In my family the twelve days of Christmas are not celebrated in their literal sense, but the theory is definitely applied because our Christmas just seems to keep going and going. There are immediate family get-togethers and extended family visits, intimate present opening sessions and big, raucous white elephant parties. Even New Year's becomes just another Christmas. As we get ready to celebrate our third and fourth (depending how you count) Christmas dinners of the year (and of the week) and prepare to feed more than 30 people, I really appreciate Neil Gaiman's dose of Christmas humor from his 2008 article in The Independent.
Gaiman tells the story of how, as children, he and his sisters "knew we were bad Jews because we wanted a Christmas tree," but the knowledge did not stop them from relentlessly campaigning for a tree to decorate for the holidays. Their mother told them sternly (well, maybe sternly the first time, after that it was probably more with a sense of grim exhaustion) that "you couldn't be Jewish and have a Christmas tree," but young Gaiman paid her reservations no mind. Eventually the continual pleading and practical theological arguments of an eight year old won the battle.
Gaiman describes the outcome of their family's new "Hanukkah tree" tradition: "Our more orthodox cousins, profoundly treeless, were both scandalised
and impressed by this. But we were happy. We had a nice Jewish
Christmas. We were content."
Read the full article on www.independent.co.uk
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Mind Games
A fun mind exercise, but harder than it looks...
I thought this was pretty neat, sort of like a literary optical illusion. A couple of random observations:
I thought this was pretty neat, sort of like a literary optical illusion. A couple of random observations:
- I think it's much easier to read the colors (instead of the words) when you read them in three vertical columns instead of left to right.
- When reading across a line, the first word is usually easiest to say correctly. I tend to get caught up on the second or third.
- For whatever reason, the color blue is by far the easiest for me to articulate quickly and smoothly.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Memory and Imagination
Julian Barnes, an English author and the recipient of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending, was recently quoted on Maud Newton.
"For the young — and especially the young writer — memory and imagination are quite distinct, and of different categories... These different kinds of truthfulness will be fully apparent to the young writer, and their joining together a matter of anxiety. For the older writer, memory and the imagination begin to seem less and less distinguishable."
Barnes divides remembrances into three varieties: pure (or accurate) memory, filtered or transfigured memory, and fiction. Over time these distinctions become blurred.
"This is not because the imagined world is really much closer to the writer’s world than he or she cares to admit... but for exactly the opposite reason: that memory itself comes to seem much closer to an act of imagination than ever before."
The blending of memory and imagination does not make either less real or less true. I have always thought that memory was an odd construction. Even with photographs and home videos to serve as "proof" or "evidence" of memories, there is still room for interpretation. As time passes, memory even seems to change, and sometimes the true version of memories painted or recounted in a different light looks different the next time you recall it. I've always felt that I am fairly adept at lying, and when I was younger I was often concerned at the ease with which I would bend memories and tell stories, but maybe the word "lying" has just developed negative connotations. Lying and storytelling are not that different and they play a role in both imagination and memory.
Barnes says that "I do not mistrust [memories], rather I trust them as workings of the imagination, as containing imaginative as opposed to naturalistic truth.”
I've never read any of Barnes' novels, but I should look them up. His ideas about truth and imagination are intriguing and if that translates into his writing, I think his books would probably be most interesting.
"For the young — and especially the young writer — memory and imagination are quite distinct, and of different categories... These different kinds of truthfulness will be fully apparent to the young writer, and their joining together a matter of anxiety. For the older writer, memory and the imagination begin to seem less and less distinguishable."
Barnes divides remembrances into three varieties: pure (or accurate) memory, filtered or transfigured memory, and fiction. Over time these distinctions become blurred.
"This is not because the imagined world is really much closer to the writer’s world than he or she cares to admit... but for exactly the opposite reason: that memory itself comes to seem much closer to an act of imagination than ever before."
The blending of memory and imagination does not make either less real or less true. I have always thought that memory was an odd construction. Even with photographs and home videos to serve as "proof" or "evidence" of memories, there is still room for interpretation. As time passes, memory even seems to change, and sometimes the true version of memories painted or recounted in a different light looks different the next time you recall it. I've always felt that I am fairly adept at lying, and when I was younger I was often concerned at the ease with which I would bend memories and tell stories, but maybe the word "lying" has just developed negative connotations. Lying and storytelling are not that different and they play a role in both imagination and memory.
Barnes says that "I do not mistrust [memories], rather I trust them as workings of the imagination, as containing imaginative as opposed to naturalistic truth.”
I've never read any of Barnes' novels, but I should look them up. His ideas about truth and imagination are intriguing and if that translates into his writing, I think his books would probably be most interesting.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Functional Art: Book Table
I'd love to have this in my apartment:
It may be an impractical design for a book shelf (it definitely has rather limited use), but it can also double as a cool visual display for your book collection and a customized 3D sculpture!
It may be an impractical design for a book shelf (it definitely has rather limited use), but it can also double as a cool visual display for your book collection and a customized 3D sculpture!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Reading in 2011
Today I read through a collaborative article in the Wall Street Journal called "Twelve Months of Reading," a collection of reading recommendations from 50 authors, journalists, and various politicians and other personalities.
I was struck by something that Adam Zagajewski, a poet and the author of the book Unseen Hand, had to say on the subject of favorite reading material. He wrote: "I'm one of those readers who love old and sometimes half-forgotten books and who do a lot of rereading, one of those who shun best sellers and can't understand their fellow travelers opening shiny volumes that they bought 10 minutes earlier in an airport bookstore."
I think it's unfortunate to choose one's reading material with such an exclusionary mindset. I'm definitely "one of those readers" who cherish their favorite novels and reread the classics sometimes even on a yearly basis. But I still like to keep an eye on the bestseller list, and sometimes you can find real treasures on the popular racks. Several of the books I've enjoyed most this year have been highly praised and widely publicized novels (at least in online circles). A couple of my favorite new reads from the year are Ernest Cline's Ready Player One and Ransom Rigg's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Authors that I enjoyed rereading include Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, and Kurt Vonnegut. I think it is important to be open to reading every and anything, because you never know in what unlikely place, whether it be a dusty shelf in an independent bookshop or the center of a shopping mall, you might find your new favorite book.
In the Wall Street Journal article, Zagajewski recommends: "a slim collection of poems written by John Burnside, a Scottish poet: Black Cat Bone. Mr. Burnside creates a world in which dreams and realities mix up, and yet we recognize in his verses our thoughts, aspirations and reveries." I will be sure to put it on my list for reading in 2012.
I was struck by something that Adam Zagajewski, a poet and the author of the book Unseen Hand, had to say on the subject of favorite reading material. He wrote: "I'm one of those readers who love old and sometimes half-forgotten books and who do a lot of rereading, one of those who shun best sellers and can't understand their fellow travelers opening shiny volumes that they bought 10 minutes earlier in an airport bookstore."
I think it's unfortunate to choose one's reading material with such an exclusionary mindset. I'm definitely "one of those readers" who cherish their favorite novels and reread the classics sometimes even on a yearly basis. But I still like to keep an eye on the bestseller list, and sometimes you can find real treasures on the popular racks. Several of the books I've enjoyed most this year have been highly praised and widely publicized novels (at least in online circles). A couple of my favorite new reads from the year are Ernest Cline's Ready Player One and Ransom Rigg's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Authors that I enjoyed rereading include Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, and Kurt Vonnegut. I think it is important to be open to reading every and anything, because you never know in what unlikely place, whether it be a dusty shelf in an independent bookshop or the center of a shopping mall, you might find your new favorite book.
In the Wall Street Journal article, Zagajewski recommends: "a slim collection of poems written by John Burnside, a Scottish poet: Black Cat Bone. Mr. Burnside creates a world in which dreams and realities mix up, and yet we recognize in his verses our thoughts, aspirations and reveries." I will be sure to put it on my list for reading in 2012.
A new trailer
As will probably be revealed in the coming months, I am a huge Lord of the Rings geek, which means I am very psyched for Peter Jackson's newest JRR Tolkien adaptation coming 12-14-2012.
The trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (also known simply as The Hobbit, Part I) was released yesterday and while I need to go watch it about a hundred more times to internalize all of its awesomeness, my initial response is that it looks amazing!
The first preview for The Hobbit on Apple Movie Trailers
This blog is definitely still intended to focus on library and information issues, but as can be seen in the posts so far, inevitably sometimes my other interests creep in (okay, a lot of the time). So apologizes for any future LOTR references or random Hobbit news!
The trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (also known simply as The Hobbit, Part I) was released yesterday and while I need to go watch it about a hundred more times to internalize all of its awesomeness, my initial response is that it looks amazing!
The first preview for The Hobbit on Apple Movie Trailers
This blog is definitely still intended to focus on library and information issues, but as can be seen in the posts so far, inevitably sometimes my other interests creep in (okay, a lot of the time). So apologizes for any future LOTR references or random Hobbit news!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Literary Tragedy in the News
Over the weekend, protestors, whether accidentally or purposefully, set fire to the Egyptian Scientific Institute, which houses the richest library in Egypt and is the oldest scientific institute in the country, established in 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French invasion. According to an article in Egypt Independent, the building housing more than 200,000 books suffered substantial damage, and "state TV reported that the fire damaged the whole building and all of its collections."
The fighting during which the fire broke out was apparently between security forces and pro-democracy protestors, a number of who stepped in to help remove books from harm's way and salvage precious manuscripts. Unfortunately even some of the documents rescued from the flames were damaged by the water used to extinguish the fire.
One civilian accurately described the incident as “a national tragedy,” one which it has been estimated will take somewhere around 10 years to recover from.
The clean up itself is being managed by a group of institutions, including the Cairo University Library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and the Rare Books Library of the American University in Cairo. And despite the efforts of many conservators and volunteers, large quantities of books still remain buried in the rubble and the chances of their recovery are still uncertain. I thought it was interesting that those leading the book recovery effort have placed a strong emphasis on "comparing them to the digitized copies available at the Information and Decision Support Center" in Egypt, revealing an important possibility for digital archives, and one perhaps not always thought of: digital copies as a disaster plan.
The fighting during which the fire broke out was apparently between security forces and pro-democracy protestors, a number of who stepped in to help remove books from harm's way and salvage precious manuscripts. Unfortunately even some of the documents rescued from the flames were damaged by the water used to extinguish the fire.
One civilian accurately described the incident as “a national tragedy,” one which it has been estimated will take somewhere around 10 years to recover from.
The clean up itself is being managed by a group of institutions, including the Cairo University Library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and the Rare Books Library of the American University in Cairo. And despite the efforts of many conservators and volunteers, large quantities of books still remain buried in the rubble and the chances of their recovery are still uncertain. I thought it was interesting that those leading the book recovery effort have placed a strong emphasis on "comparing them to the digitized copies available at the Information and Decision Support Center" in Egypt, revealing an important possibility for digital archives, and one perhaps not always thought of: digital copies as a disaster plan.
Protestors carrying armfuls of books to safety.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Book Anatomy
Today there are lots of readers' advisory websites and databases out there, like EBSCO's NoveList, a popular subscription service for librarians. And of course, many people make use of the comments and recommendation suggestions on bookstore websites like Amazon.com. A fairly new option on this front is BookLamp, marketed as "The Book Genome Project." This service breaks novels down into "Story DNA" components to help readers "find books with similar themes and writing style to books you've enjoyed in the past - comparing elements like Description,
Pacing, Density, Perspective, and Dialog - while at the same time
allowing you to specify details like... more Medieval Weapons.
This is brilliant, because I've always wanted a way to look up books based on Medieval weaponry.
But joking aside, it really is a neat program, and one that the creators have clearly put a lot of work into. As well as providing the usual information like genre/subject listing and plot summaries, each entry rates the book's writing and story content. A book's language is broken down into motion, density, pacing, dialog, and description categories, which are used to help readers predict the author's linguistic style and practical things like if the book will be a lengthy read or a short one. And to characterize the plot of a novel, BookLamp describes Story DNA with labels like: Medieval Weapons & Armor, Features of the Body, Horses / Ranching / Horse Care, Physical Injury / Exertion & Physiology, Military Campaign / Siege / Historic Combat, Nature / Fields / Hills, Expressions of Emotion, Castles / Towers / Kingdoms, and Nonverbal Communication, which are each also scaled on a sort of bar graph. (That particular list, by the way, comes from the entry for A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin.)
The site is very open to feedback, and designers are quite enthusiastic about having reader opinions play a role not just in which books are connected, but how the individual books themselves are defined within the database. I'm a big fan of sites and programs that incorporate user comments and opinions; the Internet audience can be a great resource for companies willing to listen to it. BookLamp has also actively incorporated librarians and teachers into their research division.
BookLamp's approachable attitude and sense of humor can also be seen in their use of the FAQ page to include questions like "What happens when BookLamp's engine goes insane?"
This is brilliant, because I've always wanted a way to look up books based on Medieval weaponry.
But joking aside, it really is a neat program, and one that the creators have clearly put a lot of work into. As well as providing the usual information like genre/subject listing and plot summaries, each entry rates the book's writing and story content. A book's language is broken down into motion, density, pacing, dialog, and description categories, which are used to help readers predict the author's linguistic style and practical things like if the book will be a lengthy read or a short one. And to characterize the plot of a novel, BookLamp describes Story DNA with labels like: Medieval Weapons & Armor, Features of the Body, Horses / Ranching / Horse Care, Physical Injury / Exertion & Physiology, Military Campaign / Siege / Historic Combat, Nature / Fields / Hills, Expressions of Emotion, Castles / Towers / Kingdoms, and Nonverbal Communication, which are each also scaled on a sort of bar graph. (That particular list, by the way, comes from the entry for A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin.)
The site is very open to feedback, and designers are quite enthusiastic about having reader opinions play a role not just in which books are connected, but how the individual books themselves are defined within the database. I'm a big fan of sites and programs that incorporate user comments and opinions; the Internet audience can be a great resource for companies willing to listen to it. BookLamp has also actively incorporated librarians and teachers into their research division.
BookLamp's approachable attitude and sense of humor can also be seen in their use of the FAQ page to include questions like "What happens when BookLamp's engine goes insane?"
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Endnote
Oh, and with my last project turned in, I'm officially done with my first semester finals! =)
Now I just have to wait for my grades to come in (and catch up on all the Christmas shopping I've been putting off for weeks because I've been too darn busy.)
But as much as I'm relieved to be out of classes for the next couple weeks, the nerdy student inside me is eager for next semester to begin (yes I did go check out my required reading lists for next year today).
Now I just have to wait for my grades to come in (and catch up on all the Christmas shopping I've been putting off for weeks because I've been too darn busy.)
But as much as I'm relieved to be out of classes for the next couple weeks, the nerdy student inside me is eager for next semester to begin (yes I did go check out my required reading lists for next year today).
Literary Cathedrals
As much as I became a library science student because of my interest in technology and the modern possibilities for library institutions and ideology, there's also something about the grandeur of classical libraries that is utterly captivating. Over the years libraries have been described as "temples" of knowledge, and while many writers criticize this model and the intermediary role that it creates for libraries as "priests" between patrons ("pilgrims") and The Information, sometimes the majesty of these old literary cathedrals is downright magical.
Here's a link to a recent article with photos from one writer's compilation of the 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries in the World.
And from the list here are a few of my favorites:
The "mirror" effect is absolutely stunning. This is the sort of place you could wander through for hours and hours and still not be sure you'd seen it all. Also, I love the ladder as a book retrieval system--maybe not very practical (or safe, so near to that balcony?) but oh how picturesque!
Here's a link to a recent article with photos from one writer's compilation of the 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries in the World.
And from the list here are a few of my favorites:
The Trinity College Library, aka “The Long Room,” Dublin, Ireland:
The "mirror" effect is absolutely stunning. This is the sort of place you could wander through for hours and hours and still not be sure you'd seen it all. Also, I love the ladder as a book retrieval system--maybe not very practical (or safe, so near to that balcony?) but oh how picturesque!
George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD:
This room could be a set from the movie Inception; all those layers and layers of books seem to almost defy gravity. And I love it when libraries show their collections off like this, letting the books be the visible works of art they so clearly are.
Suzzallo Library’s Graduate Reading Room at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA:
Hogwarts, anyone? I would love to have a library like this at my school. While I can (and have) study just about anywhere, a room like this gives the task of studying an allure we don't usually associate with all-nighters and caffeine overdoses and trying to write an entire term paper in a single twenty-four hour period.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Supernatural Collective Nouns
Isn't it amazing what you can find floating around on the Web?
I thought this list was awesome!
Some of my favorite terms include: "a rumpus of phantoms," "a cackle of mad scientists," "an industry of villains," "a caper of mutants," "a rage of orcs," "a lunacy of werewolves," "a dastardly of manticores," "a rustle of reapers," and "a vexation of zombies." =)
I'd love to know more details about the "All Entries Verified" claim in the lower right corner...
I thought this list was awesome!
Some of my favorite terms include: "a rumpus of phantoms," "a cackle of mad scientists," "an industry of villains," "a caper of mutants," "a rage of orcs," "a lunacy of werewolves," "a dastardly of manticores," "a rustle of reapers," and "a vexation of zombies." =)
I'd love to know more details about the "All Entries Verified" claim in the lower right corner...
Monday, December 12, 2011
Papercraft
"A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas... Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story..."
In Scotland an unnamed artist is bequeathing paper sculptures to libraries, art cinemas, and a storytelling center. These unique gifts are made from paper and old books, and seem to have a tenuous connection to British mystery writer, Ian Rankin, and Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan, but no one has claimed (or admitted) responsibility for the pieces.
It's a wonderful little mystery, I think. Someone's whimsical, artistic way of thanking the literary world for their inspirational contributions to our daily lives. NPR reports on the story with pictures of more of the left-behind treasures.
In Scotland an unnamed artist is bequeathing paper sculptures to libraries, art cinemas, and a storytelling center. These unique gifts are made from paper and old books, and seem to have a tenuous connection to British mystery writer, Ian Rankin, and Scottish poet, Edwin Morgan, but no one has claimed (or admitted) responsibility for the pieces.
It's a wonderful little mystery, I think. Someone's whimsical, artistic way of thanking the literary world for their inspirational contributions to our daily lives. NPR reports on the story with pictures of more of the left-behind treasures.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
A fairy tale sigh
As all good stories begin, once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a girl or a boy in times simultaneously much simpler and much, much more dangerous than our own. She, or he, was born and grew up believing she--or he--was no different from anyone else. Not special, not interesting, not extraordinary. At the premise of the story she or he has almost reached that moment, the tipping point, when a neat orderly life spirals out of control into a brilliant adventure that may sometimes resemble a wild goose chase through hell with everything is existence trying to kill her--or him.
But that's where the good part really starts; when the heroine is up against the wall, hungry tigers all around her with only a broken, rusted blade for protection and an unconscious prisoner who she has just dragged to freedom sprawled at her feet. There seems no possible escape, no happy ending in store, but you'd still change places with her in a heartbeat. Because you know the impossible will happen; a masked vigilante will appear on the cliffs high above or a thunderstorm will suddenly blow up and a bolt of lightning will sear through the villain's heart just as he makes the killing leap, razor-sharp blade glinting in the twilight. That's just how it happens, the unwritten law of fairy tales. And we sigh over our ordinary, mundane lives and wish we could have our own once upon a time...
Friday, December 9, 2011
Predicting the Future
The New York Times initiated an interactive collaborative prediction timeline where readers can input ideas about the future of technology. Some of my favorite ideas are "No Red Lights" in 2041 and "WiFi to the Brain" in 2071. There's even a prediction for "A.I. Government" in 2258.
What will the future be like? It's fun to predict, but in the end we'll just have to wait and see.
What will the future be like? It's fun to predict, but in the end we'll just have to wait and see.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Last day of classes - Fall 2011
Today was the last day of classes of my first semester of library science school. Half of me is flat out refusing to believe that I'll never sit in these classes again, and half of me cannot wait to finish up my last couple finals and take a few weeks off for the holidays.
Was this semester what I was expecting? Not exactly, I'd say. I think I was anticipating more practical library instruction (which admittedly we did get in Reference), and I was pleasantly surprised by the depth (and variety) of the theoretical and ideological components of the program. I think I learned that I don't really want to be a reference librarian (which was sort of my plan going into the program) or an archivist probably, but I feel like there are a lot of new career options that I'm genuinely interested in and that I had never even really heard of before this semester. I was worried that compared to studying literature and language in undergrad, library school was going to be too "science-y." But I find that now I'm excited to explore the technical side of information science more in future semesters.
I always have a hard time letting go of classes; I will have more to say about this semester in the near future, I'm sure, but right now I feel like I'm just trying to process the last three and a half months. Trying to catch my brain up to 12-07-11.
Was this semester what I was expecting? Not exactly, I'd say. I think I was anticipating more practical library instruction (which admittedly we did get in Reference), and I was pleasantly surprised by the depth (and variety) of the theoretical and ideological components of the program. I think I learned that I don't really want to be a reference librarian (which was sort of my plan going into the program) or an archivist probably, but I feel like there are a lot of new career options that I'm genuinely interested in and that I had never even really heard of before this semester. I was worried that compared to studying literature and language in undergrad, library school was going to be too "science-y." But I find that now I'm excited to explore the technical side of information science more in future semesters.
I always have a hard time letting go of classes; I will have more to say about this semester in the near future, I'm sure, but right now I feel like I'm just trying to process the last three and a half months. Trying to catch my brain up to 12-07-11.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Pyramids
When finals season is getting you down there are two sure ways to get your spirits back up. Christmas shopping! And reading Terry Pratchett! When you are a penniless grad student, the second option might sometimes be your only option. (And conveniently one of the cures for penniless grad student depression is also reading Terry Pratchett! Two birds with one book!)
In this adventure, Mr. Pratchett takes his readers to a very Old Kingdom, a land that boasts a long and repetitive succession of kings and traditions and a large collection of stone pyramids. Prince Teppic, recently returned from school in a modern foreign city, is not excited about ascending the throne and has trouble putting up with the old fashioned habits of his army of palace priests. His reign gets off to a bumpy start as the plan to build his late father the biggest pyramid ever goes slightly off schedule and sucks the entire kingdom into a rift in space and time. Terry Pratchett's parody of ancient Egypt is hilarious, and especially as someone who was fascinated with pharaohs, sphinxes, hieroglyphics, and everything Egyptian as a kid, it is an exceedingly fun romp through a fantastical alternate history.
And of course Mr. Pratchett has a random library-related factoid for his readers. On the Discworld, "the fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall." (p. 201)
Consuming literature that quickly would come in extremely handy when writing papers...
Pyramids artwork by Les Edwards (yes, that is previously pent up time energy being released from the pyramids in the form of lightning; happens every night)
In this adventure, Mr. Pratchett takes his readers to a very Old Kingdom, a land that boasts a long and repetitive succession of kings and traditions and a large collection of stone pyramids. Prince Teppic, recently returned from school in a modern foreign city, is not excited about ascending the throne and has trouble putting up with the old fashioned habits of his army of palace priests. His reign gets off to a bumpy start as the plan to build his late father the biggest pyramid ever goes slightly off schedule and sucks the entire kingdom into a rift in space and time. Terry Pratchett's parody of ancient Egypt is hilarious, and especially as someone who was fascinated with pharaohs, sphinxes, hieroglyphics, and everything Egyptian as a kid, it is an exceedingly fun romp through a fantastical alternate history.
And of course Mr. Pratchett has a random library-related factoid for his readers. On the Discworld, "the fastest insect is the .303 bookworm. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by the thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall." (p. 201)
Consuming literature that quickly would come in extremely handy when writing papers...
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Slowing down
Thanks to Ghostery, you can see a list of the top ten culprits for website loading lag time and slow Internet browsing. These "lagtags" include widgets and analytics programs, typically add-ons webmasters are paying to have run on their sites.
Here's the list with the average number of milliseconds these products will add to your website.
Avalanchers: 3912.721751 ms
Adfunky: 2600.142857 ms
2leep: 2305.563533 ms
ShareASale: 2090.703573 ms
Brand Affinity: 1917.470961 ms
Adfusion: 1908.145773 ms
Wahoha: 1853.056856 ms
GoDaddy Site Analytics: 1793.0625 ms
Redux Media: 1663.106572 ms
Kitara Media: 1578.838889 ms
And apparently if you included all these on one webpage, it would take an extra 22 seconds just to load. (An eternity to the average user.) The coolest website in the world isn't going to get any traffic if it takes 22 seconds to load; a slow load time also adversely affects Google rankings, so a regardless of its interesting content, a slow site may be so far down the results list that no one even knows it exists.
Here's an interesting article about user perceptions and the way people form impressions of the websites they visit. Jakob Neilson says that "that new pages must display within 1 second for users to feel like they're navigating freely; any slower and they feel held back by the computer and don't click as readily... After 1 second, users get impatient and notice that they're waiting for a slow computer to respond. The longer the wait, the more this impatience grows; after about 10 seconds, the average attention span is maxed out." Honestly, I think that's being pretty generous (the article was written in 2009). I rarely stay on a webpage for ten seconds waiting for it to load. If it's been even half that time I have probably already given up and either tried to refresh the page or abandoned it entirely. It's definitely a reminder to me to be mindful of the "extras" I put into my webpages--images and videos are probably culprits just as often as adsense and analytics--and to be wary of soul-crushingly slow load times.
Here's the list with the average number of milliseconds these products will add to your website.
Avalanchers: 3912.721751 ms
Adfunky: 2600.142857 ms
2leep: 2305.563533 ms
ShareASale: 2090.703573 ms
Brand Affinity: 1917.470961 ms
Adfusion: 1908.145773 ms
Wahoha: 1853.056856 ms
GoDaddy Site Analytics: 1793.0625 ms
Redux Media: 1663.106572 ms
Kitara Media: 1578.838889 ms
And apparently if you included all these on one webpage, it would take an extra 22 seconds just to load. (An eternity to the average user.) The coolest website in the world isn't going to get any traffic if it takes 22 seconds to load; a slow load time also adversely affects Google rankings, so a regardless of its interesting content, a slow site may be so far down the results list that no one even knows it exists.
Here's an interesting article about user perceptions and the way people form impressions of the websites they visit. Jakob Neilson says that "that new pages must display within 1 second for users to feel like they're navigating freely; any slower and they feel held back by the computer and don't click as readily... After 1 second, users get impatient and notice that they're waiting for a slow computer to respond. The longer the wait, the more this impatience grows; after about 10 seconds, the average attention span is maxed out." Honestly, I think that's being pretty generous (the article was written in 2009). I rarely stay on a webpage for ten seconds waiting for it to load. If it's been even half that time I have probably already given up and either tried to refresh the page or abandoned it entirely. It's definitely a reminder to me to be mindful of the "extras" I put into my webpages--images and videos are probably culprits just as often as adsense and analytics--and to be wary of soul-crushingly slow load times.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Digital Information
Thought of the day:
"We all increasingly live in a world where information not available online may as well be information that does not exist."
Rachel Onuf and Thomas Hyry. "Take It Personally: The Implications of Personal Records in Electronic Form." In I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era, edited by Christopher A. Lee, p. 246. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 2011.
"We all increasingly live in a world where information not available online may as well be information that does not exist."
Rachel Onuf and Thomas Hyry. "Take It Personally: The Implications of Personal Records in Electronic Form." In I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era, edited by Christopher A. Lee, p. 246. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 2011.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Web 2.0
The strength of interactive Web 2.0 technology is the ability for the creation of unique content. It is the unique content that brings the most popular websites readers and increases their esteemed "worth." The term Web 2.0 is pretty far reaching and can encompass everything from comments on a news website or blog, photo sharing sites, the ever-expanding world of wikis, social networking platforms like Facebook, and social tagging or bookmarking technologies. In fact, it's fairly rare to find a website these days that doesn't incorporate some aspect of Web 2.0 programming.
It is inevitable that most Web 2.0 technologies are constantly in a state of beta, designers continually tweaking and adapting the program according to the feedback they receive from users. Therefore, perhaps ironically, Web 2.0 design is itself interactive. You could say that social media has "transformed the Internet into a participatory experience." And in an egalitarian sort of way, Web 2.0 sites are breaking down traditional publishing hierarchies, making the Internet "a place where individuals can enter into conversations with content creators and contribute their own ideas and knowledge to the discussion." They allow avenues of conversation where before there were no easy paths between creator and user.
And people are starting to expect that Web 2.0 features will play a role in the websites they visit and the daily activities they engage in. So like it or not, it is quickly becoming necessary for libraries and archives to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Discovering how to do that in a meaningful way will be crucial to the future use of library, museum, and archival institution websites, and maybe even libraries and archives themselves.
Daines, J. Gordon, III, and Cory L. Nimer. "The Interactive Archivist: Case Studies in Utilizing Web 2.0 to Improve the Archival Experience." May 18, 2009. http://interactivearchivist.archivists.org/
It is inevitable that most Web 2.0 technologies are constantly in a state of beta, designers continually tweaking and adapting the program according to the feedback they receive from users. Therefore, perhaps ironically, Web 2.0 design is itself interactive. You could say that social media has "transformed the Internet into a participatory experience." And in an egalitarian sort of way, Web 2.0 sites are breaking down traditional publishing hierarchies, making the Internet "a place where individuals can enter into conversations with content creators and contribute their own ideas and knowledge to the discussion." They allow avenues of conversation where before there were no easy paths between creator and user.
And people are starting to expect that Web 2.0 features will play a role in the websites they visit and the daily activities they engage in. So like it or not, it is quickly becoming necessary for libraries and archives to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Discovering how to do that in a meaningful way will be crucial to the future use of library, museum, and archival institution websites, and maybe even libraries and archives themselves.
Daines, J. Gordon, III, and Cory L. Nimer. "The Interactive Archivist: Case Studies in Utilizing Web 2.0 to Improve the Archival Experience." May 18, 2009. http://interactivearchivist.archivists.org/
Monday, November 28, 2011
Google Culture
I just read an interesting article from The New York Times about the new Google Cultural Institute.
"The Google Cultural Institute plans to make artifacts like the [dead sea] scrolls — from museums, archives, universities and other collections around the world — accessible to any Internet user."
It's great that Google is willing to put some of its millions to work for the people of the world. A large scale digitization project focusing on cultural treasures sounds a little flashy, but it's a great place to start. From there hopefully the potential for education and open access can really take off. "In addition to working with individual museums and archives, the engineers intend to develop a standard set of tools that any institution could use to digitize its collection. That way, even small, private archives or collections could be placed online in formats that would make them easily accessible to broad audiences."
But not everyone loves Google. "Google has sometimes struggled to persuade cultural leaders to accept its plans. The company has been sued by authors and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic over its book-digitization project. In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged hundreds of millions of euros toward a separate digitization program, saying he would not permit France to be 'stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.'"
I think it's definitely worth asking why are they getting involved with all this? Especially when "the activities of the Cultural Institute differ from some other Google initiatives in that there are few outward signs of the company’s involvement. While Google provided the technology to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and is host to the pages on its servers, for example, the only reference to the company is a small note that the site is 'powered by Google.'" Is it just good-deed doing? Making the Internet a more fulfilling and interactive space?
The author of the article in The New York Times even asks "Is it appropriate for museums and other nonprofit cultural institutions to work so closely with a money-making machine like Google?"
The ethics aside, it's undeniable that Google has the ability to bring in crowds to museum websites, cultural archives, and even libraries.
"The Google Cultural Institute plans to make artifacts like the [dead sea] scrolls — from museums, archives, universities and other collections around the world — accessible to any Internet user."
It's great that Google is willing to put some of its millions to work for the people of the world. A large scale digitization project focusing on cultural treasures sounds a little flashy, but it's a great place to start. From there hopefully the potential for education and open access can really take off. "In addition to working with individual museums and archives, the engineers intend to develop a standard set of tools that any institution could use to digitize its collection. That way, even small, private archives or collections could be placed online in formats that would make them easily accessible to broad audiences."
But not everyone loves Google. "Google has sometimes struggled to persuade cultural leaders to accept its plans. The company has been sued by authors and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic over its book-digitization project. In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged hundreds of millions of euros toward a separate digitization program, saying he would not permit France to be 'stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.'"
I think it's definitely worth asking why are they getting involved with all this? Especially when "the activities of the Cultural Institute differ from some other Google initiatives in that there are few outward signs of the company’s involvement. While Google provided the technology to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and is host to the pages on its servers, for example, the only reference to the company is a small note that the site is 'powered by Google.'" Is it just good-deed doing? Making the Internet a more fulfilling and interactive space?
The author of the article in The New York Times even asks "Is it appropriate for museums and other nonprofit cultural institutions to work so closely with a money-making machine like Google?"
The ethics aside, it's undeniable that Google has the ability to bring in crowds to museum websites, cultural archives, and even libraries.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Spelling Chequer
In my family, holidays are always times for the teachers (and students!) in the family to commiserate and share funny stories about school. This poem was one of the things that came up today:
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished inn it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checkers
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped words fare as hear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
The original version was written by Jerrold H. Zar, a former professor of Ecology at Northern Illinois University, in 1992.
These days when I'm writing in a program that doesn't have a built in spell check, I'm constantly second guessing whether or not I've spelled something correctly. So maybe spell check misses some pretty obvious mistakes, but I think it saves me time in the end, and I'm mostly quite glad for it. What really bothers me about the current word processing programs is the "replace" function which automatically substitutes a new word when it thinks you've spelled something incorrectly. For example, in OpenOffice Writer if you're trying to write about IHS Global Insight, every time you type "IHS," OpenOffice changes it to "his." This is extremely frustrating.
CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE
Eye have a spelling checker.
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished inn it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checkers
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped words fare as hear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
The original version was written by Jerrold H. Zar, a former professor of Ecology at Northern Illinois University, in 1992.
These days when I'm writing in a program that doesn't have a built in spell check, I'm constantly second guessing whether or not I've spelled something correctly. So maybe spell check misses some pretty obvious mistakes, but I think it saves me time in the end, and I'm mostly quite glad for it. What really bothers me about the current word processing programs is the "replace" function which automatically substitutes a new word when it thinks you've spelled something incorrectly. For example, in OpenOffice Writer if you're trying to write about IHS Global Insight, every time you type "IHS," OpenOffice changes it to "his." This is extremely frustrating.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thanksgiving reflections
I'm officially on Thanksgiving break and feeling great about it. Never mind the two presentations, one paper, access database, and powerpoint projects I have left to finish by the end of the semester, I'm just happy to be spending a couple of days away from school and ironically, especially away from the library! When I get back to school I'm sure I will be just as happy as usual to find a secluded spot up in the stacks, which is where I always seem to get the most work done, but after spending practically a week straight there, I'm enjoying a change of scenery. After an extended time in the library, I started to notice how crisp the fresh air outside was, and how nice it was to feel sunlight on your skin, and how alive and three dimensional the whole world is (I know, sad, right?). The weather has been surprisingly warm for November, but aside from the walk between my apartment and the bus stop and the bus stop to the library, I haven't been able to experience much of it. Hopefully it will hold out for the next couple of days!
It's hard to believe the semester is nearly over. When we get back from break there will only be a few short weeks left. For one of my classes we just turned in our final papers yesterday and aside from some readings and showing up to class, it's essentially all over. For another class a short presentation is all that's left. I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that my grad school experience is (most likely) a quarter of the way over.
It's hard to believe the semester is nearly over. When we get back from break there will only be a few short weeks left. For one of my classes we just turned in our final papers yesterday and aside from some readings and showing up to class, it's essentially all over. For another class a short presentation is all that's left. I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that my grad school experience is (most likely) a quarter of the way over.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Mort
I've been a fan of Terry Pratchett ever since I picked up my first Discworld book and fell headfirst into his zany cast of wizards, night watchmen, criminals, reformed criminal postmaster generals, vampire cameramen, and an anthropomorphic personification of DEATH, who all dwell on the Discworld, a 
frisbee-shaped planet carried through space on the back of four elephants balancing on the shell of a giant turtle.
DEATH appears in most of the books in small, aptly timed, cameo roles, but there are a couple books that focus more specifically on him as a central character. Mort is one of those stories. In this novel DEATH takes on an apprentice, an awkward teenage boy who's not very good at anything and reads far more books than his father believes is good for him. The plot resembles Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice in many ways, but with a slightly dark, wild, unhinged perspective you don't typically associate with Disney. One of the best parts of this book is the chance to get a closer look at the character of DEATH. He is fascinated by humans, has a great affection for cats, and makes an extremely efficient fry-cook.
I'm always on the lookout for library-related quotes in books, and of course Terry Pratchett doesn't disappoint. The wizards in his world study and work at the great Unseen University, which naturally houses a tremendous (if often terrifying) library of magical books and artifacts. The librarian is a giant orangutang for reasons I won't go into here, but even with this rather unique caretaker in place, Pratchett warns us that "things can happen to browsers in magical libraries that make having your face pulled off by tentacled monstrosities from the Dungeon Dimensions seem a mere light massage by comparison." I do say it makes our libraries on campus seem rather dull (and safe) in comparison.
If you ever need a break from the real world, just pick up a Terry Pratchett book, it will do the trick every time.
frisbee-shaped planet carried through space on the back of four elephants balancing on the shell of a giant turtle.DEATH appears in most of the books in small, aptly timed, cameo roles, but there are a couple books that focus more specifically on him as a central character. Mort is one of those stories. In this novel DEATH takes on an apprentice, an awkward teenage boy who's not very good at anything and reads far more books than his father believes is good for him. The plot resembles Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice in many ways, but with a slightly dark, wild, unhinged perspective you don't typically associate with Disney. One of the best parts of this book is the chance to get a closer look at the character of DEATH. He is fascinated by humans, has a great affection for cats, and makes an extremely efficient fry-cook.
I'm always on the lookout for library-related quotes in books, and of course Terry Pratchett doesn't disappoint. The wizards in his world study and work at the great Unseen University, which naturally houses a tremendous (if often terrifying) library of magical books and artifacts. The librarian is a giant orangutang for reasons I won't go into here, but even with this rather unique caretaker in place, Pratchett warns us that "things can happen to browsers in magical libraries that make having your face pulled off by tentacled monstrosities from the Dungeon Dimensions seem a mere light massage by comparison." I do say it makes our libraries on campus seem rather dull (and safe) in comparison.
If you ever need a break from the real world, just pick up a Terry Pratchett book, it will do the trick every time.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Paper Topics
The Sea Hawk (1924)
I really love classic movie stills. Each shot is so carefully set up, the lighting just so, characters looking either a little too human or like an exaggeration, a caricature of an actor. Connection to libraries? Well I found these two stills over at the Silent Film Still Archive, a pretty fun website to browse and one that I used in an annotated bibliography project for a library resources course. I tried to make the case that it could be used as a reference source; I don't know how convincing I was on that front, but at least I know I gave the instructors a fun website to look up!
One thing I've learned this semester is that working on projects or long papers is so much more enjoyable when you are working with a topic that you are truly interested in--but it might not always be your first inclination. So choose your subjects wisely! I've made some good choices in that regard this semester (like classic cinema), though some of them weren't topics I instinctively went towards at first. Probably my two favorite papers from this semester were the ones I wrote on budgets and medical records. Definitely not subjects I know much about or would think to find myself interested in. The key was that each contained some unusual or compelling aspect that made me genuinely excited to investigate, research, and ultimately write.
The Freshman (1925)
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Taste Level
After more than seven years as a Microsoft user (five of those on the same laptop), last May it was time for me to get a new computer. I got a Mac, and haven't given Microsoft another glance since. I could write a lot about my devout love for my MacBook Pro or the wasted years I clung to my Dell, but I'll save that for another time.
This week PBS producer, Robert Cringely, planned to show a film of a previously unaired interview with Steve Jobs from 1995--a tumultuous time in Jobs' life and his relationship with Apple. The session was originally filmed for a PBS miniseries titled "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. In a clip of the interview posted on CNET, Jobs says, "the only problem with microsoft is they just have no taste," as he criticizes the lack of culture and originality in microsoft products. Based on the clip, this was a pretty lively interview session and I'd love to hear what else Jobs has to say about the early development of the computer technology industry.
This week PBS producer, Robert Cringely, planned to show a film of a previously unaired interview with Steve Jobs from 1995--a tumultuous time in Jobs' life and his relationship with Apple. The session was originally filmed for a PBS miniseries titled "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. In a clip of the interview posted on CNET, Jobs says, "the only problem with microsoft is they just have no taste," as he criticizes the lack of culture and originality in microsoft products. Based on the clip, this was a pretty lively interview session and I'd love to hear what else Jobs has to say about the early development of the computer technology industry.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Ninja Librarians in the News
That's what I said.
"After an AP exclusive report on how the CIA is using "ninja librarians" to comb through internet postings and social media, NPR's Robert Siegel interviewed reporter Kimberly Dozier about her research for the article. This prompted enough listener response that All Things Considered had to revisit the phrase in their Letters segment today, with clarification about what kind of degree a ninja librarian may have earned."
Via MetaFilter.
From NPR:
GUY RAZ, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
ROBERT SIEGEL: I'm Robert Siegel. It's time now for your letters. And we're going to re-visit perhaps the most ear-catching phrase heard on this week's program.
KIMBERLY DOZIER: Ninja Librarians.
SIEGEL: Ninja Librarians. That's Associated Press reporter Kimberly Dozier, talking about the people the CIA has brought in to comb through as many as five million Facebook messages and tweets a day.
DOZIER: You're talking about several hundred staffers. You've got people who are experts at finding information. A lot of them have Masters of Librarian Science. They know how to track things down on the Internet that you and I simply wouldn't know existed.
RAZ: Well, listener Sasun Baylik(ph) of Bellevue, Washington, has been trying to get a job as a librarian and writes: The degree is called a Master's of Library Science, not Librarian Science.
SIEGEL: Well, we ran this by our own ninja librarian, Mary Glendinning.
RAZ: It was hard to find her because she was wearing all-black.
SIEGEL: And Mary said this, Masters of Librarian Science is wrong. However, there are many names for this type of degree: Master of Library Science, Master of Arts, Master of Librarianship, Master of Library and Information Studies, and Master of Science.
RAZ: And then, Mary shimmied up the newsroom wall like a spider.
SIEGEL: Never mess with a ninja librarian. They'll correct you within an inch of your life.
I always knew librarians were more like ninjas than nonjas. =)
"After an AP exclusive report on how the CIA is using "ninja librarians" to comb through internet postings and social media, NPR's Robert Siegel interviewed reporter Kimberly Dozier about her research for the article. This prompted enough listener response that All Things Considered had to revisit the phrase in their Letters segment today, with clarification about what kind of degree a ninja librarian may have earned."
Via MetaFilter.
From NPR:
GUY RAZ, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
ROBERT SIEGEL: I'm Robert Siegel. It's time now for your letters. And we're going to re-visit perhaps the most ear-catching phrase heard on this week's program.
KIMBERLY DOZIER: Ninja Librarians.
SIEGEL: Ninja Librarians. That's Associated Press reporter Kimberly Dozier, talking about the people the CIA has brought in to comb through as many as five million Facebook messages and tweets a day.
DOZIER: You're talking about several hundred staffers. You've got people who are experts at finding information. A lot of them have Masters of Librarian Science. They know how to track things down on the Internet that you and I simply wouldn't know existed.
RAZ: Well, listener Sasun Baylik(ph) of Bellevue, Washington, has been trying to get a job as a librarian and writes: The degree is called a Master's of Library Science, not Librarian Science.
SIEGEL: Well, we ran this by our own ninja librarian, Mary Glendinning.
RAZ: It was hard to find her because she was wearing all-black.
SIEGEL: And Mary said this, Masters of Librarian Science is wrong. However, there are many names for this type of degree: Master of Library Science, Master of Arts, Master of Librarianship, Master of Library and Information Studies, and Master of Science.
RAZ: And then, Mary shimmied up the newsroom wall like a spider.
SIEGEL: Never mess with a ninja librarian. They'll correct you within an inch of your life.
I always knew librarians were more like ninjas than nonjas. =)
Monday, November 14, 2011
Net Gen Users
It seems like a lot of information professionals are preoccupied with answering the question: what do Net Generation students expect from libraries? I appreciate the literature that encourages libraries to adapt their services to the Google-loving, multimedia environment-dwelling, smartphone-owning student users of today, but it's important not to lose the purpose and function of the library in the rush to make a million and one changes. The concept of the information commons design: a comfortable, relaxed, available space where community is encouraged and technology celebrated, is a great idea. But I don't know that libraries need to develop video game-like tutorials to teach library resources or fill their libraries with flat screen TVs to display a rotating series of information resources factsheets. Video game appeal may draw some users in, but it's going to be difficult to convince them that watching a library tutorial is just as much fun as playing Portal 2 or Call of Duty. And as for those display screens, does anyone (other than the people who put them up) actually pay enough attention to them to absorb any of their content? Libraries have always played a critical role in learning: providing resources for class assignments, but more than that serving as places where individuals can pursue their education outside the classroom. I hope libraries won't forget the heights of their ancient design and calling as they initiate the evolution they seem to feel modern users expect.
It's not that I just want to criticize the current efforts being made by librarians, I only want to express my concern that despite their good intentions, many library "transformation" projects, are focusing on the wrong things. Joan Lippincott wrote in 2005 that "most libraries have not yet learned how to effectively integrate physical spaces with virtual spaces and services." I think her words describe quite well the root of the problem behind successfully reaching younger generations of library users. The world today is an endless double helix of reality and the virtual world, spiraling around each other, connected in a million places: omnipresent iPhones, Facebook groups that exist simultaneously online and in "real life," and even virtual reference shelves offering information to anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection. Today's students have grown up in these co-existing worlds, and to them the line distinguishing one from the other is definitely more grey than black and white. It's part of the way we think, work, read, and dream. And it doesn't just apply to "for fun" or leisure activities; to succeed in higher academic education (and most job fields, for that matter) students have to acquire literacy in not only the written word but also what George Luca called "a 'language of screens,' in order to be effective communicators."
Lippincott describes today's Net Generation as computer and technology savvy, but points out that "while Net Gen students generally can multitask, learn systems without consulting manuals, and surf the Web, they lack technology and information skills appropriate for academic work." To help students apply the vast knowledge they possess to academic problems and learning, libraries need to meet them in both worlds, physical and virtual. This means finding ways to connect the shelves of thick reference books and the librarian behind the desk and the massive online databases of e-journals and research tools (and Google, of course), or the quiet nooks where everyone loves to curl up with a good book and the daily blog post or webcomic we read on a religious basis. In some cases, this connection can be easy to achieve: wireless routers and well-placed electrical outlets go a long way. And sometimes we haven't figured out quite yet how to unite the different aspects of these two spaces.
Reconciling the problem of two environments: virtual and physical, will do more than simply bring students back to the library, it has the potential to deeply enrich the academic experiences of millions of students who have no idea just how much the library has to offer them.
Lippincott, J.K. (2005). Net generation students and libraries. In D.G. Oblinger & J.L. Oblinger (Eds.) Educating the Net Generation. Educause.
It's not that I just want to criticize the current efforts being made by librarians, I only want to express my concern that despite their good intentions, many library "transformation" projects, are focusing on the wrong things. Joan Lippincott wrote in 2005 that "most libraries have not yet learned how to effectively integrate physical spaces with virtual spaces and services." I think her words describe quite well the root of the problem behind successfully reaching younger generations of library users. The world today is an endless double helix of reality and the virtual world, spiraling around each other, connected in a million places: omnipresent iPhones, Facebook groups that exist simultaneously online and in "real life," and even virtual reference shelves offering information to anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection. Today's students have grown up in these co-existing worlds, and to them the line distinguishing one from the other is definitely more grey than black and white. It's part of the way we think, work, read, and dream. And it doesn't just apply to "for fun" or leisure activities; to succeed in higher academic education (and most job fields, for that matter) students have to acquire literacy in not only the written word but also what George Luca called "a 'language of screens,' in order to be effective communicators."
Lippincott describes today's Net Generation as computer and technology savvy, but points out that "while Net Gen students generally can multitask, learn systems without consulting manuals, and surf the Web, they lack technology and information skills appropriate for academic work." To help students apply the vast knowledge they possess to academic problems and learning, libraries need to meet them in both worlds, physical and virtual. This means finding ways to connect the shelves of thick reference books and the librarian behind the desk and the massive online databases of e-journals and research tools (and Google, of course), or the quiet nooks where everyone loves to curl up with a good book and the daily blog post or webcomic we read on a religious basis. In some cases, this connection can be easy to achieve: wireless routers and well-placed electrical outlets go a long way. And sometimes we haven't figured out quite yet how to unite the different aspects of these two spaces.
Reconciling the problem of two environments: virtual and physical, will do more than simply bring students back to the library, it has the potential to deeply enrich the academic experiences of millions of students who have no idea just how much the library has to offer them.
Lippincott, J.K. (2005). Net generation students and libraries. In D.G. Oblinger & J.L. Oblinger (Eds.) Educating the Net Generation. Educause.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
PostSecret
PostSecret is a project that I have followed weekly for years. There is something very moving about seeing the darkest nightmares and sweetest aspirations of faceless individuals shared with the Internet and humanity at large. People all over the world create postcards, usually a mixture of text and images, and send them to the founder and maintainer of the PostSecret website, Frank Warren, who selects postcards to post online every week. Postcards are usually intensely personal as people make use of the anonymity provided to shed tears, express guilt, or celebrate an unspoken triumph. For readers of the project, these unveiled secrets are often either tremendously inspirational or deeply convicting.
Recently I have found myself thinking about PostSecret slightly differently. The site is kind of an epitome of the universal appeal of the Internet's anonymity. Contributors, commenters, and consumers (i.e. viewers) are all completely anonymous participants in the act of information sharing. On PostSecret the information shared may be different from what you find on other websites or what you think about from the strictest sense of a library science perspective on information sharing, but I think the concept still applies. What is it about a state of anonymity that makes us communicate differently--some might even say better? The literature talks about the Internet as a "low risk environment" and a third zone outside of home and work where people can seek community and discover information they wouldn't be exposed to in other places. A lot of research has been done and is being done about the role of the Internet in our daily lives, but it's a pretty difficult topic to nail down. I just think it's kind of odd that the Internet simultaneously functions as a method of connection, to keep ourselves linked to others, and a shield we hold between ourselves and the outside world.
PostSecret is updated every Sunday. If you read the site regularly, it won't be long until you start to see postcards that you could have written yourself.
Friday, November 11, 2011
11:11:11
11/11/11!
Today is the last day we will have a binary six digit date for 89 years! So for most of us here on earth, probably the last binary day we will ever see. If that's too depressing for you, then I guess I'll see you in 2100 on 01/01.
Today is the last day we will have a binary six digit date for 89 years! So for most of us here on earth, probably the last binary day we will ever see. If that's too depressing for you, then I guess I'll see you in 2100 on 01/01.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Graphing a Story
Kurt Vonnegut's take on the shape of stories. An "exercise in relativity." Awesome.
As a hopeful author I like to think there's a little bit more to writing than that, but as you look at today's summer blockbusters and even a good number of New York Times bestsellers, it's undeniable that there's an alarming lack of originality. I'm a firm believer in the school of thought that there are new stories, unknown characters, and unexplored adventures to be discovered if only we can probe deeply enough into our own imaginations. Not everything has to be recycled from what came before (though most creations are at least influenced by earlier works). To Vonnegut nothing is too sacred to be ridiculed, and it's a lot of fun to watch him gently mock his own profession.
When asked what Vonnegut's advice to young writers was, he once said: "Don't use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college." He also said he would rather be a giraffe or a seagull than an awful creature like a human being, but he also described himself as a Humanist. Apparently Vonnegut used to tour the country giving a lecture entitled "How to Get a Job Like Mine," in which he would stand up in front of a group of students and proceed to talk about whatever the hell he wanted. He also told his listeners that "Practicing an art is a way to make your soul grow." I wish I could have heard him speak.
As a hopeful author I like to think there's a little bit more to writing than that, but as you look at today's summer blockbusters and even a good number of New York Times bestsellers, it's undeniable that there's an alarming lack of originality. I'm a firm believer in the school of thought that there are new stories, unknown characters, and unexplored adventures to be discovered if only we can probe deeply enough into our own imaginations. Not everything has to be recycled from what came before (though most creations are at least influenced by earlier works). To Vonnegut nothing is too sacred to be ridiculed, and it's a lot of fun to watch him gently mock his own profession.
When asked what Vonnegut's advice to young writers was, he once said: "Don't use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college." He also said he would rather be a giraffe or a seagull than an awful creature like a human being, but he also described himself as a Humanist. Apparently Vonnegut used to tour the country giving a lecture entitled "How to Get a Job Like Mine," in which he would stand up in front of a group of students and proceed to talk about whatever the hell he wanted. He also told his listeners that "Practicing an art is a way to make your soul grow." I wish I could have heard him speak.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Dynamic Browsing in PicsLikeThat
A new image search came to my attention today; it's called PicsLikeThat. At first glance I thought it would be essentially a Google Images clone, but it's actually a stock photo archive, similar to Shutterstock. What sets PicsLikeThat apart is its unique search engine that displays pictures grouped by image similarity in a "drag and zoom" layout. You still initiate your search by entering a keyword, but after that point the search process becomes much more dynamic as you navigate through the results and narrow or redirect your search by double clicking on images that are similar to the one you're looking for.
This seems like a great idea, but the reality of PicsLikeThat is that it still needs some fine tuning. The image quality on the search screen is not great, making it difficult to really pick out a likely image, and the wait time both on the beginning search and the preview option to bring up a bigger version of an individual image is much too long. It's a proven fact that today's Internet users have an increasingly short attention span, especially when it comes to load times. If a page is taking longer than a couple short seconds to load, chances are most viewers will not stick around to wait for the sluggish content. The biggest problem, though, is that for laptop owners using a trackpad, the drag and zoom process is still a little awkward.
Stock photos aren't something I use (I prefer to shoot my own pictures), but I think this style of browsing is quite neat and has definite possibilities for a wide variety of search engines in the future. The bottom line, however, is that the technical method used for PicsLikeThat just isn't quite there yet. But it probably should be.
This type of image search reminded me of a program called Seadragon demoed by Blaise Agüera y Arcas on a TED talk several years ago. PicsLikeThat's browsing environment is reminiscent of a similar but simplified version of Seadragon. And clearly it's a long way off from the potential of the superb software envisioned by Agüera y Arcas. Check out the demo video below, or visit the website: Zoom.it to see Seadragon aka Zoom.it in action. (Since it was acquired by Microsoft the software has been rebranded.) This technology is awesome and has already been around for a while; so I wonder why we aren't seeing more of it on the web?
This seems like a great idea, but the reality of PicsLikeThat is that it still needs some fine tuning. The image quality on the search screen is not great, making it difficult to really pick out a likely image, and the wait time both on the beginning search and the preview option to bring up a bigger version of an individual image is much too long. It's a proven fact that today's Internet users have an increasingly short attention span, especially when it comes to load times. If a page is taking longer than a couple short seconds to load, chances are most viewers will not stick around to wait for the sluggish content. The biggest problem, though, is that for laptop owners using a trackpad, the drag and zoom process is still a little awkward.
Stock photos aren't something I use (I prefer to shoot my own pictures), but I think this style of browsing is quite neat and has definite possibilities for a wide variety of search engines in the future. The bottom line, however, is that the technical method used for PicsLikeThat just isn't quite there yet. But it probably should be.
This type of image search reminded me of a program called Seadragon demoed by Blaise Agüera y Arcas on a TED talk several years ago. PicsLikeThat's browsing environment is reminiscent of a similar but simplified version of Seadragon. And clearly it's a long way off from the potential of the superb software envisioned by Agüera y Arcas. Check out the demo video below, or visit the website: Zoom.it to see Seadragon aka Zoom.it in action. (Since it was acquired by Microsoft the software has been rebranded.) This technology is awesome and has already been around for a while; so I wonder why we aren't seeing more of it on the web?
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Book sale
I love library used book sales. They are a great place to pick up unread titles by authors you've enjoyed in the past, find childhood favorites, and collect copies of classics you've always meant to read or think you might want to reread someday. You can find real jewels at used book sales, and sorting through the semi-organized shelves (or boxes) can be half the fun. Helping the library and getting inexpensive books at the same time; I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon!
I went to a library book sale today when they were having a $5 bag special. Essentially, you could fill a bag up with just about any book at the sale for the small fee of $5 (they did have a separate section of higher priced books, but believe me there were plenty to choose from in the general section). This sort of special is also known as the "it's the last day of the sale and the volunteers really don't want to have to repackage and transport all these books again!" phenomenon. I honestly felt a little guilty, to walk away with a whole bag of books for just $5, but I took comfort in the fact that I was giving lots of old books a new home. At this sale, the majority of the books were donated, but a good number were novels that had been culled from the public library's collection. It's downright depressing to see "discarded" stamped in the front of a perfectly good book. I hope the books feel more appreciated on my bookshelf!
In total I took home 26 books for my $5, and the volunteers honestly seemed glad for me to lug them out of the building! Out of curiosity's sake I added up the original prices on the books afterwards. 6 of the 26 didn't have prices due to age or because they were missing their dust jackets, but the 20 that did came to a grand total of $259.89! Granted most of the books were in semi- to heavily used condition, but a couple appear surprisingly new. And I got some fantastic titles: two Daphne du Maurier novels, Dustin Long's Icelander which looks really interesting, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, the first Xanth novel, and a practically new copy of Tom Perrota's Little Children. All in all definitely an afternoon well spent!
I went to a library book sale today when they were having a $5 bag special. Essentially, you could fill a bag up with just about any book at the sale for the small fee of $5 (they did have a separate section of higher priced books, but believe me there were plenty to choose from in the general section). This sort of special is also known as the "it's the last day of the sale and the volunteers really don't want to have to repackage and transport all these books again!" phenomenon. I honestly felt a little guilty, to walk away with a whole bag of books for just $5, but I took comfort in the fact that I was giving lots of old books a new home. At this sale, the majority of the books were donated, but a good number were novels that had been culled from the public library's collection. It's downright depressing to see "discarded" stamped in the front of a perfectly good book. I hope the books feel more appreciated on my bookshelf!
In total I took home 26 books for my $5, and the volunteers honestly seemed glad for me to lug them out of the building! Out of curiosity's sake I added up the original prices on the books afterwards. 6 of the 26 didn't have prices due to age or because they were missing their dust jackets, but the 20 that did came to a grand total of $259.89! Granted most of the books were in semi- to heavily used condition, but a couple appear surprisingly new. And I got some fantastic titles: two Daphne du Maurier novels, Dustin Long's Icelander which looks really interesting, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, the first Xanth novel, and a practically new copy of Tom Perrota's Little Children. All in all definitely an afternoon well spent!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Ready Player One
There are a ton of good books out there, and even a lot of great ones, but it's rare to find a book as infectiously fun to read as Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. I put this book on hold at the local library after reading about it on a blog somewhere, but I had completely forgotten about it when I received the notice yesterday that it was ready for me to pick up. From the first few pages I could tell that this book was going to be a fantastic adventure and nearly impossible to stop reading. I immediately devoured it in two marathon sessions (with a couple brief breaks to feed the cats and make a cup of tea or two).
I'll start this off by saying bluntly, if you are a fan of video games, classic scifi movies, or futuristic novels involving virtual reality worlds and haven't read Ready Player One, then go find a copy of the book right now. Cline's novel is fast-paced, ironic, entrancing, and peppered with references to old games, films, music, and technology. The book contains a lot of backstory, but where this might slow readers down in less-captivating works, here it only throws you more intensively into the world Cline has created (or in some ways, resurrected).
Wade Watts is the unlikely hero of Ready Player One, a less than average kid in every regard but his obsession with the OASIS, the virtual reality world that the Internet has evolved into by the year the book is set, 2044. He escapes his unhappy world, living with an uncaring aunt in a futuristic trailer park horror known as "the stacks," and embraces the digital realm where he can make himself whoever he wants to be. But the OASIS isn't just a virtual playground to Wade (aka Parzival--his OASIS avatar name). Wade spends every spare moment of his existence researching, studying, and scouring the network for the elusive Easter Egg left behind by the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday. Hidden beneath cryptic tests and seemingly indecipherable puzzles is Halliday's enormous fortune and the power to control the future of the OASIS. The contest first went public upon the death of the eccentric founder, but after millions around the globe have spent years searching for the treasure, no one is any closer to winning this most epic game of all time. Then Wade discovers the answer to the first riddle. Enthusiasm for the contest, which had faded in the uneventful years since Halliday's death, takes off again, Parzival is an instant celebrity in the digital world, and things really start to get interesting.
If Cline's endless facts about Atari games, John Hughes films, and 80s rock bands don't keep you entertained, his complex, often hilarious, and always addictive story will keep your eyes riveted to the text until the final page. Happy reading!
Wade Watts is the unlikely hero of Ready Player One, a less than average kid in every regard but his obsession with the OASIS, the virtual reality world that the Internet has evolved into by the year the book is set, 2044. He escapes his unhappy world, living with an uncaring aunt in a futuristic trailer park horror known as "the stacks," and embraces the digital realm where he can make himself whoever he wants to be. But the OASIS isn't just a virtual playground to Wade (aka Parzival--his OASIS avatar name). Wade spends every spare moment of his existence researching, studying, and scouring the network for the elusive Easter Egg left behind by the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday. Hidden beneath cryptic tests and seemingly indecipherable puzzles is Halliday's enormous fortune and the power to control the future of the OASIS. The contest first went public upon the death of the eccentric founder, but after millions around the globe have spent years searching for the treasure, no one is any closer to winning this most epic game of all time. Then Wade discovers the answer to the first riddle. Enthusiasm for the contest, which had faded in the uneventful years since Halliday's death, takes off again, Parzival is an instant celebrity in the digital world, and things really start to get interesting.
If Cline's endless facts about Atari games, John Hughes films, and 80s rock bands don't keep you entertained, his complex, often hilarious, and always addictive story will keep your eyes riveted to the text until the final page. Happy reading!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Google antics
Had to throw this up here:
Google entertainment feature of the day: go to Google.com and type "do a barrel roll" into the search box. =)
Google has other fun tricks up their sleeve too. For example,
Google entertainment feature of the day: go to Google.com and type "do a barrel roll" into the search box. =)
Google has other fun tricks up their sleeve too. For example,
- Try searching for "ascii art" and watch what happens to the Google logo.
- If you search "tilt" the search results page will come back slightly tilted.
- A query for "anagram" will ask you if you meant "nag a ram."
- Did you know you can change the default language on Google? Did you know you can change the default language on Google to "Pirate," or "Bork, bork, bork," or "Klingon," or "Hacker?"
- Finally, one of my personal favorites, google "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" and receive the ultimate answer to the ultimate question.
Digital Loss
An interesting article came up in one of my classes today. The Economist featured a story about the enormous loss of information caused by the "daily death of countless websites" and an overall lack of archiving digital data on the web. The sheer amount of born digital material means that the task of recording everything is literally impossible. But some large entities, like Google, may not be making much effort to archive and preserve information to begin with.
"Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all." There is a huge problem in the digital world concerning the lack of everlasting file types; with programs continually updating and reinventing themselves (plus new programs and file types cropping up all the time), it becomes increasingly difficult to access older material. A large portion of the job of archiving digital documents consists of renewing files again and again to ensure that they can still be opened and read properly. From a digital archivist's perspective, each one of these "migration" points represents a risk to the original data--a chance for the data to be corrupted outright or subtly altered in ways we might not even understand at the time.
Adam Farquhar is the head of the British Library's digital projects and he makes the extreme-sounding, but probably true, point that "the world has in some ways a better record of the beginning of the 20th century than of the beginning of the 21st." If by "better" Farquhar means more complete, and you consider all the websites, posts, comments, and stray information floating around on the web that has disappeared without a trace, his radical statement suddenly seems incredibly accurate.
On a related note, I recently looked up an old livejournal account and was both surprised and thrilled to see my old posts were still online. If I ever had copies of those entries it was on a computer now long gone, and I would have been a little sad to lose them completely. I really need to download those old high school writings and store them carefully if I want to ensure they will be around to remind and amuse me in years to come. I certainly can't count on livejournal to stand around forever. But when I do download them, what file format should I choose? .DOCX is very popular now, but I use mostly Open Office, so .ODT? That might make more sense for my computer use at the moment, but would it be the best decision for long term storage? .PDF is a highly reliable format, but will it always be? I think as we move into the future we will start to realize more and more just how essential good digital data curation is to our daily lives and activities.
See the full article on www.economist.com
"Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all." There is a huge problem in the digital world concerning the lack of everlasting file types; with programs continually updating and reinventing themselves (plus new programs and file types cropping up all the time), it becomes increasingly difficult to access older material. A large portion of the job of archiving digital documents consists of renewing files again and again to ensure that they can still be opened and read properly. From a digital archivist's perspective, each one of these "migration" points represents a risk to the original data--a chance for the data to be corrupted outright or subtly altered in ways we might not even understand at the time.
Adam Farquhar is the head of the British Library's digital projects and he makes the extreme-sounding, but probably true, point that "the world has in some ways a better record of the beginning of the 20th century than of the beginning of the 21st." If by "better" Farquhar means more complete, and you consider all the websites, posts, comments, and stray information floating around on the web that has disappeared without a trace, his radical statement suddenly seems incredibly accurate.
On a related note, I recently looked up an old livejournal account and was both surprised and thrilled to see my old posts were still online. If I ever had copies of those entries it was on a computer now long gone, and I would have been a little sad to lose them completely. I really need to download those old high school writings and store them carefully if I want to ensure they will be around to remind and amuse me in years to come. I certainly can't count on livejournal to stand around forever. But when I do download them, what file format should I choose? .DOCX is very popular now, but I use mostly Open Office, so .ODT? That might make more sense for my computer use at the moment, but would it be the best decision for long term storage? .PDF is a highly reliable format, but will it always be? I think as we move into the future we will start to realize more and more just how essential good digital data curation is to our daily lives and activities.
See the full article on www.economist.com
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Graveyards, Gaiman, and the Back-Seat Book Club
I'm not planning to pursue an extensive amount of coursework in children's library services while I'm in library science school, not because I don't think it's worthwhile (I certainly do) or because I'm not interested in kiddy lit. (I read it all the time), but just because I don't think it is all that applicable to where I see myself going in libraries and information studies. However, I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman, and he's been involved in some very cool kids programs lately, so I'll deviate into those waters temporarily.
First of all, if you haven't read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, you definitely should. Aside from the fact that it won the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, and the Hugo Award, it's also just a very fun, quirky read about a young boy raised in a graveyard by an entertaining collection of ghostly guardians. Neil kicked off a new kids' program on NPR this week called Back-Seat Book Club, which hopes to encourage young readers by bringing authors onto the program to answer kids' questions and talk about their novels. It will be interesting to see how kids respond to this program; NPR really couldn't have picked a better author to begin the show--Neil is fantastic at question and answer panels and great at book readings too. In fact, he has made an audio version of the entire novel of The Graveyard Book available online (read by none other than Neil Gaiman himself). I couldn't applaud this decision enough; Neil writes amazing books, but the coolest thing about him is the way he seems to care so much about his readers. Whether it's through a more traditional book tour or his regularly updated online journal, Neil makes great efforts to stay connected with his audience.
And a quick final plug for my all time favorite Neil Gaiman book (well, one of my favorites--it's so hard to choose!), check out Neverwhere, a riveting story of different Londons, a curious girl who is the last of a great family, and a seemingly ordinary young businessman who gets in way over his head.
And a quick final plug for my all time favorite Neil Gaiman book (well, one of my favorites--it's so hard to choose!), check out Neverwhere, a riveting story of different Londons, a curious girl who is the last of a great family, and a seemingly ordinary young businessman who gets in way over his head.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Intellectual Freedom
Our first amendment rights are tied explicitly to the freedom to read, and libraries have the responsibility to support this right by refusing to limit or censor the materials they make available to their patrons. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom to read are inseparably intertwined, and all are essential to the ideal of democracy. The American Library Association has a division specifically designed to protect these rights, the Office of Intellectual Freedom.
In my opinion, mission statements and statements of purpose are often overtly showy but fundamentally empty expressions, but the OIF's Freedom to Read Statement is a horse of a very different color. I had highlighted practically half the document by the time I finished reading it and wanted to consolidate some of the key paragraphs here.
The OIF begins a list of propositions by asserting that "It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority. Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested."
ALA addresses the issue of censorship with the belief that "Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression."
In America we're supposed to be all about Change these days, right? "Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference."
Going on to consider the effect of censorship on creativity in a quote worthy of Oscar Wilde, "To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life."
As a writer I heartily concur with the statement that "The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth."
It's important to acknowledge that everyone will not agree all the time (or any of the time) but what is civil disagreement but one of the most basic applications of freedom? "Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive. It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group."
At its core, the ALA is standing up for the value of books, of libraries, and of open access to information of every kind. "We believe that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours."
Excerpts from the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom's Freedom to Read Statement
In my opinion, mission statements and statements of purpose are often overtly showy but fundamentally empty expressions, but the OIF's Freedom to Read Statement is a horse of a very different color. I had highlighted practically half the document by the time I finished reading it and wanted to consolidate some of the key paragraphs here.
The OIF begins a list of propositions by asserting that "It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority. Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested."
ALA addresses the issue of censorship with the belief that "Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression."
In America we're supposed to be all about Change these days, right? "Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference."
Going on to consider the effect of censorship on creativity in a quote worthy of Oscar Wilde, "To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life."
As a writer I heartily concur with the statement that "The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth."
It's important to acknowledge that everyone will not agree all the time (or any of the time) but what is civil disagreement but one of the most basic applications of freedom? "Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive. It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group."
At its core, the ALA is standing up for the value of books, of libraries, and of open access to information of every kind. "We believe that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours."
Excerpts from the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom's Freedom to Read Statement
Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween
A Halloween film that's been around since 2006, but still just as great every year:
Viewer Discretion is Advised =)
Winner in Best Short Film and Best Concept categories, 2006 Chicago Horror Film Festival
The Life and Death of a Pumpkin by Blame Society Productions
Directed by Aaron Yonda, Pumpkin voiced by Matt Sloan
Viewer Discretion is Advised =)
Winner in Best Short Film and Best Concept categories, 2006 Chicago Horror Film Festival
BImber Books
I discovered some amazing handmade books over the weekend at an arts and crafts exhibit in Southwestern Virginia. These gorgeous mixed media creations were built by Becca Imbur.
I love the idea of books as art, and I absolutely think any book can count as "art." From a gleaming, gold leafed collector's edition to the most worn, tattered favorite copy with notes scribbled in the margins. Becca Imbur has elevated the idea of books as art to an extremely vibrant, graphic level, and her pieces are visual masterpieces inside and out.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Open Access Week
So I've nearly missed it, but I still wanted to throw link up here for Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2011). Open Access Week exists to promote and share the benefits of Open Access policies and publication with scholars and researchers around the world. Definitely a worthy cause.
For example take Open Office: a great program that includes word processing, spreadsheets and databases, presentation, and even drawing functions. So basically, all the essentials. I've never been a big fan of Microsoft Office (I especially detest Excel), and since I discovered Open Office I have started using it for just about everything. It's simple and straightforward and I think it would be an easy transition for Mac or PC users. If you're interested, give it a try!
For example take Open Office: a great program that includes word processing, spreadsheets and databases, presentation, and even drawing functions. So basically, all the essentials. I've never been a big fan of Microsoft Office (I especially detest Excel), and since I discovered Open Office I have started using it for just about everything. It's simple and straightforward and I think it would be an easy transition for Mac or PC users. If you're interested, give it a try!
Shredder Challenge
DARPA, the ones who brought us the $40,000 Red Balloon Hunt two years ago, has recently opened up a new challenge carrying an even bigger price tag. On October 27th five puzzles were released online, each puzzle consists of a series of screenshots of shredded document fragments. The goal, to reassemble the pieces and and solve the problem hidden within the reconstructed document. The payoff, $50,000 for you or your team. We typically think of shredding as a pretty permanent form of destruction; however, when you shred a document the contents may be difficult to read, but the information is more or less still there.
Why is DARPA giving away $50,000 to the talented decoder who solves their puzzles? Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Innovation Office, is predicting that the winner of the Shredder Challenge is likely to use techniques or technologies previously unexplored by DARPA researchers. Ultimately the hope is to gain insight into the process of document reconstruction which could be applied both to reviving destroyed documents in war zones where troops often come across remnants of enemy data and to protecting sensitive information used and shredded by United States security offices. According to Kaufman, “the ability to reconstruct shredded documents will potentially yield information that may save lives or offer critical information about an adversary’s plans. Currently, this process is much too slow and too labor-intensive, particularly if the documents are handwritten. We are looking to the Shredder Challenge to generate some leap-ahead thinking in this area.”
So whether it's by manual assembly or computer program, if you want to give your method a try, get started at the Shredder Challenge website. We're on the second day of the challenge now, but I don't think there has been must talk about successful applicants quite yet. In the Red Balloon Challenge, a group from MIT located the balloons to complete the task in less than nine hours, but it's always difficult to predict how much time a DARPA challenge will actually take. DARPA plans to reveal the winner of the Shredder Challenge on December 5, 2011.
An awesome-sounding project to be sure, though I don't think I'm smart enough to actually have a shot at it. It's neat that they (DARPA) are willing to look outside their usual research team for ideas and innovations. Good luck to anyone entering!
Follow Shredder Challenge updates on Twitter
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) main website
Why is DARPA giving away $50,000 to the talented decoder who solves their puzzles? Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Innovation Office, is predicting that the winner of the Shredder Challenge is likely to use techniques or technologies previously unexplored by DARPA researchers. Ultimately the hope is to gain insight into the process of document reconstruction which could be applied both to reviving destroyed documents in war zones where troops often come across remnants of enemy data and to protecting sensitive information used and shredded by United States security offices. According to Kaufman, “the ability to reconstruct shredded documents will potentially yield information that may save lives or offer critical information about an adversary’s plans. Currently, this process is much too slow and too labor-intensive, particularly if the documents are handwritten. We are looking to the Shredder Challenge to generate some leap-ahead thinking in this area.”
So whether it's by manual assembly or computer program, if you want to give your method a try, get started at the Shredder Challenge website. We're on the second day of the challenge now, but I don't think there has been must talk about successful applicants quite yet. In the Red Balloon Challenge, a group from MIT located the balloons to complete the task in less than nine hours, but it's always difficult to predict how much time a DARPA challenge will actually take. DARPA plans to reveal the winner of the Shredder Challenge on December 5, 2011.
An awesome-sounding project to be sure, though I don't think I'm smart enough to actually have a shot at it. It's neat that they (DARPA) are willing to look outside their usual research team for ideas and innovations. Good luck to anyone entering!
Follow Shredder Challenge updates on Twitter
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) main website
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Blogger plus Google+
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Apparently, Google is taking steps to integrate Blogger with their rising starlet, Google+. It sounds all well and good on the surface, but the big issue is undoubtedly going to be the strict requirement on Google+ that all accounts be registered under the real name of the user. On Blogger this has definitely not been the standard; writers enjoy the freedom to create accounts under Internet aliases while commenters can post replies completely anonymously. And I can't see people changing their opinions about that anytime soon. Google's current response to this hitch is a shrug and the comment that combining your Blogger and Google+ profiles may not be for you right now. But will the day come when integration is mandatory? The rumor in circulation right now is that Google is considering adapting their Google+ policy to allow users to register under nicknames or pseudonyms. The last thing Google wants to do is lose customers, especially since Blogger has such a huge user base.
This issue of real names aside, I'm still not sure I think the integration is such a terrific idea. Yes, it presents a powerful and effortless way to disseminate your blog posts, but will all your contacts on Google+ appreciate the possibly overwhelming stream of blog entries arriving from everyone in their circle?
I have always thought that the truly great thing about blogs is the opportunity they provide to put your thoughts "out there" on the Internet, available to any reader who might be interested, but not in a way that forces your posts down the throats of anyone in particular. Maybe the integrated Google+ and Blogger will have options for filtering out contacts' Blogger updates if you don't want them showing up all the time, but I don't know that that is really a good solution either. We'll just have to wait and see.
This issue of real names aside, I'm still not sure I think the integration is such a terrific idea. Yes, it presents a powerful and effortless way to disseminate your blog posts, but will all your contacts on Google+ appreciate the possibly overwhelming stream of blog entries arriving from everyone in their circle?
I have always thought that the truly great thing about blogs is the opportunity they provide to put your thoughts "out there" on the Internet, available to any reader who might be interested, but not in a way that forces your posts down the throats of anyone in particular. Maybe the integrated Google+ and Blogger will have options for filtering out contacts' Blogger updates if you don't want them showing up all the time, but I don't know that that is really a good solution either. We'll just have to wait and see.
Socrates on the written word
A couple days ago I touched on the subject of how some people worry that excessive use of Google, smartphones, and similar technology assistance is inherently making us less intelligent. Well apparently Socrates had similar concerns thousands of years ago over the spread of the written word to nearly every facet of life, and particularly when it was used to support, or replace, human memory. So maybe it's just our natural human trepidation of change and whatever is new showing up again and again. We're so predictable.
Quoted from: O'Toole, James M. "On the Idea of Permanence." American Archivist 52, no. 1 (1989): 10-25.
"Socrates, for example, was skeptical of writing, fearing that 'it will implant forgetfulness' in the human mind, offering 'no true wisdom... but only its semblance... Written words... seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent,' the philosopher said, 'but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you the same thing forever.'"
Quoted from: O'Toole, James M. "On the Idea of Permanence." American Archivist 52, no. 1 (1989): 10-25.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The end of WikiLeaks?
According to founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is in serious enough financial trouble to temporarily halt all publishing endeavors. This is the result of a blockade by major financial institutions such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, and Bank of America which prohibits the transfer of donations from WikiLeak supporters to the organization via their services. Following the initial blockade, WikiLeaks has managed to survive on cash donations for almost a year, but now things are looking grim. Discussing this "existential threat," Julian Assange revealed that the blockade had "cost the site tens of millions of dollars in lost donations and... if the blockade is not taken down by the end of the year the organization cannot continue in its work." Estimates are that WikiLeaks donations have dropped up to 95% over the last year because of this financial quarantine.
However, despite these desperate times, WikiLeaks isn't showing signs of surrender quite yet. Next month WikiLeaks plans to unveil a new, secure way for the general public to submit leaked documents to the site.
Read more:
WikiLeaks Press Statement 10-23-11
Journalism.co.uk
Wall Street Journal
However, despite these desperate times, WikiLeaks isn't showing signs of surrender quite yet. Next month WikiLeaks plans to unveil a new, secure way for the general public to submit leaked documents to the site.
Read more:
WikiLeaks Press Statement 10-23-11
Journalism.co.uk
Wall Street Journal
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