shinylib

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.

Meme: Passion Quilt

I had been ignoring the passion quilt meme for the most part, but Ellie <3 libraries prompted me to think about how to use this meme to sum up some of my thoughts on my IL instruction process. Maybe this will get me off my rump and moving forward on that article I should be writing…

When I taught my first “library instruction” (BI, IL, whatever you want to call them) classes I really struggled with how to connect with the students. They arrive in the classroom certain that they’re going to hear what they’ve already heard, which they didn’t find especially useful the first time. Many of them are pretty sure they rank amongst the best Googlin’ experts and, while they may not know what one is, many are certain they don’t need an article database. Some students groan, “Dude! I’ve had this EBSCO class 4 times this year,” and I don’t doubt it. I don’t blame them and I’m not offended—after all, Google and the like haven’t let them down when it comes to finding playoff scores, movie times, and sometimes their next date.

Despite all of that, community college students coming to a 50 minute one-shot in the library are surrounded by things they don’t know—unfortunately many haven’t been exposed to that concept in a way that doesn’t insult, bore, or intimidate. Even more baffling is the idea that there are things they don’t know about Google!

In library school we learn about sensemaking and “the gap”. The principle issues here are that there are things we don’t know, gaps in our knowledge. In order to acquire the knowledge we need we have to somehow figure out what it is that we don’t know, acquire the language to search for information on what we don’t know, and then absorb and interpret information to help us fill in those gaps in our knowledge. Like a great many theoretical pieces of library school, I don’t always think about these ideas while I am teaching.

With that and an assignment brought to me by a writing instructor I started developing a research exercise I think of as Mind the Gap (although the handout just says Research Exercise, heh), where I shove the students into various resources and then discuss the tips n’ tricks after. It seems to work fairly well, the students are more interested in my schpiel about Google advanced search, page rank, or other facets of the popular search engine once they realize they can’t readily identify three scholarly sources from the first page of a Google results list.

Interested in seeing what the other two people who read this have to share.

The rules are simple:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Whistleblowers, Midwinter

Session: “Inside the FBI: A Whistleblower Speaks Out” – Sat. Jan. 12, 8:00-10:00 a.m.

ALA Midwinter attendees crowded the room Saturday morning, expecting to hear Mr. Youssef speak about his experiences as an FBI Whistleblower. Youssef, Unit Chief of the FBI Counterterrorism Division’s Communications Analysis Unit and the highest ranking Arab-American agent, had been prohibited to speak to the American Library Association (or anyone else) about his experiences.

The weekend prior to the ALA Midwinter conference Mr. Youssef received a 12-page directive from the FBI which made no claims to relate to classified information, yet prohibited presenting or giving rehearsed speeches about the topic. Instead, attorney Stephen M. Kohn indicated that his client would be allowed to answer “spontaneous” questions, as allowed by constitutional law.

What followed was an illuminating question-and-answer period, during which Mr. Kohn was frequently required to instruct his client about answering questions and in fact had to answer many questions himself as he is under no FBI directive (“gag order” in the common parlance). Mr. Youssef was very clear that he could only speak on his own behalf as Bassem Youssef, American citizen, and not in any professional capacity.

Youssef was able to provide a better understanding of how National Security Letters work (think of the 4 John Doe librarians); how they can, in the abstract, be abused by intelligence agencies; his work on the first world trade center bombing; and his work as liaison to the Saudi government (which was particularly effective, although he is now banned from speaking any . Frustration, sadness, and even hope were apparent on the faces of both Youssef and Kohn throughout the morning.

For more (and better) coverage of this event, see the following:

Library Journal
American Libraries
Letter to Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director of the ALA Washington office, from Steve Kohn, attorney for Bassem Youssef