try some SORBET!
21 Feb 09
Those who read Jodi will recognize my new theme (code name: SORBET!) has basically the same structural underpinnings as the theme we developed for her. Getting away from the gawdawful wordpress default theme has been a three-year procrastination for me, but no longer. Still some bugs to work out, older posts not formatting quite like newer ones probably because of changes in wordpress, for example. If anything looks funky to you please let me know.
Posted by pzed on February 21, 2009 at 8.17pm
how to join the creative class
21 Feb 09
Step one: Finally get around to adding links to your sidebar.
Step two: Start lurking hanging around with other creative types.
Step three: Reap the benefits of your new, creative lifestyle!
Posted by pzed on February 21, 2009 at 1.35pm
brain dump, or, what will we do with ourselves!?!
9 Feb 09
There’s an awful lot happening in my library, as in others. In my library it all seems to be happening at once. We’ve watched the tide of digital transformation coming in, and this looks like the year we need to learn to swim. We are dealing with budget cuts—realignments, as our Orwellian university administration insists on calling them—by attacking first our few remaining print serials. We’re seeing similar, though smaller, cuts to our print monographs budget. E-books are picking up, but haven’t yet replaced print as the preferred format for books. We do have to wonder if that won’t change in the near future.
At the same time, we’ve seen a collapse in our reference desk statistics. Use stats of titles in our reference collection have declined in an almost linear fashion. We’re looking at a revised policy document for reference that will, if passed, mean a formal recognition that the reference collection is primarily electronic.
Most of the librarians in my department base their work on a liaison model. We have subject specialties that derive from collections responsibilities, coupled with information literacy and specialized reference expectations. We work with faculty in our assigned departments, and we often say to students and faculty in those areas that we are “your librarian”. But we’re beginning to recognize that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for the liaison librarian to manage relatively insignificant print serials budgets or to spend time sitting on a reference desk that is almost always slow.
There’s the potential here to free up a lot of time. What are we going to do with ourselves? I do have a few ideas, and basically I’m just posting to get this bullet list out of my scribble book. What are some of the things we might be involved in?
- Information literacy
- Training (which is different) of staff, colleagues, perhaps faculty and students as well
- Collection and use analysis; the web generates tonnes of data
- public relations and marketing of library resources and services
- fundraising
- research, thinking, writing
That’s my first pass, I’m sure there’s more, and I’m sure these could be well articulated, but really this is a brain dump, so there it is.
Posted by pzed on February 9, 2009 at 11.25am
a disposition toward technological innovation
14 Jan 09
I’ve thought now and again about the idea of a post-modern library, in which we recognize that there may be multiple right answers to the same question, grey areas, various ways of doing things all of which rely on context for value and meaning.
In a rapidly changing technological environment, it is never enough to teach people to use these tools; the education process must enable students to adapt to new tools on an ongoing basis, and even to create their own tools. This certainly requires basic technological knowledge, but since much of what you can teach in a two-year master’s degree program will be out of date by the time a graduate has joined the workforce, the post important educational function is the inculcation of a disposition toward technological innovation and a critical sense of how technology can serve and advance an organization’s mission.
For all these changes, we must avoid the simple view of technological innovation and diffusion as one-directional. Technological shifts can operate in a refining manner, one that is not only revolutionary but that also returns us to the essentials of our craft. Librarianship is intellectual work, and the best practitioner’s role is never determined solely by the technology (though generations of workers might have acted otherwise). Consequently, though media and forms of information might shift, the professional’s role may thus be enhanced, especially where the shifts enable a new focus on the mission of the larger organization. Again, if our goal is to enable discovery, the emerging information infrastructure can place information professionals who fulfill this role at the center of activity. (55)
Dillon, Andrew. “Accelerating Learning and Discovery: Refining the Role of Academic Librarians.” No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century (PDF), 51-57.
Posted by pzed on January 14, 2009 at 12.20pm
the library will have two roles
13 Jan 09
Smith, Abby. “The Research Library in the 21st Century: Collecting, Preserving, and Making Accessible Resources for Scholarship.” No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century (PDF), 13-20.
In its local role, the library will be optimized to meet the needs of its campus community. The library is likely to provide repository infrastructure for stewardship of university-based information assets. Most of those assets will support pedagogy, administration, student life, alumni affairs, and other things vital to the school. A much smaller portion of them will support research. Research will be a far more global phenomenon than local institutions can support on their own.
In its networked role, the library will be able to support research and dissemination to the extent that it is tightly networked into the increasing cluster of inter-institutional collaborations that enable the creation and use of scholarly content. These collaborations will be key elements of research cyberinfrastructure, an infrastructure that will be a research-and-dissemination platform. In the magic phrase of the digital era, it “will scale,” be ubiquitous, and support a variety of scholarly domains, from astronomy to nanobiology, archaeology to urban design. The next-generation research library must be firmly embedded in that infrastructure, because that will be the platform to which scholars will gain access on their laptop library. (18-19)
Posted by pzed on January 13, 2009 at 8.22am
No Brief Candle
12 Jan 09
I’ve finally gotten around to looking at No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century (PDF). Published in August 2008 by the Council on Library and Information Resources, it’s not surprisingly a call for change in research libraries still shrugging off the shackles of having been founded in the 19th and reified in the 20th Centuries. Part I of the document is an overview of the discussions that were held at a CLIR organized conference in February last year, and this section ends with nine recommendations. I’m always leery of sweeping recommendations, they have a tendency to be overly simplistic and, if not wrong, pretty much self-evident (case in point from this document: Rec. 6, “Instruction and delivery mechanisms should be designed according to what we know of human learning and discovery.” — thanks for pointing that out).
But here are some interesting bits. I was hoping to cite only those that avoid the passive, but that just isn’t always possible.
1. “ . . . develop a rigorous research agenda. . . .” For me, the emphasis should be on “rigorous”.
2. “The research library should be redefined as a multi-institutional entity.” This is happening quickly in some areas, more slowly in others. We have an agreement in Ontario that effectively functions as a province-wide policy for print serials holdings for the 20 member libraries of OCUL, but we’re nowhere near consideration of the strategies itemized in this document, which if implemented here would effectively lead to a single provincial library.
3. “Greater collaboration among librarians, information technology specialists, and faculty on research project design and execution should be strongly supported.” I cite this recommendation with interest because what they’re talking about in the context of collaboration are the core elements of a new position I have recently taken on: scholarly publishing, institutional repository development, data curation, and digital resource development. The emphasis here is on faculty research.
Finally, 4. “More funds should be allocated for experimental projects and new approaches,” which dovetails nicely with 8. “Institutions should use studio and design experiences as the basis of a new library school curriculum.” I’d like to bend recommendation 8, though, and apply it to the notion of pursuing experimentation embedded in recommendation 4. Libraries are a built environment physically, virtually, and conceptually. The librarian-as-designer gets to experiment with and ultimately decide how to build (and renovate, and tear down, and rebuild). Exciting!
Incidentally, Part II of No Brief Candle consists of eight essays by conference participants.
Posted by pzed on January 12, 2009 at 2.11pm
this is not a post
16 Dec 08
I was thinking the only song that really captures the true meaninglessness of xmas has to be “Felice Navidada”.
Posted by pzed on December 16, 2008 at 9.32pm
Jowle Brothers
21 Aug 08
Carter, Angela. The Magic Toyshop. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
When the younger one finished his tea, he tossed the cup over the hoarding with a lyrical, curving, discus-thrower swing and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He seemed to be inspecting the train, raking the length of it with a low, sweeping, lop-sided gaze. His eyes were a curious grey green. His Atlantic-coloured regard went over Melanie like a wave; she submerged in it. She would have been soaked if it had been water. He touched the other man’s arm; at once he dropped his cup and they came towards her. And if one moved like the wind in branches, the other’s motion was a tower falling, a frightening, uncoordinated progression in which he seemed to crash forward uncontrollably at each stride, jerking himself stiffly upright and swaying for a moment on his heels before the next toppling step. The boy smiled and stretched out hands of welcome; the other did not smile. Melanie knew they were coming for her and started. (34)
Posted by pzed on August 21, 2008 at 9.42am
on satire
22 Jul 08
“No one knows what’s funny anymore.”
Posted by pzed on July 22, 2008 at 3.38pm
Max Streicher
18 Jul 08
Winniped Art Gallery (Galleries West)
LRAHM PDF!
beautiful.
Posted by pzed on July 18, 2008 at 1.35pm
