Data Obsessed

Slate has one of their ubiquitous articles/slideshows about the future of public libraries this week.  I haven’t seen any posts about this one yet, but I’m sure they’re out there - the liblogs I read represent a tiny percentage of the ones out there, and I tend to stay away from the public library ones as a general rule.

The premise of this particular article/slideshow is that architects may be the savior of libraries, and includes as per the usual photographs of some of the impressive multi million dollar central libraries that have been built over the past twenty years.  Frankly, in my opinion, the article doesn’t really say much that we don’t already know - libraries are becoming gathering places, you’ll find most patrons at the computers or reading newspapers, most of these new central libraries have some kind of impressive architectural space - but I did find an indirect quote from Ross Dawson towards the end of the article interesting in a rather disbelieving way.

Mr. Dawson is some kind of consultant who seems to specialize in extinction - yeah, there’s a consultant for everything - and he claims that public libraries will be extinct by 2019.  I can’t buy this.  2019 is a mere 11 years into the future, and while public libraries do struggle to remain relevant to their consumer base, I can’t see a complete extinction in barely over a decade.

The article’s author is more likely to be correct: libraries won’t necessarily be repositories of books first and foremost.  They’ll be gathering places, urban spaces, “arbiters of information.”   But then, from what I know and what I learned in school, that’s what they already are.

Filed under: Librarianship
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In a couple of weeks I’ll have have been at my new job two months.  It’s been fun, something my old job never was for me - or at least not in recent memory.  So far:

• I’ve been to London for work and training (and shopping)
• I’ve (apparently) become the resident chemical industry expert, and in fact spent much of last week explaining specialty chemicals to my new boss
• I’ve looked up a lot of financial information.  A lot.
• I’ve wondered, on a near daily basis, how people stand commuting everyday for years and have started looking at NYC apartment ads.

I’ve been terrible about blogging.  I didn’t have much to say in the later months at ex-MPOW, and now I’m working nine hour days and have embarked on a gym routine, so I generally come home and crash.  And also, I simply haven’t had much to say here.  That may change, or I may just post sporadically for good.

Filed under: Miscellany, Blogging
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It took longer than a week to get to, but as is often the case, the interview and decision process was slower than anticipated.

I submitted my resignation at MPOW today.  It’s not been a good year for me there, and I’d been wanting to move on anyway when a new opportunity literally fell in my lap - a research with some training position at another consulting company, but one that does not do chemicals and energy (I’ve discovered that I’m not really interested in that particular area over the past couple of years).  Their main business is media, which I’m interested in, but they do a little bit of everything.  It’s more money and it’s in Midtown Manhattan, something that definitely appeals too.

There is no cataloging involved in this position, thank Jesus.

I start on January 7th and am promptly being sent to London for training on January 8th, something that’s awesomely exciting for me.  I haven’t been out of the country since college (and it was London then, too).  New MPOW has killer perks too - companywide weekend holidays in Spain, good bonuses, very decent health insurance.  I’m excited about work, and I haven’t felt that way for about two years now.  I’m hoping that this is the great fit job-wise that I’ve been looking for.

Filed under: Job Search/Networking, Work
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I know, I know, long time no post, but this was just too cool not to:  NORAD and Google Team up to track Santa’s sleigh on radar.

I didn’t know the original story - that in 1952 a Sears store inadvertantly gave out the phone number of the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) commander-in-chief as their Santa hotline number.  (Personally, I also wonder how a Sears store in Colorado Springs even got that number), but it’s really a cool story that’s turned into a Christmas tradition.

In other news, expect a post next week about a change in my current situation.  I’m afraid I have to be extremely vague  until everything’s official.

Filed under: Miscellany, Technology, Shiny Things
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(Long time no post, I know.  I haven’t had much lately to say related to libraryland - and still don’t, actually)

It’s the first week of September, which means Steve Jobs just pulled his One More Thing out of his back pocket, and the geek world drooled on cue - including me this time around.  I really want an iPod Touch, and I want it now, but there’s no way I’m buying it until I get some decent storage on it.  Especially since I want it for the pretty, and it’ll probably take me forever to use any of the functions (I’m the person who has had an iPod Video for a year and a half and only relatively recently added any, uh, actual videos to it.)

But man.  It IS pretty.  Look:

And also:

In a generation or two, it will be mine.

Filed under: Technology, Shiny Things
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I’m a Midwesterner. I work in New York. The biggest culture clash? Whether it’s pop or soda. Maybe if I showed them all this, I’d win the battle once and for all:

Via BoingBoing.

Filed under: Miscellany, Whimsy
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So I took that Pew Technology Typology Quiz that seems to be making the rounds, and apparently I’m an Omnivore, the category of all hip, trendy technogeeks. Okay.

Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Omnivores typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic.

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.

Filed under: Technology, Shiny Things, Whimsy
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It’s been an extra-long time since I posted here.  Mostly work has remained the way it’s been all year for me - extremely busy - and it doesn’t leave me much time or energy for blogging.   Plus, there just hasn’t been as much out in the liblogs that I’ve felt compelled to comment on.  But on to the point:

Last night was the Hudson Valley SLA’s April meeting, at David Chen’s Chinese restaurant in Armonk, New York, and our guest and speaker was the national president-elect, Stephen Abram.  Stephen’s a 2.0 evangelist, and I’ve made it obvious over the past couple of years that I’m not.  I admit that I had some personal reservations initially - not that he wouldn’t be an excellent presenter, because I knew that - but that the presentation would dredge up the old, beaten-into-the-ground argument between those who think Library 2.0 is a paradigm shift in librarianship and those who think that 2.0 tech gives us new ways to accomplish what we’ve always been trying to do.

It didn’t at all, but the presentation did make me feel my age more than usual.  If we want to talk in generational terms, I was the sole “Millennial” librarian in a room full of Boomers.  When I skimmed Stephen’s diagrams of all the Web 2.0 tools out there, I’d heard of a lot of them, and I’d tried out a lot of the ones I’d heard of.  I didn’t get the feeling from my neighbors that that was the case with a lot of them, and frankly, I can’t blame them.  I’ve tried out most of those tools because I started trying them out in graduate school.  If Web 2.0 had exploded when I was already entrenched in a career, I don’t know when I would have found the time.  I think I would have been overwhelmed.

One of the key things Stephen mentioned (I think this was during the question period) was that if you set aside fifteen minutes a day, you can learn and keep up with these technologies.  I was skeptical at the time - I have no idea how many minutes a day I spend on Web 2.0, but I guarantee that I probably spend more than fifteen minutes a day reading liblog feeds alone - but then I saw Meredith’s very timely post today, and they’re both right; it can be done.  The trick is in limiting yourself.  I have 52 blogs in my newsgator account filed under Libraries/Information/Knowledge.  If you’ve only got fifteen minutes, don’t do that.  Pick five or six, and as Meredith says, make them very focused on your interests.  And after you’ve done that, play.  Set up a del.icio.us account.  Try out Google Docs.  Heck, if you have more discipline than me, you can even try to catalog your entire home book collection with LibraryThing.

But I think the real key point that sometimes gets lost in the This Is The Future And We Have To Keep On Top Of It is…this is supposed to be fun.  Don’t stick with a tool if playing with it bores you to tears or if you can’t see yourself ever using it.  I have Flickr account I usually forget about.  But Writely/Google Docs? For me, one of the most awesome things ever.  There’s enough toys out there for everyone to be able to find something for them.  The trick is playing around long enough to find it.

Filed under: Librarianship, Technology
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I nominate this as the new definition:

Librarians hoard the wisdom of humanity. They are the keepers of all knowledge, the guardians at the temples of understanding, and devoted protectors of the sanctuary in the midst of uneducated anarchy. Plus, they are often aware of very cheap places to dine alone with books. A group of librarians is also known as a shoosh.

Also:

Librarians can often be seen reading for recreation. Some enjoy sniffing book spines to ascertain the age of books in a competition known as “Guess how old this is.” Master librarians can even smell a book’s ISBN. (This skill prevents librarians from enjoying the delicate art of kitten huffing.) They also frequently knit, play scrabble, and do crossword puzzles when they’re not out rampaging with their motorcycle gangs and getting awesome tattoos.

And finally:

TIP! Vanquishing Librarians is most effective in non-book environments.

Repeat the following incantation three times “Your field is obsolete and you will be replaced with improved content and slicker GUI interfacia from Google.” This should be sufficient to destroy the non-technical librarian.

A geekier librarian may be resistant to this incantation and should simply be bludgeoned with the first volume of the OED or a similarly large reference book.

This morning’s craziness is brought to by the Uncyclopedia.

Filed under: Librarianship, Whimsy
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Information Outlook needs a re-design.

By re-design, I’m not referring to the superficial - they’ve changed some fonts and some graphical details, and they changed the titles of their regular columns already, and I’ll admit it looks nice and pretty. What I mean is that SLA needs to take a serious look at the content and revamp it, and they should begin by putting themselves in the position of a member who can’t afford any other library journals.

I am that member, and here’s what I’d like to see:

• Less columns, and more articles. The March issue just landed in my mailbox. I’ve already read the whole thing, and I count 9 columns and 1 article that’s unaffiliated with any kind of regular feature. I’m not saying, necessarily, that I want Information Outlook to try and be the Journal of Information Science by any means, but with the ratio of columns and articles the way it is now, IO seems excessively fluffy. There’s very little meat.
• More voices. This is really one of my major beefs; IO has the same writers month in and month out. Part of this is, of course, the mostly column structure of the magazine, but even if the structure remained the same, couldn’t the responsibility be shopped around a little more? It would make for a richer experience for all of us, I think. I did like that the Info Management column was written by a guest this month (Jill Konieczko). We’d benefit if this was done more often, across the board.
• This will seem contrary to my previous points, but I’d really like to see a Newbie Librarian semi-regular feature. There are a lot of new librarians out there now, and 1) it’d be great to have a column on the ongoing issues of those of us at the beginning of our careers, and 2) I really think readers in more senior positions would benefit from hearing from someone with the same perspective, perhaps, as their new hires.

So, what would I do if someone crowned me editor of Information Outlook? Well, first I’d slice monthly column space in half. The columns they have now wouldn’t be obliterated, but they’d rotate on a bimonthly basis. Second, I’d make a concerted effort to recruit more writers for stand-alone articles. Writers are out there - take your pick, just as an example, from the liblogs. We have some great writers that I think could make a good contribution. And finally, I’d add the Newbie Librarian column, and I’d make it a shared column - at least three new librarians contributing on a rotating basis. That keeps it fresh, and provides an even broader perspective - we’re spread across wildly varying fields, after all. I’m in chemistry and energy, and Amy, a close friend and fellow newbie, is in journalism.

That’s my two cents, anyway.

Filed under: Miscellany, Librarianship
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A few days…week…ago, I promised a post explaining why I haven’t been posting, which is a tad on the meta side.  Well, its remained fairly busy, though some of the workload has tapered off slightly, so I’m just getting to it now.

We’re in what I call proposal season at MPOW.  It can happen at any time and its characterized by a rather insane number of research requests in varying degrees of difficulty and oddness as the project managers attempt to craft winning proposals for potential projects.  This year, it started right after Christmas and is just tapering off now.  There were a few weeks that were exceptionally nuts with it to the point where nothing else got done - no database work, no cataloging, no circulation duties, no serials.  My impression is that this was a busier than usual season, but that impression could be skewed by several factors:

• We’re replacing two of our research databases, which has been my responsibility - including liasing with various database companies, evaluating the products, setting up trials, and finally getting approvals.  Just wrapped that up today.
• I’ve been negotiating with a company to convert a database that didn’t get transferred from our old catalog/database to the new one.  This should finally be under control, allowing me to move forward on some other projects.
• I mentioned last fall that a presence on the intranet would be advisable, and that’s finally moving forward - with the caveat that the library needs to provide the html pages.  Meaning we need to design it.  Meaning me.
• The part-timer who managed the techie stuff on our catalog/database was laid off last summer, and I’m still learning how to do all that by the seat of my pants
• I have a project to move our confidential files from file drawers to locking bookshelves that I’m trying to move forward and that involves rearranging the physical library
• I went to a conference in Reno in the middle of all this.
• I took over as webmaster/networking chair of the Petroleum and Energy Resources Division of the SLA, and while the site is presentable, the code is rather a mess
• I’m also the President-Elect of the Hudson Valley chapter of the SLA, and I’ve started planning our annual meeting in November.

I’ve got friends who sometimes wish they were a solo, and it does have advantages, namely that you ARE in charge.  But it’s got disadvantages, too; you don’t get a support staff to delagate too, for instance, and juggling supporting the research needs of all your clientele and keeping the library up and running can be quite the trick.
And you’re still in charge.

Filed under: Librarianship, Work
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I’ve finally had it with Bloglines.

Bloglines has been my RSS reader for three years, since I started using RSS, and for the most part I’ve been pleased with it, but recently the problems have been piling up. Posts aren’t being picked up; for instance, I don’t ever get any LISNews posts anymore. Still, I hadn’t switched, because I didn’t like the feel of Google Reader, and I hadn’t taken the time to find a suitable alternative. But today, while glancing at Walt’s informal survey (which, naturally, never showed up in Bloglines), I noticed a couple of mentions of NewsGator. So I’m trying this out. So far, I like the organization better than Google Reader, and I’m playing with it now. The design beats Bloglines, for me.

So we’ll see.

I also hope to get to posting semi-regularly soon; it’s been a crazy couple of months. Maybe I’ll post about that later.

Filed under: Technology, Blogging
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The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about the conversation over at this post at The Shifted Librarian. Not so much about the post itself - though I suppose I count myself among those who don’t think that a danceoff is a particularly good replacement for accepting responsibility and paying your fine - but the mini-conversation in the middle between Jenny and ignatiousmonkey. Jenny asks why IM is so focused on the book, and he replies with this:

I work in a low-income neighborhood, and we get a lot of kids who would surely love it if we had gaming systems. We get mobbed by teens as soon as school lets out, and I’m sure we could get even bigger crowds than we do if we had something as simple as a Super Nintendo. But a line of Mos Def’s song “Mathematics” comes to mind: “Young bloods can’t spell but they could rock you in PlayStation.” And that’s what I see a lot of: kids who can solve Runsecape levels with the best of ‘em but can hardly read and don’t seem to consider it important.

He has an extremely valid point, in my opinion. And I ended up thinking about this today again when I saw this, from Sunday’s Washington Post by a high school librarian [via BoingBoing] :

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. “A lot out there is conspiring to distract you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s your opinion about books. It doesn’t make it true.”

No, we shouldn’t focus solely on books. But we shouldn’t ignore them in favor of all the latest high tech gadgets and social networking sites, either. For all their benefits, they aren’t a replacement for the activities that train us in concentration. I live on the internet these days, and I’ve noticed a decrease in my ability to concentrate on things for large chucks of time. Is it related? I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Filed under: Librarianship, Reading/Literature
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The latest tool I’m fascinated by is ChaCha (sent by Amy), and the reason I’m fascinated by ChaCha is that it’s guided search is manned by actual search experts.  The website says:

Powered by thousands of knowledgeable humans, when search queries are entered into ChaCha, the system automatically locates the best available guide to deliver personal and targeted results for users’ searches. Additionally, ChaCha users can choose to either “search with a guide” or get instant search results by tapping into ChaCha’s rapidly expanding index of human-generated results.

I wonder how many librarians have managed to get into ChaCha’s pool of search experts?  It’s definitely something tailor-made for librarians.   You have to be invited by a ChaCha guide to become one, so you can’t just sign-up and get started.  Personally, I’d love to become one.  It’d be a good way to keep my search skills sharp in the areas I don’t work in much anymore but am still very interested in.

Filed under: Librarianship, Technology, Shiny Things
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Tagged by Dave. I’m not sure I can come up with five facts that most or some of you don’t know about me, as I’m pretty open. In any case, they aren’t nearly as interesting as Dave’s:

1. I’ve only been off the North American continent once in my life. I went to London for a January term course in college, hoping that it would just be the start of lots of travel. And hopefully it will be, eventually. Right now most of my travel is for SLA conferences, but I’m hoping to travel to Japan before I turn thirty.
2. My default leisure reading for de-stressing is romance novel series. There was once a time when I read romance novels exclusively. I’ve broadened my horizons now, but some of my favorite reads are still romances, and I particularly love series, where I can follow a cast of characters through several books.
3. I’m a fashion junkie. Most of the blogs I read on a daily basis are style blogs, and I particularly enjoy staring at pretty handbags. However, I’m also cheap, which means I rarely if ever buy any of the things I see featured on said blogs.
4. I write fanfiction. 98% of the time, when I write creatively, it’s fanfiction. Most recently, I’ve been writing about fictional Japanese tennis players (in fact, this domain is named after my favorite character from that series) and television spies.
5. I wore essentially the same hairstyle for thirteen years. By essentially, I mean that little things about it would change - how it was layered, how I wore the front - but it was always, always very short in hopes that by keeping it short I could tame the naturally thick, naturally curly mass in my head. My hair stylist finally convinced me last January that I should let it grow, and now it’s almost shoulder length for the first time since I was twelve.

Tagging: Nate, Amy, Gill and anyone else who wants to do this.

Filed under: Whimsy, Blogging
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Welcome to the December 11, 2006 edition of Carnival of the Infosciences!

Victor Fam presents Focus On Create Value posted at Victor Fam.

Victor Fam presents Spreading the Personal Development Pixels posted at Victor Fam.

Alvaro Fernandez presents Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on Brain Fitness Programs and Cognitive Training posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution, saying, “An introduction to the field of software-based Brain Fitness and Brain Training through an interview with one of the leading scientists.”

Chadwick Seagraves says “I don’t write as extensively about the Philosophy of Information as I’d like to and this post is about the questions you run into when considering the inherent value of information” in his post at InfoSciPhi.

John Dupuis at Confessions of a Science Librarian presents “My Job in Ten Years: Further Thoughts on Abstracting & Indexing Databases,” about how Google Scholar, Windows Live Academic, and their future competitors will affect what our jobs as librarians will become.

Editor’s Choice:

I make it a policy when I host never to expect that I’ll get enough submissions, so I always have a huge number of editor’s choice picks - just in case.

• Robert Berkman at Intelligent Agent discusses the possibilities of tapping the virtual world of Second Life for business research.
• The Annoyed Librarian has a series of posts (also here, here, and here) on ALA-APA and the ALA-APA Advocating for Better Salaries and Pay Equity Toolkit.
• T. Scott at T.Scott discusses the recent suggestion that Library 2.0 be deleted from Wikipedia, and goes on to discuss the problems with the “Library 2.0 concept.” David Rothman at davidrothman.net responds.
• The Filipino Librarian posts the results of this year’s librarian licensing exam in the Philippines. Steven Cohen at Library Stuff wishes they would do the same in the U.S.
• The Ubiquitous Librarian has some ideas about using movies as library promotion.
• The Corporate Librarian wants to stretch his information literacy muscles at his company and is wondering what works and what doesn’t. I highly recommend screencasting - it was pretty effective when I tried it to teach people how to check out barcoded books. Then again, I had to print out the screens for several of them anyway, so maybe not so much.
• And related, Meredith at Information Wants To Be Free wants to know why no one’s talking about the cool possibilities in screencasting. The excuse, apparently, is that everyone already knows about it, but as Meredith points out, that’s hardly the case.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of the Infosciences using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of the infosciences, blog

Filed under: Librarianship, Technology, Shiny Things
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Carnival to be posted tonight, since I don’t have access to some of the submissions from work.

Filed under: Librarianship, Technology, Shiny Things
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Carnival of the Infosciences #60 was posted Monday at Woody Evans.  Go take a look if, like me, it slipped your mind.  I’m next on the list, and I’ll be taking submissions at amanda [at] renji [dot] org, so sent them early and often!  Carnival #61 will be posted on December 11th, so you’ve got a little over a week.

Filed under: Librarianship
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I’m confused.

I lifted an eyebrow at Librarians for Fairness when I first saw the website - not because I figured they represented some far-right agenda, necessarily, but because in my experience, most of the library materials I’ve seen have been on the pro-Israel side. And to be clear here, I am NOT some pro-jihadist; I certainly do not condone the terrorism that the some pro-Palestinian terrorists have used to advance their cause. I’m personally of the belief that neither ide is completely blameless; let’s remember that people were living in Palestine before it was designated Israel, and I don’t think the desire for a return of some kind of Palestinian state is particularly absurd.

But that’s not the point. The point is that I think an acquisitions librarian should make an effort to showcase both sides of an issue, and I haven’t seen any evidence that the libraries of America have Middle Eastern sections simply filled to the brim with anti-Israel literature. Indeed, from my own personal observance, it would seem that pro-Israel, Zionist literature is well-represented. It’s possible that I am, of course, wrong, and if you think so, I encourage you to comment.

These ruminations were brought to you by this explosion of wank drama at LISNews, and this follow-up.

ETA:  Kevin points out that my statements didn’t read very well re: the Palestinians, so I’ve edited it slightly.

Filed under: Librarianship, Politico
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At least Amy did.  I used to just order pizza when I was in college and didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, but I’ve gotten more ambitious since I acquired an actual kitchen.  Last year I stuck with poultry - Cornish game hens - but this year I’m going a little bit different route.

I’ve had a hankering for ham recently, so I bought myself a three and a half boneless ham.  Since I’m only one person, I imagine I’ll be eating it for weeks, and perhaps I might have to break down and make myself scalloped potatoes and ham to get rid of it.  My side is Cheesy potatoes, basically hashbrowns with onion, sour cream, and cheese, and topped with cornflakes.  And finally, for dessert: blueberry pie.  It’s not a full Thanksgiving spread - nothing cranberry, for one - but the whole thing would be just a TAD overwhelming for one person and a cat.  Even mine, with his ham fetish.

Filed under: Whimsy, Food
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