jacqueline's web-log / bitácora de jacqueline

it's all over

2010-01-03T15:20:00.004-05:00

...well, come on. I haven't posted since MAY. The focus of this blog is too narrow, especially since I'm not a working librarian, and it's too strictly factual. Or sometimes not. This blog never did decide what it wanted to be, and that makes for a mediocre blog.

all these things that i do is a blog -- well, a microblog -- with a broader range and shorter posts. Tumblr offers simpler, easier ways to post all kinds of different things, so I guess it'll be more multimedia, too. I hope you enjoy it.

Matar a tu lector RSS (English in previous post)

2009-05-15T08:13:00.005-04:00

Este artículo de Farhad Manjoo, periodista tecnológico de la revista Slate, es sobre los lectores RSS y como son innecesarios. Es decir, que el escritor ha encontrado una manera de seguir todos sus sitios preferidos sin usar ningún lector RSS. Me divertí mucho leyendolo. Aunque he usado Google Reader y My Yahoo! durante unos años, nunca he sido una usuaria habitual. Normalmente, los ignoro; a veces, me dan un sentimiento desgradable de dejar mis responsabilidades, de ser floja, y convierten algo que debe ser divertido - encontrar cosas nuevas y interesantes en la Web - en una tarea tan aburrida como ver mi e-mail de trabajo (cuando tenía trabajo).

La estrategia de Manjoo es muy simple: organizar sus marcadores dentro del navegador según cuantas veces a la semana los lee, y usar el botón medio del raton para abrirlos en pestañas diferentes. (Si no sabes lo que pasa cuando abres una enlace con el botón medio, hazlo. Te esperaré.)

Mi problema con RSS siempre ha sido así: ya sé que sitios quiero visitar. Sé que sitios voy a visitar. Voy a recordar un sitio que tiene información interesante y útil. ¿Porque, entonces, necesito un lector RSS para darme la lata? Hasta ahora, he utilizado Delicious y la historia de mi navegador para ir a donde quiero, pero voy a utilizar la estrategia de Manjoo a ver como funciona.

Kill Your RSS Reader

2009-05-14T09:34:00.003-04:00

This article by Slate magazine's tech guy, Farhad Manjoo, is all about how RSS readers, championed by many as the only way to stay up-to-date on all your fave blogs and sites, are really unnecessary, not to mention annoying. I loved reading it. I have designed two RSS pages, on Yahoo! and on Google, over the past couple years, but I've never become a dedicated user of them. At best, I ignore them; at worst, they give me an unpleasant feeling of slackery and laziness, making something that should be fun - finding cool info on the web - as much of a chore as checking my work email (well, back when I had a job).

Manjoo's strategy for keeping up with the Joneses is a more sophisticated version of what I already do: he organizes the bookmarks in his browser according to how often he visits a site, and then opens them all up in the same window using the middle mouse button. (If you don't know what happens when you click on a link with the middle mouse button, go try it. I'll wait.)

My problem with RSS readers has always been: I already know what sites I want to visit. I already know what sites I'm going to visit. If a site has useful and interesting information, I'm unlikely to forget about it, so why do I need an RSS reader nagging me to do it? Until now I've been relying more on Delicious and my browser history to get me where I want to go, but I'm going to try this bookmark strategy. Let's see how it works.

Notas de una reunión con Nieves González en el 15 de abril 2009 (scroll down for English)

2009-04-23T14:20:00.019-04:00

★IWETEL★

Doñana - Director de Biblioteca

*bib.us.es → más noticias

[friendfeed]

shelving: colocación y prestamo
and
circ.

Ayudante de circulación -
Shelving + Circ. Asst.

suministrar libros (mejor que recuperar)
deliver books

tareas encuadernación menor
-minor book repairs

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
online university.

licenciaturas 2nd
→documentación

Master
Sociado de Information y...

"Master Online en Documentación Digital"

Oposiciones:

Auxiliares
Tecnicos
Ayudantes
Facultativo

NOTAS EN ESPAÑOL

Nieves González, Bibliotecaria de la Universidad de Sevilla y profesora de Biblioteconomía de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, amablemente aceptó quedar conmigo el 15 de abril. Tenía muchas ganas de conocerla y de preguntarle muchas cosas sobre documentación en España y sobre todo en Andalucia, y no me falló.

Estabamos de acuerdo que me beneficiaría con un curso español de algunos aspectos de documentación, y hablamos de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, que ofrece una licenciatura de segundo ciclo en documentación, y del Master Online en Documentación Digital de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Nieves también mencionó los cursos de Master y Experto en E-Learning de la Universidad de Sevilla. Y actualmente estoy considerando estas opciónes.

Además hablamos de la importancia de tener una identidad digital. Nieves me introdució a friendfeed, una herramienta para seguir las actividades de sus amigos y compañeros en linea, en Facebook, Twitter, etc. La verdad es que aún no he decidido usar esta herramienta; todavía no tengo una cuenta Twitter (aunque considero hacer una casi cada día) y es bastante fácil seguir a mis amigos en Facebook, y seguir blogs en Google Reader. ¿Hay alguien en friendfeed? ¡Contadme!

Gracias a Nieves ahora tengo un poco de información sobre las oposiciones para trabajar en una biblioteca, que me dan mucho miedo, por que no las tenemos en Canadá. Me recomendó que me inscribiera en IWETEL, un listserv para documentalistas. Y, por fin, he terminado mi curriculum español con el vocabulario útil que Nieves me dio. ¡Muchisimas gracias, Nieves!

NOTES IN ENGLISH

Nieves González, Librarian at the University of Seville and professor of Library Science at the University of Pablo Olavide, kindly agreed to a meeting with me on the 15th of April. I was eager to meet with her and ask lots of questions about the information professions in Spain, and in Andalusia most of all. She didn't disappoint.

We both agreed that I would benefit from an info-related course in Spanish for vocabulary and practice. I am in desperate need of both. We talked about many courses, among them a graduate program in information studies from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (an online university), and the Master Online en Documentación Digital of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Closer to home, the University of Seville offers courses towards a Master y Experto en E-Learning. I'm still considering these options.

We also spoke of the importance of having a digital identity. This was familiar territory from library school, but nonetheless important to discuss. She introduced me to friendfeed, a tool for following the online activities of your friends and colleagues on various social networking sites. Since I'm still a Twitter holdout (though I think about it daily), I'm not sure if I really need this tool. It's easy enough to follow people on Facebook, and blogs can be followed in Google reader. I guess I'll think it over. If any of you are on friendfeed, please let me know!

Thanks to Nieves I finally have some information on the Oposiciones, scary Spanish government exams that you have to take to work in any public or government library here. She recommended that I subscribe to IWETEL, a listserv for information professionals. And, I was finally able to finish my Spanish curriculum thanks to her vocabulary help. Thanks so much, Nieves!

Salamanca Public Library

2009-04-11T11:22:00.008-04:00

I recently returned from a camping trip to the interior of Spain with my husband and two friends. We visited Toledo, Segovia, Avila, and Salamanca. Salamanca is known for its university, which has produced many famous minds. Among the must-sees in Salamanca, or so say the guidebooks, is a structure called the "casa de las conchas", a building decorated with shells -- not real ones, though. We eventually found it, and it turns out that its other name is "Biblioteca Publica".

According to the library's website, this library was inaugurated in 1993. Check out the entrace hall and weep.

I wanted to take some pictures of the interior of the library, but the librarians weren't too thrilled at the sight of my camera. I can't blame them, really: the atmosphere inside was so quiet and studious I felt like a jerk just walking around. I can report that they have made wonderful use of the space. Lots of windows and simple, modern design made everything feel light, spacious and airy.

Read more about the Casa de las Conchas on Wikipedia (Spanish only).

wordle UPDATED

2009-03-31T10:28:00.012-04:00

I just discovered Wordle, which is a free tool that can make word clouds for you from any blog, from your delicious account, or just from words you submit yourself. Here is a cloud made from my delicious tags. Note: "glis634" was the number of my web design class in library school. My final project for the same course included a lot of photographs. And I currently work as an esl tutor just to put food on the table. Update: Here's a cloud from this blog too.

Further update: Boy, am I late to the bandwagon on this one. My friend Amy linked to this months ago. And a funny thing: I remember seeing it. Anyway, enjoy!

I am a Shover and Maker 2009!

2009-03-28T14:10:00.001-04:00

So read all about it.

discoveries

2009-03-28T06:58:00.005-04:00

1. In Spain, the information professions are known as documentación, and include biblioteconomía (librarianship), archivística (archival studies) and museología (museology?) as well as, according to Wikipedia, documentación itself. That confuses me a lot, but I'm working on it.

2. There are a whole crapload of professional organizations here. The ones that seem most relevant to me at the moment are the Asociación Andaluza de Documentalistas and the Asociación Andaluza de Bibliotecarios, because they are specific to the autonomous community I live in. There are lots of other ones though, like ANABAD, FESABID and SEDIC. FESABID is having a conference in Zaragoza in May which I think I should attend, broken Spanish notwithstanding.

3. Info professionals in Spain don't find my story quite as impressive as I do.

4. It's unlikely that I'll find a job very quickly. I suppose the best thing to do would be to make myself known to some professionals around here, so that I don't seem to have come out of nowhere when a good opportunity actually comes up?

scanner-free

2008-10-10T05:53:00.003-04:00

I am in a foreign land and don't have easy access to a scanner. However, the last time I was here I found the public library while getting lost looking for something else. I plan to make a trip there soon, take some notes, and put 'em up here. So... see you soon! I hope?

Notes from One Big Library Unconference. With Comments. Part Two.

2008-06-29T20:03:00.005-04:00

Cataloguing/Semantic Web/Folsonomies [sic] etc.

openlibrary.org
-like a wiki-version of OCLC?
-will have more records than OCLC in 18-24 months
→who owns the metadata?

OCLC has more restrictions?

social tagging
vs.
controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabs can be inadequate
Tagging can be helpful statistically
(e.g. in large numbers)

Why do we want to professionalize social tagging? Doesn't that miss the point?

cold rigid authorities
vs.
wild wooly tagging

→Does this constitute a threat or an opportunity for cataloguers?

COMMENTS
By far my favourite session. I've been interested in the idea of the semantic web ever since it was introduced to me. Admittedly that was just a few months ago, but still, the idea of so many interlocking parts, and of such a grand communal effort, is so satisfying. In my thinking, the One Big Library would be a part of the greater semantic web, and I would have liked some talk about where the borders would be drawn. I disliked some of the talk about social tagging. One of the session moderators was talking about what he saw as the importance of teaching people to tag so that others could find what they had tagged. I don't think librarians need to try to control and formalize tagging, which I see as wild and untamable. I would almost guarantee that if people are taught how to tag, they'll either stop using tags or tags will stop being effective for them. Tags do not belong to just us; they belong to everyone and we should leave them alone. (I mean, we should still use them ourselves, but you get my drift.) There is no need to confuse them with controlled vocabularies; social tagging is something new and different. Moderator and organizer Stacy was talking about it almost as though it was a resource for cataloguers to mine; I like this. The Zotero guy, Trevor Owens, mentioned that it would be useful to have the two "pools" -- traditional vocabularies and social tags -- to draw on, to improve library catalogues. I like this too. There was much talk about allowing users to tag records in OPACs, which I think is a fabulous idea.

One Big Library on One Little Device.

Mobile interfaces
-for OPACs, dbs, etc.?

Isolation of iPod
vs.
Connectivity of iTouch?

Issues of privacy + access

Texting call numbers!

Who uses what devices?
→user profiles
→what are they trying to do?

Splashtop.

COMMENTS
Apparently the Ryerson library catalogue has a feature whereby, after finding the book you want, you can text the call number to yourself. I think this is nothing short of brilliant; in all seriousness, I would use this all the time. This session made me realize that the reason I'm not more "up" on certain social technologies is that I want to leave the house sometimes, and all I have is a desktop. Who knows, if I were more mobile I might even Tweet. I like dichotomies and so am quite proud of the iPod/iTouch one I have up there.

Look into: aggregators w RSS

COMMENTS
I heard an unconferencegoer talk about how she was so behind on her aggregators. What is this? I asked myself. I got home and looked it up on Wikipedia and found that My Yahoo is one. I started using that three years ago.

Ha.

Notes from One Big Library Unconference. With Comments. Part One.

2008-06-29T19:07:00.010-04:00

tag onebiglibrary (photos, blogging)

ZOTERO
Center for History and new Media chnm.gmu.ca
→one of their projects like Wordpress for museums?

-instead of having a "my backpack" (e.g.) thing specific to each provider (e.g. Proquest) -- have it in the browser.

(Zotero blog)

it's kind of like del.icio.us with citation capabilities

-you can also search your comments (can you tag?) Amy says yes.

Timeline feature is cool.

-drag & drop citations into a text document.

So far, no web app.
New syncing feature now available.

COMMENTS
I had never heard of Zotero before, and I seemed to be alone in that. It seems like a neat and fairly intuitive tool that's like a cross between del.icio.us (save stuff you find on the web, while you're on the web) and something like EndNote or Reference Manager (saves it in your chosen citation format). Cool if I'm doing research, but it's not something I'd play around with on my own time. I might download it just to check it out, though.

-EDUCATING FOR THE ONE BIG LIBRARY-
(apparently I am moderating?)

OBL -- set of trends
local → agglomeration
-bringing people into your system
-interaction of libraries with social web
-glue

what is and isn't the library?
access issues
→users don't always distinguish.

COMMENTS
The Unconference organizers' cute trick was informing all recent graduates or current library school students that we would be moderating this session. Amy and Jan quickly opted out since a session on Drupal was happening at the same time, but I headed up there and moderated with two lovely women named Aliki and Marian, both from U of T. I'm glad it happened, in the end, as it obliged me to speak up in a session. I think it went well, and I don't think I made a fool of myself, except at the end of the day when I was asked to wrap things up. I get a free pass since this was my first conference, un- or otherwise.

EVERGREEN
John Fink

Laurentian
Windsor
McMaster

Declining importance of ILS
-one part of an enormous whole
-other info. sources

Open-source ILS
-price
*ownership. →it's yours.

Not necessarily supported. Some orgs. are rising now that do support for Evergreen. e.g. LibLine.
→parallels with Linux?

Evergreen was designed for public libraries.
Evergreen is not "feature-rich". Interest from aca. lbraries is changing this somewhat.

"Non-trivial install process"
-lots of options
-lots of dependencies
-you must instal certain things before installing Evergreen.

Issue: Portability of information.

Project Conifer
Goal: Have a central ILS + have data visible to all 3 uni's (L, McM, W) and be able to share
↓
The machines that support this are at Guelph.

conifer.mcmaster.ca

open-ils.org

COMMENTS
I was woefully unprepared for this session, since it assumed some background knowledge of Evergreen. John, the presenter, tried to do a short introduction to the idea but to be honest, I was struggling for the first little while since I didn't even know what an ILS was (it's an integrated library system, but I think I got the gist of it from context). I always like to hear about open-source technology; I'm not anything approaching a programmer, but I appreciate the ethos behind it.

the Library of Congress Strives for Accuracy in All Things

2008-06-06T21:56:00.004-04:00

The correct LC subject heading for the homes of ministers of the church, when those homes have been provided by the church, is "Parsonages" and not "Rectories".

The correct LC subject heading for gardens attached to the homes of ministers of the church, when those homes have been provided by the church, is "Rectory gardens" and not "Parsonage gardens".

I think "Parsonage gardens" sounds like a very expensive, very tasteful, very exclusive housing development.

This is likely the reason for LC's inconsistency. Thank you, LC, for keeping your subject headings both accurate and evocative! Keep up the good work.

Hiatus due to generation

2008-05-25T09:05:00.003-04:00

I am, probably unnecessarily, announcing a hiatus on this blog. I feel that these projects should have a purpose, and frankly I'm not sure what the purpose of this one is. I lack focus. I have, probably, a diffuse personality.

This apparently just makes me typical of my generation:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/52229

and

http://www.slate.com/id/2187428/

Oh, please.

snark in my moleskine

2008-03-28T14:31:00.004-04:00

Things I've done in the past 2 days with "2.0" tacked on the end of them.

ORIGINAL: Laundry
NOW: Laundry 2.0
% SEXIER: 30%

ORIGINAL: Waiting for the bus
NOW: Waiting for the bus 2.0
%SEXIER: 10%

ORIGINAL: Ramen noodles
NOW: Ramen noodles 2.0
%SEXIER: 60%

ORIGINAL: Procrastination
NOW: Procrastination 2.0
%SEXIER: 100%

March 25 at work on the back of a letter about convocation

2008-03-28T14:28:00.003-04:00

25/3/2008

Two months or so into screening photos for the O sle r digitization project. I am getting the distinct feeling that I've seen them all before, already.

But I'm too tired. Early mornings of reference assignments and descriptive biblio make me a dull... something...

bad blogger knows she hasn't posted

2008-03-14T19:25:00.003-04:00

...and triumphantly exhibits the reason for her admission.

from notes on "The Gutenberg Galaxy" by Marshall McLuhan

2008-02-26T17:49:00.005-05:00

*Quoting Aquinas:
"The senses delight in things duly proportioned as in something akin to them, for, the sense, too, is a kind of reason as is every cognitive power." (107)

p. 109: Medievals associated the message with both the book and the word.

different languages I'm learning this term

2008-02-22T14:45:00.007-05:00

DIFFERENT LANGUAGES I'M LEARNING THIS TERM

[Librarianship: not a humanities-based profession]

html
<ul id="sample">
<li>different</li>
<li>languages</li>
</ul>

css
body {
color: #fff;
background: #000;
border-bottom: 1px solid #bc210b;}

SQL
SELECT Course.code, Section.id
FROM Course INNER JOIN ([Enrol] INNER JOIN Section ON Enrol.section$id=Section.id) ON Course.code=[Enrol].course$code;

Descriptive Bibliography
Collation Statement:

8⁰ : π⁴A-R⁸[$4 signed]; 140 leaves, pp.[8]1 2-272=[280]

(postscript: please pat me on the back for figuring out how to display html as text. Hooray me!)

quotation from iris murdoch novel

2008-02-17T20:17:00.008-05:00

"Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretenses are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage." IRIS MURDOCH The Sea, the Sea

12 february 2008 in class

2008-02-17T20:07:00.016-05:00

6:15 Web Design Class

The professor seems sad, beaten by our wanton misuse of the <br /> element. I think it's to early in the term for him to be feeling this way.

Who are these men? Why are they doing this?