS program and started spending a ridiculous amount of time on my new laptop. During the quarter I always have a browser open and am continually logged into MyUW so I can listen to my lectures, turn in homework and post on the boards. I have chat open for group projects. Now a person with reasonable self-control would probably be able to leave only the necessary windows open and power through their work like a champ. But I am not a person with reasonable self-control. I am also easily distracted. Eventually I found a way to work on my computer without checking Facebook every three minutes, but it was difficult and resulted in only going online to do the work I have to do and then putting the laptop to the side while I read or drafted my assignments. If I have to write or use the laptop for an assignment, I have found the little switch that turns off the wireless signal to be the greatest invention of all time.

This putting aside the distraction isn't possible at work as I cannot do most of my assigned tasks without an Internet connection. I need it to edit records in our ILS, to update holdings in OCLC, to run ILL requesting, and to edit documents on the shared network folders. When in Circ I need to be monitoring email accounts as well. So unplugging at work isn't really an option. At work what needs to happen in that I change how I interact with the Internet. I find that in order to be productive, I need some sort of background noise. When I'm really in the midst of something, I easily tune things out, but I seem to need something to jump start it, a louder background to react against. It's probably because I grew up with a twin sister in a family of loud New Yorkers that today I find I cannot even do class reading in utter silence. I have been known to do laundry just to have the sound of the dryer running for white noise. It's pathetic.

But when you're sitting in a technical services office, laundry isn't an option and internet radio is too tempting. So the challenge has become to create background noise without the Internet. This is why for the past couple of days I've been cranking out my weeding projects to the sound of Little Shop of Horrors, Sunset Boulevard, and other choice items from our media collection. It's working somewhat - I am finding myself more focused, but also more in need of regular breaks. I'm not sure if I'm necessarily getting more done but I feel like it because the moments of focus are longer and deeper.

I'm still intrigued, though, by the idea of walking away from the Internet for a month, or at least limiting my interaction heavily. Work email whenever, but personal email, Facebook, and reading only at certain points in the day (before and after work, for example). Could I manage that for a full week? Next Friday I leave on vacation and that might be the perfect time to attempt something like this. I might get more reading or writing done. I might be just as lazy and bored. But, until I remove the great procrastinatory variable, I'll never know.

For Alex

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Heat Wave

This has been the strangest year or so of weather here in the Pacific Northwest. After being snowed in for over a week in December, the earth now decided to throw a week of 100+ degree weather our way. I think that the earth really must have meant to send all of that to my family in New York, since they seem to have a lot of chill nights and rain. If someone could set this straight for me, that would be excellent.

Of course the week of unending heat would be the week that AK returns home from his camps out East. He's off this week, so instead of running around with small children in AC'd glory, he'll be at home cleaning and fixing up his class equipment. I am sure that he is more than excited at the prospect of spray painting in the sun.

Though I'm now slothfully draped on the couch with a fan focused directly on my back, I've actually been rather productive in the past few weeks. I've knitted more than I expected (on the third scarf of the summer, since I seem to have sworn off sweaters). I'm in the middle of several excellent books, though I simply cannot bring myself to finish To the Lighthouse. I'm not entirely sure what's cause this blockage. Maybe I'm not in the right mindset for Woolf at the moment or maybe I screwed myself by devouring Orlando before I tackled this novel. Either way, it's staring reproachfully from the top of my active bookpile and I'm starting to feel just a tinge of guilt about it. The book directly to hand is Zamyatin's We, which I ordered on Summit after finishing 1984. It's beautifully written and thus far the plot is fairly compelling. I'll write up a Goodreads review when I'm finished. I think I might re-read The Dispossessed after that, to finish out the dystopia trilogy. That is, if I can put aside Woolf for just a little bit longer.

The Challenges of Composing

Though I only officially spend two days a week in Circulation, I tend to be assigned anything that has to do with developing documentation on all of our policies and processes. This is probably because I once volunteered to re-write some portion of the Circ Manual and soon became the victim of my own success. Not that I really mind the writing assignments. Truth be told, they tend to be my favorite part of the job. Despite this affinity, it took me some time to realize that writing documentation for a department is vastly different from the sort of writing I specialized in previously. For example, think about both a piece on creating and checking patron records compared to an essay on Robert Browning and Florentine Portraiture of Women. The underlying purpose of both works is identical - the writer is attempting to convey some idea or concept to the reader in as clear and concise a manner as possible. However, when the execution of both works are examined, the differences are rather pronounced.

In my experience, documentation requires a tighter hand and a terser voice than an academic essay, at least more so than the essays I created. This is perhaps due to the lack of persuasion needed in documentation. In documentation it is not really necessary to get the reader to agree with an argument because it's not necessary to really argue anything. Documentation reflects an established consensus. In my work, documentation is composed and then approved in meetings, so everyone is on the same page. There are also procedural constraints - essentially, this is how we create patron records because of how the system works so it doesn't matter how much anyone hates having to remember to type all the zeros into an ID number.

Because rhetoric isn't necessary in documentation, the piece is more to the point. This tendency to concision an unbelievable challenge for me as I have always been a wordy writer, as this sentence amply demonstrates. Put simply, I babble. I brazenly defy Strunk and White's call to "Omit needless words", relishing melodic though not necessarily pertinent turns of phrase. Even worse, a brief survey of essay titles from my first two degrees demonstrates a shocking affection for alliterative titles. When writing academic essays on history or novels - where story is paramount - this wordiness can be easily integrated and can even be a boon. But when the purpose of a piece is to help a new and harassed Circ Supervisor figure out how to create an alumni record on a weekend when the alumni office is closed and when the impatient patron at the desk, who forgot their alumni card, really wants to leave with their books, this predilection will only earn the author their co-worker's ire.

So what does a useful piece of documentation look like? This will certainly vary between different organizations and their particular information needs and styles. Below is what I do to make documentation better for me and my coworkers.

1) Keep it Visually Simple: By this I mean no dense blocks of text. Think of the difference between a reference book and a monograph.* A piece of documentation should be easy to browse. The reader should be able to pick out the portion of the process or information they need. Formatting is key here - setting out important details in bold or providing numbers for long sequences of steps. I often begin an entry for the Circ Manual with a short preamble that details the purpose of the documentation and/or the process or policy it describes. For longer processes, such as consortia borrowing, I might also include a paragraph that is a general overview of the entire process. From there I'll get into the step by step way to carry out the desired task. I make sure that the steps are numbered and well spaced so that the reader can follow along easily on the screen or via a printout.

2) Know Your Audience: Departmental documentation is used by both full-time and student supervisors. This means that as I writer I need to consider the reader's learning style, job responsibilities, and comfort level with technology.

In terms of job responsibilities, I mean what sort of procedures the reader can be expected to carry out. For example, a full-time Supervisor can and should be comfortable looking up the status of an alumni in Banner before creating a record. However, Student Supervisors do not have Banner access and cannot verify patrons this way. If the documentation leaves the reader lost or at a dead-end, it's ineffective and needs to be changed. The documentation should provide work-arounds or alternatives. For example, is this a dinner break and can they ask the patron to wait or is it during normal business hours and is there someone else on campus they can contact?

In addressing comfort levels with technology, I tend to err on the side of overly explaining. While it's not the point of "Place your dominant hand on the mouse and move it laterally to the Start button...", I do try to break a process down thoroughly. Those who are more experienced can easily skim and pull out the basics and those who need the full click-by-click can follow along. If writing documentation on a process that involved technology of any sort, I like to provide screen-caps. I've never thought of myself as a very visual person, but I have found that seeing that my screen matches the documentation can be comforting and can help when things get a little complicated. By this I mean I can sometimes condense steps by saying "Make sure your screen matches that below" instead of trying to verbally describe how a menu should be formatted. But I also try not to go overboard. My rule is that if there's a significant change in the menu or something else pops up, you make a new screen-cap. Otherwise, a short sentence will suffice.

Variations in learning styles can be difficult to address. But learning styles I mean realizing that people learn differently and thus expect different things from their learning materials. I don't think it's necessary to follow something like 4mat slavishly to ensure that your two page summary on shelving is absolutely inclusive (though I recommend giving it a read to get a better sense of the cognitive differences out there in your readers). Instead, keep a critical eye on your work and ask if the readers will find your work easy to understand. Is your vocabulary and terminology at the right pitch? Are you including enough visual cues (or too many)? Are you giving enough examples to help reader's apply the procedure? Additionally, I've found that giving a rationale for a process will often mean that it will stick with people more. By explaining that all of the zeros in a patron's ID number are necessary to allow uploads from Banner to overlay properly and prevent duplicate records, that bit of information might stay more firmly lodged in one's brain (and make record clean up all the more easier for me).

3)Date Your Footer or Indicate Edits: This is a pet peeve of my boss and one that I've come to take on myself. In order to make sure that the most recent, and thus most accurate, version of a piece is being used, note the footer with a "Last Updated" section. Do NOT use the auto dating function in Word. That will change the footer every time you open the document. Make it a habit when editing to change the footer and add initials if necessary. If using a wiki, this is an unnecessary step (which is one of the reason's why I'm longing to move our documentation to one!). If your department is a fan of track-change in Word feel free to use that (I am not and since I am often the only person editing the documents, it's not really necessary).


This is all I can think of for now, but I hope to add to this in the future!



*Bates, Marcia J. "What Is a Reference Book: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis." RQ 26 (Fall 1986): 37-57. I have read this article at least twice in my program already and it's still pertient.

A slight trim...

When I was small, my mother would let mine and my sister's hair grow out during the summer. We'd go running around outside with white blond ponytails that never seemed to stay up or free of twigs and tangles. Before school started in the fall, my mother would take us in to get the three months growth trimmed into easily manageable bobs. The first woman who cut our hair, a friend of the family, would sweep up our fine blond scraps and tease us by saying that they should be used to make Barbie dolls. For the next fifteen or so years, my hair followed the same pattern: start with a bob, grow it out until the knots or length becomes intolerable, chop back into a bob. There was a brief dalliance with "not quite a boy" cut towards the end of high school, but after that initial cut I could never seem articulate what I wanted. Thus the bob reigned.

This pattern remained unbroken until a November Sunday in London four years ago. Frustrated by the lack of water pressure in a fifth floor bathroom and the state of my greasy hair, I walked into a salon near Paddington Station and asked the taciturn Russian stylist to chop it all off. She gave me hair that was short, spiky, and slightly terrifying. But it's also exactly what I needed during a new grad program in a new country. I couldn't hide behind hair that was only half an inch long. I was out there, for better or for worse.

Back in the States, my hair returned to its former pattern, primarily at the behest of my husband and his preference for "girl hair". I've moved between bob, angled bob, nearly shoulder-length, and back to bob over the past four years. Recently I felt the need to chop it all off again. My current emotional state flows between relaxed with a novel to neurotic and up all night with a laptop wondering why I cannot seem to channel this continual creative urge. I started falling back into old habits of avoidance (my primary procrastination manifestation). I started to hide from people and emails. I needed to change something and, honestly, a haircut is the fastest solution. It sounds trite as hell - the image of a girl with a tear stained face slipping into a salon while simultaneously erasing a boy's phone number from her phone comes to mind - but it works. My hair is shorter and I feel more ready to take on world.

It's funny how a new haircut can bring about that sort of change, that the simple application of scissors can suddenly increase ones confidence and internal sense of badassitude. This past Sunday I walked back to the bus with funky cropped, chopped hair. The stylist spent a good fifteen minutes inspecting my hairline, my face, the texture and fall of my hair. She worked to "open up" my face, broadened the bangs, and essentially razored off the rest. I missed the tug of the razor, the sudden exposure of the back of my neck. I love the feeling when, washing newly short hair, my hands go too far back, searching for all of the hair I left on the salon floor (and, as my stylist complained to her coworker, in her shoes and her shirt).

Since I'm blind as anything, the process of the haircut itself was a complete mystery. In a way, I've grown used to this and rather prefer it. Instead of staring at myself in the mirror, a hated activity to start with, I close my eyes and try to see if I can feel how the haircut is going. I notice the weight of my hair start to subtly shift while watching handfuls of the stuff fall to the ground. After all these years I've developed a pretty good sense of what the final product will be before I can see it properly. However when I put on my glasses this time, I admit to being shocked. It's been so long since I've gone this short. It was strange to see my face in the center of that hair, all the trendy angles and my bright red face staring back.

I'm out there again and I think it's exactly what I need.

Sluice

During the summer between seventh and eight grade I went to what I fondly refer to as nerd camp. Imagine a college campus filled to the brim with overachievers from all over the country, all eager and energetic despite the moist heat of July in Pennsylvania. This was bliss. Since my math scores on the SAT weren't high enough to qualify me for any science classes, I signed up for a class on writing. For you see, when I was younger I wanted to be a writer.* This is perhaps the natural inclination of any bookish child. I believe the severely bookish wind up wanting to either create the works that bring them joy or want to surround themselves with the works that bring them joy. This does not necessarily mean that every writer or every librarian was once a severely bookish child, but it's probably more likely than you think.

The woman who taught my course is now a full English professor in her own right, information provided through the divine intervention of Google. My TA, however, seems to have disappeared as all I can remember is that her name was Eliza. Just Eliza. She was barely taller than me, with a slight frame, short brown hair and glasses. I want to add in a bandanna and cargo shorts, but I have a feeling that they've been added to my memory after the fact. Really the only distinguishing feature that my thirteen year-old mind has retained is that she was the first woman I ever met who didn't shave her legs. I remember workshopping an essay with her out in the stairwell during a nightly study hall. Perched on the wide windowsill against the black panes, she pointed out phrases on my looseleaf essay. I have no idea what I wrote or what she said, because it took all my effort not to stare at the long dark hairs on her thin pale legs. I sat across from her on the cool stone steps, nodding where appropriate, marvelling at how she must be either incredibly brave or incredibly crazy. Or so it seemed to my thirteen year-old self.

The only other distinguishing feature of Eliza (though, again, not one that's helpful in tracking her down) that I can recall is her favorite word: sluice. Our teacher asked us all to come up with our favorite word and I can still recall the slight smile on her face as Eliza drew out the sound of the world: "Slluuuuuiicceee". She had to define it for the class and I scribbled it down in the corner of my ever-present notebook. I still haven't forgotten it.


I hadn't really thought of Eliza, her legs, or sluices in years until today, when I came across this article. Here poets were asked their least favorite words. I have to say that I'm not a fan of "pulchritude" (also because I'm fairly certain I would butcher the pronunciation), but am guilty of using "chillax". The words listed in the comments are variously heinous and innocuous. Spatula? Really? I laughed at the continued hatred of moist. A friend of mine cringes terribly at the phrase "moist oyster", which is unfortunate as she lives in New England and cannot conceivably avoid either word.

The word I shared as my favorite all those years ago is, like Eliza's last name, forgotten. Today I am leaning towards inscrutable, but that's apt to change as nothing can have the same staying power as sluice.



*I also wanted to be a nun (wore suits and played guitar as far as I could tell). My father suggested lawyer since "you like arguing with me so much you might as well get paid for it".

Summer Loving

The longer, brighter nights seem to get away from me faster than their shorter, darker friends. I come home from work brimming with excellent intentions and suddenly it's eleven at night and I'm still dancing around the house to my iPod instead of focusing on Virginia Woolf, my knitting project, or this blog. This, dear readers, is the true devilry of rock and roll - its procrastinatory powers.

I've been torn about what to put in this online space - the daily ramblings of The El-Jay are effortless, but this should be more of a thoughtful space. So I present something rambling and thoughtful: a play-by-play review of the new Tori Amos album.

While I love this album, it's more erratic in sound. Maybe I don't mean erratic, but rather eclectic. She's all over the place with sounds both old and new, in tone and mood. This could be an extension of the Doll Posse personae as well. I suppose that there's also the thematic linkage, though I tend not to dwell much on the lyrics during the first few times in an album. I am the sort of person who can spend years listening to a song, content with fuzzy lyrics or meaning (think early R.E.M.), and then will become utterly shocked when I actually figure out what's going on in the song. Suffice to say, my reactions here are more about the gut, the initial sound and flow of the tracks and the snippets of lyrics that I catch. The over analyzing of the lyrics are definitely more of an El-Jay pursuit.

Tori Amos -Abnormally Attracted to Sin

1. "Give": Dark from the start, feeling bits of Choirgirl here. She's stripped her sound back down again. It's focused without feeling too sparse, which leads to a greater sense of richness. Not rocking head bobbing, but a sort of swaying is provoked here.

2. "Welcome to England" : I completely understand why this is her first single. The more electronic stuff of late, but the lyrical flow and pulse of Venus/Scarlett (the two albums that I play the most). I am always a sucker for a gentle application of acoustic guitar with her strong piano rhythm. You can actually hear her piano here, which I want to say has been missing before ADP, but cannot be bothered at this point to go and research that. Call me on it if you can. This track is my favorite thus far. Also, "You've gotta bring your own sun...." See, the catchy lyric!

3. "Strong Black Vine" : Hi, Metallica circa S&M called and would like their sound back. I am too busy waiting for James to start singing to focus properly on this song.

4. "Flavor" : Bonus points for avoiding pretentious British spelling. There's the same atmosphere here as in "Give". A rolling, pulsing that could easily be monotonous but which she seems to make work. Atmospheric without making me fall asleep.

5. "Not Dying Today" : Okay, and now I'm waiting for... TMBG? Paul Simon? But it's working.... Okay, with the talking sing-song, I am totally heading to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, TN. It's the underlying, continual throbbing that puts it in the Simon category for me. Bonus Gaiman reference? I still like this though. Playfully funky, if we're looking for the soundbite.

6. "Maybe California" : Just Tori and the piano/strings, as basic as it gets. I am somewhat underwhelmed by this track. Ridiculous after praising so much of the "OMG, piano!" of earlier tracks. I am writing this after listening to this track for the third or fourth time and my initial prediction of "I will probably grow to love this song" is so far pretty dead on.

7. "Curtain Call" : Loving the piano rhythm from the start. Good energy, good build. The darker songs have these ostinatos that just carry them through. Solid song. Strangely

8. "Fire to Your Plain" : My gut flipped when I heard the opening as I flashed back to the "... the power of orange knickers..." Slightly bizarre, but enjoyable. Could this be a perky Tori song that doesn't involve zebras?

9. "Police Me" : Getting back to the "noise", but this is an effective application of it. Interesting switch up to that, what at least feels to my mind, 60s syncopation. I'll keep listening to it, but it's not a favorite by any stretch.

10. "That Guy" : Somehow the sort of quirky that works for me. Nice swing. Gorgeous orchestration with just enough of a slant into the minor to give it some character. Third favorite song on the album after "Dying" and "England".

11. "Abnormally Attracted to Sin" : I never seem to care for the title tracks on her album, so my lack of amazement here shouldn't come as a surprise. I do like "impeccable peccadillo". Musically, I think she's trying to do too much here and it makes me want to skip on to the next song. On this listening, I sorta feel this would make a good James Bond theme. Or am I just insane?

12. "500 Miles" : So the Pretenders immediately come to mind, which really isn't the fault of the music, but rather the title. This song is... adorable. And I mean that in the best possible sense. It's about as twee as Tori gets, which I appreciate. She's helped away from the edge by the strong drum/rhythm line. "In the land of the midnight sun, I lost myself..." Am I still too hung up on the idea of sun (or the complete lack of it today in Oregon)? In the running for favorite song of the album.

13. "Mary Jane" : The evil step-sister of "Mr. Zebra". I sort of wish Horowitz was alive to cover this. I am trying to ignore the forced cadence on the lyrics. Otherwise, quite excellent.

14. "Starling" : Ummmm, oookaaaayyyyyyy. Well, it's growing on me. Still growing. Check back in a few weeks.

15. "Fast Horse" : Yes to guitar and piano joined in such a manner from the off. "Girl, you got to find you the man who something something Dark Side". No, that's not it. I am sorry, I am too busy dancing around to this to type properly.

16. "Ophelia" : I am a bit wary of anything purposefully directed this tragic heroine, but Tori seems determined to prove me wrong (also, see the above note about not really paying attention to the lyrics until much further along). Gorgeous, intricate piano work. Rich vocals. A win for me.

17. "Lady in Blue" : Slow and soulful start. An uncomfortable atmosphere - meaning that I'm feeling slightly unsettled here, instead of pulled into the swaying bliss of some of the songs above. Ah, and now she kicks up the energy and the piano and I am fully invested in the song again. I guess this album neatly illustrates my limitations as a listener. There's also a sort of cadence here, a sense of wrapping up. But I have been listening to too many musicals of late, so that could certainly be a side effect.

To sum: a solid album with moments of excellent and only one song that I can't be bothered to listen to. Well played.

Still Alive

So yeah, in the midst of fighting through LIS 530 (which I conquered admirably), end of year for UP, the worst allergies of my life, two friends having babies and now packing up and sending AK off on his month long Great Summer Camp Trip, this blog has fallen to the side. I suppose part of the issue is that I barely had the time to think about anything that did not relate directly to either instructional theory or languages of description. I know I had this particular screen pulled up more than a few times in the past month, but nothing ever emerged. Besides, Facebook is a much faster and more effective way of expressing the frustrations and the joys of the quarter as everyone else who is suffering or celebrating are equally surgically attached to their laptops.

So the quarter is over and I am still alive and still seriously contemplating cataloging as a future. Apparently LIS 530 has a bit of a reputation for turning people off the idea of cataloging, which having survived the class I completely understand. I am drawn to cataloging through a combined desire to put everything in order and to make everything easily discoverable for the patron. But when you start thinking about not just how to put a MARC record together, but the years of thought and theory that informed its creation, your head wants to explode into tiny pieces. And this is after you've spent three weeks trying to wrap your head around the distinction between the manifestation and the expression of a work in FRBR. In my paper for LIS 500 (sort of a glorified "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up" essay), I wrote about wanting to follow my instructor's call to be a tool builder instead of a tool user. I'm quite naturally the latter and balking at becoming the former. Not so much balking as that I do have doubt that I'll ever have the skills required to do that sort of work. But I'm only through the first year and not yet in my tech heavy classes, so we'll see what comes.

Had things gone according to plan, I would be joining others in the start of the summer quarter. My one credit class was cancelled (along with the only other 1 credit I haven't taken) leaving me ineligible for financial aid. I was upset when the possibility of cancellation was first announced. But after thinking about it and looking back on 9 months of continual motion, the idea of sitting on my butt reading and catching up on errands and life for three months seems almost too good to pass up (even if AK will be travelling for a good third of that time). I'm still on track for graduation, so all is well. And I've already read two full novels and am nearly paralyzed by the amount of choice before me. Bliss.

Not much else to report. Today I accompanied a friend to her old lab at OHSU and helped her pitch failed mutant strains from her Ph.D work (little tubes of cultures and naphthalene that I helped her set up over a year ago). In tow was Mr. Rowan, her month old son. I danced him to sleep in the middle of a restaurant today and my right shoulder is yelling about it still. There are twins on the Right Coast that I have yet to meet but cannot wait. I am deeply unsure about having kids, but until I make that decision I am more than content with spending time with other people's (and then handing them back when they start to have a fit).

And now, to sleep.

Purpose Statement

This quarter features more of those "Why am I doing this??" moments than the previous two. First quarter I was too overwhelmed to really think about what was going on and last quarter was a rather relaxing stroll through reference and statistics. LIS 530 is proving to be challenging - mostly the thrilling sort of challenging with spikes of the terrible challenging that makes me anxious and unable to sleep. Some of this is surely latent gifted child syndrome ("Everything was easy and perfect when I was 11 and, despite my brains, I can't figure out why it isn't now!"). Some of this is that the professor for 530 intends us to struggle, to not dance straight into perfect quiz scores. I appreciate this on an intellectual level and am left kicking my feet and pouting on a five-year-old level.

While finishing a paper, working on a quiz, and trying to plan out the next step of another major project, I kept thinking about all of the other things I could be doing at that exact moment if I wasn't in school. A late weekday afternoon featured running, reading novels, knitting, bringing the house up to a state slightly above hovel, and fencing. When I wasn't in school I had vacation time and money to spend to go on vacation. I didn't have to worry about tuition rates, Internet outages, or due dates.

Oh, due dates. My eternal nemesis. How many hours did I spend avoiding you with the vain idea that I "produce better when I'm under the gun." Now that I am officially too old to pull an all nighter, I hate due dates even more because I have to work ahead of them. I am much, much better at organizing my time than I was as an undergraduate or in my first grad program, but I still find myself overwhelmed. All I do is school and I'm terrified that in the future all I'll be able to do is work. Is this something I love enough to want to do it all the time? Most days, yes. I am a big fat nerd about most of this stuff and love when I can see what I've learned playing out at work. I know that what I want to do won't necessarily take the absorbing fanaticism that an English PhD would have required (unless I manage to become that cataloguer). Is this what a career means? Will I have to live and breathe it or is it that I have a tendency to live and breathe whatever my goal of the moment is? My history shows an ability to hyper focus with abandon...

I'm not sure, and I have a lesson plan to write and 8 readings on indexing and cataloging to get to...

awesomePants

Since LIS 530 tried (and failed!) to completely destroy me, and because today features some Portland gray and continual reminders of my favorite graduating seniors, I present a list of what remains awesome:

*Maria'n'Stephen'n'Phoebe'n'Alicia'n'Jennifier(x2)'n'Claire(x2) - the best iSchoolers around

*Charles Ammi Cutter - librarian, cataloger, badass

*Trent

*Barnaby Rudge (I honestly didn't think I would be loving this as much as I am)

*Possibility of visiting EDDS in August and the sticky horrible beautiful mess that is a New York summer

*Boston holding it at 3-3 after going into triple overtime AGAIN

*The Triangle Offense

*Coffee

*The bus mall returning to 5th and 6th

*Three day weekends

*Going to the eye doctor on Monday (which means Health Care)

*New student supervisors to train (though I will miss my girls like whoa)

*The rain that washed away whatever it was that sent me into a Benedryl induced coma yesterday

*Sarah Waters at Powell's on Monday

*The Customer Service lady at Toyota Financial

*That boy who hangs out with me

Phil

So FRBR, ARCS, MARC, IFLA, dc:, 4MAT and the Portland NAC have eaten my brain and my time. I haven't had the time to create a coherent, non-work related thought in forever.

Well, except about Phil Jackson.

Growing up, the only professional sport my father seemed to care about was hockey (we watched the Super Bowl too, but only because it featured Buffalo wings). Though my father and I were both born on Long Island*, we loved and cherished the New York Rangers. I will never forget that magical season when Messier, Graves, and Richter broke the curse (especially since I spent years being furious at my father for not taking me to the victory parade).

Over ten years later, I find myself living with a man who adores not the blood, speed, and beer of the NHL, but rather the narcissistic drama of the NBA. My father loathed professional basketball, so it was never on home. Until I met AK, my knowledge of the NBA began and ended with Pat Riley's pompadour. With great pleasure, he patiently explained the rudiments of the game during the Laker's failed attempt to take the Championship from the Pistons. He waxed poetically on the tactics, the rhythm, the movement. And then he wised up and just handed me Phil's book, Sacred Hoops and I was hooked.

I don't want this to be an essay on "How a girl learned to accept her husband's interest in sports, even though sports are icky", because that's a patently untrue assertion. Sports are for anyone, both in terms of who can compete and who can watch. The four greatest baseball fanatics I know are women (just as the biggest romantic I know is a man). It's for everyone. Period. Besides, I've always enjoyed watched professional sports because it provides all I want in entertainment: drama, complexity, and an excuse to yell at the screen. Perfection.

So even though I won't get the chance to see the Blazers take on Phil in the Rose Garden, I'll still be watching... if only to watch Kobe pitch a fit like the brat that he is.


*This is important, because New York has two other teams: the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Islanders. Once a coworker had Rangers' tickets he wasn't going to use and didn't think to pass them on to my Dad because he assumed my Dad was an Islanders fan. Heartbreak. Also, we hate the Devils and the Penguins.

Maybe Not...

I'm beyond a bit late to the party for this, but the newest song on repeat of the moment.



Look for the Bathroom version of "Some Fantastic". Excellent.


Today was ridiculously bright and sunny and warm, so very little was accomplished in the way of work. There's been running and cleaning and laundry and a flurry of posting to the message boards, but I've yet to work on drafts of anything. AK and I took a long walk after the sun went down and the topic turned to places we could eventually move. While we both like Seattle, we agree that we need some place that has more sun, not less, than Portland. He will continually lobby for San Diego, which I think is still too expensive a place to live (even with the housing market bottoming out). The iSchool is pretty heavy on the Australian connections, so maybe that would be a possibility. Unfortunately my knowledge of Australian fencing begins and ends with an expat who fences at NWFC, so some research is in order.

Since my sisters came out to visit, I've been thinking a lot about the East Coast. I don't know if I could ever live there again. The Hudson Valley is unrecognizable to me now. Public transport is nonexistent outside of a major metropolitan area (essentially anywhere except NYC and Boston). The energy is different too. As much as it pains me to admit it, I don't know if I'm cut out for East Coast living (or at least southern New York/Tri-State area living). Right now I can't think of anywhere I'd want to be other than Portland, but unless the state schools find money and people start retiring, I'm not sure of the job prospects. Economy, you have three years to get it together!

I never thought that this would be a place that I would be reluctant to leave.

The Return of Running

Before grad school started up, I was on a running regime of almost 20 miles a week - typically two shorter runs during the week and a long one on Sunday mornings. I peaked on a ten mile run in the blazing heat and decided that really a half-marathon would be my breaking point. I had planned on keeping up my running when grad school started with the idea that simply grabbing my shorts and sneakers would be a quick and easy break from the grad school grind. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case when I discovered that 8 credits a quarter (if broken up into 4 courses) made me insane and overloaded. After surviving Fall Quarter, I had plans to run again, but the Snowpocalypse of 2008 hit and kept us buried until well after the start of Winter Quarter. And I didn't run during winter quarter because I'm lazy. I get home from work and spend an hour making dinner, paying bills, cleaning up the place, or sitting on my butt not doing anything after working all day. Then I plunge into homework until 10 at night.

This is not to say that I've been a complete schlub the entire time. Yes, fencing had to give since AK coaches almost every night of the week and making it to an OFA practice is nearly impossible for my schedule. Almost every day I take a long walk, at least half an hour. I'm a twitchy type of person and I have to move. This is especially true when too many large projects are looming or the message boards look intimidating. I must move.

But I've been feeling the need for something more, for a proper sweat. I miss the pleasant exhaustion that follows a good workout. I miss feeling lean. So when a book on beginning running appeared on the new book shelf at work, I checked it out. There's a 14-week program in the back for people who are no longer beginners (you could run a 5k) but who aren't exactly out there on a half-marathon track. This morning I began session one of week one with a quick cycle of speedwork. It hurt only slightly (mostly my lungs). I absorbed so much wonderful sunlight and now I'm here on my bed, still in the sunlight, and ready for a day of laundry and literature reviews. Though listening to the birds and the stream outside my window, I'm a bit loathe to add to the background the thumping of the washer. An excuse? Perhaps, but at least I moved my butt today.

Access and the Supercatalog

There's a lot running through my head at the moment. My husband and I bought a proper used car, my family is visiting me on this coast for the first time ever (I have a younger sister next to me on the couch reading Coraline and asking me "What does this word mean?"), and the new quarter is currently destroying and rebuilding mental concepts.

I just finished an article* by Cerise Oberman on the supercatalog and the "Cereal Syndrome" that many patron face in light of this massive increase in information. The cereal syndrome is essentially the issue of "more being less". Consumer studies showed that an overwhelming selection of goods in a store can actually lead to an increase in anxiety among shoppers, instead of a sense of pleasing bounty (190). This information overload and the anxiety that it brings is increasing prevalent in the library world, as we are adding more and more resources and databases and things to the catalog.

Oberman, writing in 1991, spoke of the creation of a "supercatalog", a "totally integrated information network" (190). I believe this is nearly embodied in entities such as WorldCat Local. One search and, at least in my library, you receive hits in the UW libraries, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, and everything that anyone has cataloged and affixed a symbol (like Harvard and their reserve articles....). That is, quite simply, a ton of stuff. Students need to be taught to think critically in order to slog through a multiplicity of hits, databases, and other resources.

While I deeply appreciate Oberman's proposed methods (grounded in my dear Kuhlthau), I think she missed one vital part of instruction, namely evaluating access. Oberman alludes to this in her first point on the online environment, namely that students should understand the function and purpose of the catalog. In doing so, students should be taught how to get to the materials they're locating, once they've figured out that the material is appropriate for their needs. At work we talk a lot about how students just want to click one button and have the materials appear, but right now that's not feasible with current catalog functions. Students have to decide if a material is local, in Summit, or in WorldCat. They then have to decide if they want to order it, how to order it (there are two different logins students have to use to order materials) and then how long it will take/how soon they need it. At work we try to provide good customer service by getting things as fast as we can, but often students shoot themselves in the foot by not understanding how to locate materials. If students order on ILL a book in Summit, we're going to cancel the request and order it via Summit, but they have to sit and wait for an ILL person to look at the record and run the search. If they pick a record with 3 holdings, they should maybe emotionally prepared for not getting the materials or should seek out new resources.

I suppose I'm wondering if this is a burden that should be on the student or that should instead be on the catalog developers. I think the question should be not can we make the catalog one click, but should we make it that way? As long as students have to rely on courier trucks and the US Postal Service to ship books and materials, information will not be instantaneous. Should we leave students with that impression of immediacy or instead teach them about the limits of the system? While it might not make us feel that great about our product, it's a valuable piece of information for students who need to make quick and important choices about material selection.




*Oberman, C. (1991). Avoiding the Cereal Syndrome, or Critical Thinking in the Electronic Environment. Library Trends, 39(3), 189-202.

Organizing

I should probably be finishing the last lecture I need to listen to for class tomorrow, but I'm feeling rather excited and alive at the moment, so it's best to write now. I'm typing from a table at the top of my hotel, looking out on the university. I spent four excellent hours this morning in class for LIS 560 (Instructional and Training Strategies for Information Professionals). My professor is as excellent and articulate as I remember from my first quarter. Once again, I'm happy that I have some knowledge to help me ground the material, though in this case I'm relying on what my husband does for living --teaching-- instead of library experience. Throughout the lecture and discussion this morning, I kept noting bits that I wanted to share with AK (either because he might be keen to know something or because I was learning something he'd already discovered and shared). Because the 560s tend towards youth services, I was a little hesitant about this course, since working with children is not anywhere close to what I want to do for a living (I know my limits). so I'm glad that I'll be able to come away with something that will help me in my training of students or future job talks.

But I'm just as glad that I'll have a better sense of what it is that AK does. Yes, he gathers up small children and adults and teaches them to fence, but he's never just stopped at that. He's always considering how to approach the material, how to best present the material and engage the student to both make the class enjoyable and to make better fencers. He's truly interested in the pedagogy of fencing, not just how to best win a touch. While he always has a plan for his class (6 week intro versus 1 week camp, epee versus saber etc.), it's never exactly the same. He's always considering his methods, looking at how to change and improve what he's doing. And while I think it's possible to chalk some of that up to his need for constant creativity (which isn't necessarily a flaw), a great deal of it comes from just wanting to do it better, to give the students a better experience and more knowledge. Since I've often been placed in the frustrating role of guinea pig when he's trying out some of these theories (which can be good or bad, depending on the idea... and on my mood), it's nice to think that I'll finally have the perspective from the other side of the piste.

After class and lunch with the awesomest workshop group ever, I visited with my advisor. Since this is the last residency ever, I wanted to touch base with her about my future, something beyond the core courses. We had a great chat, which is why I'm feeling somewhat pumped and excited about the future. We discussed how I could gain perspective of the field outside of the academic library world. Academic libraries, especially small liberal arts colleges, is the bulk of my library experience, both as employee and user. When I have to think about a career that doesn't involve becoming a systems librarian at a similar institution, I'm blocked. I really don't know my options yet. Really, that's because I'm still new to this field as a professional and I haven't yet developed the skills that will dictate my options. She feels that once I get through the beginning 530s I'll have a clearer sense of where I'm headed. The idea of doing a directed fieldwork in a similar, but non-academic environment was proposed. If I could track something down, that would be perfect - building skills and an idea of where I'm headed all at once. After that we just chatted about life and the world and other tangentially related topics. She's a very cool person and I hope to find the excuse to get up to Seattle again, if just to talk with her.

So now I'm back at the hotel, in the middle of the aforementioned lecture. The lecture and my meeting this afternoon lead me to think more on why I'm attracted to the organization of information. It's more than just a compulsion for order - I have often seen offices of catalogers that do not bespeak of a mind geared towards controlling chaos. Before I followed the path of Victorian Studies, I felt very drawn to the sciences, especially chemistry. I loved the precision of it, certainly. What I really loved was how you could write things down, how a simple collection of words and numbers could tell you so much. Entire reactions, creation and destruction, in a single line. If you could read it... Making things useful, making things accessible and easy, even if on the back end they're terribly complicated, is a lot of what we're doing now in libraries and a lot of what I want to do. There's so much possible data, but how do you get to it and how to do you render it in a way that people or machines can do what they need to do? That's the sort of question that I find interesting, though I doubt my ability to answer it. Well, at least my ability at this point in my career. But the question will still be there in three years.

Third Verse Same as the First...

Tomorrow I work a full day and then take Amtrak north to the final MLIS residency. While I'll certainly miss the inherent decadence of a forty minute flight to Seattle, I'm not missing the cost of a last minute ticket. I'm still hoping to get some funds from the travel scholarship, which would make my life so much happier and easier. We'll see.

In anticipation of residency I'm trying to ease myself back into a work cycle. It's amazing how easily the concentration and time management muscles atrophy with the slightest break in practice. Both my courses don't look terribly difficult, though I'm sure they'll be plenty challenging - I'm naturally nervous about them, but there's none of the abject fear brought out when I first read the Information Behavior course site. The only reading I've done so far is on metadata, which is a term that I admit I've thrown about with much abandon and very little understanding. While some the reading is floating in that nebulous philosophical area above my head, much of it is interesting on a practical level. I suppose that's what I find so attractive about cataloging and the like - how do I take this stuff and arrange it so people can find it and use it? I love the idea of making things easier to find and thus easier to use, be it by helping to clean up authority records in the catalog or updating a patron record.

One article*, which is an overview of metadata schemes in the library and museum world, there was a brief discussion about user-created metadata. Particularly in small communities (hobbyists), the shared understanding and, most importantly, shared language can be a boon for tagging. But, as I've seen in other studies, the lack of control can be an issue in terms of accuracy. I know of colleagues who dislike the idea of user tagging in a library catalog, not out of a sense of "Keep off my lawn, you crazy kids!" but more from the the realization that what is added might not be all that useful. A value-add should add value, not clutter things up. Getting a good base support of users to tag can be a challenge. An empty catalog doesn't spur on participation (if no one else is doing it, why should I?). While I know that I could probably hunt this down, doesn't anyone know of a successful user-tagging projects within the confines of a library catalog?

When read the article I was struck by the underlying calling for expertise. This shouldn't be shocking as the article seems geared towards nascent professionals. The idea of arrogance connected with expertise, the "I know what the user needs better than they do" has reared its controversial head in a number of my classes so I suppose I'm a bit sensitive to it. Is metadata a place where the user doesn't belong? At least, not directly. Clearly metadata and other features of the organization of information exist to serve a user based, which must always remain in the back of the mind. But I'm left wondering if you achieve the ultimate metadata goal (according to the article I read) of "rich, consistent, carefully crafted descriptive metadata" without some level of expertise and thus control. Does the creation and maintaining of the swarm of information surrounding information demand professional control or does it demand the creation of a controlled system that can be used easily by nonprofessionals (like Dublin Core)? How do you balance it all?

I doubt this is something that can be answered in ten weeks, but it's a start of something...



*Gilliland, A. J. (n.d.). “Setting the stage.” In Introduction to metadata: Pathways to digital information. Online Ed., Version 2.1. Murtha Baca ed. Available: http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/setting.pdf.

Nicholas Hughes

When the news of his death appeared in my news feeds, I was saddened to hear of it. I felt that his sister certainly didn't need any more death in her life. I also realized that it was the first time I knew anything of the man who so neatly absented himself from the poetical spotlight of his family.

But, his death wouldn't be news unless the obituaries turned to recounting the death of his mother, his father's mistress, and his father. Judith Flanders says it better than I ever could:

Yet the "curse" idea is repellent. Repellent to those afflicted with depression; repellent to those whose friends or family have been so burdened; even repellent to lovers of poetry. Sylvia Plath killed herself after many years of psychological instability - she had attempted suicide in her teens, had undergone ECT. Her marriage had broken down, she was living with two small children through one of the coldest winters for decades. Like all too many others, before and after, in a desperate moment, she killed herself, having first carefully set out bread and milk for her two toddlers in their cots. That she had just written some of the great poems of the twentieth century is neither here nor there. She was a great poet, and a depressed person. She was not a great poet because she was depressed; she was not depressed because she was a great poet.

He was a professor who, according to the University of Alaska website, was well loved and dedicated. Let's remember that instead.

The Food that You Eat

I wish I had an excuse for not posting over this somewhat relaxing spring break. Well, I have scoured areas of the apartment never before scoured (you know you have some sort of compulsion issue when you're using toothpicks to get at grime on a part of the stove no one will ever see). Break usually means reading, and I have been devouring books as best as I can (including an autobiography of a woman bullfighter and some Sarah Vowell).

I just finished Mark Bittman's latest, Food Matters. Bittman is the only reason I even bother with the food section of the New York Times. His How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian are staples in my kitchen. His recipes are simple, delicious, and come with handy sidebars on the variations you can do with dishes (which has lead to some successful "toss some stuff together and call it dinner" meals of late). In Food Matters, Bittman argues for a new approach to food and what we eat. I've known since I was seventeen and reading up on vegetarianism that the commercial meat industry is pretty heinous towards the environment. I know that the Food Pyramid developed out of marketing for the beef and dairy industry (even wonder why those sources of protein get to hang out on their own?). I try to avoid HFCS, and have all but banished white bread from the house (except for the occasional homemade baguette, because really bread doesn't get much better).

Bittman presents all of this, and more, in his defense of a better way of living. That's what I like most of all about this work, which is a type of diet book. He's advocating for a lifestyle change. It's absurd to think that a few weeks of something odd will leave you skinnier and healthier and able to go back to your old eating habits (I remember my parents going on that odoriferous cabbage soup diet years ago and my father dabbled in Atkins until the kidney stones hit). To improve your body, you have to improve your diet, which means long-lasting change, not just abstaining from sugar until your next weigh in. Bittmans' approach is interesting - essentially you bulk up on the veggies and plant matter, remaining vegan (or so) until dinner, when you can eat as you will. This approach makes sense to me, though I'm not sure how to work it around my own weird eating schedule (breakfast late at work, lunch as the primary meal, and dinner made primarily to produce leftovers for lunch). Vegetables and fruit are full of all the good stuff we need to survive, and are what our meat-poor ancestors lived on for centuries. Meat used to be flavoring, not necessarily the focus of the meal. And somehow along the way, with subsidized farming and a booming fast food industry, that idea was lost. Vegetable production (even the megafarms) is less harmful to the environment than meat and, in this crazy town of Portland, I have plenty of local and sustainable produce options available.

Though I think I might be hard pressed to give up on dairy as a whole (I love plain, nonfat yogurt and I'd honestly rather go without cheese or milk than head towards the soy), I think I could easily live like this, and live happily. However, food is a complicated and delicate subject in my house. I live with perhaps the pickiest eater on the planet. Imagine a typical four-year-old boy - big on the burgers, Cheerios, and pizza, and not so keen on much else. Now imagine he's grown up and can use a stove by himself, but is usually too lazy to do so, but has a car and knows where to get what he wants. That's my husband. I love him more than pretty much anyone else on the planet. He's intelligent, incredibly kind, and fun. But his diet is appalling in general, and in particular for a thirty-five-year old man.

When I was newly married, my mother passed on this bit of wisdom: if you love each other, you'll only fight about money. Well, in this house we rarely fight about money (Lego budget aside) and more often come to verbal blows over a 24 pack of Coca-Cola and Wendy's bags in the foot well of a car. As the using a toothpick to clean a stove incident might suggest, I am a touch on the neurotic side. Since my fencing has decreased to almost nothing and my running is a twice weekly affair, I've had to abandon my "I'm an athlete and I can eat whatever I want" attitude towards food. I've mostly vegetarian, bring lunch everyday to work, and try my best to eat something other than coffee for breakfast. I read food labels carefully (which is why there are two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies stashed in the freezer, since I discovered that two cookies filled about half of my daily saturated fat intake) and have been trying to cook more for myself and the husband. This is still a challenge. Tonight I feasted upon roasted beets and a tomato and red lentil soup (spiced up with cumin and garam masala). The husband might have a large bowl of plain pasta (no sauce... ever) or, if he's feeling adventurous, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the ubiquitous can of Coca-Cola. While he recovers from a late night of coaching I will be in bed, imagining that I can hear his arteries hardening and his blood sugar rising.

I know he's not going to drop dead in the next week, but I can't help thinking about what his intake of red meat and ultra-refined carbs will mean for the future (for both his body and the environment). I've managed to change in whole-grain pizza crust and whole-wheat/seed packed bread for sandwiches, but I can't seem to do much else. Yelling is ineffective, as are carefully placed articles on the amount of sugar in soda and the recent study on the dangerous of red meat. But I believe my husband isn't alone in this resistance, that his diet mirrors that of hundreds of thousands of other people in this country. How do you shift a country where the American Dream is celebrated by a steak and potatoes and washed down with cola? At times like these, I feel that I'm just a liberal urban hipster jumping on the next great alternative thing that will soon appear on Stuff White People Like. But it still remains that we are, inescapably, what we eat.

ACRL - Post the Second and a Half

Onwards in our recap!

After the last stats presentation, I wandered up to catch the end of the PCC/PSU presentation on information literacy programs and standards. The brainstorming rubric they presented, which focused mainly on how to locate and work with other similarly minded librarians on information literacy, could easily be used in almost any sort of interlibrary collaboration (collection development could easily be replaced, with a little tweaking). I had a chance to chat with a number of the community college librarians from the Portland area (and there are a lot!). Mainly our conversation focused on the impending cessation of the residency program at UW (my friend/cohort member Maria is now a full-time tech at PCC). Though I can understand the rationale behind the administration's choice (it's an expensive adventure for many in the program and last residency's flooding fiasco showed that they could either record or sync-up class presentations), I will still miss it and wonder how the other cohorts will get situated without it.

At this point I think I finally made it down to look at the poster sessions, many of which I recall being fascinating, but none of which I actually wrote about since my hands were full with free ice cream and a free dictionary from the amazing and friendly people at the Oxford University Press. This is why I am so happy that the entirety of the conference proceedings is stored online. Also I should mention that at times I went down to the area they titled the "Cyber Zed Shed", only to discover that the presenter was not there (I sat through two no-shows and my friend informed me of a missed third!). There were topics at this part of the conference that seemed interesting (interactive subject maps) and some that weren't (Google Docs). The big tech event for this conference seemed to be Twitter. There were a number of presentations on this 2.0 technology and I saw people throughout the event (and during Ira Glass!) tweeting.

I am of a mixed mind when it comes to Twitter. I can see the point of microblogging, it's immediacy, and it's inherent succinctness. But it also feels like another version of my Facebook Status Update and I keep wondering if I have anything that amazing to say, something so terribly pertinent and yet easily crammed into 140 characters. I'm hesitant as well when it comes to libraries entering the 2.0 space of the user. A coworker who went to one of the 2.0 technologies and libraries presentation mentioned that the presenters gave a number of great hints, such as don't try to friend students. That means entering too deeply into their personal space. Instead let them become a fan of you, which means they get all the information they need from you and they don't have to worry that you're going to see their latest beer pong photos. I think so many libraries ran headfirst into these spaces without really thinking carefully about how to do it, and it doesn't help that the platform changes on a weekly basis (Facebook, I am looking squarely at you). As 2.0 technology starts to stabilize, it will be interesting to see what rises up.

At this point on Saturday I had the energy left for two presentations. The first was on the TIDES Experience (presented by Susan Clarke). This is a fascinating collaborative online image project. This grew out of a digitization of historical/archival images in a Texas university library and grew into an interactive project that develops and supports a wide ranging education curriculum for Texas and now Mexico (kindergarten all the way through university). What was interesting here is how a grant project on digitization turned into such a wonderful and sustainable project (how they got sponsors, broadened their collections and curriculum stores etc.). And this is really something that is for the average user, not the library or archive junkie. Most of the site's hits come from Google or Yahoo. They get requests from teachers to add images to support their classroom (and have started taking teachers out into the field to collect stuff themselves. Having worked in a very traditional (albeit fantastic!) archive, I was really intrigued to see such a explosion of ideas and images from one project.

Next up was a discussion of the challenges faced by distance students (something I'm very interested in on a personal level). Presented by Capella University, this presentation was the only one I saw where the presenters work in an entirely virtual library space. In fact, until 2 years ago all of the library services at Capella were outsourced. The library staff is responsible for 26000 "learners", 80% graduate and 20% undergraduate. From the presentation it seems that the library staff does a lot of troubleshooting for technology. A successful treatment for an ongoing problem (which they track through a database of answered questions) was to have a librarian go into a course space with a help guide and to offer assistance. So many students responded to this overture and the library found their requests for help go through the roof. In an online program it's often hard to know exactly where you should go with a question. Yes, you have a list of resources, but you've probably not tried any of them yet and it's always a bit nerve wracking to know that you might wind up in the wrong space and will be send on and on trying to find the right person. While the presentation wasn't helpful to me as a learner (and not really as a professional since I don't do any reference outreach), it was still really interesting to see how the staff tackled problems and worked to establish themselves within the university. Most of us at academic libraries take it for granted that we are an inherent part of the university structure, so it was interesting to see how the library staff worked to collaborate (the word of the conference!) and make themselves known to the rest of the administration.

Sunday morning brought Ira Glass, who was totally on the escalator with me and who I tried very hard not to stare at! Once again, the room was packed. Glass began his talk entirely in the dark. Some soft background music played while he spoke about how "this is radio", about the intimacy of listening to a voice in the dark. Sadly, he was not encouraged to do his entire speech in the dark, so the lights went up and there he was, in a hoodie and with rumpled hair, two CD players, and mixing board. He spoke mostly on how to develop stories, how he arranges and presents stories to keep listeners interested. He works on a storytelling pattern that turned out to be sermon-like- action, action, action, idea, action, action, action, idea. It's about hooking people, keeping them interested, but keeping them interested in the people as well. The second I can really remember from this is that all of his tape archives are stored, just in boxes listed by show number, in a facility in New Jersey. They're not really organized or digitized (some are so old that he would have to bake them and the would only get one shot at copying them). He asked the room of librarians and archivists if anyone would be able to help him out with this and offered his email address. He shocked the room when he revealed that if he lost the archives, he wouldn't be that bothered. He feels the strength of This American Life comes in it's immediacy, in that it is so of the moment, of the now. The show isn't prepared with the long-term in mind at all, but how it will be and sound the night it's aired and 1.8 million people tune in.

The conference was a great experience. I got a sense for what it's like to walk around a hotel full of librarians instead of fencers. I learned a lot about a variety of topics and how to present. A number of panels or papers seemed so interesting when I read about them and added them to my schedule but then didn't really live up to the description, were too general to be very useful outside of broad conceptualizations, or were difficult to parse out (this is especially true when there are slide after slide of complicated graphs). It's really an art to get up on a stage with a PowerPoint and blast out in twenty minutes (you have to have ten left over for questions), a subject that you could have been studying for years. I'm hoping that the UW program, with all of the Pointecasting, will give me an opportunity to practice this in the coming years. What I found weird about being a student instead of a professional at a conference like this is that I kept wondering about my impact. I can't promise the vendors that we'll use their products. I really, really liked the project on staff information needs presented by the University of Regina, but it's not really something that falls under my job heading. But this has given me a lot of thought about projects I can do in the future and how I can start making little changes in the bit of the library when I can make an impact.

ACRL - Post the Second

Friday night's keynote speaker was Sherman Alexie. I don't think I can even begin to summarize how wonderful he was. It's hard to take someone who is so about words, so deep in words and who has such a command of words ,and try to replicate them yourself in words. Suffice to say, he's a brilliant speaker, jumping between traditional speechy bits, poetry He spoke a lot about perceptions - how people look at librarians and have a certain set of beliefs, just as they look at Native Americans and have another set as well. He's a bit rambling as a speaker, punctuating ideas with poems and other asides. He's fluid, self-deprecating, and hilarious. I didn't take notes (this is not the sort of thing you could really write down), but the one bit that really stood out for me is when he answered a question about why he lives in Seattle. He said he loved a nomad woman (her family moved around a lot). He met his wife in Spokane and she couldn't stand living there. She would only marry him on the condition that they wouldn't live in Spokane. He got to choose out of a select list of cities where she would live and he picked Seattle. She got him to Seattle, but he was keeping her there.


On Saturday I went to a number of really good sessions. The first was a presentation by the library and IT staff at Bowdoin college on how they fostered communication and collaboration between the two departments. They took a very chill, almost friendly approach. The two groups spent a lot of time just getting to know each other and learning how to communicate with each other. The two departments have very different cultures and ways of working together, so it was essential that they take the time learn about each other so one culture wouldn't be "superior" and alienate the other. It was sort of a "touch-feely" approach, but they've been so successful in developing projects and aligning their goals that you have to think that this is certainly worth a shot (worse case scenario, you just wind up having a lot of group lunches!).

After that was a fascinating look at the OhioLINK collection analysis project. Working with OCLC Research, the consorta analyzed their monograph holdings with a view towards using this data to encourage collaboarative collection development in the future. By presenting clear data on how many copies the system has and how often they circulate, they hope to reduce unncesssary duplication and to encourage a diverse collection. Also in these tough economic times, if you can get away with not purchasing a title in favor of another, that's worth it. The conference got the first look at a wealth of data, which was presented in a very clear and coherant way (a true skill, I'm starting to realize). They took the holdings from each library, collected it onto single OCLC records (to facilitate analysis). Data for collections were broken down in really interesting way. Universities often wanted to see their entire collection, then administrative units, then individual branches, and even unique collections within branches! This clearly took a lot of effort, but I think it presented a really rich picture of the individual holdings in a instiution.

Two ideas stood out for me in this presentation. The first was how the collections spread out around subject. Law seemed to be the most heavily duplicated subject (due to accreditation requirements - each library is required to have the same set titles). Computer Science, perhaps not surprisingly, had a ridcidulous obsolescence rate. Titles in that subject need to be immediately cataloged and get out on the shelf, since they will be used the most when they're new and then checkouts gradually fade away. The second concept was the most surprising. I did learn in LIS 500 that 80 percent of your checkouts come from 20 percent of your collection (there is a core collection of the most popular or pertient items, which certainly shifts and changes over time). However, the analysis done here suggested that 80 percent of the checkout came from only 6 percent of the collection. The group will look at language (they noted that most foreign checkouts not in Spanish could be attributed to the foreign language departments of universities who use the same materials over and over), age of items, and will also look at publisher type to see if a suggestive pattern emerges.

A less enlightening statitical lecture focused on the recent ALA-LSSCP email survey. I thought the presentation would focus more on the actual proficiencies thatthe certification will require or sees as necessary in the library world. Rather it was a lightening fast array of charts, numbers, and more charts. The data was pretty rich, but rather complex and I'm not sure I walked away with a real understanding of anything (other than there are different skill sets in public and academic libraries, but that wasn't all that surprising). However, I did note the idea that support staff, in this survey, tended to give a higher value of importance to their tasks than MLIS staff or library directors. Why is there this break in perception? Clearly staff workers are proud of the work that they do. But why isn't that perception shared? Should it be shared?

Okay, this post is already overdue and already too long. More later (since Ira Glass is about to come on!)