Record of a Bibliothecarius Aspirant

"You have to go to school for that?"

2006-04-26T07:09:00.000-05:00

The other night in class, someone mentioned how they told a customer at their work that they were going to grad school to be a librarian - to which the customer, who works partime as a career guidance person - why do you have to go to school for that and with computers will there even be a need for librarians? It also sparked off a discussion in my class and I've come to the understanding that not too many people realize what exactly it is a librarian does. I think this is partially why libraries and librarians have a difficult time justifying resources they need, and why funding is always quickly cut.

In my mind, the term "Librarian" is akin to "Engineer" - in that while we all belong to a certain field of study and a "way of thinking" - there are 1001 different variations of the position. Just as one can be a mechanical, electrical or environmental engineer so can one be an archivist, reference librarian or work in acquisitions. On top of that, Librarians seem to have many more support duties fall on their shoulders because - well - who else will do them to maintain a Library. Librarians need to have an understanding of business if they want to be able to manage the day to day operations of a library such as managing payroll, paying for the building costs like heat and electricity, balancing a budget and paying for new acquisitions and publications. Librarians need to be tech savvy as they are often called upon to do digital reference work, manage online journal databases, manage the library's terminals and network and preform various HTML duties just to name a few. Basically - a librarian is often expected to wear a multitude of different hats - even more so in smaller settings such as school libraries where it's often one person who does it all.

I think most people think of librarians based on their rememberance of what their initial point of contact with librarians were and from what they experience within a library - which is usually going in, asking for help finding a book and then checking the book out. I think a good analogy would be wondering why someone who works for the Sears corporation would need an advanced degree, because how hard is it to stock shelves and run a cash register? The don't think of the massive back end of the Sears corporation like the CEOs, CIOs, Marketing Department and all the other individuals who work for the company.

This is why it is important for Librarians to make the public aware of what it is we do in the first place - and how important and diverse our duties are. We need to take steps to change the opinions that people have that all librarians are responsible for is checking in and out books, shelving books and telling people to "shhh" if they get too loud. They need to understand that we are training to be CEOs, Marketing Reps, Customer Service reps, Information Technology Specialists and a whole slew of other positions - because we have to be. And we have to be librarians on top of that.

1M limit?

2006-04-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Test post

How long was I out?

2006-04-05T07:15:00.000-05:00

I just updated my other blog, Little Wars and felt I probably should hit this one up too.

So in a nutshell, here is what is new.

I completely redesigned my website for my university account, as it was an assignment for my class this semester - which I'm really enjoying. You can take a peek at it at http://www.buffalo.edu/~jcnewman and know more about me than you probably wanted to.

Work has been fun and interesting. I've got a few projects here that I'm working on that I can't discuss right now. Not that they are secret, but I'm somewhat pressed for time - so I'll go into detail on them later.

I'm working on some documentation for some painting workshops that I teach (miniature painting - see my wargaming blog for more details) - so I'm lreaning Apple's "Pages" program which is pretty neat for simple publishing.

I moved my workspace exactly one cube over, but in doing so I changed the layout of my office and now it's even more comfortable. I have lots of plants and 2 aquariums - one 10 gal and 1 2 gal. I think aquaria should be required in all workspaces for the benefits they provide in regards to stress management and lowering blood pressure. I should probably cite sources to back those up, but I'm not going to.

I also still am completely in love with Library Science which is a good thing, since I totally suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome and wander from one thing to another.

Copyright - or "I SUE YOU!"

2006-02-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Guardian is running an article today about the author of the DaVinci Code being sued over copyright issues for lifing some of the central themes from the 1982 non-fiction "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail".

The question facing the counts is "Can you copyright an idea or a conjecture"

This is somewhat timely as in my class this semester there was just a small splinter discussion about issues of copyright and HTML source code. I am uncertain as to the legality of taking pieces of someone's source code, or their code in it's entirety and where that falls as far as copyright is concerned. If anyone has a definitive answer, drop me a note and let me know.

From the Guardian Article:

The author of The Da Vinci Code "lifted the central theme" of the bestselling novel from a non-fiction book about Jesus and the Catholic Church, the high court was told today.

Writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are claiming that the American novelist Dan Brown appropriated themes and ideas they explored in their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. They are suing their own publishers, Random House, which is also Mr Brown's publisher, for breach of copyright in the potentially far-reaching case. If the two writers are successful and opt to take injunctions stopping use of their material, it could threaten the British release of the film adaptation of the novel, starring Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellen, which is scheduled to open on May 19.

The case is also likely to clarify existing copyright laws over the extent to which an author can use other people's research. Counsel for the two writers today disputed claims by Mr Brown, one of the highest paid authors in history, that their work was "incidental" to the creation of The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 40m copies worldwide. Jonathan James, QC, told Mr Justice Peter Smith in the chancery division of the high court today that this was an "extraordinary claim that would surprise anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code after reading The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail".

The QC said Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh's theory had "spawned many other books" that explored aspects of their historical conjecture in a variety of ways. But he added that only The Da Vinci Code had "lifted the central theme of the book"- the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had a child, and the bloodline continues to this day, with the Catholic Church trying to suppress the discovery. Mr James said "many people all over the world" had commented that the novel had lifted this focal theme. The QC said the authors had invested a "massive amount of their lives" researching the Holy Blood book between 1976 and 1981. He added there could be "no dispute" that Mr Brown was aware of the importance of the Holy Blood book to the central theme of the Da Vinci Code when he wrote the novel.

Mr James said the Sir Leigh Teabing character in the novel even mentions the importance of his clients' book. But Mr Brown had said that the non-fiction book was not "crucial or important" to the creation of the central theme of his novel. When he wrote his synopsis, he had not even read it. The QC said: "This cannot be correct. It was not only used as a source, it was an essential point of reference for the making of [the Da Vinci Code]." Mr Brown, whose earnings are estimated at more than £200m, acknowledges the theories of The Holy Blood in his novel and called his villain Sir Leigh Teabing.

It has been suggested that the name was a deliberate part anagram of the surnames of the authors of the earlier work. The Da Vinci Code, which won best book at last year's British Book Awards, has sold over 40m copies worldwide, earning Mr Brown £45m in one year. In a statement today, Gail Rebuck, the chief executive of Random House, described the Holy Blood authors' complaint about The Da Vinci Code as "without merit". John Baldwin QC, representing the publishing company, had told the judge that many of the ideas the authors' complained about were not even in both books and most were not original to the Holy Blood. He said the non-fiction work "did not have anything like the importance to Mr Brown which the claimants contend it had".

The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon. The case is expected to last two weeks.

DMCA, the RIAA and YOU!

2006-02-16T08:42:00.000-05:00

The EFF is reporting that the RIAA states that ripping CDs for MP3 players and for backup is not "Fair Use". Ars Technica also has another look on this story which goes into a little more depth.

From the EFF article:

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
February 15, 2006

It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the MGM v. Grokster argument last year?

Apparently not.

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

For those who may not remember, here's what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:

"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, "perfectly lawful" means "lawful until we change our mind." So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance. What about all the indie label CDs? Do you have to ask each of them for permission before ripping your CDs? And what about all the major label artists who control their own copyrights? Do we all need to ask them, as well?

P.S.: The same filing also had this to say: "Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use...."

More Librarians and Comic Books

2006-02-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

3 of the 4 other males in my LIS class this semester are into comic books - which only reinforces the "Librarians love comic books" theory I have. (Not all, it would be wrong to stereotype librarians - but I think a significantly higher percentage of librarians vs other professions)

Anyways I was granted some wonderful inspiration from one of my classmates to go ahead and use Booxter to inventory my comic collection. For some time I've been wanting to find a way to keep an accurate inventory of what comics I have, along with cover art and have it in a database format for easy access - and now I do. Granted they don't have an ISBN - I can keep most of the pertinant information in Booxter. He uses an Excel spreadsheet now, but I pointed out booxter to him, and hopefully he'll start using it and discovering it's amazing ability. I think I could probably do the same with Delicious Library - but for now it's Booxster.

I'm also happy to see my classmates are equally as AR about bags and backings for each of their issues. And for those who get stupid excited about archiving and preserving things, I'd like to point out Bags Unlimited which is a supplier of items such as bags, boxes and backings for comic books, magazines, photos and all sorts of other things. They sell square ball holders for my baseballs! I love this store.

Yup, I'm pretty geeked today :)

Potential DRM problems

2006-02-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

The BBC News is reporting that the British Library fears that DRM may affect their ability to provide materials to patrons.

Text of the article - (The pictures are from the game REZ and is totally unrelated. I just really like the game, and I'm tired of the BBC using the same stock photo for all their library articles)

Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future.

Many publishers put restrictions on how digital books and journals can be used. Such digital rights management (DRM) controls may block some legitimate uses, the British Library has said. And there are fears that restricted works may not be safe for future generations if people can no longer unlock them when technology evolves. The British Library spends £2m of its £16m annual acquisitions budget on digital material, mainly reference books and journals.

But by 2020, 90% of newly published work will be available digitally - twice the amount that is printed - according to British Library predictions published last year. Libraries are allowed to give access to, copy and distribute items through "fair dealing" and "library privilege" clauses in copyright law. But as publishers attempt to stop the public illegally sharing books and articles, the DRM they employ may not cater for libraries' legal uses.

"We have genuinely tried to maintain that balance between the public interest and respecting rights holders," Dr Clive Field, the British Library's director of scholarships and collections told the BBC News website. "We are genuinely concerned that technology inadvertently may be disturbing that balance, and that would be unhelpful ultimately to the national interest." The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group is conducting an inquiry into DRM. In written evidence, the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance (Laca) said there were "widespread concerns in the library, archive and information community" about the potentially harmful effects of DRMs.

"We have grave concerns about the potential use of DRMs by rightholders to override existing copyright exceptions," its statement said. In the long term, the restrictions would not expire when a work went out of copyright, it said, and it may be impossible to trace the rights holders by that time. "It is probable that no key would still exist to unlock the DRMs," Laca said. "For libraries this is serious.

"As custodians of human memory, a number would keep digital works in perpetuity and may need to be able to transfer them to other formats in order to preserve them and make the content fully accessible and usable once out of copyright."

In its written submission to the group, the British Library said DRM must not "exert excessive control on access to information". "This will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege and undermine, or even prevent, legitimate public good access." Fair dealing and library privilege must be "re-interpreted and sustained for the digital age", it added. Dr Field said: "This is going to be one of the significant challenges for us over the next few years."

Check your facts!!!

2006-01-31T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal On-line is reporting today that Publishers say that "Fact-checking is too costly". All this is on the heels of James Frey being "Pwn3d" by Oprah over 'A Million Little Things ." For some reason this sets of a ton of alarm bells in my head, and really very few of them are in response to James Frey's actions.

First and foremost I feel that we live in a society where too many individuals get their history from blockbusters like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Pearl Harbor" or "Alexander" and "Kingdom of Heaven." While these movies are based on historical facts and accounts, they aren't completely accurate for a myriad of reasons - such as being able to punch up a story and deliver a greater emotional experience. Other factors might be a director's bias towards the material being presented - Steven Spielberg is a great example of this. Because of his religion and involvement in Jewish issues, I'd imagine it's very hard for him to give a balanced view of historical events without adding in his personal feelings. In fact, in an interview he mentioned that he was unable to even talk to actors who were hired to play German soldiers because of the uniform they were wearing.
Which brings me to my second point. In terms of a memoir - which by definition is an account of an author's experiences - what is to say that the author's memories aren't biased or accurate to begin with. For example, if a writer feels that he is constantly being picked on and attacked by a certain individual growing up, and that this person is constantly out to get him - that is going to come through in the writing when in reality this "bully" may not have even had an interest in this individual and everything is based on the machinations of the writer's imagination. I know from personal experience that I have mis-interpreted people's actions and felt they had something against me, when in reality I read the wrong things into the situation and couldn't have been farther from the truth. If I had written down what I believed then, does this make me a liar? Am I duping my readership? Or am I simply putting my perspective on the situation - and if it differs from someone else's, does that make it a lie? I once heard a quote in that the truth is a 3 bladed sword with his side, her side and the truth someplace in between.

When grandpa goes off about how he was a World War 2 flying ace and he shot down 15 Germans, and then single handedly threw the Japanese off of Tarawa before giving Emperor Hirohito noogies until he signed the peace treaty - I don't really hold him accountable for his flights of fantasy. I'd also like to state right now that my grandfather never told such stories about WWII, and that I am using this to illustrate a point and therefore I don't want to be sued by any of my readers or berated by Oprah for duping her. I don't really expect any of you to go on fact finding missions to find out what stories my grandfather told me as a child.

As one who has a rather large following with her book club, how much responsibility should rest on Oprah's shoulders? Did she do any fact checking before strongly recommending this book as a guide for overcoming addictions? I vaguely remember some incidents where a certain individual lead a group of people into an unpopular war based on some bad information. He said "I was misled" - but he is still held accountable for his actions. Why is this any different in principle? Oprah is speaking as an authority figure in recommending this book and as such I feel she too has a responsibility in verifying it's authenticity. How is her role as a talk-show host that different than a news reporter, and should she be held to the same standard as reporters for making sure her information is good if she wants to be taken seriously?
Fiction or non-fiction, if the story and information is good and inspirational - then what is the problem? I had to read Catcher in the Rye growing up - as do a number of young adults because it's a tale of coming of age - and it usually has quite an impact on it's readers. Because it's fiction, is the work any less important? What about Joyce's case of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" which takes autobiographical element's of Joyce's life, such as his crisis of faith and other aspects of his life which helped to forge him into the person he became. The book can't really be categorized neat. Amazon has it listed as both an autobiography/memoir and asfiction/literature. How far off is "A Million Little Pieces" from this as far as being autobiographical fiction?

And what is wrong with this country that one can fire a lawsuit, such as what Marc Bern is doing for his client Karen Futernick, seeking $50 million in damages based on the fact that this book was classified as "Non-fiction". I wonder if I can use this as a precedence to file suit should I find a text-book contains non-factual information. The Lemony Snicket Unauthorized Autobiography contains the lines "The book you are holding in your hands is extremely dangerous. If the wrong people see you with this objectionable autobiography, the results could be disastrous." It says right there in print that it's an autobiography - so do I have a case for litigation as the work is really fictional, but I accepted it as true based on that statement, and the fact that it's an autobiography? How much fact checking am I supposed to do as a reader? Granted, that is an extreme example, but it's not that far off base - I think. I'm not a lawyer. I guess in my America, Marc would simply petition that this book be reclassified as Autobiographical Fiction and that would be the end of it, as I'm sure he realizes there are serious matters the US legal system needs to focus on.

PS - If it's on the internet it has to be true! Therefore everything in this entry is 100% accurate!

Personal Update

2006-01-30T12:03:00.000-05:00

It's a new semester and I've been really lax with updating my blogs (Both this one and Little Wars) so here is a quick rundown on what has been going on in my life.

I'm taking a class this semester, which is really quite basic as far as material goes - but there are some rather interesting issues that I am excited to learn about, such as various database related issues and the DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative). There are some case studies on library automation that I am also really interested in. The rest is stuff I already am pretty familiar with, but I can help my classmates out. Last week I helped one of my classmates with creating and uploading a very simple webpage - once he saw that it was online he got super excited, and I couldn't help but to share in his excitement. Now, web pages seem rather ordinary to me, having worked on them for years - but it reminded me of the summer I spend sitting in the graphics lab at the University on a Sparc workstation learning HTML - and how thrilled I was when I got my first web pages up online.

I haven't spent much time updating my inventory of books. In fact, I've packed a ton of them away in paperboxes in the attic. I suppose I should start grabbing one at a time and entering the data in - so I can create accurate manifests of what are in the boxes in the first place. I've also neglected my Delicious Library and haven't really made any progress in creating a record of assets there, either. I did share the program with one of the professors here in the Math Department and he was super excited about it. Again - it's really bringing me a ton of joy to connect people with this information.

I've become involved with the Astronomy Club on campus. It started with a quest to try to obtain newer hardware for the Planetarium which rekindled an old passion in me - so I figured I'd get involved to see what I can do to help. There is an Astronomy Day comming up which should be a good time. I like being a teacher and mentor to other people, but I don't think I'd like to teach full time - there are other projects that I enjoy working on, and I think Librarianship is the perfect hybrid of what I like to do.

I've started playing with iLife 2006 which has a neat iWeb application - but I've only given it a cursory glance. We are experiencing all sorts of problems with the latest version of OS X and Internet Explorer on campus, so I've been spending my time loading Firefox to various machines on request. I've also been spending my time creating prototype images for the new Mac equipment we have ordered for summer hardware replacements. We haven't purchased any of the intel based machines yet, so I don't have to deal with those headaches right now.

that's about it for me in a nutshell. How are you?

The other bit o' my job.

2006-01-13T13:06:00.000-05:00

When I'm not training to be a librarian I spend my days working as an instructional support specialist. In essence, I'm a glorified lab monkey. Not in the sense that people experiment on me making my eyelashes longer and my hair bouncier - but in the sense that I lug equipment around, plug things in, load software and generally keep everything running all year long on one of our 2000 student access machines. Sometimes between it all, I climb on things and eat bananas.
Anyways - one of my labs (and it's my lab because I was nominated as "The Mac Guy" due to the fact that I was the only one to have any unix experience in my background - and since it's mac, it's all mine) was recently gutted and renovated and the lab co-ordinator sent pictures around of the completed job which I'm sharing here :)

I grumble and swear under my breath alot while setting up labs because our major heavy lifting periods are the few weeks before the fall semester starts and with noone on campus we can get in and get work done with the minimum of disturbance. Since it's August, it's hot - since it's a public institution HVAC doesn't work right in a majority of buildings, so it's even hotter and dusty and since it's the remaining weeks before classes there is a ton of pressure to get things done before school starts.

BUT - when I see things like this, and know I helped in some part it really makes it worth while. Also, much of the grunt work for this particular project was done by the lab co-ordinator who is just a great guy and a pleasure to do work for, and that makes it better as well.

I only wish I was putting newer computers in there to match all the new fixtures.

John Blanche

2006-01-10T17:22:00.000-05:00

John Blanche, one of my more favorite contemporary artists has a web-gallery up now at http://www.lvxmvndi.com/ (Lux Mundi - roughly 'Light of the World', and the name comes from collection of 12 essays written in the late 1880s, centering around the idea that the Incarnation is the central tenent of Christianity- not that Johns work has much to do with that)

For those not familiar with his work - it's very much akin to the likes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosche
The navigation is a little strange to get used to at first - but it's a pretty neat gallery of work - done mostly as concept art for Games Workshop.

To the right is one of my favorite works of his, and one which I have a framed poster of (I got it free with a WHite Dwarf Magazine - I'm such a nerd). I'd love to have an art book of his art but aside from some various GW art books, I don't think such an animal exists. For geek reference - here is a bio of John Blanche from Warp Artefacts

And lastly - I don't know who this wee guy is, but he's adorable and would go really well with my Teddy Bear Space Marines.

New Sony E-reader - but is it good?

2006-01-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

The BBC news has an article here about the new Sony Reader which they unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The reader has a screen made from electronic paper which only uses battery power when the text on the page needs to be changed - and offers text that is almost as sharp as it is on the printer paged - being compared to cheap newsprint text.

E-books haven't made much of an impact on the market yet as most people don't enjoy the experience of reading a book on a screen. For the most part, I don't care for it either. It's a nice alternative when on a crowded bus or subway - but given the choice, I'd still rather have a print copy I can throw in a backpack. However, there is a rise in the number of e-books being downloaded and Sony as well as various publishers like Random House, HarperCollins and Penguin are looking to sell books via Sony's "Connect" online store in the hopes that this reader will do for books what the iPod and iTunes did for digital music.

Sony Reader Specs:

Display: 15cm diagonally
Battery life: 7,500 pages before recharge
Formats: BBeB/PDF/JPEG/MP3
Size: 175mm x 124mm x 14mm
Weight: 250g

Sony expect to price the reader at between $300-400 dollars.

Now keep in mind that Sony has tried this once before with the Librie and it failed in the japanese market because of it's high cost and various restrictions placed on readers. Also, it seems like many companies are pricing e-texts at a price which is higher than it's paperback counterpart. So I guess the big question is "Why bother?"

My take is that at $300-400 I can buy a *TON* of books at various shops (especially 70% off discount shops) to take with me and read where I go. I also don't have to look at a screen with poor text quality - lets face it, reading cheap newsprint isn't fun. The only upswing here is the lack of black ink on your hands when you are done.

The upswing is that these can handle .pdf files and html files which would make them ideal for transporting and studying technical documentation back and forth from work, or while at the gym. It is also easier to carry this device around rather than a stack of books. One paperback I can easily fit into a jacket pocket. A hardcover text isn't too terrible in a backpack - but certain tomes like Neil Stephenson's "Quicksliver" which is 960 pages and weights in at 3.3 lbs can be a bit of a pain to haul around as casual reading. It can also read blogs and RSS feeds so if you don't have a portable device such as a PDA or a laptop but like to keep up with various websites and blogs, you can with this device, and will play Mp3s.

Another interesting analogy I've heard is the complaint that companies are tying to make their e-readers look too much like books and that this is like trying to see people on the auto-mobile as a horseless carriage by putting an artificial horse out in front of the car. I tend to fall into both schools of thought. I like reading books - in a book format. There is a certain size and weight I'm comfortable with when it comes to actual paper books - however, I also know the joys of reading news and articles on my PDA, which slips into my pocket even easier than a paperback would.

Here is what something an avid e-book fan says about E-readers that look like books and why they like e-books:

"Why do I prefer ebooks? The 800-page book I just read weighed no more than the short story I read before that. And I could have hundreds of 800-page books in my pocket at once.
I can touch a word on the page and instantly call up a definition from a 150,000 word dictionary. I can read in the dark, I can read while waiting in a queue, I can read while floating in a canoe (with the PDA in a waterproof bag.) I can bookmark interesting pages, I can jot notes in an electronic 'margin', I can copy a relevant passage into an email without re-typing it. If my house burns down, I have an off-site backup of my library. I can search for a character's name or a phrase I want to look up. And I don't need something that _looks_ like a book to do it!"

As for my opinion - I don't think this reader will get me reading e-books any more than I already do (which is very little) - HOWEVER - I do really like it's functionality to be able to not only handle e-books but also PDF's and HTML so I can take several manuals with me without using alot of space or weight and I can keep track of various blogs and websites I regularly read . But not at it's current pricetag - I'll stick with my laptop for now (which weights 4.6 pounds and is about the same weight as most textbooks). With a new slew of e-readers comming out, I wonder if anyone will hit on the next "killer-app" with a multi-functional display device that is easy to use, isn't DRM dependent and is above all - easily affordable.

Life Hack - Metadata in notebooks

2006-01-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

A "hack" in technology terms is a quick little solution (usually code) to fix a problem or make something run more effectively. Therefore a "Life Hack" is a little routine to make daily life more efficient. Very often they seem really obvious - but they are things we just don't do.

Anyways - todays life hack is a neat little thing I've picked up to make looking through my notebooks and journals much easier. In the upper corner of each page I put a little "metadata" or little notes about what the text on the page pertains to. Then if I am looking through an old notebook filled with stuff I can quickly and easily find what I am looking for by just glancing at the corner of the page.

For example - I have a notebook in which I keep notes about paint colors and techniques I use when working on figures. I'll put recipes, samples and color swatches as well as note on iconography used. In the upper corner of each page I'll make a note like "rust technique" on a page that discusses how to paint a rust effect or "polish Hussar uniform" on a page that lists what colors to use on a Winged Hussar's uniform and where they should be applied.

Obsessive Compulsive Behavior Enabler

2006-01-06T14:50:00.000-05:00

OK - As you know I've been using Booxter to keep a library of all my books, and it is quite good. I'm currently at 550 books cataloged right now which is about half of our collection and I think "Man, wouldn't it be great to be able to do this with CD's, DVDs, Games etc?"

Well - I can. I've recently discovered Delicious Library which does just that - and the best part is I can import my book lists from Booxter into it. In a nutshell, you can use a scanner to scan in a UPC and it will go out to Amazon and download all the pertinant information. It then adds it all sexy-like into a bookshelf display - or a liner display much like the looks of iTunes.

Like booxter, you can also use it to keep track of an items location - such as the bookshelf in the livingroom or plastic tote #3 for easy location of the item.

It will also keep track of borrowed items as well - with a name, date borrowed, date due and E-mail address of the borrower. There are also neat hacks that will take the xml file that Delicious Library uses to store data and convert it into HTML so one can post their collections up on the web.

I'm excited as I feel a great practical use of this program - other than the glaringly obvious application - is in case anything bad happens to our stuff, it will make submitting an insurance claim that much easier as we will have a pretty detailed inventory of what we had.

Moleskine - My newest found love.

2005-12-29T10:46:00.000-05:00

My sweetie and I just went to an art store in Rochester because I wanted a few sheets of corrugated plastic sheeting and she wanted a block of watercolor paper. Art stores are dangerous places for the both of us, as we also ended up with much more. I, for example, also got a wooden box to store my paint brushes in as well as a few different sketch and notebooks - one of which is a moleskine (pronounced Mol-a-skeen-a) notebook.

Bloody brilliant thing, to be honest. It's cover is an oilcloth and cardboard construction, it has a page marker in it as well as a band that holds it shut, or holds the pages flat when writing. I picked it up to keep notes in when I paint up figures and armies - because I tend to find colors I like fo a uniform - paint a bunch of figures and move on to something else which causes me to forget what colors I used for my pallete when I return back to the original project. No more. :) I'll keep notes and color swatches - so now when I teach workshops or pick up projects after several months I'll have a record of what I used.

Neil Gaiman also really likes moleskine notebooks as well. It's easy to see why there is such a "cult" following regarding these notebooks. I think I am going to order a few more so I have them on hand for everything now :) Here is a whole blog dedicated to the moleskine and what people put in it.

Words, words, words....

2005-12-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

This Christmas was a season of book giving. I personally got about 10 new titles myself - and some really neat stuff. Highlights include two books on gardening - one on small gardens and one on water gardens. Von Clausewitz's "On War" - for those not knowing he was a Prussian soldier during the Napoleonic Wars and went on to write one of the most influential works on military philosophy in the western world. Since I'm a huge wargaming nerd, IT MUST BE MINE!!! ;) I bought myself a coffee table book on Mechanized Warfare as well. Then there were some puzzle books - I'm in love with crypto type puzzles and word games. The rest were random history books on pirates, WWI, history of pulp novel art etc...
I also gave a ton of books this year, and gave my sweetie a coffee table book on the Italian Masters - but mostly because I like learning about art history lately. I also got her a ton of childrens books because she collects them and as an illustrator she really appreciates the art.
What it really means is I get to go nuts cataloging them all, and that is the fun part! :) I'd love to be able to find a neat way to dynamically create a web based listing of all my holdings which can be searchable by various topics, but my DB-fu and and my dhtml-fu are weak.
I wonder if libraries also face problems of too much stuff to shelf, which is something I am running into. Currently we have more books that space to display the books, and there are several paperboxes of pulp sci-fi sitting in the attic. I can remedy the problem by going to Ikea and buying a ton of book shelves to put in the guest bedroom. There are shelves in there, but they are horribly inefficient. However - there currently is no money in the current budget for new shelving, which means the space issue currently continues. SAVE ME BILLY!
I think the ultimate solution is to sell our house and buy a giant warehouse on the waterfront where we can have a nice studio type apartment with rows and rows of books :)

2005-12-15T09:20:00.000-05:00

*peeks around*

I'm still here! :) I've been hammering on my Wargaming blog - http://littlewars.blogspot.com

So whats new? Well.. I just started playing with SAGE, which tracks RSS feeds from within Firefox. Hopefully this means I can keep track of all the blogs I've discovered and I can see what is newly posted without having to make "The Grand Tour" of each and everyone one. I just started using it today - and so far it looks promising. I wonder if it will track comments. This post should show up as new the next time I populate :)

I've discovered that there is a non-trivial amount of wargamers on a forum I frequent who are librarians as well. See for yourself.

And now - and attempt at slapping a stupid animated gif I made into my blog. Because I can.

New Blog - Little Wars

2005-11-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

I've created a new blog for my hobby of miniatures and tabletop wargaming at:

http://littlewars.blogspot.com

Totally unrelated to librarianship - but I figure I'd post it as a random FYI for those who read the syndication of this blog.

The picture is from an English Civil War game we played some time back :)

Random Trivia - Little Wars comes from the title of the HG Wells wargame rules published in 1913. The followup book was "Floor Wars". It is also interesting to note that HG Wells was a pacifist.

Annotation Assignment

2005-11-30T11:22:00.000-05:00

Technology Annotations:

1880-1920
Hodges, N.D.C. “The Advances in Electricity in 1888” Science v. 12 no. 308 Dec 28 1888: 329-332

Hertz has done various experiments in electricity finding it behaves likes a wave. Have been working on ways to guard against lightning strikes. Number of lights have been rising steadily, efficiency increased – cost decreased. Number of lighting stations has increased and Edison has erected central stations of large capacity with 50,000 lights. Numerous electric motors have been installed for companies. Boom in electric street cars, looking to have battery storage for the street cars rather than running wires. Batteries are currently inefficient. Numerous lawsuits and companies jockey for patents and position in the market.

Schufeldt, Robert Wilson. “The Necessity for Better Book and Newspaper Manufacture with Respect to Materials Used”. Science, New Series, Vol 48, No 1241. Oct 11,1918: p369-371

The war economy has caused numerous manufactured goods to suffer in quality, but newspapers and books seem to be really hard hit. Wealth papers faired OK, but smaller papers were forced to cut back on not only size, but quality of paper and ink. Paper quickly becomes yellow, splotch and brittle making for a prompt and permanent destruction of current history, particularly military history of the war. Books are also not lasting and nowhere near the standard of books from the 14’th and 15’th century. Periodicals are being kept locked away in dry rooms for preservation – perhaps archive copies should be printed using better materials. Author also calls for technical institutions to turn attention to the manufacture of better materials.

1921-1940
Compton, Nellie Jane; “Library Language”. American Speech. v. 2 no. 2 Nov 1926: 93-95.

The American Library Association celebrates 50th anniversary in October 1926 and over those years many new terms have come into being to go along with “library science” and “library economy”. Some terms are extra-library such as “card catalog”, “Collation”, “Imprint” which have crept into many business offices and homes. “Circulation, load and reference” desks have appears – there are “Book trucks”, “free access”, “technology rooms” as well as “book wagons”, “Shelf List”, “cataloger”, “pages” and “Accessioner”.

1941-1960
Brown, W. Burlie. “Microfilm and the Historian”. The Mississippi Valley Review v. 40, No. 3 Dec 1953: 513-518

Major photoreproduction techniques became satisfactory ten or fifteen years ago, and numerous archive projects have been completed. Microfilm seems like it would help historians and researches but microfilm hasn’t widely made it’s way into college libraries yet. Reasons for neglect are there are no agreements on standardized ways to use microfilm and librarian unawareness of how valuable microfilm is. Microfilm is good way for libraries who are starting late in becoming research libraries to acquire a great deal of materials. Libraries have options available to help lower the cost of a microfilm library.

1961-1980
Shera, Jesse H. “Librarians Against Machines”. Science, New Series v. 156, no. 3776 May 12, 1967: 746-750

“Librarians are having difficulty adopting the new technology because they have no professional philosophy” Miniaturization technology continues to grow, able to condense and archive more and more, but problem is information retrieval Computers and Hollerith machine make information retrieval a possibility, but librarians are skeptical of new advances. Robert D. Leigh says Librarianship is “…Skilled occupation on it’s way to becoming an organized profession…” Important thing is drawing attention to relationship between tools and mechanisms and the values held by people in organized society.

1981-2000
Halman, Talat Sait. “From Babylon to Liberspace”. American Libraries v. 26 Oct. 1995: p 895-8.

Article was adapted from a lecture at the 61’st International Federation of Library Associations. While technology will make the library less of a mecca and make information retrieval easier, fears are that it will create a greater gap between industrialized and developing nations. Virii are a potential hazard to on-line data storage and can be just as damaging as a fire. Four nightmares – obsolescence of learning, cyberspace globalization will be a “lobotomy”, new for of tyranny through censorship and new age will be dominated by technologically advanced forming intellectual colonialism. Four dreams – full functional literacy worldwide via technology, humanity liberated from ignorance, universal democracy and global participation and a new global renaissance.

2000-Present
Dietz, Roland; Grant, Carl. “The Dis-Integrating World of Library Automation”. Library Journal v. 130 no. 11 June 15 2005: 38-40.

Librarians and vendors need to collaborate to address issues like open source software, consolidation issues, integration with other services such as distance ed. Librarians need to jointly define a future vision and possibly move towards standardization.

Book –
Battles, Matthew, (June, 2003). Library: An Unquiet History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company

Covers the history of libraries, particularly the rise and fall of them through the ages. Discusses what should and shouldn’t be contained in libraries. i.e. Everything or just the best of the best. Covers innovation in libraries over ages – i.e. Dewey decimal system.
Contains : “Reading the library” – “Burning Alexandria” – “The house of wisdom” – “The battle of the books” – “Books for all” – “Knowledge on fire” – “Lost in the stacks”.
Bibliography and index.

Website –

1) Goldenberg-Hart, Diane. "Libraries and Changing Research Practices: A Report of the ARL/CNI Forum on E-Research and Cyberinfrastructure." ARL, no. 237 (December 2004): 1-5. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/237/cyberinfra.html

Association of Research Libraries report from daylong conference regarding changing technology and the role of libraries. “Cyber-infastructure” helps create virtual research environments, collaborations. Journals are perhaps “obsolete format”. Discussion on issues of quality control, funding – big impact on sciences, little impact on humanities.

2) Breeding, Marshal. “Reflecting on 20 Years of Library Technology”. Library Technology Guides, Key resources and content related to library automation. http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=11411

Breeding reflects on experiences at Vanderbuilt University Libraries. Suggests readers understand big picture, be able to understand details, specialize and maintain awareness of technology trends. Originally published in “Computers in Libraries” vol 25, issues 25 – Apr 2005.

3) Stephens, Michael. “10 Things I’ve Learned as a Blogging Librarian”. Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology. Apr 1, 2005 http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/001209.html

Stephens reflects on two years of blogging experiences. Lis blogsphere is thriving community, spelling counts, Libraries should be blogging, cite your sources, blogging librarians make a difference.

Screen Real Estate

2005-11-28T13:18:00.000-05:00

Here is a frustration I have about my laptop. In general, I love the portability of my 12" powerbook. It's brilliant that I can slip it into my backpack, and it doesn't take up more space or weight than a textbook.

The problem I have is the amount of screen. At work, I have three monitors hooked up to my primary machine, which gives me one full display for Outlook where I can monitor appointments and e-mail and then two other displays as a workspace - which is nice because I can work on projects side by side - for example, I can have a web browser open to an instruction manual on one monitor while I have a remote connection to a machine I am working on across campus open on the other. I can't do this neatly with my laptop, unless I physically connect a second monitor into it - which defeats the purpose of it's portability. Above is a picture of my workspace which shows the 3 displays on my PC (the white monitor is hooked up to my mac, since I'm "the mac guy").

Now what I would *love* to have is a headset I can wear that can sense when I turn my head - which would allow me to have a whole "wall" of screens in front of me to work on. So I could slip a pair of glasses on, look to the right and see my e-mail and then look to the left to see the meeting notes I'm typing up. Heck, why not up and down as well? Look up and see my appointment calendar, look down to see the system maintenance tools.

I guess what I really need to do is get virual desktops running on my laptop so I can at least toggle through screens and make it appear as if I have more real-estate in front of me.

Thats just my ranting for today - hopefully in the next few years "Augmentated reality" devices will allow for nerds like myself to do such things.

Book archiving project update

2005-11-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

I am lazy. I also have the attention span of a hamster. Cute little fuzzy wuzzie hamster! My hamster likes yogurt drops and I call him Father Jack because that’s who he looks like - especially when he first wakes up.

Oh yes! Back on focus! So I haven’t been doing much with my book archiving project and I’m holding steady at about 500 books done so far, which was about half of our collection. I’ve decided to also eventually working on the books that are at my parent’s house because some of those are still mine, and some day most of them will become mine – so I might as well have a decent inventory.

I’ve been tinkering around using WorldCat to fill in LOC subject and other little tidbits of information. I’ve included a picture of the DB fields – it’s really sweet, it’s just like iTunes for books. You can click on the picture for a big version of it to see the fields.

Anyways – with so many books, and shelf space at a premium, I think what I am going to do is to start packing away books that I don’t look at regularly and making a note of their location by box number. That way if I need to lay my hand on something, rather than rummaging through stacks of boxes, I can find exactly what box it is in.

I’m rather reluctant to start cataloging my older books as they don’t have an ISBN readily accessible so for those books I’ll have to do most of the grunt work by hand and hope I get the edition correct. Some of the really old books (I have a large number of books that are 1930 and prior. I’ll also need to take photographs of the covers of these books as well, which isn’t too terribly bad - but the whole overhead of the project has me a bit intimidated. Maybe if I just do a few every day it won’t be so bad, but then we get back to my attention span issue.

Another perspective on the future of books and Taking AIM at librarians

2005-11-03T13:43:00.000-05:00

While browsing around for some other articles on what the future holds for books, I find that Doug Johnson, who is the district media supervisor for the Mankato Public Schools in Mankato, Minnesota, has many of the same feelings about technology that I have in regards to changing technology affecting how we view books. (Those of you who are writing on librarian stereotypes might want to take a look at the latest post in the Blue Skunk Blog which is Doug's blog as it deals with librarians and image. I run hot and cold on his opinions, but they are worth checking out.) Here is a copy of his article that appeared in Technology Connection: The Magazine for School Media and Technology Specialists. I strongly agree with him that it isn't a black and white issue, and that the future isn't going to be technology *or* books, but technology *and* books. I tend to see everything in shades of grey, and sometimes get stuck by the fact that others see them as either black or white.

But that isn't what I want to talk about; I get tired of harping on future speculation sometimes. I want to talk about something in the here and now that I think is really neat. IM A LIBRARIAN!

No, I'm not making a statement of my position in life, I haven't earned that right yet, but Instant Message a Librarian!

As an instructional support specialist who set up and maintains computer labs Instant Messenger for the longest time was a major thorn in out sides, for a myriad of reasons. I'm not sure what it is, but students feel the self-centered need to try to install software on lab equipment as if it was their own machine - which if a machine isn't properly secured can make a difficult work experience for subsequent users when they have to deal with software that no longer functions properly because file associations have been changed, or they have to cope with pop-ups and ads for other software on their desktop. Other times, labs something get full of individuals on instant messengers just chatting with people, sometimes whom may be sitting right next to them, for hours on end - making it difficult for students with legitimate academic needs to get anything done while they wait for a terminal to be freed up.

But it's not all bad - there are many legitimate uses of IM programs. Here at work, we use IMs to keep in touch with one another while we are in the field, or working in different areas. If someone is working after-hours and needs my assistance, they can very often fire off an instant message to my home machine, or my cellphone and ask for help. It makes distant collaborations a snap as well, in that I can network with colleagues at other SUNY schools and get advice on a problem that I am having that perhaps they have dealt with as well, in real-time.

It's not a huge leap to apply this technology to librarianship. Most reference desks I know of have computer terminals on them for looking things up in on-line databases or catalogs; why not give the librarian access to an Instant Messenger - which is what numerous schools have done. Just do a quick google search on "IM a Librarian" and see how many library webpages come up. Michael Stephens who is a librarian in Indiana, and publishes the "Tame the Web" blog, loves the idea of IM a Librarian.

"Why not get on a standard system that is deeply ingrained in our techno-culture instead of making our users wade through java-enabled Web pages and chat environments that sometimes do not work the way they should? Give 'em something they already know. How do we best serve our users?" - Michael Stephens

YES! I've had to deal with IM based technical support, and nothing is WORSE than having to deal with a non-familiar custom-built chat interface! Use existing technology that people are familiar with and use everyday and make it accessible to them! I like the idea that while IM is near instant, if a librarian has multiple users, your question can go into a queue and get answered in sequence, so you don't have to stand around waiting for a librarian to become free, you can continue to work. Having worked in tech support, it's great to be able to queue up questions and triage them and having been on the other side, it's nice to have someone simply say "I got your question and I'm working on an answer for you, I'll be back with it in just a few moments"

Also, instant messenger provides the ability to easily transfer files, links and sometimes even control of a system, if the user permits it - so I can sit down with a remote user who might not be in the library and show them quickly how to do a search for the information they are looking for.

At my university people have been able to IM a librarian for 5 years now, so it's nothing new, but it still impresses the heck out of me. In fact, here is a link to the "submit a question via IM" help page, as well as an article in the UB reporter from last year about it. I adore how libraries are usually able to take a technology and really use it in service to others.

Broadening your horizons....

2005-11-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

I want to take a few moments to address what I feel is a very irrational fear amongst some librarians.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL BOGEYMAN IS NOT COMING TO STEAL YOUR JOB AND EAT ALL YOUR BOOKS!

First off, lets look at the past and a glimpse of things to come. We have had "books" for ages. Of course, looking way back, those "books" are quite different than what we see now. In the long past, people used to write things down on clay tablets - upon which were written pictograms, ideograms, cuneiform and then linear script. This was great, but I'd imagine clay tablets were both heavy and fragile, and as time passed technology changed and people discovered how to make "papers"

So then we had papyrus scrolls - but papyrus wasn't all that flexible, so many sheets of it had to be stuck together and then rolled up in a scroll form. So this was much easier to carry around and store - but I'll wager there were librarians saying "You can have my clay tablets when you pry them out of my cold dead fingers". Time marches on, the technology proves easier and everyone was using scrolls - but it was fragile. So then people started making parchment out of animal skins - but it was heavy and difficult to fold - so it fell out of favor until the codex form was adopted - which was taking sheets of the same sized writing material and stitching them together. At around 400 AD the codex form was the preferred method of storing the written word.

Then comes inventions like different binding methods, movable type, electronic desktop publishing etc... People probably freaked out about that too. If people use movable type, it will put all those poor monks who copy everything down out of business and the illuminated page will go away! Well, illumination isn't a lost art, and it did bring the written word to the masses causing an ideological reformation. Desktop publishing makes it easier to crank out manuscripts and reformat them for publication. I'd be hard pressed to find a publisher who wants to crank out a publication doing things the old way.

So this brings us to electronic books and electronic paper. I love innovation, and I'll use it where the technology is appropriate - but as I stated in a reply elsewhere, I don't particularly like sitting around with a laptop in my lap all the time because it's uncomfortable - and this is with a 12" laptop which is no bigger or heavier than a hardcover textbook. E-readers have their place, but they haven't caught on because it's not how people want to read. Looking at a parallel, the ipod took off like wildfire because it's an appropriate technology. People like being able to have their entire music library at their disposal with variable playlists in a small compact form they can load and reload depending on their whim. I don't think it put the concert pianist out of business either. The current e-book readers haven't taken off because people don't like cuddling up with a screen all the time.

However, paper as a medium is changing again. Rather than laying ink to paper, it is getting to the point where we can run a current through a plastic "page" and cause capsules to shift coloration giving the same effect. It only needs the power to manipulate the type on the page, so it doesn't need power to be read or carried about. With a small power source, it could have video on it as well - and the technology is getting to be cheap and disposable. Looking down the road it could mean product labels with motion to catch peoples eyes, easier to read instruction sheets since they can contain animation, newspapers with video highlights along with the text and a whole slew of other options. It can also mean less expensive overhead for production. A company can produce blank labels, newspapers and books which it can ship to a publishing company that can then simply load in the content and ship it out, working on an on-demand principle. We have 3000 subscribers, we can print up 3000 copies and leave the extras for tomorrow. As a textbook publisher, one can crank out a million copies of a text book and have them ready for distribution. Should there be a revision change, rather than print up another million copies, the original million can be reloaded with the new information, meaning they can offer the books for less since it costs less to manufacture them and hopefully my kids and grandkids won't have for pay $80 for a math text book. It's environmentally sound. Think of how much paper is used up delivering a weeks worth of newspapers to a neighborhood. Granted it can be recycled, but imagine if it could be re-used by having one paper during the week that could be re-written with the latest news, if the subscriber wished, or if they wanted to keep an article, they could cut it out and buy a new paper.

My girlfriend who is an artist and a toy designer has noticed the changes in technology and the book as well, and likens it to changes in painting. Painting exists today, even in the digital age - but it has changed substantially over the ages. Painters still lay paint to canvas, but they don't use a canvas and gesso made from animal skin and fat anymore, nor do they hand mix their pigments out of various metals and minerals. So in the future books will still exist and librarians will still be needed, probably moreso than ever - but down the road, the odds that your book will be the same as it is now will probably be the same as being able to check out a cuneiform tablet from the local library.

Microsoft signs on with the OCA

2005-10-26T16:38:00.000-05:00

The BBC news is reporting that Microsoft has signed onto the Open Content Alliance (see link in sidebar)

They are going to work to put up 150,00 works online, beginning with what is in the public domain. Microsoft said it was already liaising with publishers and libraries on ways to make more copyrighted works available for online searches.

US libraries which have joined the separate OCA's library project include Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Virginia, and the University of Pittsburgh. The OCA was set up by a group of digital archivists and is backed by technology firms Adobe and HP, as well as libraries and academia.

More librarians and comics!

2005-10-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

I think I should start doing article research into this as well...

Anyways, in another blog someone made me aware of Unshelved which is a cute little on-line comic about a librarian, and one of the archive comics is about his talking to his supervisor about the Preacher series. I have to confess that Garth Ennis is definitely one of my favorite writers - particularly his war stories and his Judge Dredd work. Ol' Stony Face is a guilty pleasure of mine. :D

In todays news.....

2005-10-26T07:36:00.000-05:00

Of interest to those who are looking into privacy and legal issues, the Washington Post ran an article on possible abuses of the Patriot Act . The Electronic Privacy Information Center has some more details it obtained using the Freedom of Information act.

On a somewhat related note, microwaves can be used to eavesdrop through walls by picking up on microvibrations of clothing.

On the topic of Blogging - students at Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta were given the choice to take down their myspace accounts and their personal blogs or face suspension. In a nutshell, the school is stepping in and dictating what the kids can do from home, in their own time. The reasoning behind this action is to protect them from sexual predators. Kids also are not allowed to mention anything pertaining to the school without the schools permission. What are your opinions? Is it looking out for the welfare of children or an effort to minimize negative public exposure for the school?

Name that Reference

2005-10-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

Not too terribly obscure - and since we librarians are good at looking things up, it should be a snap - but.... can you name that reference?

Mia culpa!

2005-10-25T13:07:00.000-05:00

I accidently broke the comment function of my blog *sheepish grin*

I think it's fixed now... my code-fu is sooooo poor. I should learn some more before facing my blog again! *runs off into the woods to learn a new style from the drunken CSS master*

SORRY!

Why libraries matter - flash e-book

2005-10-25T07:59:00.000-05:00

This is a cute little animation in verse about "Why libraries matter: A Story Long Overdue"
"Why Libraries Matter: A Story Long Overdue" is the charming tale, told in rhyming verse, of a young girl who shows her family and neighbors how important the library is to them and their community. The project is the latest in a series of initiatives from the Alliance Library System who, last year, introduced the Libraries Matter campaign (www.LibrariesMatter.com ) to public libraries across the world. "

You can find their press-releases here

It's a neat melding of technology for use in advocacy and out-reach programs. It might be of interest to those interested in children's lit also.

Great links about librarian stereotypes

2005-10-24T16:08:00.000-05:00

Shelly Howells wrote a GREAT article for the New Zealand Herald about librarians who break stereotypes so anyone who is writing on that topic should definately check it out - and everyone else should check it out simply because it's cool.

Referenced in the article are a few other really good sites and blogs.

The Warrior Librarian Weekly is a great resource for librarian humor - AND - they mention Rex Libris (see earlier post) - *AND* I'm not the only librarian who dresses up. :D I feel so vindicated. ;)

Interestingly enough, I know at least one other Bellydancing Librarian. So how many others of you are out there?

Lots of other good links there as well... :D I think I am going to start a page just cataloging cool librarian blogs - and there are alot of them, librarians and blogging really seem to go together 0 it would make a really neat sociology study.

Lastly, I have to throw a link up to The Librarian Avengers (where I shameless stole that picture from - originally from Strangers in Paradise, which is yet another comic reference because librarians love comic books) - about why you should worship librarians. I also learned that I am a "Guybrarian" :D

"I'm here to have an argument!"

2005-10-24T12:51:00.000-05:00

I would like to have an argument. (No you wouldn't!) ....

Seriously though, I'd love for people who are reading, if they are reading, to challange my position. Play devil's advocate if you agree with me. Present your side of the argument if you don't. Just don't be mean, I'm fragile. ;) Ok, I'm not fragile, but I don't have much patience for nastiness, just for the sake of being nasty. I'm really curious as to everyones viewpoints and think healthy debate is a good thing. I like to make people think about what they are saying, and I'd hope that others would make me questions and re-evaluate my thoughts as well. I don't have that many strongly held convictions that I can't be persuaded by a strong argument in the other direction - or I can at least concede the point.

Young hunk, cyberpunk and sweet thing.

2005-10-21T08:36:00.000-05:00

Cyberpunk is dead. Long live cyberpunk!

Well… William Gibson, who is considered one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre, would say Cyberpunk is dead – and largely it is. It’s time has come and gone. It’s no longer edgy, but nostalgic. There are new things to be angstful about. Salon has a great article about how it has become “irrelevant” because current technology has caught up to what cyberpunk was predicting and as such, cyberpunk as a literary movement has lost it’s teeth.

But what exactly is cyberpunk? In a nutshell it was a literary genre in the 1980s that focused on information technology in a world experiencing a social breakdown of sorts. It’s often written in a hard bitten style that doesn’t feel the need to explain anything, it’s all just there for you to deal with. Generally it features an anti-hero struggling against the press of society, usually in the form of giant mega-corporations in the near future (next Sunday AD, if you will). Often it has concepts of meshing technology and humans in the form of cybernetics and implants, human life is cheap and corporations have more or less become the governments of the future. Most cyberpunk writing features an online universe – be it called the matrix, the meta-verse or cyberspace – it’s a place where hackers and information brokers can go to trade there wares, attack computer systems or just as easily be killed. Largely this is due to the ability of hackers to be able to connect directly into a network through their brains by cybernetic implants which gives them the ability to navigate at the speed of thought. Blade runner and The Matrix are both good examples of the cyberpunk genre in film.

Stylistically cyberpunk is a great blending of film noir, hard boiled pulp detective stories and post-modernism. There aren’t any heroes to speak of, but rather anti-heroes put into tough and extraordinary circumstances – very often against their wishes. Often the heroes are merely pawns and while they might survive the ordeal, they often aren’t any better off than they were before. Cyberpunk literature expresses the fears of the growing and failing corporate world of the early to mid 80’s, as well as the dehumanizing effect of technology and the collapse of government institutions and extrapolates all this into a dystopian prediction of what the next 20 or 30 years might bring. Some of these predictions have been alarmingly bang on. Bruce Sterling is quoted as saying: “Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes."

So what is a good book list for someone just getting into cyberpunk fiction? There are the big 3 – William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson. One can also read Pat Cardigan, John Shirley, and Rudy Rucker. Probably one of the best starts would be to pick up William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy – “Neuromancer”, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. I’d also highly recommend the “Burning Chrome” collection of short stories. Lets take a quick look at Neuromancer, though. It was Gibson’s first novel and he exploded onto the scene with a Hugo, a Nebula and a Philip K. Dick award. The opening line of the book is “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”. In my mind, that’s right up there with “It was a pleasure to burn.”

“Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price”
Case is an out of work drug addicted cyber-cowboy who made his living breaking into high-security corporate databases and stealing information for his employers in another corporation. After a double-cross he finds himself poisoned with a Russian nerve agent that wreaks havoc on his nervous system and as a result, can’t do his job. He is approached by Molly, who is a razorgirl. Razorboys and girls are cyberneticaly enhanced hired muscle, usually for bodyguard duty or wetwork. Often the enhancements are things like eye and ear replacements so they can hear and see better, muscle augmentation so they are tougher, implanted weapons – hence the name razorgirl. Case is hired by a man named Armitage who is a special forces veteran, but really turns out to be the human face for an Artificial Intelligence who is masterminding the whole situation. The rest of the sprawl novels are similar in flavor, although the follow different characters in this world. Johnny Mnemonic was also a Gibson short story that was turned into a movie adaptation – although the movie version is actually a melding of several Gibson stories into one.

Bruce Sterling is probably best known for his short stories and essays about cyberpunk. He edited the “Cyberpunk Anthology”, but “Islands of the Net” and “The Difference Engine” which is really what sparked off the ‘Stempunk’ genre are also worth reads. Sterling is also active in various interesting movements, such as the Viridian Movement which is a green movement without the perceived self-righteousness of the green movement that strives for high-tech, stylish and ecologically sound design. The Viridian Movement has become “World Changing”
For Neal Stephenson, I’d recommend Snow Crash right off the bat. From Amazon.com “From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.” Neil also writes technology articles for Wired magazine.
Lastly, I’d like to recommend the “Cyberpunk Fakebook” by R.U. Sirius and St. Jude (Jude Milhon). R.U. Sirius and Jude Milhon both wrote for the avant garde “cyberpunk” magazine “Mondo 2000” . I have a soft spot for Jude as she was one of the first cypherpunks and was also a very outspoken proponent for feminism in the technical world which for so long has been male dominated. Girls can be hackers too, you know. You can grab the E-book as well from Project Gutenberg.

There are numerous film and television references that deal with cyberpunk ideas as well. “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future” was light years ahead of it’s time in 1987 which upon watching today rings hauntingly true of contemporary media and society. The show revolves around Edison Carter who is a news reporter for the popular Network-23 news program “Live and Direct with Edison Carter”. Edison’s job is to uncover scandal and corruption in a world where video rules, the economy is based on ratings and networks wage all out war against one another in an effort to remain on top and retain corporate sponsors.

One of the seminal movies would be Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner”, which also really hits on many of the key themes in cyberpunk literature, set in a dystopian Los Angeles where the only humans left on earth are not fit enough to make it to off world colonies and replicants – or artificial people who have a pre-programmed lifespan of 4 years who go rogue are retired by special police units called Blade Runners. Mostly the replicants just want a normal life, like other humans. Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. Dick was also a major influence on the cyberpunk genre. Going way back to Weimar cinema, Blade Runner owes a lot to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” – which could be argues also fits into the cyberpunk genre with two very distinct split classes whose lives are rules by technology.
Other movies would include The Matrix, Johnny Mnemonic, Robocop, Ghost in the Shell, Circuitry Man, Lawnmower Man, Brainstorm, Brazil (a favorite of mine), The City of Lost Children (also one of my all time favorite films), Hardware, Until the End of the World, Sneakers and a whole host of other films.

So as a kid growing up, I’ve always had a huge interest in the cyberpunk genre and movement. When I first started learning HTML, I created a webpage devoted to various cyberpunk things and I actually recently rediscovered it in my unix account directory from the university I went to. It hasn’t been touched since June 2000 and you can take a look at it here. Some of the links are broken now.. perhaps one day I'll go back and fix them. I also got a really warm fuzzy feeling when looking at the help page for searching on the UB Library catalog help page that "Cyberpunk" is one of the key words under basic key word searches.

To search by keyword, enter one or more search terms.

* cyberpunk
* noh drama
* employee assistance programs

I need a manifesto - my thought on technology adoption

2005-10-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

I should probably take a few moments and explain my personal beliefs on technology and its adoption into society so readers can better understand where I am coming from. I’ll “briefly” touch on a few points, as I think I’d like to really expand on them later – but lets start from the beginning as it’s a very good place to start.
In the beginning as a young child I was a nerd. I’m still a nerd, so that hasn’t changed any, but I was fortunate enough to have parents who helped foster my pursuit of all things geek. For example, I was able to read by the time I hit kindergarten and I loved all things space and dinosaurs – as do all boys at one point I think. Chuck Yeager and Carl Sagan were childhood heroes of mine, so that should give some indication of where my mind was at. I was with my mother in a bookstore and she mentioned in passing how difficult it was for her to pick out books for me as a child since it seemed like every dinosaur book focused on the same 6 dinosaurs. Apparently I would get frustrated with them, “But I already know those dinosaurs, I want something new!” I still have my well worn copies of field guides from when I was a kid and sometimes I like to look through to see how much has changed over the past few decades. I also became familiar with some of the issues that intellectuals face. (I am loath to use that word to describe myself, because I don’t really see myself as one) I used to have a T-shirt with an Einstein quote that said “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds” that I used to wear – and still believe, which helped form my philosophy. Even though I had the ability to read in Kindergarten, I was discouraged from doing so in class because the prevailing idea at the time was that it would negatively impact the other children’s self-esteem causing them to not learn as well. I also received a crack on the noggin from my mother one night when we were looking though my telescope at Jupiter and my neighbor asked how many moons Jupiter has. “16...” I quickly replied – probably a bit too quickly for my mother’s liking as she interpreted my actions as sarcasm and dope-slapped me. I had to run inside and get my field guide just to prove I wasn’t being a smart ass. Bu the way, Jupiter is now considered to have 4 large moons and almost 60 smaller ones – so quite a change from when I was a kid. Astronomy and paleontology weren’t my only interests. Oh no, I was (am) ADD so I had to be interested in EVERYTHING from chemistry to electronics to marine biology and so on. I had a lot of “nerd” toys about the house as a kid.
Probably the biggest impact, however is when my Dad brought home an Atari 800 which I more or less cut my teeth on. Well, not exactly – I was about 5 when it came home so I already had teeth, but it was still life altering and it started my love affair with computers. We also had a cassette tape drive for the machine, talk about outdated storage media – but we never got a modem until the 300 baud unit for our Apple ] [ some years later – which was when I first got online with various BBSes . I first used the internet with a “borrowed” VAX account at UB – when UB was still using BITnet (BIT stands for ‘Because It’s Time’ btw) – around 1990. I remember Archie and Veronica gave way to mozilla – and thinking “Hey! You can get pictures now? Cool!” I’m not so sure I like where the web has gone since – but still, it’s just a tool. It’s like the period of American history where everyone wants to move out west in search of riches causing all sorts of lawlessness and problems – but soon things will settle down and normalize, I hope.
From a literature point of view as a kid I got a hold of a William Gibson novel my dad borrowed from the Library and fell in love with his somewhat dystopian view of the future. It was actually a copy of “Neuromancer”, which I would highly recommend as one of the best examples of Cyberpunk literature. Perhaps I will post at length about the cyberpunk subculture in the near future – but it also helped shape my view of the role of technology in society.
So there is the cliff notes version of my childhood, touching on some of the milestones of my belief system – but what do I actually believe? I should probably write a manifesto one day. My undergrad degree is in English, not that you would be able to tell from my grammar and typos – but I have a fascination with various literary –isms. Mostly Modernism, Futurism and Romanticism , which is a direct conflict with the other two – but the ideas resonate with my philosophy on technology. Also, all the –isms are full of manifestos and I don’t want to be left out. Actually, I was highly recommended a book called Manifesto: A Century of –isms which is a brilliant collection of manifestos from various art and literature movements and I’d like to pass the recommendation along.
First and foremost, I believe that information wants to be free. I believe everyone should have access to information, especially as a means to better themselves. This is one of the major pillars of librarianship. I think technology is a major key in the liberation and dissemination of information. One of the things I love about the internet is how easy it is to share information and collaborate with others regardless of geographic location. It is just as easy for me to send a packet of data to someone in China as it as for me to deliver a memo to the cubicle next to me – and just as quick. I can post my ideas, no matter how off base they might be, someplace for everyone to come and look at if they wish. We have the ability to pool up several resources into one giant resource. I get really excited about things like WorldCat. As a youth, if my library didn’t have a book, I had to call around to other area libraries until I found it – and very often I wouldn’t find it. Now I can see everyone with a copy of that resource – and most places have an ILL system so I can obtain it in a matter of days. Perhaps one day it won’t be a matter of days, but moments that I can retain that resource – as it can be shipped digitally to a location. I’d like to dream that one day I’ll be able to borrow a book from a library in Italy on a whim, have it in moments from my request in a format I chose – either on digital paper that I can refresh with new books down the road, or a print on demand solution so I can purchase a hard copy to carry around. I can definitely see journals going this route as they are getting so expensive for individual libraries to subscribe to – someone is going to replace the buggy-whips with better solution for distributed publication. How cool would it be if one day, all the world’s libraries were linked up with multiple redundancies of digital copies of holdings – so should a library face it’s destruction at the very least the data isn’t lost forever.
I believe that we need to knock down other barriers to information – when it comes to technology I think this is largely an issue of class. There are thousands upon thousands of hungry minds out there who aren’t going to get a chance because of certain social and economic hurdles and these individuals need to be encouraged rather than discouraged. They should be able to have a place to learn and seek out other like minded communities. At one point there was a time when books were only available to the very wealthy and elite. The printing press made a huge dent in this by being able to mass produce books and helped spark off an intellectual revolution. Libraries have been compared to churches and missionaries in that they do their best word in some of the poorer communities where they are most needed. With the dropping cost of technology – a computer can be had for under $100 – benefactors should be able to provide connectivity to those who may need it but can’t afford it. Just the other day, we sent a few hundred fully functioning computers to Surplus. Granted they aren’t powerful enough for classroom education, they would work beautifully for granting internet access to communities who might not have any.
As a packrat, I think we should save everything. I’m probably cut out to be an archivist because I like to organize, preserve and store everything for future use – because although you have no use for it now, down the road it might come in handy again. I believe we should use technology to digitize everything, and then “back it up”. Right now it’s very easy to do with new releases of materials. Desktop publishing makes it very easy to keep a digital copy of new books. The same is true with audio and video. I think it’s important to make an effort to preserve the older stuff – the photographs, maps, letters and books. Looking at the example of hurricane Katrina, much of these materials were destroyed which is a tragedy that is only compounded in that they were unique and can’t be replaced. If digital copies had been made, at least the core data would have survived for later generations. I don’t think technology should be a replacement, but a supplement. It will also provide greater access to these materials. Perhaps I wasn’t able to get to a civil war museum in Mississippi before it was destroyed. If the collection was digital and online, I’d still have been able to at least see it and learn from it. Once it’s gone – I’ll never have had a chance to look at it. It also makes access to rare texts easier. Perhaps a library doesn’t want to take a manuscript out of storage as a means of preservation – but a person can look at a digital copy or reproduction and get the same effect. This also leads me to another point. Sometimes things deteriorate so far they are almost of no value. A great example is the dead see scrolls which over time have darkened so one can’t see the ink anymore. Before a few years ago, it was very difficult to work on them – researchers had to tilt them to look at them at strange angle to try to see what was ink and what wasn’t. They are also very fragile so it’s possible a researcher can destroy a piece with just a poorly timed cough. Now using infrared photographs, researchers can work on a copy of the scroll and see the writing as if it were new – so in my mind it’s just as important to try to preserve the originals because down the road there might be a new method of analyzing items – so sometimes just making a copy isn’t enough, although I think it’s the best of both worlds in that it lets researchers work on a piece without putting the piece in danger.
I think I will go into these ideas in more detail down the road – but the last point is I don’t see technology as replacement for the older ways, but as a supplement. This is probably the romanticist in me speaking as the modernist and futurist say “Destroy the old ways and find new and faster ways of doing things!” I was once asked “Would you really want to curl up with an E-book” – and the simple answer is, “Yes, I would”. Let me first say that I am a book junkie. I love everything about books and I don't really see
them going away per se - but there have been some really amazing leaps in the technology of digital paper giving it the look and feel of regular printed paper – as I have posted about at length.

So in theory it should be fairly easy to design a device that looks and feels like a book - perhaps mount the whole component inside a leather-bound cover , or perhaps a newspaper or magazine, and have people be able to get content that way. When the technology becomes cheap and easy enough to reproduce on a large scale perhaps “books” can have digital pages. Imagine that a person can walk into a “bookstore” and buy a blank digital book – there are lots of styles to choose from, like giant leather bound tomes or slim brushed aluminum covers. Something for every personality to enjoy, just like iPod skins. So when a person wants to “borrow” a book from the library, they can request what they want at a terminal, plug their blank book in and download it to their personal digital book. Since it only requires energy to set the “ink” on each page, they can unplug it and read it as normal. Then it can either "destruct" after a period of time or just get re-written over the next time they borrow something else. This wouldn't replace books per-se - people would still want paper copies to retain and re-use, but it should cut down on overhead and enable libraries to have a much larger collection.
But more present day - a few years ago when I carried around a palm pilot, I used to download the daily news as well as a few magazine articles before I left work. That way if I had to stand on the bus or train I could always hang on to the strap with one hand and read the news with the other, using my thumb to scroll down or select new articles. It was definitely nice and convenient to be able to read the news on a small hand held
device, rather than try to wrestle with a full blown newspaper on a crowded train. Since the display was backlit, I could also read on a dark bus between campuses after class.

I also like to read in bed or on a couch, and very often after prolonged periods I find myself in a comfortable position where it's not easy to flip pages (like if I'm holding the book one handed, or wedged in someplace) and it would be neat to be able to just touch a corner of a display and have it “flip” the page. Being able to illuminate the display, such as a backlight would also be a benefit on nights I can't sleep and want to read, but I don't want to disturb my sweetheart’s sleep by turning on a light.

I'm familiar with E-books now, which are nothing like a book - and I can
understand the hesitation to start using one over a tradition bound book - but as I stated before, it's easy to design a device into a book shell, with simulated pages - I don't think it would be that big of a leap. Looking at the Sony Librie - I still feel the design isn't quite natural enough - it looks too much like a screen - but it's a step in the right
direction. The rest is simple engineering and design

So after a lengthy summer, to answer the question - yes. I would want to read books
from a screen as in the past I have found it to be a really nice and
convenient alternative to carrying several books on me as well as allowing
me to have a hand free. I'd be even more willing to read a book
printed on digital paper as it's a more natural alternative to actual
books. I'm sure that when E-mail first debuted people felt the same way.
"Would you really want to read a letter on a screen rather than a piece of
stationary" - yet here we are. Actually, that might make some interesting
research for my annotations. To play devil's advocate, does it mean
letter writing is going to go away? I doubt it, just last year I was
given some really nice stationary, an ink pen and well and a wax seal.

I’d also like to note that when sitting on the beach – I’d rather just have a traditional paperback as well, since sand seems to get everywhere. Digital books will by no means stop me from being a book collector (hoarder?) and I can’t foresee them from replacing books – but I do think they would make a great inexpensive and environmentally friendly alternative to books.

Electronic Flexible Paper

2005-10-19T14:33:00.000-05:00

Yes - well... because such things interest me to no end, and I'm sure you are sick and tired of reading about it in my blog.

Flexible Electronic Paper Display on DevLib

In a nutshell, it's a display that is 300 microns thick and is as flexible as construction paper. It has a resolution of 600x800 and a pixel density of 100 pixels per inch. Monitors and LCDs generally are 72-96 DPI. It also has 4 levels of grey it can display, where most books have 2 - black and white.

You can find more information about how microcapsules work, as well as other product specs at Eink.com

IT Horror Story

2005-10-19T14:26:00.000-05:00

One of the things I really like about my job is that I can dress how I want - there is no dress code - because a large part of my work involves me lugging heavy equipment and crawling around on dusty and dirty floors. Today for example I am wearing a pair of cut off BDUs and a t-shirt. Since I work on a college campus, this affords me the perfect camouflage in which to mingle in with the students. This is good because 1) I can listen to them talk about what they like and don't like in computer labs and they are much more willing to be frank and open if they feel no staff members are around. 2) It lets me see what they are really doing in my labs - and it makes me happy to see a majority of them doing work rather than trying to install software on my equipment and 3) It enables me to get in, get stuff done and get out without anyone knowing that I'm "The Computer Guy".

Well, one day towards the end of a semester I was working in a lab and a faculty member blew my cover. It became known that I was "The Computer Guy" and everyone had questions.

Quick tangent - when people ask me what I do and I reply that I work in IT their first response is almost always "Oh? I have this computer at home and this isn't working right I was wondering if you could help me with...." I guess it's the same with other professions - like mechanics "My car has a rattle...", artists… "Can you paint me a..." etc… There are a few professions I'm glad I didn't go into... "I got this rash and…"

Back on topic - after answering the barrage of questions about what they should buy, why their computer is running slow, what anti-virus software to get a girl comes up to me and says "I was working on this computer and I saved my paper, and I can't seem to open it now"

There are two things to keep in mind here. The first is that I get quite a few bad disk problems (well, not as many these days now that people use jump drives and portable HD's) and the second is when a user logs out, their desktop and everything is wiped out and recreated for the next person. This ensures a clean, uncorrupted desktop for all users.

"Ok" I say, expecting her to hand me a disk. "I can take a look at it, but I can't promise anything” She’s fine with that.

"I was working on this computer last night" she says. I pause for a second - look around the room at the signs posted at 2 foot intervals that say "Do not save anything on the desktop or it will be lost – machines are wiped upon logout" and my heart begins to sink.

"Ok." I said fully expecting what was to come next.

"I saved it on the desktop, but when I logged in today it's gone - can you get it back?"

Having worked tech support at a help desk for 3 years helped me to develop a knack for having to give people bad news in a way that is caring and supportive. For example, I wasn't about to say "Ok, you are in college, you worked in this lab all semester and you didn't see the giant signs that say 'Don't do that!' - or else perhaps you felt that you are special and that they just didn't pertain to you.” This would be an example of poor customer service - but I had to let her know.

"Hrmmm. No, I'm sorry - since the computers are wiped out on logout, there isn't anything I could do - do you perhaps have a backup?" Again, working at a help desk, I've had so many people come in at the end of a semester in a panic because their thesis or final paper was on this one disk and now they can't read it! Most of them were students who didn't actually do their paper in the first place, and just want an excuse to get an extension. Some of them are legitimate bad disks, and for the most part we were able to recover them - which is a good feeling. One guy even brought me dinner because he was so happy. All of them should have been keeping multiple backups - learn that lesson and impart it on everyone you know - if it's important, BACK IT UP! If your life depends on it, BACK IT UP! (you can kinda sing that)

So I finish giving her the news and she looks at me for a second, giving me the impression that I had successfully given someone The Bad News and I wasn't going to be strung up from a low branch - and she cries. This isn't a tears well up and she begins to sniffle, this isn't a head goes down and she shakes a little as she sobs - she CRIES. Like a cartoon - imagine the big frowny mouth and giant balloon teardrops coming from behind it. If I wasn't feeling bad enough for her as it was, my heart really gave way at that point and I felt awful. And then she runs out of the room. I'm left stunned for a few moments and go back about my work.

After a few moments she returns with a faculty member in tow and they both give me the evils - like I was the one who on orders from Lucifer himself took a magnet to the hard drive of the machine while singing "Rubber ducky" - why Rubber ducky? Well, that’s just evil.

"What is going on here?” the faculty member demanded. I explained the situation and the faculty member looks at the signs, looks at the girl, looks at me and then says, "Ok, we can talk about an extension" and walks out with her.

To this day, I don't know if she really lost her paper, or was just a good actor looking for an extension - but because of this experience I give thanks every time I am able to resolve a computer issues via remote connection without having to leave the safety of my office.

E-paper to be used for Newspapers and Magazines

2005-10-14T12:46:00.000-05:00

Quick bit of news -

Seimens E-paper

"Cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens.

The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle.

The new technology caused a sensation when it was first made public this week at the Plastics Electronics trade fair in Frankfurt."

I wonder if images would be pre-loaded, or could the conveivably be updated as you go along?

What does this mean for Journalism? Could you have constantly changing adverts? LIke imagine the artvoice - every night the "Whats Happening" section gets updated with that day and the next seven days worth of information - so when you pick it up you don't have that - "Ugh! It's friday and I missed monday through thursday!" experience.

Imagine if newspapers and journals were able to update on the fly, correcting publishing mistakes or giving more accurate details on the fly. Conversely - imagine how scary it could be if Media can then retract something that it said and leave no record of it.

But refreshable content would be a neat green boon. Think of how many tons of wood pulp could be saved by not having to print a newspaper daily, but having a subscriber being able to refresh it's content. Then there would probably be a bunch of really angry lumberjacks who lost their jobs because we don't need as many trees cut down.

It's an interesting thought.

If you want to get more geeky - there is a good technical article on Seimen's E-paper on Physorg.com

Wafer Thin color displays for packaging

LITA Blog

2005-10-06T09:53:00.000-05:00

For anyone interested - the Library & Information Technology Association has a blog at:

http://litablog.org

From their 'About LITA Blog' page:
LITA blog will be an interesting blog to follow if you are interested in technology in library and information systems. LITA’s mission is that it “educates, serves, and reaches out to its members, other ALA members and divisions, and the entire library and information community through its publications, programs, and other activities designed to promote, develop, and aid in the implementation of library and information technology.”

This blog launched in June, 2005 prior to the ALA Annual Conference at McCormick Place in Chicago, June 23-29. Coverage will begin with key ALA and LITA conferences (ALA Annual, ALA Midwinter, and LITA Forum). Between conferences the blog may be very quiet.

How to reduce spam comments

2005-10-06T09:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick guide to help reduce the amount of spam you get as comments in your blog. This won't prevent human spammers from going through, but it will eliminated the automated ones.

First, go to www.blogspot.com and log yourself in. Once you are logged in you should see your dashboard. On there is a little cog for "Change Settings".

Click on the cog and you will be brought to a screen showing you tabbed options of settings. You will want to look at the bottom row of tabs and click on "Comments"

This will take you to a page with a set of radio-button options with how to handle comments. Near the top you can set an option for who can comment. I leave mine open so anyone reading my blog can comment, but some might want to limit it to just registered blogger users as an added measure of restriction. The option to prevent automated comment spam is "Show word verification for comments". You will want to set that for "yes"

Once this is done, when someone wants to comment in your journal they will be shown an image of distorted letters and they will need to type in that sequence of letters. Currently this type of character recognition is very difficult for computers to handle - so it's a good way to prevent automated comment-bots.

For more information on what the word verification option is you can take a look at the blogger help page on the subject.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a comment here or via the online discussion for our class.

Back to the grind!

2005-10-05T12:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I’m back from North Carolina and I had a multitude of ideas rattling around in my gourd that I wanted to write about – but as soon as I get back I find that I’m the only grunt left at work to hold down the fort and (hopefully) satisfy everyone’s technology needs. I’m always up for a challenge. Anyway, I jotted a few notes down to work from, so I should be set for topics. Here is a random and gratuitous picture of a sunrise over the Atlantic I’ll share. You can click on it for a bigger version. Somewhat back on topic - since I want to talk mostly about technology past, present and future - I should post this picture from the beach that contains people walking, wild horses and someone on a Segue. Think of the innovation in human transportation here – “Lets walk there!” “No, it’s to far” “Ok we can ride a horse” *years pass* “Lets walk there!” “No, walking is far to primitive of a conveyance and it tires me out, lets take our Segues. Maybe we can play a horseless version of Ben Hur on the way.” It was just surreal to see – but a fair illustration of the old co-existing among the new.

If you are a huge bibliophile, don’t read the rest of this paragraph as it’s pretty awful - both my writing and the subject matter. Ok, still here? On the way back from NC, we stopped off at a McDonalds in Pennsylvania for a quick bite. It’s one we stopped at on the way back from Lancaster, PA a few months ago and my sweetie said they had neat wooden shelves with knick-knacks and lots of books inside, so I wanted to check it out since I waited in the car last time. Going inside, I wander over to see what books are shelved and to my horror I realize that it’s not a book, it’s the spine and an inch of pages – like someone ran a whole bunch of books through a band-saw and stuck them to the wall. I liken it to an animal lover walking into a giant hunting lodge for the first time and seeing all the heads on the wall. Definitely made me sad – it looked like it was a school library that god rid of a ton of texts and they were used for decoration. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s OK – since they were probably heading for destruction anyways. OK, it wasn’t that huge of a travesty – but it did bring me down a little bit.

In other more upbeat technology news – there was an article on USA today’s website about Yahoo competing with Google to scan in texts. You can find the article at this link

LOS ANGELES — Internet search giant Yahoo responded Monday to rival Google's plans to make books available for reading online by introducing its own version.

The key difference: Yahoo is not scanning copyrighted works, as Google did before publishers called foul and it temporarily stopped. Instead, Yahoo is paying for the scanning of older, out of print titles and making them searchable through the Yahoo index and a new website at opencontentalliance.org

I personally think this is great! Sort of picking up where Project Gutenberg left off. This is what I am talking about when I say we should take steps towards a new “Library at Alexandria” – well there is a new library near the site of the old one, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina – but I’m taking in a more abstract means of having a means for storing as much human and cultural knowledge as we can – and then make it available for as many people as we can. I’m attracted to the notion of using a model like the Internet – since the Internet was designed by DARPA to be able to continue functioning should chunks of it get blown away. Sadly the one in the classical world couldn’t do this and was sacked – which after the human cost is one of the worst by-products of war. By creating multiple distributed copies of this information if should something happen to one node it can be rebuilt and restored with the minimal chance of data loss. Currently if a library gets damaged for whatever reason – much of that stuff is gone forever. The looting and burning of the National Library in Baghdad is a great example of this. While I will make no argument that it is sad to lose these texts in the event of a disaster – I take comfort in the fact that people are willing to take steps to insure that at least the knowledge contained within will persist.

Personal Library Update

2005-09-13T11:35:00.000-05:00

I've created a new HTML doc with all the books that I have cataloged so far. The doc only lists the cover image, title and author - and what genre I have categorized it in.

It also has a link to amazon.com for more details.

Check it out at Http://www.network-23.net/Books

For Consideration: Print on Demand

2005-09-13T09:39:00.000-05:00

I’m curious to see how Print on Demand will affect libraries in the future. Print on Demand, for those not familiar with the concept, is the ability to order up a document such as a book and have it printed and bound up all in house. So an book outlet no longer has to contact a publisher, order a copy of the book and have it shipped to them. And publishers no longer need to do massive print runs to make the printing of a title economically viable. Also, as it stands now, many retailers have a minimum order they need to fill before a publisher will ship to them, and publishers sometimes have to deal with buying back copies of books that don’t sell – so there is a fairly high level of wastage that is factored into the price of a book. Cost wise, currently the per unit cost of the physical bound book itself would be higher than offset printing – but since much of the overhead is removed one is left with an overall per unit cost which is way less. So while the material cost goes up, the production and distribution cost goes way down and the consumer ends up paying less than they currently do.

With the migration to digital storage and digital publishing, it’s conceivable that publishers can then put their entire catalog into various databases that outlets and customers can access. Like iTunes a patron can browse though available texts and when they find one they want, they can order it up, have it printed and then shipped to them. In the future an avid reader might find himself walking into a little storefront that houses a Print on Demand book center with a list of titles he wants. Handing his list to a minimum wage-slave who is thankful he can work here and doesn’t have to flip burgers at McDonald’ he sits down and reads a magazine while he waits for his titles to be printed up and bound – just as easily as if he were ordering a pizza. The best part for him is that it costs way less than going to a major book retailer as the overhead expenses of having a large floor space for browsing, the personnel to manage a big store and most importantly the initial cost of ordering books to stock the store in the first place just don’t exist here. Perhaps the shop is just a counter, a few terminals for browsing titles and a backroom where the printers are - all staffed by a few kids paying their way through school.

Will this be a boon or a bane for libraries, though? It would now be possible for a person to walk into a small library and have nearly the entire repository of human writing at her fingertips. Since budgets are a major concern for libraries – perhaps they can cut back on costs of maintaining a large building, acquisitions and staffing – or perhaps not.

Unlike the retailers the upside of a library, especially a public library, is the fact that one doesn’t have to pay for books - unless of course, they return them late. So using Printing on Demand, when a patron is done with a text where does it go? It would be way to expensive to let the patron keep the text and therefore they would have to return it. In the case of popular books, multiple copies would need to be ordered to at meet demands and all this adds up to a need for storage, which negates the first benefit of being able to save money by only having to maintain a small location. Since the books would need to be stored, then someone would need to make sure they are checked in and out as well as accurately being cataloged and placed in the right locations so they are available for patrons. This then negates the third benefit of saving staff costs. However, print on demand would really help the acquisition department in being able to tailor their collection to the population they are serving by being able to get near instant feedback on what types of books that people would like to have – which is what good libraries already do anyways.

My argument is that print on demand, should it have an impact on library patronage could potentially hurt it if not effectively implemented. The reason I say this is that if it becomes really easy and inexpensive to be able to walk into a printers and order up all the books you want – then people might be more inclined to purchase their books rather than borrow them. Why go through the hassle of remembering due dates, having to deal with late fees and if you want to re-read the book or lend it to a friend down the road you can. However, it was also said that DVDs would kill the movie theaters because it can offer a near exact digital reproduction of the film in a home environment so why would people want to go out, pay inflated prices for tickets and popcorn when they can do it for less money at their leisure? DVDs have in fact not impacted moviegoers to a noticeable extent because there is another factor that wasn’t taken into consideration and that is the shared theater experience, which can’t easily be replicated in the home. Many people will comment that there is just something about physically going out to the movies and watching a film surrounded by an audience that makes it a unique and fun activity. The same thing can be said about libraries – there is something about just being able to go to one either to just wander amongst the stacks and browse the books or to meet up and work in a library as an information commons that can’t be replicated. Perhaps Print on Demand will instead help libraries if used as a way to supplement their collections. For example – a library might maintain it’s current holdings but then it can run off multiple copies of a new release – such as the Harry Potter books so there are many available to patrons. After a while, it can perhaps sell off the old copies as a secondary source of income – much like a video store does with surplus copies of new release titles. A library could also offer patrons a service where in addition to their current holdings they can browse an entire catalog of other titles that the library might not have – but that would be available for purchase so should someone see something they want while browsing, they don’t need to run out to a book seller but can pick it up in one location. This can also be used to bolster a library’s budget. Another possible method of implementation involves kiosks being set up where patrons can browse titles and then click a button to add them to a request queue, like an Amazon wish list. Then every quarter a board can meet and review the number of requests and then with a set budget, order the most demanded titles.

I’m really interested to see how libraries will deal with up and coming technologies and how they will impact The Library in general. Is it possible that information can move towards a new “Library at Alexandria” where all human knowledge is available for a person to browse – especially in a society where capitalism dictates the pace and direction of innovation or will it get to the point that without major social changes in our culture, libraries as we know them may die out.

Librarians, Squares and Alternate Words

2005-09-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

Just a quick posting while I wait for some software to be installed on a machine.

First - in my excitement about the finding the perfect program for managing my book collection I shared with with one of the librarians on campus who is responsible for archiving - who also found the program to be really neat - but that isn't the point of this story. The point is that while in the process of sharing with her, she noticed that I had a Sandman graphic novel listed in my collection - so she informed me that she has all of the Sandman books as part of the library collection. Wow... a librarian - who stereotypically is supposed to be a square - is talking to a dork (who is a different type of square) about comic books - and this surprises me greatly! I guess it shouldn't.

Growing up, my neighborhood library had a decent selection of graphic novels and comic books - and this is one of the first places I became acquainted with Matt Feazell's 1987 Cynicalman, The Paperback. So the fact that my hometown library has a book from some underground cartoonist who draws stick figure comics was pretty cool.

Actually - while doing some quick web searches, it's really neat to see how many librarians are into comic books. I'd love to do an informal poll one day to see what the percentage is and how it related to other fields. I'm not fanatical about them, but I like to pick up and follow some strange random titles.

The other quick random topic is I'd like to have the word "Bookatorium" accepted into the lexicon. It's a good word and I think it need to be used more. When I'm at work, and I need to wander over to the library, often I sign out as at the bookatorium, and everyone knows exactly where I am. Except around halloween, then it becomes the DIE-brary, because it's spookier.

Random Library Stuff - Comic Books

2005-09-11T08:09:00.000-05:00

Being a fan of comic books (because I am a big nerd, afterall) I picked up a copy of "Rex Libris" published by Slave Labor Graphics -

The astonishing story of the incomparable Rex Libris, Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library, and his unending struggle against the forces of ignorance and darkness. With the aid of an ancient god who lives beneath the library branch, Rex travels to the farthest reaches of the galaxy in search of overdue books. He must confront incredible foes, such as powerful alien warlords who refuse to pay their late fees. Wearing his super thick bottle glasses, and armed with an arsenal of high technology weapons, he strikes fear into recalcitrant borrowers, and can take on virtually any foe from zombies to renegade public-domain literary characters with aplomb.

So if you dig comics, or just randomness - check it out.

Personal Library Project - Background

2005-09-09T12:56:00.000-05:00

I was sitting around looking at our pile of books and I decided that it would be neat if I could create a decent inventory of them. I could have used an Excel spreadsheet with just the basic information like title, author and publishing date but I wanted something more detailed and and I wanted way less data entry – being inherently lazy. A few weeks ago I began a quest for a software package that was easy to use, fairly powerful and that could do a search for books based on ISBN, the cheaper the better since I don't have a huge budget to use a "professional" tool. I came across a program called Booxter for my mac which uses an iTunes like interface, can do ISBN searches on multiple sources such as amazon.com’s business server, the Library of Congress, the British Library etc… I also borrowed a barcode scanner from the library where I work to make the data entry aspect of the task that much easier. Book covers were a huge bonus and it costs $15 for registration.

To spare the bandwidth, I’ll drop a link to the screen capture. So click here! I use semi-translucent windows - so there is some noise underneith the image, it's not your computer, it's mine. :)

As you can see tons of other fields beyond just the basics– I particularly like the section for signed books since I often get a book signed when I see an author speak as sort of a “Kilroy was here” type of deal. And I like the lent out section as well – since I’m inclined to share my books with my friends and then forget all about them.

So that in a nutshell is my current project. As of today I have 543 books entered into my database – and that is about 1/3 of our collection – the easy 1/3 with barcodes and highly visible ISBNs. Jenna and I both have a ton of books that are pre-ISBN and don’t have LoC numbers as well – so each of those will need to be looked up and added manually. I also enjoy old books and have quite a collection of pre 1930 texts which will also require me to manually take pictures or scans of the covers, so I can have those as well.

And now for the semi-regular (well, I intend it to be) “Lesson of the day!” Be sure to say lesson of the day in a deep echoing voice to show it’s very important (but not the drag race or monster truck show type of important, that is a different voice)

ISBN – What is it? Well, it’s not a typo of the name of the play-right. (Nor did he write "An Enema for the People" – that is something totally different) ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number and is intended to be a commercial identifier for books. The ISBN standard was created in England in 1966 and accepted as an ISO Standard in 1970 (ISO 2108)

ISBNs are 10 digits long and contain 4 parts: 1) the country or orgin, the publisher, an item number and a checksum. For those who aren’t computer nerds – a checksum is simple means of maintaining data integrity by various means. It can be as simple as adding up all the digits and then storing the resultant – and to test parity someone goes back and reads the digits and if the resulting numbers match, everything was transmitted ok. Otherwise there was an error.

For more info on ISBN – check out http://www.isbn-international.org/en/index.html

And that’s it for me for now. ☺ Enjoy!

First post

2005-09-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Hello! Just a quick test post to see if I got the API settings right so I can post from my dashboard.

In english - I want to make sure I can use a widget on my laptop to post to my blog.