lankes libraries

http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/intro.php

band names 9

I make up band names and post them here.  You can use them if you want.

The Badassettes.

work is wot?

Yeah, so I don't write about work -- not directly.  Reading through all these here archives, you'll find none never no direct mention of where I spend my ten a day.  Alright.  Obliquely, maybe, you could reckon on out sudoku-like... but it don't matter.  What matters is: work is getting interesting again.  Work is getting able, agile, smart.  Work is getting will, and work is getting vision.  Suddenly the future has enablers who are oiled (if not well-oiled yet), and ready to flex horsepower for a set of taxpayers who need to know.

Ahhh, yes.  Ah, yes.

liblog landscape listing

Here Ishush got itself listed in Walt Crawford's Liblog Landscape for ought-seven through ought-eight:

creativity in libraries, 3

All this is about 'creativity in learning in libraries', really.

But we've got some handicaps, from the start.

Library systems aren't built for wandering; libraries happen to be brilliant places to wander and bumble and bump into unexpected things -- but the systems of organization were not designed for wandering.  They were designed to minimize the need for wandering.  They were designed to move seeker to sought with zero wander betwixt seeking and finding.

Now our digital aides (and content) have inherited this interest in decrease wander.  Catalogs online, databases, these are built on the notion that the seeker knows what he's seeking.  Sure.  Helping people get to the info is the goal.  Libraries (well, good libraries) aren't antagonistic to wandering -- but if they were designed for it, there'd be no classificatory systems at all.  So.

We've got a heritage of 'get to business' here.  That's useful.  How, now, do we introduce the elements necessary to make folks feel like they can turn up and bumble without getting barked at by a crab (old, punk, or other)?  Mixed metaphor there, but.

You know -- welcome to the library, come in, ask questions if you want -- we don't care if you put the book down in the wrong place.  We don't care if you fall asleep reading.  We don't care if you write on the tables. (crabs note: these are simplified ex. of shift in attitude, not suggestions for policy.  and they're questions.  they're wonders.)  I wonder -- there's a 58 year old HVAC repairman in looking up info on 9/11 because his damn cousin was rattling off a bunch of hockey she heard on the Alex Jones show, and he wants to get some newspaper articles to prove her wrong... I wonder how to make a space that visibly and immediatley demonstrates it's okay to sit down and start TRYING THINGS OUT b/c he's not going to BREAK ANYTHING.

--

and then: how to bring such ambient cues to the direct and pointed activities of bibliographic instruction...

creativity in libraries, 2

It's more complicated, of course: here we got a slew of 19 year olds who want more than anything to get the girl or get the guy, to be cool, be tough, be famous.  God bless them.  Making mistakes in front of others, helpful though it might be ultimately in making them more confident learners -- that ain't high on anybody's list.

And the 'making of mistakes' is predicate -- it ain't what we or they will be trying for.  It will happen (and it's inevitable, it will happen) before things get learnt.  B4 they get learnt at all.  Because it's in the making of the mistakes (which comes after "trying things out" you know "to see if it will work or not") that we learn stuff.

I like what Robinson's on about -- it's not that some folks are 'more creative' than others, it's that some folks stifle it as a trade off.  You can look mighty foolish going around being creative about stuff.  You can fail.  That can sting.

So how we create a culture of 'softer blows' in the classroom, where the sting ain't so mean?  How to make a library classroom with padded walls? Haha.

creativity in libraries

Ken Robinson's TED talk on creativity in education -- his main point being that creativity ought to be encouraged and valued as much as literacy in our schools -- has got me thinking how I can bring student/patron creativity to our library literacy sessions.  Again.  

I've made an important shift in my bibliographical instructionating in the last year.  Used to be (and this is mainly what I inherited when I joined the library subculture at the particular place I work -- though it's got roots in Air Force culture too) I did more of a 'presentation' style -- here is the database location, here is the search interface, here are the limiters, here is the syntax, here is a sample article, here is how you print it, here is how you e-mail it, et.c.  The shift has been towards more student participation and involvement in 'the presentation' -- I have always been open to questions during the instruction, but the 'shift' has made the whole affair more Q&A than Speech.  My instruction sessions are, like, 30% presentation, now, and 70% hands-on and questions.  I kinda knew there were multiple learning styles, but it's only in the last 3 years that I've seen this clearly enough in action to start changing my own actions in the instruction sessions.

So.  Taking it further, how to encourage the 'mistakes and gaffes' necessary for real understanding within the alotted hour?

A shift to 20% presentation, 80% hands-on?  A purely (annoyingly) Socratic approach?  More 'treasure hunt' and 'activities' and 'games' built-in?

Small teams working to find things, then presenting what they found to the whole class seems to be a really workable and useful format -- it lets the performers perform, the shy ones receed and watch, the leaders lead, and they're all on the spot and they all have something at stake because they know they've got to stand before the class and prof and librarian.  That tends to keen up the mind.

Classes will begin to roll into our library within 3 weeks.  I want to keep an open mind, and watch for what works.

Anyway, watch this:

10 writing tips

Interesting take on "how to be a writer" from Writingforhire.blogspot.com:

http://writingforhire.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-write-for-cash-generalities.html

Tips 1-3:

1. Get a job and keep it.  This "job" won't be writing, probably; it'll be counting things or working a register or mulching pear trees or sweeping floors in bowling alleys or delivering pizzas or teaching 6th graders or working in a snotty atheletic shop or cutting meat at Whole Foods or something.  Keep this job: it's the job that pays rent or mortgage, bills, you know.

2. Write.

3. Submit your work.

woodyevans.com

Moving my main blogging interests back to my own site for a while.

[Point of clarification -- my main writing work blog is woodyevans.com.  My thoughts on libraries, searching, & info-sci will mostly constellate around here and ghostfooting; plenty cross-over will happen, as always :]

STAR-TIDES makes WIRED

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/fast-cheap-and.html

Lots of folks working hard on various parts and pieces of this for years now.

Syncrety. 

And, yes, we could still use librarians on this to do KM work and metadata for documents...

Vinay's Briefing in Reykjavik

Six Ways To Die - Hexayurt Project briefing, Reykjavik, 17/9/2008 from Hexayurt on Vimeo.

life online

Could Life Evolve on the Internet?

By Brandon Keim September 09, 2008 | 7:50:23 PMCategories: Complexity, Evolution, Systems Biology  

If principles of life are universal, could life emerge on the internet?

I posed the question to evolutionary dynamicist Martin Nowak of Harvard University, developer of amathematical model of evolution's origins, the period during which unique chemical structures experienced mutation and selection that guided them toward replication -- and thus to life.

Though Nowak's focus is biological life, the principles seem broadly applicable, perhaps even to configurations of electrons coursing through the Internet's silicon and fiber-optic substrate.

"Computer viruses are some form of evolution," said Nowak.

"Viruses fulfill replication, mutation and selection -- but people don't consider them to be alive, because they think life has to be made of chemicals," saidIrene Chen, a Harvard systems biologist who specializes in early biomolecules.

"We can definitely make things in a computer that fulfill the criteria for life that NASA uses, except it's not chemical," she added, and cited the AVIDAprogram at Michigan State...

just a great little video

Borges reminds us: the map is not the territory.

palin library banned books: update

In my last post I quoted the Kilkenny e-mail about how Palin tried to ban books at Wasilla Public Library. To be fair now, Snopes goes into more detail on the subject and holds that Palin never actually attempted to ban any specific titles.

My call to actively oppose her based on her opposition to the right to read must now in fairness be actively recalled, as she did not actively pursue an agenda of censhorship as mayor. She merely hinted at it.

But look -- if she's interested in banning books, what a lever she will have to attempt to do so as a vice-president in the age of terror.

sarah palin, censorship, libraries

The e-mail below by Anne Kilkenny is circulating now in lots of places, but I wanted to post it here for the matter of the Wasilla Librarian.

Excerpt:

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Now that, my dear friends, is a blatant case of an executive power trying to limit a community's freedom to read.

Take the other stuff for what you will, but the anti-library business alone makes her worthy of active opposition.





--

About Sarah Palin: an e-mail from Wasilla

A suburban Anchorage homemaker and activist — who once did battle with the Alaska governor when Palin was mayor — recounts what she knows of Palin's history.

By Anne Kilkenny

Editor's note: The writer is a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, Alaska. Late last week, Anne Kilkenny penned an e-mail for her friends about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whom she personally knows, that has since circulated across comment forums and blogs nationwide. Here is her e-mail in its entirety, posted with her permission.

---

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Gov. Sarah Palin since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first-name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99 percent of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice for vice president and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe."

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life." She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her lifestyle ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time) and less than two years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration, most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn't even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in five to seven years without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as governor Sarah proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenue: Spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys." Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor, she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state's top cop.

As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's police chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than two dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town, introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal city administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Gov. Frank Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil and gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job, which paid $122,400 a year, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this commission (who was also the state chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club," when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Sen. Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects — which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance — but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork."

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The state party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla, there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiaitive that would have either protected salmon streams from pollution from mines or tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on whom you listen to). She has pushed the state's lawsuit against the Department of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for president; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being president.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there are a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

Claim vs. Fact

• "Hockey mom": True for a few years
• "PTA mom": True years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
• "NRA supporter": Absolutely true
• Social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
• Pro-creationism: Mixed. Supports it, but did nothing as governor to promote it.
• "Pro-life": Mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby but declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.
• "Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
• Political maverick: Not at all.
• Gutsy: Absolutely!
• Open and transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
• Has a developed philosophy of public policy: No.
• "A Greenie": No. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
• Fiscal conservative: Not by my definition!
• Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
• Pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
• Pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.
• Pro-labor/pro-union: No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

Why am I writing this?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name, you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "bad things happen when good people stay silent." Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the city librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

Caveats: I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending and taxation two years ago (when Palin was running for governor) from information supplied to me by the finance director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: Did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall — they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000" up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced, a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-1990s.

• Anne Kilkenny is a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, Alaska.

forced migration

Thanks to Heavy-D:

http://www.forcedmigration.org/

Forced Migration Online (FMO) provides instant access to a wide variety of online resources dealing with the situation of forced migrants worldwide. Designed for use by practitioners, policy makers, researchers, students or anyone interested in the field, FMO aims to give comprehensive information in an impartial environment and to promote increased awareness of human displacement issues to an international community of users. We have prepared an introductory guide to forced migration for visitors who are new to the subject.

FMO is coordinated by a team based at the Refugee Studies Centre, Department of International Development (QEH), University of Oxford. FMO and the Digital Library Project were funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the European Commission between 1997 and 2004. Since January 2005, FMO has been funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).

symphony e library

Just a bit of news, if you haven't seen it yet:

--

PROVO, UT, August 27, 2008 – SirsiDynix, the global leader in strategic technology solutions for libraries,
today announced the release of SirsiDynix Symphony e-Library,™ an enhanced online library catalog solution
that offers the speed, ease and flexibility librarians have requested. The product runs on SirsiDynix
Symphony 3.2.1; its predecessor, iBistro, is currently in use at 900 libraries worldwide.
SirsiDynix Symphony e-Library makes life easier for libraries and patrons because this powerful yet simple
solution is:
• Smooth: With the same look and feel as SirsiDynix Enterprise™, users enjoy seamless transition
among products.
• Flexible: Use of standard Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) gives libraries a fully featured default
interface and ease of customer configuration.
• Fast: The streamlined interface focuses on high speed search and retrieval
• Easy: The updated “My Account” features a new intuitive interface to engage patrons as they view
holds, renew materials, check for library alerts and complete other interactions with their Library.
• Secure: New e-Commerce options provide users with additional secure ways to review and pay
library fees.

mere anarchy loosed upon the shelves

(Via Unshelved)

Anarchy hints at a basic faith in people's ability to govern themselves and order their own affairs without oversight. Does the above logo hint that everything really is now miscellaneous?

community property library books are

Boingboing has:

Judge orders woman to return two library books or go to jail

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, August 28, 2008 8:24 AM | permalink

A judge has ordered JoAn Karkos of Lewiston, Maine to return two copies of It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health, which she checked out the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries last year.

In September, Karkos sent letters to the libraries, including checks to pay for the cost of the books. The letters said, in part, “I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and sexually graphic, amoral, abnormal contents. I will not be returning the books.”

The judge has ordered Karkos, who is being held in contempt of court, to return the books and pay a $100 fine by Friday at 4pm. If she doesn't comply, she'll be arrested.

In 2007, NPR reported on the incident, providing several links, including a link to a letter Karkos wrote to the Sun Journal.

Lewiston Woman Facing Jail Over Book

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country feedback: audio homunculi

Text analysis of body parts mentioned in popular music lyrics, by genre. Above, see 'country'. Check out all the booty in hip-hop, too: http://www.fleshmap.com/listen/index.html