Where do we go from here?

I'm no longer constrained to a particular posting schedule for class, but I do think I'll probably keep up with this at least until I graduate. It's a useful place to gather my thoughts and prod ideas into a semblance of coherance. Work on final project for intro to tech has been challenging - sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a frustrating way. 

I don't really feel that the amount of practical experience we've gained through a few projects is enough to call myself experienced at web design, or even really conversant... but it has given me an appreciation of the amount of work it takes to maintain a complex site, especially to host something as complex as most libraries do, with online catalogs, database subscriptions etc.

IT work... not my forte, but I'm glad to be a bit more knowledgeable about it. If nothing else I can appreciate a bit more of the conversation between the family tech geeks.

I have a new favorite quote.

Courtesy of  Max Evans article in Volume 70 of American Archivist, Archives of the People, by the People, for the People, and it is this:


"It is not just minimum metadata; it is extensible metadata."

Big Brother is Listening OR Consumer Culture Strikes Again

I have a smartphone, and I am generally very cautious about my use of the GPS locator, and when and how I post information to social media about my physical location or activities.   While there are many beneficial uses for GPS, there are also potential drawbacks. This article from Tech Republic points to another culprit I hadn't even considered - information picked up through the microphone.

On the surface, a nice idea: I get consumer loyalty credit for entering a retail chain. But there is, as one of the quoted panelists discusses, a distressing lack of upfront information about how this gathered data is being used, and how control of the information capture is actually handled.

It's a bit like the risk that by signing up for a website that gives access to coupons, for example, I may inadvertently be exposing my online banking information accessed from the same computer and browser....except my phone is much more linked to my physical person, not just to my residence or workplace. In fact, I would even say that my smart phone is much more integrated into my daily life than even my laptop.

I find this new twist in consumerism subtly disturbing, though I suspect it is a trend that is only just beginning.

I caved....

...and got the Adobe creative suite 5 .  They had cool tutorial videos for Photoshop too.  I could spend a day on their site, I really really could.

Javascript is going to be the bane of my existence...

I can already tell. 

Feeling a bit overwhelmed this week.  This is a heck of a lot of new information to be processing, and I feel like I'm not grasping it well enough to move forward at the pace required.  We somehow passed from, "Oh, yeah, I get this - no problem!" to "I'm completely lost and confused" somewhere in the last five days - and there was absoloutely nothing in between. 

It's like my brain went from first gear to third and completely burned out the clutch. 

Automated shelf reading?

Okay, I may be a tad bit behind the news curve on this one, but does anybody else think this has real potential?  Article couresy of wiredcampus is here.  (Thanks Chris, for the heads up!)

Dickinson Magazine Spring 2011...

Features an article called "Parsing the Past" about alumni archivists! Props to my alma mater for a feature piece, though it appears that the web content and print content are slightly different.

It's kind of nice to know that I have a tradition, of sorts, to be following here!  I may also have a chance to put my skills to some use in the near future, as I have been asked to be a part of the organizational team commemorating the 60th anniversary of Dickinson Christian Fellowship.  Sounds like an excuse to go diggining for photos and other documentation in the school archive.

Incidentally, Waidner-Spahr is the first library at which I had a paying job. (Student work study wages, but still...)  I wonder if anyone I knew is still working there.

(Edit: Yes, there are!!)

Features Expo... kinda

So I finally decided I really need to explore some of the features blogspot has to offer.  I've played around some with the gadgets, the displayed color scheme and found a few blogs, belonging to folks I know, to follow.  If I intend to keep this up it's about time I stopped being quite so minimalist in how I use the tools here.

This will likely be an evolution in progress.

I will say that in spite of myself, I do enjoy the fish...

CSS Ahoy

Having played with Dreamweaver in the lab and a bit with Kompozer, I'm still undcided about which coding tool I like better. For once I didn't have to mentally shift gears in the middle of on campus weekend, since both courses were dealing with similar subject material - EAD is an interesting challenge, though the archivists toolkit ability to export EAD code is somewhat flawed...  I think I'm going to reserve judgement until end of term.

National Archive + Social Media

So I discovered that the US National Archive has a fun feature on their website called Today's Document.  They showcase something significant to the calendar date from the archive holdings.  They even have a mobile app for it!

Sadly, I have not yet figured out how to view/retrieve my favorite documents as catalogued in my app on my regular computer screen.  A data storage issue (tracking account info?), a developmental oversight (too much of a hassle?)  ... I can't figure it out. I still want to see if it's possible, and I haven't given up yet... I wnder if they'll accept this idea as a suggestion/ improvement or if I'm the only dork who think that would be a neat thing to be able to do?

Kudos to the Archive for a great PR trick though!

Why I love the Smithsonian

Okay, I promised myself more archival realted items in my next post, but I just can't help myself...

The Smithsonian Institue is hosting a museum exhibit on videogames in 2012!

I abhor large cities, but I'm starting to wonder if I can manage a federal internship in DC next year....

(Also, props to tech republic as another great tech information hub!)

Most. Awesome. Museum. Concept. Ever.

The computer history museum. I need to talk to Sara Lott, whose title is software archivist.  I am intensely curious about her job description...   Also Heather Yeager whose title is Digital Media Archivist


For the news related part of this post, the above link came from an article about the decomissioning of historic domain names, and why they might be worth preserving.

Justifying once again the need for increased technological awareness in the archival profession.

(Making me wish  I had room in my schedule for more classes, actually.)

Farewell to February

The shortest month, but an interesting one for me...

I had the opportunity to hear two archivists speak to audiences advocating  both their collections and the profession.

Keith Bingham spoke about the life of Carter G. Woodson and the legacy he left in the form of African American History Month.

And Edward C. Papenfuse spoke about the acquisition by the Maryland state archives of an original draft of a speech by George Washington.

Both gentlemen were inspiring and educational presenters, as well as supportive and encouraging of an aspring future professional.

Social Networking vs. Live networking

And I'm back once again to zdnet.com. What can I say? It's a decent information hub. This time I found rather a sad commentary on networking. I find it particularly distressing that the authors felt it a necessity to state that "The base lesson is that what may be OK online (for example, jumping into the middle of a Twitter or Facebook thread) does not always translate to the real-world."

...  Really?   This isn't OBVIOUS?  ...

It hurts my brain that there must be a subset of the population to whom this is not readily apparent.  (Or why would anyone have felt the need to write such an article?)  Isn't this just playing to the sterotype that all technophiles must be socially awkward and therefore require such advice?

But as social networking takes a larger role in how businesses operate  and as libraries as information service providers become more closely entwined with the development of information technologies the issue will become more pressing. Actually, I think Dion Hinchcliffe put it rather well in the article when he said: 

"Also, the leading benefit [of social collaboration] is clearly information sharing. In work environments where information is the most potent currency, such as knowledge workers (which are the backbone of the modern economy), therefore social business is most likely to provide the highest value."

Rather interesting possibilities for libraries there, I think.

* On a personal note: Why is it that the less sleep I get the more philosophically minded I become?

Wikis as the ultimate democracy?

This weeks lecture topic: Blogs, Wikis, and Social Computing

I was doing a bit of casual digging (yes, I am aware of the irony) and came across this statement - "Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web..."

Not to be pigeonholed into a single opinion I also wound up reading:

Governance, Organization, and Democracy on the Internet: The Iron Law and the

Evolution of Wikipedia ( Piotr Konieczny, Sociological Forum, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2009  DOI :10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.01090.x)

In addition to learning about  Robert Michels, I think my favorite actual term discussed for a wiki is actually  "adhocracy".

I'm not sure that I totally buy democracy though... I need to do more digging.

I think I have never enjoyed Jeopardy quite so much...

Dear IBM:  I am thoroughly impressed! Watson has dominated the human competition in the final round. I am in sympathy with competitor Ken Jennings - and will welcome our new computer overlords...

(Eventually. Grudgingly. Maybe.)

In all seriousness - a fantastic exhibition match. I am EXCITED to have seen this in my lifetime! The only thing better would have been to be in the audience.

The language recognition, the ability to recognize idom and wordplay is fascinating - Watson is certainly a well designed, well coded machine.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how its voice gave it tangible personification, in spite of a lack of facial features. Even Alex Trebek refered to it as "he" once or twice. As far as its ability for data retrieval and analysis, there were a few notable instances where the humans still took the advantage (at least temporarily).

An interesting case study in rapid information retrieval between humans and computers.  Might shed some interesting light on the argument that Google can replace reference librarians on the basis of cost savings alone. Watson may have answered the majority of questions correctly, but the instances where it failed were odd...not what I expected. Not to mention - it's hardly cheap!

 I really hope this gets re-aired for more analysis!

Warning: Rant ahead.

The one serious issue I am having with my current academic persuit is the sheer number of accounts and login information I now need to maintain.  In addition to my Pitt student login I also have:

Omeka
Jing
Screencast
RefWorks
Scopus
Blogger
ePrints

Not to mention Facebook, which I joined my first term (under some duress) because it was the preferred method of group communication, in addition to my own email accounts and personal blog, (which has suffered some on hiatus) which I  have been maintaining since 2001.

They really need to consider converting our student ID's into something like a CAC card to maintain and retrieve all the protected information we need to remember and access as a part of our student activities!

the benefits of tagging, social bookmarking and other user centered contributions

I found yet another interesting article via zdnet.com about assessing the business benefits of social business .

If you read this article replacing Enterprise 2.0 with Library 2.0 it could in many ways stand as proxy for any of a dozen articles I've perused in the course of my library studies thus far including similar concerns for cost benefits analysis, integration, security measures... even the statement that   " there’s still enough uncertainty to make more conservative organizations take a wait and see approach, even as many of them that I speak with now realize that broad deployment of social tools is now primarily a timing issue."

It's that sense of inevitability that makes me wonder why, if multiple disciplines are holding essentially the same dialogue, there isn't more conversation going on across disciplines than I've encountered thus far. Of course it may be that I am  simply not looking exhaustively as I might, but as much of a hot topic as this has become, it shouldn't be too difficult to uncover such collaboration attempts. To harken back to an earlier post on branding, how much do we treat a library like any other corporate venture in order increase customer satisfaction?

tagging is not just for graffiti artists anymore

An interesting discussion this week on why tagging will not replace cataloging as a method of describing and locating items in a library collection. (Which boils down, in its essentials, to  the difference between a taxonomy and a folksonomy). There were some interesting comments regarding how a folksonomy might be used to augment a taxonomy, i.e how the inclusion of tagging might improve a users satisfaction with an Online Public Access Catalog experience.

One comment by the instructor - that if the idea of a folksonomy gained some acceptance in the profession that Law and Medical libraries would likely be among the last adapters - got me thinking.

I can completely understand that lawyers and doctors by the nature of thier professions are required to be precise in their communications, and would likely be least satisfied with such a mutable arrangement system as a tag cloud - but they are also, I imagine, likely to be the best potential producers of a folksonomy with some underlying structure - a hybrid between a rigid taxonomy and a completely free form stream of consciousness association. Something which might stand a chance of combining greater flexibility of tagging with a commonly known, well accepted, not to mention precise, professional vocabulary that resembles a taxonomy in that it provides a known (or knowable) structure. Maybe not a supertype-subtype arrangement, but an arrangement none the less...

Maybe that's just the insomnia and cold medicine talking, but I can't get the concept out of my head.

A video tutorial!

In the process of making which I learn what zotero is and how to capture video....



Also that I hate the sound of my recorded voice and I absoloutely MUST get a better microphone if I am going to keep doing this!!

This week's topic: storage media and devices

This weeks lecture topic covered the basics of computer related data storage.
Kilobyte, Megabyte, Terabyte... these things I am familiar with, so I decided to do some digging on something I was a less familar with:  Exabyte storage.  (And let me just say for the record that I LOVE zdnet.com for tech news.)

So... a very interesting article appeared today about a new tape drive using Barium-Ferrite (BaFe) tape.  I am not a chemist, but it sounds from the article like a very interesting development indeed because it, apprently, does not rust.  This posits some interesting potential benefits for archival quality storage of born digital documents, especially in high-humidity environments.  Maybe not in the short-term, due to expense, but if the affordability curve of technological developments remains true to form over time, in five years, or ten, it will not only be more affordable, but also (one hopes) have a documented performance records that lives up to expectations. 

Open Source Software

This weeks topic: Open Source Software - in libraries and in education.  The star attraction for discussion was, (as far as open source) of course Linux. The one I found most intriguing in the course of my research however, was Evergreen.  Open source by libraries for libraries! They've also kept rather an interesting timeline of early adopters.

While I am impressed at the ingenuity, flexibility and affordability of open source options, I must admit I find them a bit intimidating. I'm not a luddite by any means, but to draw another analogy: there is a difference between an oil change and an engine re-build.  I have great respect for people who have the skills to program these tools, but I doubt I will ever be much more than a well educated user.

My hat is off to you, technology innovators!

I  don't ordinarily enjoy blogs that emote rather than inform, but I'm going to break my own rule and vent for a minute about Google.

[Soapbox] Dear Google: Why must all your web searches function like a fire hose? I'll grant you that Google Scholar does an admirable job of keeping out non-academic sources, but you still need to work on ranking your search results by relevance. The algorithm you are currently using returned a rather impenetrable (at least to me) ordering of items. Pardon me for being under the impression that the most relevant items should appear at the top of the list. It seems I was mistaken - proving yet again that a thinking human being cannot be replaced by a "thinking" machine. [/Soapbox]

Actually not a bad argument for why we still need actual reference librarians, and not just computerized catalogs.

(Edit: Not that I think Google is entirely useless. They are doing some pretty neat stuff tracking flu trends, for example. )

Branding

Back to the issue touched on in the pre-holiday post - exploring public perceptions. Our lengthy , but interesting reading assignment included OCLC's Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources.  

Firstly, I was impressed (and I'll admit a bit surprised) at the diversity of voluntary respondents they succeeded in reaching succesfully. Kudos to the design and implementation team on that effort!

Secondly, some of the findings that caught my attention corroborate a favorite saying of a good friend and department head at my previous institution when referring to the value-add of librarians vs. the internet in an information search: "Google gets the easy questions; we get the hard ones."

• Finding of interest 1)  The survey findings indicate that 84 percent of information searches begin with a search engine. [Emphasis added].
  
    
• Finding of interest 2) Researching specific reference books is the second most frequent library activity conducted annually.
• Finding of interest 3) Overwhelmingly, respondents from all geographic regions and across U.S. age groups indicate the librarian is the first choice when seeking assistance at the library.

The difficulty pointed out by the data analysis of the report seems to be the information seekers who never consider the library or librarians as a resource in the first place.

• Finding of interest 4) Most respondents indicated they have not sought help (64 percent) when using library resources.

 It seems from scanning the included respondent comments to be due in significant part to a lack of awareness (Or I might possibly argue -only slightly tongue in cheek - attention span.) when it comes to services offered.  Question of the week: How much do we need to treat cultural institutions like a for-profit business model in order to raise "brand awareness?"

Remembering A Great Man

A link to TIME magazine's archive of articles on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  http://www.time.com/time/archive/collections/0,21428,c_mlk,00.shtml

A link from the National Archives discussing Dr. King's deposition on copyright infringement
http://www.archives.gov/northeast/nyc/exhibits/mlk.html

And a link to Stanford's collection of his papers
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/online_king_records_access_okra/

The role of archives in preserving social memory is especially significant when we pause to reflect on the very lasting impact a single person can have when their acchievements are celebrated rather than allowed to be forgotten.

What does your operating system say about you?

The lecture for week two began with a brief history of Mac and Microsoft and their OS rivalry, and an interesting (I thought) comment by the instructor, to the effect that he uses different browser applications for different tasks.

That got me thinking: Apple and Microsoft have their own deveoted followings, and popular perceptions that follow with them. Assuming you are working for an institution with the freedom to choose a software provider and not one locked into a service contract, what do your choices in technology say about your institution to the tech savvy public?

An Introduction

This blog is a requirement of my mandatory technology course for Archives and Records Management.  I suspect as things progress and I develop more proficiency it will become almost second nature to record significant items here.

I'm already kind of regretting not having done this sooner, in order to capture experiences, discussions and key components from earlier courses. Live and learn, I suppose.