An addendum (with library-themed ice cream flavors)

I wasn't sure if I was gonna post on here after my last, concluding post this past weekend, but this was just too good and too relevant to ignore. Yes, folks, these are library-inspired Ben & Jerry's flavors. I thought (though only for a second) that they were real and got excited before realizing that it's not, but of course I did join the Facebook group. Out of all of these, I liked the "Checked Out" flavor the best. What's your favorite?

In any case, I thought that since today is officially the last day of the summer semester and since everyone worked hard, we all deserve a treat. Thus, buy yourselves some ice cream (or another treat of choice since I know at least one of you can't eat it) today or at some point this weekend and have fun!

The End is Not the End

Well here we are. Some of you are already done with your coursework for this class and others are still working on your portfolios and what not. I'm very happy to say that I finished up my portfolio a few days ago and furthermore, I also submitted my final paper for LIS 2000 this morning, too. Thus, I'm done with the semester. I'm a little bit worried that I still haven't received my grade for Assignments 7 and 8 (and for that matter, the group presentation we did on-campus for LIS 2000), so I don't feel like it's quite over. Even when I'm done with my work, there's still more to do (like write this blog). I don't mind too much, though. I guess that's the nature of being in grad school. Once this semester ends, we can sit back and relax for a month, but I know that in September it'll all start back up again. Frankly, I'm worried about how I'm gonna balance everything, especially with the the Retrieval half of LIS 2005 (which is now LIS 2002, I think) being called "search and seize hell" by at least one other blogger on here. Then again, I think all of us should be proud of ourselves. We all have busy lives and lots of responsibilities and this isn't easy.

As for the final assignment, well there's not too much to say about it (for a change). That's because it's just a portfolio of all the work we've already done. I'll say that the hardest part about it was figuring out how to present the ePrints articles and doing the screen capture, saving and then embedding the code and what not. Overall, though, I'm glad that it didn't take an inordinate amount of time, though. I know my site probably doesn't look that great (thanks to those who disagree), but I'm no programmer/web designer (to say the least). I guess the functionality is the most important part.

Well, unless I feel like posting something else on here this coming week, I'll see you all in the fall! I hope you enjoyed reading this thing as much as I enjoyed making it.

Chrome vs. Firefox

If you didn't know that these are web browsers, don't you think that the title of this post could also be the title of some Xbox game or a sci-fi movie from the '70s or something?

Anyway with that said, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the points in this article. Why? Well, I've been a loyal Firefox user since I got a new computer about 4 years ago. It just blows away IE in every conceivable way. I love that, as the article describes, it's possibly the best example (outside of maybe Linux) of open-source software with a community ethic that really works. This is something we've been reading about a lot in LIS 2000.

However, when I tried out Chrome after downloading it by accident a while ago (apparently you can download it if you download Skype at the same time), I was astounded by how fast it was. Thus, I feel I'll be using Chrome in the future (at least somewhat). I also don't know if Chrome can capture the market share of Firefox or IE.

Running on Empty?

I'm honestly a little torn on this particular issue. I generally think that a cas like this should comprise "fair use", but of course this also reminds me of other cases where Republicans have tried to use other artists' music without permission. Clearly, they've misinterpreted some of the lyrics. The most famous example is perhaps Ronald Reagan using Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." (not a patriotic anthem, but a song about the effects of the Vietnam War on a soldier) in his 1984 re-election campaign. Anyway, here's the article.

Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it's definitely a huge step in the right directions. It's great that so many more books (and particularly the ones Google is digitizing that are in the public domain; like my classmate Jenny Pilling, I also have issues with Google being the sole proprietors of said digitizing, but that's for another post) are going to be available via this device, as opposed to the locked-into-Amazon nature of the Kindle. I also like that the e-reader software will enable books bought on Barnes & Noble's website to be read on other devices (though unfortunately not on Sony's or Amazon's devices). It's still a little too all-inclusive, though. It's too top-down and tied in with a specific company (in this case, B&N) for my taste (i.e. for me to seriously consider purchasing one). Obviously, I understand that they're just trying to compete with Amazon and Sony and that they need to make money, but I still think an e-book reader that lets readers load exactly what they want on there will be the book version of the iPod. It just hasn't been made yet.

Thoreau, part deux

Well, once again I put off Assignment 8 until its due date (this past Sunday), though fortunately I was able to finish it a few hours later. Between the time I started to look at it and its conclusion, though, I definitely panicked and if it wasn't for the help of Tim Schlak and others on the message board (and particularly Amiya Hutson as well), I'd still be lost. Furthermore, in a fit of panic, I called a few classmates to see if they had any hints for me. I got their respective voicemails, but each of them called me back (again, within a few hours). Thus, thanks to everyone who commented on the board and to those who offered to help as well.

The first part of the assignment was easy, or so I thought at first. All I had to do was make 10 annotated hyperlinks. To be honest, I'm STILL confused about what exactly the annotations were supposed to be like and the instructions in the syllabus for this assignment certainly didn't illuminate it. Furthermore, even after receiving more specific instructions on the message board, I was still confused. At some point, I just left it alone, but I'll get to that part later. The first part was simple enough. This time, I used Amaya (which looking back on it, was a mistake) instead of Kompozer and frankly, I don't like it at all. After opening up my fragment and putting together 10 hyperlinks, I was confused about what do next. I just couldn't grasp the CSS concept as well as that of external styling. Thus, I started a thread on the message board and asked for help. Within a few hours, I got several responses and they were each very helpful. Thanks again to Amiya for pointing me in the right direction and to Tim for the detailed help. I realized that all I had to was insert the amended example.css file into my html and that would change the background of the fragment depending upon its specifications. Pretty easy, right? Well, I certainly calmed down after I realized this.

I did my work mostly in Notepad and it wasn't even too hard to find the appropriate part of the code to modify. Frankly, I didn't even need Amaya after modifying the code and then opening it up in IE (which I really dislike, but it's the default browser that opens an html file on the laptop I was using)to make sure that my changes were working. Well, I take that back, but only a little. I did need an editor to change around the last paragraph (which for some reason didn't have some necessary spaces between words). Again, it was easier to do it in Kompozer, though, which is so much more straightforward than Amaya (for me, at least). I didn't even need to code. I made those changes in the GUI screen.

So after I did that main part, I was still confused about the annotations and wanted to make sure that my hyperlinks were enough. Therefore, after putting it up on the Unix server, I posted another message on the board with the link, he said it was OK. I hope so, especially since we haven't gotten our grades for Assignment 7 yet.

One odd thing about Wikipedia

Until I saw this article earlier today, I hadn't even stopped to think about this feature of Wikipedia. Of course, it relates directly to our current reading on copyright (digital and otherwise) for LIS 2000.

Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (part 4)

And so we come to the last day of the on-campus learning experience for Cohort 9. The first hour, from 9 AM to 10 AM, was spent discussing Everything is Miscellaneous and Viral Spiral. For this exercise, Dr. Alman divided us up into groups that were different from the groups that we were already in for our presentation.

And then, from 10 AM to noon, we did our presentations. Or at least that's what the schedule said. Luckily, our group didn't go first. That's always a terrifying proposition. If you go at any point afterwards, you get to observe how the other groups put together their presentations and you can take pointers. It's not that there's a competitive element to this at all, though. One of the things that I absolutely love about this program (and I guess, the library profession, from the limited amount of exposure I've had to it at this early juncture) is that everyone supports each other and everyone is (generally speaking) nice to each other. We're all in this together. With all that said, I did want to put together a good presentation and to get a good grade. I must say that I really enjoyed the Censorship & Banned Books presentation. This is perhaps a personal bias. If it wasn't for the copyright/fair use/file-sharing group that I was a part of, this is the group I would've been in. I liked finding out which books were banned somewhere and which ones were challenged.

Then it came time for our presentation. I thought that the other members of my group did a fantastic job. I must especially thank Jen Gould for putting it all together on PowerPoint. The slides looked fantastic! As for my own segment on file-sharing, I thought that my presentation was OK, but I forgot to list some pros and cons. After I got to my points, there just wasn't any more time (not that I was watching the clock) and yeah, I just forgot. Sorry! I did allude to them more than once, though. I hope that all of you who were there enjoyed it (but maybe that's asking too much).

I love how our presentation topics (copyright, fair use and file-sharing) and the current readings we're doing for LIS 2000 are so perfectly tied in together. I absolutely can't wait to get to Lawrence Lessig's books. I'm in the middle of Digital Copyright now and it seems like a logical extension of Viral Spiral, which I loved.

By the time of the last presentation (The Future of Librarianship), we had run out of time. It was 12:15 and one more presenter (Apryl Gillis) had yet to make her points. However, because several faculty members had arrived just for the occasion, the presentation was delayed in favor of said faculty members making points about the archives and other programs. My advisor, Dr. Courier, was there and ideally I would've liked to stick around to ask him some questions. However, I know that he's also available by e-mail and that I may get to see him in October when we come back to Pittsburgh. It's not really an issue now since I know what I'm taking in the fall (I'm finishing up my required courses before going on to the electives). So after the Future of Librarianship group finally got to finish their presentation, we were done! Well not quite yet. Amiya wanted to take a class picture so we went to the stairway on Allen and had our picture taken there. I'll be honest here. I hate getting my picture taken and it was the 3rd time over the past 4 days that it had happened. However, I didn't mind it this time as I enjoyed meeting everyone and I'm a really big fan of the program so far.

After all was said and done, a bunch of us (me, Ian, Jenny P., Becky and Nathaniel) went to lunch at Food for Thought. This time I had the reuben, which was just as great as the corned beef sandwich I'd had there a few days before. After lunch, I said my goodbyes to everyone except Jenny (since we drove back to Philadelphia together) and Nathaniel, who walked back to the hotel with me. After getting my luggage (which the hotel held for me during the morning after I checked out), Jenny picked me a few minutes later and we were on the road. The drive back, I'm happy to report, was about as quick as the drive there. By the time we got to the Philly suburbs (which are very heavy traffic-wise around rush hour on I-76), it was a bit past 7, so we avoided most of the evening rush. Thanks again to Jenny for driving me there and back (5 hours each way).

As for my final thoughts, well I had a blast. It's nice to be in a totally new city for 4-5 days, though it's nice to be home, too. Pittsburgh is a lovely, walkable, interesting town (and boy do they love their burgers/sandwiches) and I can't wait to go back in October. I hope to see the Warhol Museum, Phipps Conservatory, Carnegie Library, the Pirates' stadium (if we don't go during the All-Star break next summer like we did this time around) and other sites that I missed this time around, though I'll have to take what I can get with our workload!

Fast Track Weekend/On-Campus Learning Experience (part 3)

Where we left off on Monday night, I stayed up until 1 AM doing reading, editing my segment of the presentation (and composing an annotated bibliography) and what not (oh and posting my thoughts on both Viral Spiral and Everything is Miscellaneous). Thus, perhaps I wasn't at my freshest on Tuesday. I set my alarm to 7 every day except Sunday (where I set it to 8), which didn't leave too much time to walk down to campus by 8:30-9 (the range of when we started at Allen Hall each day). Skipping the hotel breakfast and forgoing both Crazy Mocha's coffee (which, again, is excellent)and Bruegger's Bagels (OK at best), I decided to try Cafe Brioche, which is conveniently located directly across the street from Allen. Anyway, I can't recommend it enough for a quick breakfast! Their egg and chesse croissants and iced coffee are both excellent. I would end up grabbing another one on Wednesday.

First up was a "combined session" on LIS 2000 and LIS 2600 between 8:30 and 11. After that, we walked over to the SIS building and although we were scheduled to meet with Elizabeth Mahoney, we were in a computer lab with another librarian. We went over the answers to a questionnaire that they had given us yesterday. In the interest of not being unprepared for this (even though it wasn't being graded), I attempted to answer all of the questions on the sheet. All involved using the Pitt libraries site and I managed to figure out 3 of the 5 questions on my own. Of course, this attempted to me not getting that much sleep the night before, but that's the trade-off.

Oh, I should also mention that my group was able to meet after the combined session and before we went to the SIS building again. Originally, we were scheduled to meet right after the SIS presentation, but this left the entire day and evening open.

Given the SIS's building proximity to the bus stop at Forbes and S. Craig, I wandered over to S. Craig to catch the 61C bus to Squirrel Hill. I'd also spent part of the previous evening writing down directions related to my plans for the "exploratorium". Luckily, this proved really handy. Before catching the bus, though, I wandered over to a record store on S. Craig called Desolation Row. It's not really a record store, but just a new CD and vinyl section and a decent used CD section in a corner of a used bookstore called Calihan Book Shop that's visible from the street. I didn't get anything there and though I was a bit hungry, I decided to try a place I'd heard about in Squirrel Hill (Uncle Sam's) and so I held off. After the 61C bus didn't come for 20 minutes, I gave up on got on the 61B bus. It said "Forbes/Squirrel Hill", so I figured I'd get off somewhere there and take it from there. I asked the sullen bus driver if she went to the corner of Forbes and Murray and she didn't even answer me. Oh well.

Despite this unpleasant encounter, here's where Pittsburgh's Port Authority buses have a huge advantage over the SEPTA buses here in Philly or for that matter, the MTA buses in New York City. Near the front, there's a screen that reads off the cross streets at each stop! That's a common sense solution that so many other bus systems should adopt, but don't. So anyway, once the sign said Murray, I got off. Squirrel Hill is nice. Really nice. It's loaded with restaurants and other shops of all sorts and there's a bustling commercial strip along a few blocks of Forbes. My ultimate destination was Jerry's Records (which I'll get to later), but first it was lunch at Uncle Sam's. I'd heard from some food bloggers that the one in Oakland isn't quite as good as the other locations, so I decided to try the one here. Let me tell you, it didn't not disappoint. It got an oddly-named Italian sausage sandwich that really hit the spot. Now onto record shopping!

Murray Street, like much of the rest of Pittsburgh, seems to reside on a large hill, so of course walking down 4-5 blocks to get to Jerry's was fine. If you're a record collector, Jerry's is definitely a great place to visit. Most of the records are $3 and they have almost every kind of music you can imagine on vinyl (including soundtracks, exotica, novelty records by Hollywood stars, etc.) and not a single CD. I know there are lots of record collectors still out there and a younger generation of music listeners who didn't grow up with CDs and eschew downloads for vinyl (or combine both, in some cases), but I wonder how this place survives. It doesn't seem to have too many new releases or rarities that pull in a lot of cash, either. In any case, I'm glad that it's still there, as it looks like it hasn't changed in 30 years or so. I will say that the hostility towards CDs and anything else digital in general is a little off-putting. I love vinyl, but I have room in my life for CDs and mp3s as well. What was also off-putting was the owner's seemingly anti-Philadelphia attitude. I realize that people from Pittsburgh have pride in their city. That's fine. If I lived there, I would, too. It's a GREAT town and I can't wait to go back there in October. But I just don't understand the rivalry between it and Philadelphia. It goes both ways, too, of course. I didn't grow up in PA, so I guess I'll never get it. From my vantage point, Pittsburgh seems to have way more in common with Philly than with most of the rest of Pennsylvania, but whatever. Anyway I got a Will Rigby Lp and an Lp by a band called Senator Flux, both sealed. They were $3 and $5 each, respectively. Awesome!

After walking up the hill to Forbes to catch the 61B and then walking from the Forbes/S. Craig corner (I looked for a 54C but couldn't find one, so I just walked it) back to my hotel, I was drenched in sweat! I had to meet Ian for dinner and was running late. After changing and making myself look halfway decent in record time, we went to Tessaro's in Bloomfield (I think). This place is known as a must for burger fans and it definitely lived up to its reputation. The beer (a locak brew on draft, though I forgot the name) was great, too! After dinner, we headed over to the Southside Flats neighborhood (E. Carson St. reminds me a bit of South St. here in Philadelphia) to see Black Francis of the Pixies play a solo show at Club Cafe. Initially, we got a little lost in Bloomfield and ended up in Lawrenceville. The directions I'd written down were from the hotel, so I realized that we had to go back to North Oakland before going over the Birmingham Bridge. Luckily, there were signs everywhere and it's not too far from Oakland, so were able to find E. Carson St. in the course of a few minutes. The show was sold out, but fortunately I was on the guest list (thanks Adam at Magnum PR), so we didn't have any problems. The show was great. He started at 8, played for over 2 hours and entertained questions from a local radio DJ (a station was broadcasting the first hour of the concert) as well entertaining requests from the audience. And yes, there were lots of Pixies songs! After that, we were both tired, so we went back to the hotel, where I checked my e-mail to make sure everything was OK with our presentation and then went off to bed.

On Animal Farm...

I found this article interesting. Again, it relates heavily to my group's presentation on Wednesday for LIS 2000 and to issues of copyright and fair use in general. It seems to me that devices like the Kindle are definitely indicative of (at least part of) the future of reading, but where they have it wrong is that they're (at least as far as I'm aware) tied in directly with Amazon. Compare that an iPod, for example. Sure it's made by a single corporation (Apple), but you can put whatever you want (wherever you buy or, ahem, don't buy it from) on there. That, I think, is what really drives its popularity. Everyone can put his or her own personal touches on what that person wants to listen to or watch on his or her device. That's where radio stations (like the short-lived Jack FM in New York) who play all of their songs in a shuffle-ish mode across different listening formats get it wrong. People don't wanna hear the same songs over and over again. It's not just about randomization, but personal choice. I think (or at least I hope) that someone will invent a reading device akin to a Kindle, but where you can load up (for example) books bought from Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble as well as whatever .pdfs and .docs you might want on there for say, a class or for pleasure reading. Thus, my feeling is that these reading devices are sort of in the pre-iPod stage right now. Thoughts?

And as for Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, aside from the obvious irony of 1984 essentially being temporarily censored by Amazon (similar to my classmate Nathaniel Wolfgang-Price's point in his group's presentation on Wednesday; specifically, he stated that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 had either been challenged or successfully banned somewhere, though I don't remember which now), Animal Farm reminds me of two things. First off, some friends of mine in college did a zine called Manor Farm. Furthermore, there's this gem by The Kinks on their amazing 1968 amazing The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Enjoy!

Best Buy

Although I'm generally not a fan of big box stores (don't get me started on how they've undercut independent record stores with their pricing and exclusive deals with artists), I found this article interesting. Now you're probably wondering what this has to do with librarianship. I just found an interesting parallel between their future survival plan and that of libraries. This is something that's been discussed in LIS 2000 since the beginning of the term and it was covered repeatedly during our on-campus session as well. Basically, not only do libraries have to market themselves more effectively, but the new model will definitely involve what Best Buy's doing now (i.e. lots of technological assistance for patrons).

Blogger, It’s Not Nice to Leak Guns N’ Roses Songs

This article relates to the presentation that my group did for LIS 2000 on Wednesday. Specifically, it relates to the file sharing aspect that I did my segment on. This is yet another example of the record industry not realizing that bloggers can actually HELP them sell records. It's free publicity! In the end, Chinese Democracy turned out to be a massive commercial disappointment, and after a 15-year wait. I'm not saying that if this guy hadn't been sued, it would have done better, but it's just ridiculous that they're still so afraid of this now not-so-new technology that they don't think that they can use the help. Sigh.

On a somewhat related note, I saw Tommy Stinson, Guns 'N Roses' bass player, perform with The Figgs about a month ago here in Philly at a small bar called the Tritone. The Figgs backed Tommy on one of his solo tours (after The Replacements broke up, he formed Bash and Pop and Perfect before joining Guns 'n Roses and embarking upon a solo career). Apparently he lives in Media (about 30 minutes outside of here)!

Thoreau, part 1

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent part of Sunday night working on this assignment for LIS 2600. I wish that I didn't have to put off this assignment until the last minute, but fortunately it only took me about an hour to complete. The instructions were quite vague and since I have the syllabus printed out, I didn't realize there was a hyperlink embedded in there until I went to the actual syllabus on Blackboard and found the necessary fragment there.

Anyhow, after reading the discussion board, I realized that instead of going to the address specified, I had to download Filezilla first and then type in that address as well as the port before uploading my work there. To be completely honest, I'm still not completely sure that I did this correctly. As of yesterday, I still haven't received a grade on this assignment. Yes, I was able to see my work (following another really useful link in the Discussion Board which pointed to someone else's work on this assignment) and hopefully, our instructors can see it, too. I almost posted the link to the dB just to prove that it worked. I did get that infamous 404 (or was it 403?) error the first time I tried to view it and I'm still not exactly sure why. That was OK, though, because I realized that I didn't do the assignment correctly the first time around and so I had to edit it (I used KompoZer, which I found much, much more user-friendly for a relative HTML novice like myself than Amaya). Anyway, fortunately I didn't even have to use any coding. I just edited the fragment in GUI mode (the default mode when the program opens), saved it as an HTML file and uploaded to Filezilla.

As a side note, I'm glad that I didn't post it to Google as some of the other students did. I know that Dr. Tomer won't penalize any of us since he initially said that it was OK, but it seems like those who used it will have more work on their hands for this week. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I almost ended up using it before figuring out that I could just download Filezilla and then upload my document there.

I just hope that this week's assignment (which I haven't started yet) will be as (relatively) painless. It seems like a continuation of last week's work with some added hyperlinks and formatting, but I don't wanna judge it until I do it. Onward!

Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (Part 2)

Well Monday morning was the first "real" day of this whole thing. I walked down to campus (a fun and brisk walk since it's all downhill on Bigelow; I can't say the same for the walks back uphill, but at least it's good exercise), got great coffee from Crazy Mocha and an OK breakfast sandwich from Bruegger's Bagels and schlepped up to Allen. After Sunday, me and Jenny had both decided that it would be ludicrous to drive there given how close each of our hotels were to campus. And besides, we both like walking. Anyway, after getting our pictures taken and after the LIS 2600 presentation by Dr. Tomer, we got to have lunch on our own. I am thankful to Dr. Alman for many reasons, but one of them is listing Food for Thought in her "places to eat in Oakland" guide. This place makes a seriously great corned beef sandwich. "Really good" is an understatement. Do not miss this place if you're in Pittsburgh and into that sort of thing. Afterwards, I dragged Ian B. (who also accompanied me for lunch) to Wicked Discs, one of the record stores on S. Craig St.(one of the shopping strips in Oakland), where in the limited amount of time we had to browse there, I got a vinyl copy of Government Issue's You Lp. Overall, the store was small and cool, though a bit pricey.



After hustling back to Allen and getting in a few minutes late (sorry), we got to attend the "Introduction to the Profession" seminar. I must say that I really enjoyed this part of the learning experience and I think I learned quite a lot from the librarians in various fields. I think I've decided that I'd like to at least take the Introduction to Archives class as an elective, though I don't think I can commit to the entire track. I don't wanna place all of my eggs in one basket, especially not before I try out of the classes. I also think that school librarianship is probably not for me, though Joe Prince had what was by far the most memorable presentation due to Hamburgheruesa (I hope I'm spelling that correctly), a toy llama that he uses in his library at North Allegheny Middle School that even has its own e-mail address (I distinctly remember hamburgheruesarules@gmail.com). Although it's not my field of interest, Joe seems tailor-made for it (as a former English teacher) and he knows how to market his library and the profession itself quite effectively. Amy Watson's presentation interested me as well and later, I found out that we have a mutual friend who works for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. As she said, the world of libraries is quite small! And I don't think anyone in Cohort 9 will forget Barbara Epstein's presentation. I don't wanna mention it because it's so grizzly, but it's certainly memorable! Of the different tracks, I can see myself in academic, public, special libraries and maybe archiving as well and all for different reasons. It's tough to decide so early on, especially with only a little bit of experience (all volunteer) in my chosen field.

After our walk to SIS, we got to meet Elizabeth Mahoney and another member of the SIS faculty along with several library employees. I wasn't sure where to go for dinner afterwards and eventually settled on Ali Baba's on S. Craig St. It was pretty good, but not great. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening (slightly cool with virtually no humidity and mostly clear), so I found a bench somewhere on 5th Avenue and read Viral Spiral (an excellent book which may be my favorite of everything we've had to read for LIS 2000, but again more on that later). After that, I hoofed it back to the hotel, where I worked on my bullet points for the book discussion for Viral Spiral and Everything is Miscellaneous while somehow managing to watch the season premiere of No Reservations. I also worked on some stuff for our group presentation as well. Fortunately, we managed to finish most of the work for our group presentation before we arrived on campus, but there was still work to be done (annotated bibiliographies, et al.) along with, as ever, more reading before submitting my thoughts on our readings into Course Documents.

Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (Part 1)

Well I just back from Pittsburgh. OK that sounds like the start of an old song or something, but it's true. We (myself and Jenny Pilling, a student in my cohort who was kind enough to give me a ride there and back; thanks again!) drove out to Pittsburgh on Saturday from where she lives (Ardmore, which is right outside of Philadelphia) and got there in under 5 hours. It definitely helps to go on a Saturday, so we avoided all the traffic that way. We were also lucky enough to avoid the traffic on the way back on Wednesday, but more on that below. Now for the sake of not having this post be the equivalent of a lengthy Russian novel (are there short ones?), I'm separating them into different parts. The first segment will cover Saturday and Sunday.



After checking in to my hotel a little after 9 (after a great dinner at this place), I was too exhausted to really accomplish much of anything other than checking e-mail and watching Valley Girl on one of the movie channels before dozing off.

It was fortunate that we didn't have to be on campus until 1 since I had a chance to sleep in a little (though I did get up and 8 and managed to work out at my hotel's gym; it was the last time I was able to do that, but more on that later). What was unfortunate, though, was the hotel's complimentary breakfast. In this case, there was a reason it was complimentary and that's because (for the most part), it was awful! For the rest of my stay, I happily paid a few dollars extra for coffee and breakfast elsewhere. So anyway Jenny (who stayed at the Quality Inn; she told me later that it was half the price, so I think I know where I'm staying in October) came to get me at 11:30 so that we could go to campus to get our IDs. There was no line and we got our IDs within minutes and then we met up with Nicole, another student in our Cohort who came all the way from Qatar! We all went to the Primanti Brothers on Forbes Ave. in Oakland (a neighborhood I'd explore and get to know really well for having been there only 4-5 days), right next to the University, and I'm happy to say that it was great and way, way better than the one I went to 3 years ago in some suburb (the only time I'd been to the Pittsburgh area prior to my trip). So anyway we went to Allen Hall and met some of the other students. Eventually, just about everyone in our cohort arrived and we met Dr. Alman and Dr. Tomer as well. I think we just did some introductions and team-building exercises before having dinner at Lulu's Noodles (a place with seriously GREAT bubble tea and pretty good Chinese food, too), but then again I'm still so wired from the experience that sometimes it's hard to keep what happened on which particular day straight. After dinner, I went back to the hotel to work on my project for LIS 2600. Yes, I did put it off until the last minute, but fortunately it didn't take me long to get through it. That'll be a separate blog post, so stay tuned for that.

A Virtual Smorgasboard

That's what this morning's business section of The New York Times was in terms of articles that are relevant to this course. It must be Information Technologies day over there or something.

Here's one about Google Chrome challenging Windows.

On a related note, this one is about Google's plan to develop an operating system to go along with Chrome.

Next up we have an article about Bing, Microsoft's challenger to Google's search engine. You can read it here.

And last, but perhaps not least, are Apple and Google violating antitrust law? Read all about it here.

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

This article is several years old and I just happened to come across it while looking for something else, but it definitely points to a still-ongoing phenomenon. Admittedly, though without going into too much detail, I can definitely relate to much of this and it's part of what attracted me to the field in the first place.

Also, I know at least a few of you will get this reference (and my apologies to those of you who don't), but doesn't the title of the article sound like it could be a Fall tune? Drink a long draft for the hip shushers. They're not appreciated. :-)

What, me read?

Check out this funny anecdote from today's Metropolitan Diary section of the New York Times.

Koha assignment

Well, I meant to post something about this earlier since I finished this assignment on Friday night, but a busy holiday weekend has prevented me from doing that until now. Like Karen, I really enjoyed doing this assignment because I essentially got to catalog some books on my favorite subject (music). When I created my folder, I didn't label it as such (calling it "Matt B"). However, I would hope that our teachers get the general idea and given that the name of the class blog is evocative of The Basement Tapes (a series of recordings by Bob Dylan and The Band done in the mid '60s), I have very little doubt that they would.

In any case, I did run into several snags with it. First off, it was a little annoying that like what Professor Schlak (Tim) said, I got about a 50/50 hit-to-miss ratio with the ISBN search. I was never sure whether to use the 10 or 13 number ISBN. Sometimes I tried both and got one (but not the other) and sometimes I got neither. Sometimes I typed in the title or the author and found the book I wanted to catalog that way. At other points, I was surprised when searches for famous authors like Nick Hornby (as well as searching by the titles of his books) turned up absolutely nothing, but yet books by far lesser known authors (Brendan Halpin, for example) came up (not that I'm complaining about that, mind you). At first, I didn't realize that all of the items have to be about a specific subject because I didn't read the instructions carefully enough. It's a good thing that I looked at the other folders to get a general idea! Thus, I had to delete about 4-5 books that weren't specifically music-related, so that was a bit annoying but not a huge deal.

What was a bigger deal was that sometimes (though on only a few occasions, thankfully), I got that nasty error right after the step where I put in the extra bit of information in the 3rd box about it automatically filled in the missing item fields after downloading much of the needed information when it was found in the internet search (sorry I don't have Koha open now so I forgot the specific step). This was usually after it had been hanging for 4-5 minutes, too! All that waiting and for nothing! I figured that it was just a problem with Koha, though, because usually I was able to get it to work after 2-3 tries. If it still didn't work, I would just move on to another book and usually, that would work. Still, the assignment took a bit longer than it should have for that reason. Perhaps internal improvements to this step and to Koha in general are in order?

At first, I also didn't realize that I had to make my folder public, but that was easy enough to change. Well, now I have to finish some reading for LIS 2000 and to start on a paper for that class. In the words of a Government Issue album title, the fun just never ends!

Oh and before I forget, I wanted to say that Dr. Tomer's instructional video was absolutely invaluable in terms of helping me to complete this assignment. Without it, I would've been totally lost. What helped me was pausing it as I was going along and cataloging my first item and after a few items, I didn't need to view it anymore.

My Crazy Life

Well, I just wanted to let you all that I got a new job earlier this week. I know what you all are thinking and no, I'm not asking for sympathy. Everyone in the program is busy, often to an insane degree. I am, however, feeling more than a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Today was my second day and to say the least, this month will be very busy for me. Thankfully, I'm off tomorrow and though we have a busy weekend ahead of us (including a wedding on Saturday; yep, our friends are getting married on the 4th), I think I should have enough time between tomorrow and Sunday to finish up my work for both this class and LIS 2000 as well.

And speaking of LIS 2000, I participated in my first Skype session today. It was a conference call to talk about the group presentation we have to do for that class during our on-campus session in Pittsburgh in a few weeks. I have to get a mic set up to be able to participate fully in the next session, but it was still cool to use it for the first time. When I downloaded Skype (which was a bear to download, BTW; I had to download the full version since the original executable file I downloaded didn't work and then I had to change the extension to .exe to get it to open, but hey it worked), I also unwittingly downloaded Google Chrome, which I'm using for the first time tonight. I really like it a lot so far. I don't know if it'll eventually replace Firefox (I can't stand IE) as my default browser, but so far so good. It seems very intuitive and easy to use.

Also, back to 2600, when do you all think we'll get our grades for the last few assignments?

ePrints

Well, I finally finished the ePrints assignment last night. After looking at the dB, I figured it out, though like many other students it seemed like the hardest part of it was knowing where to begin. At first, I wasn't even sure if I had to download it until I read the dB! In any case, uploading some of the large .pdf files was definitely the most time-consuming part of it along with having to switch from IE (to access the VPN) back to Firefox, my regular browser. That wasn't such a big deal, though. I also mistakenly forgot to save some of the information I found for the citations in a text file, so I just decided to type in the entire abstacts instead of going into the VPN again for some of the entries. Again, I hope I get all the metadata that I needed to, though it doesn't seem as important (from what I read on the dB, at least) as getting 25 articles into the live archive. I also didn't provide URLs for the article. I figured the .pdfs were sufficient. I hope this is OK, too, and that I don't get points off.

And speaking of which, I'm wondering when we'll get our grades for the Jing/Zotero assignment. OK, enough ranting.

Information Overload

Information Overload

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This excellent article from the most current issue of the Utne Reader deals directly with some of the topics in both LIS 2000 and this course, LIS 2600. Additionally, the lack of critical thinking and the public/private debate (comparing "benevolent librarian types" and "private companies") in terms of access to information are addressed here as well.

belated thoughts on Jing/Zotero assignment

When I first attempted to do the assignment, I realized that I'd never made an audio recording using a computer. I thought for sure that I'd have to purchase a microphone or a webcam, but luckily the laptop I was using during the time where we didn't have an internet connection via our desktops (a big storm a few weeks back knocked out our phone service for 3 days and also knocked out our modem and we had to wait for Earthlink to ship us a new one) did the trick. I didn't realize that most of them had built-in mics, so thanks to the instructors for the tip!

I found that it was relatively easy to use Jing, both in terms of the capacity it has for enabling users to make videos and in terms of screen capture (though this was a bit trickier; I had to do it 3-4 times to get it right). Therefore, I found that the toughest part of this assignment was to put it on this blog. In particular, while it was easy to get the video up, the challenge was how to make it fit the screen properly. I experimented with a few different approaches and finally was able to curtail it so that it fit my laptop screen, albeit at the expense of screen clarity. It's too bad that Blogger doesn't resize it automatically, but it's easy enough to change the HTML code references to height and width (thanks for the tips). I ended up changing only 3 of the references to height and width and not all of them, but I still think that it did the trick (?).

Now it's full speed ahead onto the eprints assignment!

In this word factory, replacement parts are free

I don't know how much this really has to do with librarianship, but it does have an awful lot to do with books (and specifically, textbooks). I don't know if this is an isolated case (though one would hope so) or if it's emblematic and indicative of the struggles of the publishing industry, even in an industry as relative secure (or one would think, at least) as one that makes textbooks that are used nationwide. What do you all think?

Ray Bradbury

I don't know what you think of when you think of the legendary author science-fiction Ray Bradbury, but I tend to think of his most famous work, which is of course Fahrenheit 451. Now this is a book that many of you probably had to read at one point in your academic career (perhaps in middle school or high school), so I'm sure that many of you will be familiar with it or at least its basic premise.

As a lover of knowledge and information, societies which practice book burning horrify me, as they should any civilized person. This doesn't just include the burning of literature in Nazi Germany or the many raids on libraries throughout history (such as the ones we just read about in Glut for LIS 2000), but also more modern examples like the burning of Beatles records and memoribilia in the mid '60s after John Lennon made his infamous and widely misunderstood statement about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus". Other examples include the blatantly racist and homophobic burning of disco records in 1979 at Chicago's Comiskey Park and more recently, Dixie Chicks CDs being burned after Natalie Maines made an anti-war statement in London during the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In any case, it should come as no surprise that the author of Fahrenheit 451 should be such a huge supporter of the public library system. He's on the front page of today's New York Times in reference to the Ventura, CA public library. You can read the article here.

The article also reminds us that the current crisis facing the public library system here in Philadelphia (for those outside of the area who may not know, due to a budget crisis, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter has threatened to shut down 11 branches, all in underserved, low-income communities, though thus far the branches have fortunately remained open) is a nationwide one as well.

I should also note that Bradbury's opinion of the internet, is well to put it generously, narrow-minded and unenlightened. Therefore, I don't agree with everything he says here, but his dedication to public libraries is admirable.

As a side note that's sort of appropos of nothing related to this post other than the name, there was a New York-based hardcore punk group named Fahrenheit 451 in the late '90s. I don't know how long they lasted or if they're still around. I guess I might have to look into that one.

Assignment 4 (Zotero Installation Video)

I apologize for the scratchiness of my microphone, especially towards the end of the video, but this is the first time I've ever narrated an audio presentation and it's the only mic I have at the moment. Anyway, I hope you can understand me.

I also apologize that this out-of-scale. I tried resizing the height and width, but there's still a disconnect between the screen size and what it shows on blogger.

What's the Word?

Here's an article about the one-millionth English word and the predictable controversy amongst academics. Guess what it is? Web 2.0. How appropriate.

Arcade Publishing Files for Bankruptcy

This may have more to do with LIS 2000, but here's a short blurb about Arcade Publishing having to file for bankruptcy. I don't know if this is an isolated base or if it's indicative of a larger trend amongst book publishers, but of course I hope it's the former and not the latter!

Assignment 4 blues

If anyone can help with the audio narrative portion, please get in touch!

I think you're crazy...

Click here to read about acclaimed producer (and 1/2 of Gnarls Barkley) Danger Mouse's new "CD". I put "CD" in quotation marks because the disc in question has no actual music on it. Part of me think this is a publicity stunt for a more traditional release in a few months or so. However, this isn't the first time Danger Mouse has been in legal hot water. He made his name by releasing The Grey Album, a mash-up of The Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album with Jay-Z's rhymes on top of The Beatles' tracks.

I should also credit Grackles and the Truth for reporting on this first.

I wonder if the Stockholm Pirates would've swept the Mets last week

Here is a rather interesting article on Sweden's Free-Web party. This is the first I've ever heard of such a political party existing anywhere in the world. Given my feelings about these matters, I'd consider voting for them. I certainly believe in as much de-regulation of the internet as possible and that it should kept a free, open forum. I'm also strongly in favor of net neutrality and strongly opposed to large corporations squeezing fines (with threats of lawsuits) from so-called "thieves". This is a strategy which they've largely abandoned in the last year or so since they finally understand that it's horrible PR to sue your own customers and that it breeds a lot of well-justified ill will, but they still insist on going after sites like piratebay even though the spread of information online is virtually unstoppable. I can go on in much greater detail about this, but I figured that this might be food for thought for all of you given today's LIS 2000 presentation on fair use and what not.

Well well blogs go on long after the thrill of blogging is gone

Check out yesterday's New York Times article on blogging here.

WorldCat assignment and other assorted ramblings

Well, I finished up the WorldCat assignment yesterday. Overall, I'd say that this assignment was far less difficult, more straightforward and thus took a far shorter amount of time than the previous assignment (Scopus, RefWorks, etc.) did. The only part that confused me initially was the RIS format aspect, but once I looked at the message board, I was finally able to get it. I'm still not sure if we can export it in .csv format, but while I'm unsure, I submitted it in the format that was assigned in the syllabus. I hope I wasn't supposed to do it in .csv as well, but I'll take that chance (unless someone tells me otherwise).

Otherwise, I'm still trying to figure out how we can find out how we're doing in this class. LIS 2000 is much easier to keep track of. Will we just get all of our grades at the end of the term?

Yet Another One...

Here's another fun article from Saturday's New York Times that I missed until today. Click here to read, or re-read.

More on the BookExpo

If you click here, you can read another article about the BookExpo held this past weekend in New York City. This one deals more with the book publishing industry and its future. Like the article I linked to in my previous post, this one also deals with digitization.

Extra Extra! Read All About It!

I found an interesting article about Google's plan to compete with the Amazon Kindle in today's New York Times that may be of interest to some of you and that also encompass some of what we're learning in LIS 2000 and to a lesser extent, in LIS 2600 as well. Enjoy!

Click here.

How Am I Doing in this Course? Please Call 1-800-...

I do have one question that I've forgotten to address thus far, though. Dr. Tomer, if you're reading this, how will grades be assigned? Will they be posted at the end of the term or earlier? If I missed this in the syllabus or elsewhere, then I apologize. I was just wondering. Anyone else can answer this, too. Thanks in advance.

It's Oh So Quiet...

Since there have not been any assignments assigned for this week in LIS 2600, I haven't been posting here the post few days. Don't worry, though. Once I start working on the next assignment, I'm sure that I'll start ranting and rave here just like last weekend. In the meantime, though, I hope that everyone has a great weekend. Now it's off to the watch the Phillies take on the Nationals at Citizens' Bank Park and hopefully it won't be a rain-out.

Assignment due 5/24 - an analysis

Well it's Sunday night, about a quarter to 9 PM EST as I type this and I'm FINALLY finished with this week's assignment. It's not that it was particularly difficult, at least IMO and especially with the aid of those on the Discussion Board (so thanks to all of you!), but it just took an incredibly long amount of time. Part of it is that I admittedly made the mistake of starting to look at it today. I was so bogged down with the readings and assignments for our other course (LIS 2000) that I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter, though. I don't wanna sound like I'm abdicating myself from blame here, though.

Nevertheless, the most tedious part about it involved having to individually import Google Scholar references to RefWorks (boy do I wish there was an application that lets you import multiple references/citations like with Scopus). There was also a brief scare a couple of hours ago when I couldn't even get onto any of the discussion boards. Apparently Courseweb thought that I wasn't registered for any courses! I knew this was a minor technical glitch, but it was a bit jarring to look at and frankly, after all the work I've been putting in so far, a bit offensive. :-)

Fortunately, I'm back online now, my classes are now showing up (goes to show what happens when one takes a break for dinner).

I'm also a bit confused as to how share our Google Reader RSS feeds. I made them public and sent a "friend request" to Dr. Tomer. In any case I guess the important thing is that he sees them.

I also didn't post last week's assignment on the Discussion Board until yesterday. Admittedly, I was confused that I didn't see a separate thread for it and was unaware that it was all under the thread marked "Questions about Citations and References" (sorry if I'm getting the name wrong).

Anyway, all appears to be well now. I just hope I did OK on this assignment.

2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers

Now that I've introduced myself in the previous post, I wanted to comment on one of last week's readings. It's interesting to see how many of the predictions in this article have come true in the five years or so since it's been published. While I don't have the statistics handy, E-mail, cellular phones, blogs, iPods and now iPhones and the Blackberry have, if anything, come into even greater prominence not just here in the U.S. and in other Western countries, but in fast-growing economies like India as well. It'll also be interesting to see if e-books really do infiltrate the classroom and what will happen with devices like Amazon's Kindle, which of course enable users to read a book, magazine or newspaper on a portable device the size of an iPod.

As I skim through this article again, I'm reminded of an article I read yesterday for another class. That article is the definitively-titled "Content is Not King" by Andrew Odlyzko. I'm reminded of this article because it seems to be either a complement to "Content, Not Containers" or an article that directly contradicts it. Its main point is that throughout history, communication, functionality and convenience (all labeled under the guise of "connectivity")have been more important than content and that this is especially relevant in predicting what individual consumers and businesses are willing to pay for. For instance, there's a section of "Content, Not Containers" which describes how in 2004 cell phone companies were gearing up to include all sorts of new features on cell phones like internet usage, ringtones and what not. I would conclude that other than for those with iPhones and Blackberry devices, most of those who use cell phones don't use them to go online or to listen to music (this isn't necessarily true in Asia, for example, but that's another post). Text messaging services, however, have flourished since then, with many (myself included) now paying a flat fee in addition to a monthly usage charge for phone service in exchange for being able to compose and receive an unlimited number of text messages per month. So far, though, this is the exception and not the rule.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Libraryboy, the blog I've created for LIS 2600, one of the two courses I am currently taking for my 1st semester in the Fast Track MLIS program via The University of Pittsburgh.

Those of you following me and reading this may already know who I am from the introductions on the main Fast Track Discussion Board or the Discussion Board for LIS 2000, the other course I'm currently enrolled in, so if the following is already familiar to you, I apologize in advance.

My name is Matt Berlyant. I'm one of those "career-changers," as my previous academic background is in Statistics and much of my previous work background has been in academia both as a staff member and as an adjunct math professor. I'm also married and live here in Philadelphia with my wife Anne and our cat Lola (otherwise known around here as "our pride and joy" and many, many other affectionate nicknames).

Based upon the instructions given, I'm not sure if I should stick to discussing topics pertinent to this course, but that's what I assume. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know for sure (if you have that information) or just to say hi (or for any other reason). I'd be happy to hear from you.

And yes, the lack of separation between the two words that make up this blog's title ("library" and "boy") is entirely intentional. It's an homage to Brendan Halpin's novel Donorboy. To be completely honest, I haven't read Donorboy yet (and probably won't read much for pleasure other than the daily paper and magazines and what not) for a few months given the insane amount of reading we all have to do for these courses, but I loved his novels Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Long Way Back. I loved DCW so much that I read it twice in a row from cover to cover, something I rarely do (after I read something once, I usually move on to something else).

You may have also noticed (if you click on the "about me" section and look at the all of my blogs) that I have another blog. It hasn't been updated in almost two and half years, but if you'd like to check it out, feel free. It mostly consists of music-oriented writing (show reviews and what not) written between December 2004 and December 2006, but also includes other observations on daily life and what not. After a year or so, I stopped updating it nearly as much because that was when I started writing for bigtakeover.com and thus most of my music writing since then has been on that site. You can read my posts over there @ the following URL:
My blog on The Big Takeover website.