shinylib

What I’m Doing Today…

This is a presentation for the Emporia State University SLIM Oregon cohorts brownbag lunch today. FYI, my reference to ITLWTLP is to point out that they are critical while remaining professional. Just in case you thought I was calling them jerks. (;  If you’re thinking this presentation seems incredibly simple and obvious, that’s the point! It’s a group of two cohorts: one about to graduate and one just getting started.

Also, I realize that most of the “futurists” I mention don’t necessarily describe themselves that way. They are people I like to watch because I generally catch glimpses of the future. Except for JFW. Everyone knows what that’s all about.

Hiatus

I know it’s been quite a while since my last update. I do have things to say about ACRL (it will be so outdated by the time I get around to it) but I’m dealing with some personal junk that’s occupying my time.

I received a pretty crappy letter from my employer over spring break. It was a we-might-lay-you-off-but-we’re-stalling-on-deciding-p.s.-have-a-rockin-vakay type of letter. Obviously I am not amused.

I hope you are all weathering these stormy economic seas okay out there in library land.

Meanwhile, I’m presenting at the Oregon Library Association annual conference this Friday (#OLA2009).  I am going footloose and slidefree. Feels a bit strange to be untethered, but I think it might rock—or I might just suck out loud.

So much to say, so much to do

I have a lot that I want to say but not a lot of time in which to say anything. This is largely about getting prepared to leave for for the airport in 20 minutes.

In lieu of belated resolutions or some sort of similar post, I’m going to give a list of things I hope not to do this year. Some of them are totally self-explanatory, others I hope to get back to in greater depth…

What I hope not to do in the remaining months of 2009:

• fix or explain printer errors
• prep for classes I’m not actually teaching
• micro-manage the handouts/instructional resources
• work egregious amounts of undeclared overtime
• imply that the user has done something wrong when the experience has an unexpected outcome
• keep all of that crap in my inbox—or any other folders
• attempt to do so many things at one time
• give away so much of my time to library-related causes outside of work
• do so little for my community
• totally neglect my hobbies
• fail to read for pleasure
• rely on my memory to track my ideas and inspirations
• dread that peer reviewed teaching thing we have to do
• have so many unfinished drafts hanging around
• engage in a futile battle of shushing with students on the first floor
• allow students to trample the customer rights of other students
• a lot more, I’m sure…

Tying loose knots

Since I posted about my quest for moon boots the other day I’ve been thinking and rethinking some of my views. I’ve also been using our current housebound-due-to-snow status to catch up on a lot of reading. I suspect I’m about to go on a really long ramble.

I’ve talked in the past about the debate amongst my colleagues at PCC: some of us want to streamline and simplify the home page and others want to put everything conceivably relevant to a student right out there. I have always come down firmly on the side of simplify and streamline for a number of reasons. They’re not original ideas and most revolve around the idea of developing in users a base level of skill and competency that functions in any library system. I also just visually deplore homepages that are crammed full of links and blurbs.

That’s all well and good when you’re operating within a local library context, but what good is it when you’re not talking about the library? Like, when you’re shopping for boots. I realized that I’m asking these sportswear companies to do exactly what I don’t want to do with our website—put stuff front and center so I can find it (or use a reasonably structured schema of some kind). To me library and online retailer are different use environments most of the time, but they probably result in the same expectation from a number of our users.

That’s reminiscent of a conversation over at command-f. I wish I’d been paying attention several weeks ago when it happened, but I’ll just play catch up on my own now. Continue reading…

Fried!

It’s the week before finals. That’s all I have time or energy to say… ♥ to those of you in academia and to our public counterparts who see our procrastinatory slaquers during our off-hours (and all other times, I’m sure).

Outbursts and such…

I taught this writing class last night and had a really awesome time. The students were very with it and into what was going on. Y’know, the type who actually respond when you ask them stuff.

But this one guy was especially interesting.* He was prone to outbursts as well as various mutterings.

I can’t for the life of me recall what he said but it was out there. My response was, “Well…that was a radical interpretation of the text.” We all paused for a moment before resetting and moving on.

I asked another student to tell me about the source of the article he found, who he thought the intended audience was. He thought for a while and the proclaimed, “poor people!” I foolishly attempted to extract an explanation but it just didn’t track. Hey, at least he gave it some consideration.

*By interesting I mean I later discovered he’d changed the desktop of the computer he was at to a picture of me.

Degrees of Freedom

I’m rooting around in my library school files today, and I’ve found a few funnies. This one, written by me and Meredith Solomon is clearly a keeper. If you’re still in school and wondering whether that advanced research methods course is for you—I can tell you yes, yes it is.

Old statistics, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant charts
Minutes after they took I
From the null hy-poth-e-sis
But my validity was made strong
By the stats of the almighty
We deviated in this generation
Significantly.
Won’t you help to sing
These degrees of freedom
Cause all I ever have:
Degrees of freedom
Degrees of freedom.

Emancipate yourselves from threats to Validity;
None but our critical t can free our minds.
Have no fear for threats to validity,
Cause none of them can plot the line.
How long shall they reject our hypotheses,
While we calculate with our charts and books? Ooh!
Some say it’s just a part of pointlessness:
We’ve got to fill our books.

Won’t you help to sing
These degrees of freedom
Cause all I ever have
Degrees of freedom
Degrees of freedom
Degreeeeeeeeeeees of freedom.

Pirates, dang!

It’s days like today that make me wish I had started one of those snarky anonymous blogs. Then I could talk a lot of smack about some folks I witnessed or experienced today in the library. This is not the home of snarky anonymity—so I’ll just make a few pithy statements and leave the rest to your imagination.

• When he started shouting about pirates I just thought dude was on acid… turns out he wasn’t.
• Who sits in a library and eats jars of condiments?
• Jimmy Carter, not George W. Bush. Totally different presidents, I swear.
• I actually don’t know why anyone would smuggle paper towels out of the library.

blashepmy

I was at a discussion of some kind while at ALA, I honestly forget which. I think it might have been the ACRL Instruction Section discussion on social software. Anyway we at the table began to debate in earnest the merits and methods of teaching students (again, the implied students are those pesky millennials) how to value their privacy.

At first I began by sharing my typical method: show n’ shock (show them stuff and attempt to shock them into giving a crap). Then the woman next to me (delightful, wish I knew who she was) countered by asking why we believe this is something we should be teaching in the first place. Then all hell broke loose. I just got it, I totally knew what she was asking and why.

I hadn’t previously been thinking about it, but I followed up on her question with one of my own. Are we sure there is merit to forcing our values on our students? I mean yes, I want them to know how much info Facebook is sucking down with the potential to sell it, barter with it, or do who-knows-what. But really, just because I give a crap about my privacy and the relationship between my online identity and this (to me) very important concept tells you just that: it’s important to me. The assumption is always that millennial students are too stupid to understand the importance of privacy.

But maybe they do get it…and maybe they just don’t care. I think that every generation can come up with a list of values they embrace that they feel the other generations just don’t get. This is probably true of most cultures, subcultures, etc. These aren’t necessarily values for the masses, y’know. If you want to blast your puketastic weekend photos all over MySpace that’s your business. I might just start approaching you with the idea that you at least think you know what’s best for your image, for your privacy. And if that turns out not to be true? Well, I’m not sure what happens then.

Finally, a use for Twitter

I had forgotten to mention this, but I was really impressed by something that happened the other day. elliehearts sent out a tweet looking for screencap software recommendations. I recommended Snagit, in part because Techsmith had been giving out free licenses for an outdated version.

Of course as soon as I tweet my recommendation I realize that Techsmith isn’t actually doing that free license offer anymore. (It was a pretty old deal, who can blame them?) So I retweet elliehearts to tell her that it is no mo. She sends me back an @msg explaining why she’s hunting for screencap software anyway. We agree it’s a bummer on the Snagit issue.

About 2 hours later we both get an @msg from betsyweber at Techsmith, making sure we know there’s a free 30 day trial at Snagit.com and and that they have educational pricing packages.

That’s just good Twittering. I realize some people might feel invaded, but that’s what happens when you allow your tweets to go public, which is an opt-in function. I for one think Techsmith just got a big gold star.