il faut cultiver notre jardin

I've been talking about it for months. It's been burrowing around in my brain, keeping me up at night. No, it's not the wedding (I'm feeling five-by-five as far as that goes). It has a special file folder on my desktop. I even have a codename for it. Project Reload: the irritating and insatiable need to (re)create an online presence, one more professional and centered.

Attending ALA for the first time in June 2010 has provided a useful albeit arbitrary deadline. My digital presence has stretched too thin over the last two years as I explored the internet and, really for the first time, treated it as a legitimate extension of my self. I have accounts all over the social web with varying user names and profiles but no central space to call my own. It would be nice to provide new contacts not just with a business card, but a URL to a personal web domain as well.

So I've decided to start over from scratch and attempt to employ what I've learned over the years. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to systematically remove myself from the web (as much as such a thing is possible). Footprints may remain, but much of the body will disappear. By March of next year, I hope to have a series of spaces set up and integrated into a unified digital space encompassing a new digital body: born again in the saving waters of internet protocol.

Six months may seem overly cautious (and in web years, such a long time!), but between now and then I plan to finish two SJSU courses, get married, go on a honeymoon, and make a 2 week trip to Florida. So I'll take this slow, being thorough and concise. The down time will also give me the chance to think about what matters most in terms of digital presence and what can be left behind. In the least, I'll simplify my digital lifestyle. But if all goes well, this endeavor will result in a space to call my own, my own corner of the internets, one centered on issues of importance to academic libraries and my growth as an information professional.

In the meantime, you can always reach me by email. As I come back online, I'll post links to the new material here, but consider this blog to be in the freezer for the time being. See you all on the flip side. =)

2005 Guenoc Zinfandel (central & coastal, CA)

Did you know that Zinfandel is one of the oldest vines in California? Up until the late nineties, it was also the most popular until cab sauv took over. This bottle explodes on the nose with a hot, spicy aroma tinged with raspberries and cedar chips. On the mouth, the flavor shifts almost entirely to the front of your palette: extremely dry with plums, a hint of oak, and a subtle finish of... I kid you not... cooked green beans. I had to drink the entire glass to be sure but, trust me, it's there. =)

Librarians of angelic disposition

In my reading for the reference course I'm taking, I came across the following quote from G. T. Clark (1904), a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library:

"Many of those coming to the library are unaccustomed to the use of its tools, unfamiliar with literature of the topic in hand and indiscriminating in the value of authorities. The reference librarian must make up for all these deficiencies and furthermore should be possessed of an angelic disposition, and be filled with an unquenchable desire to assist fellow beings."

I've got the desire part down, but my angelic disposition need some work. Something to strive for ;-)

-Clark, G.T. (February 1904). Reference work with the general public. Public Libraries 9, 58.

N. VA Community College Librarian (jobs I'd apply for...)

...once I get my MLIS. 'Til then, I can simply hope this will be the right match for someone else. Good hunting.

Northern Virginia Community College, Manassas, VA: Librarian

Job Description: Provide reference services, collection development, and bibliographic instruction using traditional tools and emerging technological sources. Develop and maintain reference and instructional resources including web-based materials. Supervise library specialists in a team-oriented environment. Serve on college and state committees.

Job Requirements: Required: ALA accredited MLS. Strong supervisory/management skills; excellent written and oral communication skills. Knowledge of networked computers, online library systems, the internet, electronic databases and HTML. Ability to interact effectively with diverse students, faculty, staff and library patrons. Strong service orientation.

Base Pay: $60,161 - $65,350

Link to LibGig posting

2007 Trapiche Broquel Malbec (Mendoza, Argentina)

For a wine so dark, it carries a surprising sweetness and lightness to the palette. Gamey on the nose with a hint of mint and "leafiness" (I bet this would go great with lamb). Pepper hits the tongue but quickly softens into a blackberry sweetness. Light on the tannins, with a strong cocoa finish. For just under $16, this bottle is worth stocking up on, so... off to BevMo!

wading into a digital Jordan

The recent acquisition of Friendfeed by Facebook sent tremors through the small community of users that inhabit the lifestreaming service. Tremors not so much generated by fear [of assimilation] as by the shuffling and displacement of users reevaluating their positioning in the public spaces of the internets. The thought that Friendfeed could go offline caused many users to realize how deep they had entrenched themselves in the real-time web and, conversely, how far they'd stepped away from that staple of web 2.0: blogging.

For those who have never been in its flow, Friendfeed is a lifestreaming service that does two things very well: (1) it consolidates all your online activity: postings, comments, bookmarks, status updates, shared items; and (2) it provides a shared space for [just short of real-time] conversations about items you share. (For more information, see this post).

The popularity of Friendfeed and other real-time-web-like services (Twitter, Google Wave, Pub Sub Hubbub) has moved many digizens away from the "traditional" blog post (long prose) in favor of immersion in the flow: commenting, chatting, and microblogging as fast as one can type. And who can blame them? Friendfeed and Twitter are interactive, dynamic, free-flowing conversations that often travel in curious and unexpected directions. While this doesn't diminish the value of a well-crafted blog post, we are by nature social creatures and nature will out.

(For more information: Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis, and Anil Dash discussed this last week on twit.tv. I'd also recommend reading ars technica's and TechCrunch's write ups.)

I, too, have neglected my relationship with blogging, having made it easy (too easy) to communicate real-time with others via desktop apps like Twhirl and Pidgin. The uber-connectedness of it all is exhilarating. As a filter, I limit my exposure to the flow to only those times when I have my laptop open, though as one friend points out, perhaps I should consider having another dedicated solely to flow and reserve my laptop for more static online tasks. Still, by the time I've finished the conversation, there is little desire left in me to begin writing a blog post, having already said what I needed to say to exactly those people I wanted to say it to.

As the folks at twit.tv point out, there is something to be said about having a dedicated space for your conversations. As elegant and useful as Friendfeed is, your lifestream is still stored on their servers. With a blog (on your own domain), you control and store your own material. Perhaps, there could be a way to integrate the real-time web with the creation of blog posts. Could you, reader, watch as I type and edit this post, make recommendations and share in the experience? And could all this be stored on my own server? (ha! if anything, the posts would be worth reading ;-).

This is all to say: if the rebirth of Friendfeed into whatever form the karma of the collective chooses also brings about a resurgence of long-post blogging, I welcome the change and hope it gives life to more intimate forms of creation and conversation while still retaining the beauty of crafted and finessed prose.

Two articles on undergraduate information retrieval

From the desk of "what I've been reading lately..."

Dahl, C. (2009). Undergraduate research in the public domain: the evaluation of non-academic sources online. Reference Services Review, 37(2), 155-163.

Dahl finds that authority, accuracy, currency, coverage, and objectivity (as evaluative criteria for academic resources) are not always applicable to evaluating sources in the online public domain (blogs, wikis, forums, etc). Instead, she encourages librarians to look at whether online resources are at a level of scholarship appropriate to the task, support the argument of the assignment, add value, and present legitimate information. Unfortunately, many faculty members restrict students from using internet resources, such as Google Scholar, and in the worst-case situations, prohibit the use of anything except books and journals found in the library in hardcopy format. Dalh discusses the dangers of approaching information retrieval in this manner. As she states, "revisions to evaluative criteria for non-academic items in the public domain must be based on a belief that such items can be valid resources for undergraduate research, and must shift the focus to whether or not the item is suitable for the purpose at hand, rather than whether or not it is, traditionally-speaking, academic" (160).


Howland, J. L., Wright, T. C., Boughan, R. A., & Roberts, B. C. (2009). How scholarly is Google Scholar? A comparison to library databases. College & Research Libraries, 70(3), 227-234.

Howland et al. compared the search results of Google Scholar with 7 library databases (e.g. JSTOR, Medline, PsycINFO, etc) and found that Google Scholar on average was 17.6% "more scholarly" than the databases. Of the highest interest to me as I read this article, the authors of study find that while Google Scholar returned "millions of hits, many of which are spurious at best" and the library database returned only "a few thousand results that are more focused to the query", "the power of ordering results by relevancy, combined with the fact that very few people ever go beyond the third page of results, creates a searcher-imposed higher level of precision for any search engine" ... and Google is better at moving the most relevant results to the top. In short, Google Scholar did a better job at both precision and recall than the library databases.

2007 Rheingau riesling spätlese (ed. Maximilian)

This off-dry, German riesling has a rounded, full-bodied weight (almost creamy across the sides of your tongue), with hints of melon on the nose and ripe orange on the palette. There's a suspicious metallic taste on the finish, but nothing a bit of chilling won't cover up (hey, you do what you can with what you have). Not a bad deal at $8.

awol

Almost an entire month since a post. Mea culpa. It sounds surprising to say it, but the reason I'm not writing here is because I'm too busy writing. I have a pile of journal article reviews waiting to make their way into a blog post and a few empty bottles of wine to review =). Did I mention the wedding is 4 1/2 months away? Late and soon, getting and spending...

convergence and overload

If there are any gray hairs on my head planning to make an appearance, now would be the time to do so. In addition to the usual rigors of a Masters program, I'm now essentially working two jobs: the usual metadata/office manager/HR surrogate/IT position and a new copy cataloging/student supervisor position. Without getting into the details of the situation, I took advantage of a hiring freeze to voluntarily move into an open position for a special cataloging project in the offsite library. Aside from getting to do actual cataloging work (I'm one of those people who enjoys reading through AACR2 in my downtime), I supervise students: both good additions to the resume. The downside of the entire situation is that for job #1 (the office manager position), I'm trying to do a week's worth of work in 2 days. Perfectly doable except when emergencies crop up. All and all, I really have no grounds to complain about the situation. I'm doing real librarian work (albeit paraprofessional) and it's a step up from the previous position.

But add to that (and the current MLIS course on information retrieval systems) the fact that the parental units are coming into town tomorrow for wedding planning and I have one hectic week to make it through.

All this leads me to say that I've not forgotten you, dear reader. My mind continues to dwell on thoughts of disengaging and cultivating a private life. In fact, the lack of words here may be due to the fact that I'm spending more ink in my journals (analog style!). Next on my list of things to do include wiping my RSS reader subscriptions and starting from scratch, removing myself from social sites that no longer provide ROI (Twitter is on that list, btw), and generally working to improve my online activities so that, at least in a professional capacity, I have an organized and unified digital presence before I complete my Masters. It's forced and artificial, I know, but it's necessary. And what part of my personality isn't forced? (those who know me in RL can attest to this)

Until next time (when I plan to talk more about disengagement... if a wine post doesn't make an appearance)...

(image from massdistraction)

nations regressing into illiteracy

I'm spending today doing a marathon reading of Alex Wright's Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. We've already worked our way through the libraries of Alexandria and China, Cassiodorus's Vivarium, the monasteries of Hibernia, Gutenberg's invention of 1458, Bacon's tripartite division of knowledge, Diderot's revolutionary encyclopedia, Linnaeus's taxonomy, Jefferson's personal library, Panizzi's upheaval of the British Museum, Cutter's numbers, Dewey's decimals, and Ranganathan's facets.

I'm up to chapter 11 where he discusses early ideas about what the internets could have been. This sentence shocked me from my reading-induced trance:

"We might do well to remember, however, that throughout human history the information technologies that mattered most rarely left halcyon outcomes in their wake; for the most part, they left trails of wrenching disruption: burned-out libraries, once-civilized nations regressing into illiteracy, and episodes of blood-curling violence. For all the populist optimism surrounding today's Web, a happy ending is far from guaranteed." (p. 183-4)

Some apocalyptic forecasting for your weekend daydreams. =)

S. Bennett on libraries and learning

Bennett, S. (2009). Libraries and learning: a history of paradigm change. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 9(2), 181-197.

In this article, Bennett focuses on the third of three paradigms of space-management in libraries: reader-centered, books-centered, and learning-centered. The first is exemplified by the monasteries and scriptoria of medieval Europe and the second by the repositories of academic libraries in the first half of the twentieth century. The third paradigm is illustrated by the "learning commons" of contemporary academic libraries: spaces that facilitate ready access to [digital] information, collaboration, and what Bennett calls "intentional learning." By providing spaces in which students actively learn (preferrably self-motivated), libraries can transform from being service providers [of information] to learning-enablers.

Bennett stresses the need for librarians to start thinking like educators as opposed to service providers. The superabundance of information in non-print format shifts the space-paradigm back to a user- (rather than book-) focussed need. In other words, libraries as buildings serve the academic community more by providing spaces in which students use information (collaborate and learn from it) than by housing collections.

Two things I would like to add:

-A total paradigm shift away from a book-centered space requires almost complete digital access to all the world's information. Despite Google's best intentions, this is still many years from realization. But as that singularity approaches, I expect libraries will continue to shrink on-site collections to those most basic and highly-circulated materials while moving low-use materials to off-site repositories and electronic formats thus increasing available space for learning-centered activities. In the two universities I've worked at, this has certainly been the trend (special collections excepted).

-Bennett differentiates between creating spaces for "intentional or autonomous learning" and instruction-motivated learning in that the latter denotes a service activity while the former does not. I do not think that distinction is so clearly divided. Bennett's dichotomy is based on the assumption that a "mastery" of information is possible at some level (either individually or technologically) and I suspect that many of those autonomous learners still need help wading through the deepening waters of available resources. Thus learning-centered spaces will still need to provide some degree of reference and/or technical support. That said, I do agree that when considering how to best use library spaces, we should pull more heavily from university-wide learning objectives rather than those of individual departments or courses.

IF y(n+1) > yn THEN converge

Everything that has been rising in my mind came to a head this weekend. Tiffany and I drove up to wine country north of Santa Barbara, bought a few bottles of wine, visited the Sunday arts fair at Stearns Wharf, drove the CA-1 through Malibu, stopped to take a hike up to Point Dume, and (as by now you've heard) got engaged. The all but complete disconnectedness of the weekend (not even cell phone coverage for most of the time) allowed my mind to wade into the deeper waters of my more recent preoccupations; and the intense focus on the task at hand gave free reign for my subconscious (for lack of a better term) to settle my priorities/values into a natural order (natural as opposed to forcibly reasoned which is by far my preferred MO). Those thoughts:

The loss of a private life. I've never given much time to cultivating a private life but reading Sontag's journals makes me wish I had. The internet has provided an efficient outlet for my exhibitionist tendencies but between Twitter, Facebook, et al., I think I've reached a threshold of [sometimes vacuous] output.

Information overload despite filters. I'm proud of the filters I've set up online and off. Considering the number of information channels I plug myself into, I'm relatively overload-free. But despite these, I'm feeling the pressure again and I'm not sure I have the energy or the professional inclination to continue tightening and tweaking the pipes. It may be time to tear out the plumbing all together and rebuild from the ground up.

The need for a professional online presence. Part of that rebuilding process would involve building a new digital space, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, but that project has been put on hold due to wedding plans =) I recognize that I should be turning my thoughts toward professional librarianship more often than I do but the lack of focus is keeping me at bay, Prufrock-style (information literacy, digital copyright issues, web tech, oh my!).

So until I get my act together, be prepared for more wine notes, perhaps some thoughts on Harold Bloom, and maybe a dose of poetry. Blogging starts with trying and ends with focus. Let's see if I can get from one to the next. Talk soon...

2005 Black Mountain Malbec (Napa, CA)

(Father, it has been 5 weeks since my last wine post. Mea cupla.) While I was in the check out line at Trader Joe's, the cashier did the oddest thing. Before she swiped my bottle of wine across the barcode reader, she crossed herself! Whatever her reason for that incongruous act, the magic worked because this bottle is delish. The color of dark, deep red...(no, it can't be). On the nose, fruit and dried black tea leaves that become even more apparent after decanting for an hour. On the mouth, a surprise: peaches sautéed in port hidden beneath raspberries, plums, and rich tannins. Ftw! The whole experience lacks a mid-palette and a long finish, but for under $5, you couldn't ask for a better bargain.

Congratulations, Jeffrey!

Congratulations to my younger brother, Jeffrey, who graduated from the University of South Florida this past weekend! I'm so proud that you made it through to the end. It wasn't the easiest road, but trust me, you'll be glad you did it.

So, does anyone out there need a recent-college grad with a B.S. in Management and Information Systems? =)