[BEGIN]

Hi Louise,

I don’t know who to tell this to, and I’m sure I could save this for my course evaluation form, but I often tire of writing those evals by the end of the semester.

I just wanted to say how amazing Dorothea Salo has been in teaching LIS 644. She is incredibly passionate as a teacher and it is contagious. There are students in that class who were nervous about all the ‘techie stuff’ but have been really glad they stayed with it. And they’re doing things they probably wouldn’t have had any inclination to be doing otherwise, like writing a blog or exploring a new software application or tool. Dorothea keeps the assignments meaningful, the topics current, and the readings concise (I don’t think professors consider the adverse effects of assigning lengthy articles whose contents could be summed up in one page).

Her classes aren’t lectures, they’re events! From technical school to undergrad studies and up until now, I’ve never had an instructor like this. I don’t think anyone misses lectures for that class; if they do it’s planned or an emergency has arisen. If it wasn’t for my looming tuition bill, I’d feel inclined to pay admission before each class. Students arrive with laptops, curiosity, and a handful of questions and we just delve into the latest and greatest library-related topics in computing technologies. If she didn’t stop lecturing at 8pm, we’d probably role on into midnight!

Dorothea has also been awesome at discussing how to get our first job in librarianship. She has incorporated the job searching aspect of librarianship into the lectures almost seamlessly. It’s as if she really does care about whether we make it in our post-SLIS lives.

I guess what I’m saying is, Dorothea’s 644 SHOULD be required. It’s just a shame that there weren’t more of my colleagues in this class as I understand it’s not offered next semester. They’d be feeling much more prepared for the workplace if they did. Oh, well. I guess I’ll just count myself lucky and grateful for this to have been my opportunity.

I just thought you should know. 
-Dan

[END]

In general, I feel like I’m more eager to roll-up my sleeves and start experimenting. But to be honest, I’m not sure if this inspiration stems from this class or if it’s because I’m nearing graduation. Regardless, I am eager to jump into the sea of madness and see what value I can find in all these tools we’ve been hearing about in school. (We’ve only been hearing as this is a research institution. We just talk about these new-fangled things here.)

I think Danika’s blog’s title sums up how I’m feeling: Brave New Librarian. I feel eager, curious, and fearless in the face of new technology. Yet, as an expecting father without a job, I am scared of unemployment and low salaries. Thus, I feel willing to restrain my passions and curiosities, and just be compliant as long it gets me a job to alleviate said concerns. However, I don’t think I’ll be able to contain them for long.

I don’t think I react to technology differently than I did before. The #2 pencil is still technology to me, and it has remained that way since I took Prof. Hench’s Management of Information course during my undergrad studies.

Since starting my practicum at UWDCC, I have been contemplating the possibility that digital librarianship may not be the zenith of librarianship (at least in terms of access, certainly not in terms of preservation). I suspect that it, too, is just another phase and something greater yet unfathomable to us now will emerge, being regarded as even greater and better.

I think this course has also emphasized how interdisciplinary librarianship really is — I think this is unjust considering how much it pays and how much schooling it requires. I swear librarians are expected to be lawyers, computer programmers, babysitters, social workers, and law enforcers, to name a few.

(If I could do it over again, I think that I would have majored in I.S. and been done with school over a year ago…and I’d probably be getting paid more down the stretch. I think librarianship is noble, but I’d forsake having a role in it for a better paying job in I.T. any day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a money-hungry type of person. Between nasty school loans and having a baby on the way, a $30,000-salary would be a joke if it wasn’t so horrifying. I can only hope that whichever Red State we end up moving to has BadgerCare!)

On a sidenote, I hope to keep up blogging as a result of this course. And don’t tell Dave, but I’m thinking about running Ubuntu as soon as I get my hands on another computer. (My wife will probably slash the tires on Dave’s car for that inspiration. “If we get a new computer, it better not be anything greater than a calculator!” she says.)

I am giving up on trying to get the iTunes file formats (.m4a and .m4p) to work. However, I am going to try and find plug-ins for lossless file types like AIFF, WAV, SHN, and FLAC. The Greenstone Wiki is giving me some hope by saying such file types “potentially” have plug-ins.

Below is a cropped screen shot of both the MP3 and Ogg Vorbis icons displayed when viewing the collection via a web browser. (I like the Ogg Vorbis icon. I just wish it was a little bit smaller.)
One thing I don’t like about Ogg Vorbis is that neither of the big-name audio players I use (iTunes/QuickTime and Windows Media Player) play that file type by default. I did find plug-ins for playing Ogg files in both QuickTime and Windows Media Player, but this doesn’t enable Ogg files to play as nicely as MP3 files do in a web browser when they’re clicked on at Greenstone. They want to open up either QuickTime or Windows Media Player outside of the browser, giving the user an option of saving the file.

File copying and deleting is a whole other realm of problems that I probably won’t have time to delve into. I really don’t know how or if these songs are made secure.

Another huge problem that is getting weirder with every experiement is how my MP3s will play nicely in Internet Explorer but are hit and miss in Firefox. I don’t know if I show delete and re-add (is that a word?) my Radiohead MP3s, because they only play the first second of each song in Firefox; in IE they play in their entirety. Now, I’ve added my Jem MP3 to the Greenstone collection and it not only plays fine in IE, it also plays in its entirety in Firefox. Does Firefox hate Radiohead, or is something just fluky here that might be reset by deleting and re-adding the files? It’s so weird!

Another problem I have been trying to fix is in the metadata. I have been trying to make the Dublin Core element dc.Relation appear as dc.Relation^Is Part Of, but every time I go in and make the change it displays as dc.Relation^Relation in the metadata displayed on the Enrich tab. See image below.
Maybe my problem is simply a syntax error. Maybe instead of typing ^, I should be use |, :, /, or …who knows what character!?

I am finding the Wiki to not be too incredibly helpful. I feel certain that there’s a wealth of content there, but I keep feeling like my searches should come back with more (or better) results than they do. Do you know what I mean?

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
[Windows root]\system32\hal.dll

Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I would have found it funny that the uncooperative file was named HAL (see HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey: “I’m sorry [Dan], I’m afraid I can’t do that.”), but… MY FILES! MY HOMEWORK!

No matter how many times I restarted I got the same old message. All I could think about was all my homework residing on my potentially hosed computer. At this point in the semester, you don’t care about the digital photos and songs you could lose; it’s the semester long projects that make you want to cry or puke. I sat there wondering if I was going to have to wipe my hard drive. Worse, I wondered if my professors would even believe me if I told them my work had been lost due to computer failure.

I booted up my Mac laptop and said to my wife, “This is why we have two computers!” (She hates my computers and wishes they’d all die so I would spend more time with her. I call my Dell ‘The Mistress’ because I’m with it/her more than I am my wife. Hopefully, this changes once the misery of school is gone.)

Thank you Google for the direction and thank you Microsoft Support for the solution. I basically had to boot to my Windows XP CD-ROM and run bootcfg /rebuild at the DOS prompt.

That was too close. “Now, let’s see a show of hands. Who here thinks I should back-up my files now that Windows has finally loaded?”

I don’t know if you all have seen those business cards for Joanne Schwarz from Library Associates just lying around at the SLIS Library’s employment help area. I recently emailed her asking about their services and this is what she emailed me back.

Dear Dan,
We do indeed try and help new graduates find a job. There is no fee for
students or new graduates. We like to receive a resume as a Word
attachment and your resume is uploaded into a proprietary database. We
search this database every time we get a job order to match candidate
with position available before we ever post the job on our website. We
are a national company with offices in Los Angeles, Washington DC,
Denver and San Francisco. After you graduate, if you are interested in
registering with us, you can send me your resume to
jschwarz@libraryassociates.com. Please also send a cover letter with
your geographic preferences and the kind of library you are most
interested in. It is good to remember, most new graduates have to begin
at an entry level status unless both their education and work experience
are exceptional. I hope this answers your question.

Joanne Schwarz
Senior Recruiter
Library Associates Company

It sounds to me like she’s warning us rookie librarians to not expect good starting salaries. Is this because the employer will be paying the recruiter out of our salaries? Anyway…
I just thought I’d pass this on in case anyone else had seen those cards and was curious.

Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes
by Alfie Kohn

The following review of Punished By Rewards was written for Booklist by David Rouse:

“The idea that competition and reward are effective motivators forms the bedrock of our educational, economic, and managerial systems. Kohn, though, has strongly attacked the belief that competition is healthy and has documented its negative effects in No Contest: The Case against Competition (1986). Now he challenges the widely held assumption that incentives lead to improved quality and increased output in the workplace and in schools. He notes that the system of rewards and punishment is based on Pavlovian and Skinnerian behavioral theories, which are supported largely by experiments with laboratory animals. Kohn derides rewards as bribes and offers instead the proposition that collaboration (teamwork), content (meaningfulness), and choice (autonomy) will serve to motivate both students and workers. He marshals impressive theoretical support and, at the same time, uses humor disarmingly to argue his case.”

Maverick! by Ricardo Semler

The following review of Maverick! was written for Library Journal by Mark McCullough:

“First published in Brazil in 1988 as Turning the Tables , this book was the all-time best-selling nonfiction book in Brazil’s history. Semler, the 34-year-old CEO, or ‘counselor,’ of Semco, a Brazilian manufacturing firm, describes how he turned his successful company into a “natural business” in which employees hire and evaluate their bosses, dress however they want, participate in major decisions, and share in 22 percent of the profits. Semler believes that Semco is different from most companies that have participatory management because employees are given the power to make decisions–even ones, with which the CEO wouldn’t normally agree. Semler claims, ‘This is not a business book. It is a book about work, and how it can be changed for the better.’ Highly recommended.”

Corporate Creativity by Alan G. Robinson & Sam Stern

This book is almost a ‘how-to’ in the realm of instigating creativity and innovation in the work place. It is dry at times, but I don’t know of a better book on this topic. (At La Crosse we rented out books. This is the only of the three that I have yet to go out and purchase.)

Man, I wish I could take the time to locate and cite all the articles he used in his classes. They were probably as good if not better than the aforementioned books, but I just don’t have the time to type them up.

For whatever it’s worth, this professor (Professor Hench) was the person who taught me that a #2 pencil is technology. His class Management of Innovation blew my mind. It was as if I had been living in a one-dimensional, black and white world up until I took that class. Everything thereafter has been in 3-D. I now see in color!

That class echoed sentiments like: The ‘best’ and the ‘most powerful’ don’t make the best products. Newer isn’t always better. Life is not linear. We live in a world of chaos and chance. It’s about how travel through life and what we do with the resources around us combined with the opportunities that come as serendipitous encounters. ‘Managing’ gives the illusion that someone is in control. Managing for control (hierarchical) v. managing for creativity (autonomy). So on and so on. What a class!

[BEGIN]

Maybe I should just respond to one of your comments made in my second journal submission. You asked if any classes helped me become prepared for processes I’m working on. I don’t know if you were referring specifically to digital video editing or all the processes I’m working through at DCC. (Your comments were written on a page in my journal where I was talking about digital video editing.) Either way, the answer is no. I’ve loved my ‘techie’ classes I’ve taken at SLIS, but the experiences I have had at UWDCC are mostly only easy for me because I work on computers all the time. I’m always editing audio and video files; scanning photographs and modifying images; creating metadata for files, especially my audio files (this is why I think a ‘metadata librarian’ as a position seems absurd to me, and yet I’m never qualified for those positions because I don’t have anyone to vouch for me to say I’ve spent 2 to 5 years working with METS or MODS…anyone who can follow rules, is detail oriented, and can type should be able to handle a metadata librarian position…can you tell I’m frustrated from the job hunt?).

Quite frankly, outside of my information architecture class (where we made a web site for a real client), database design (where we got to experience creating non-Access relational databases), and this practicum at the DCC, I would argue that most of my schooling has been a waste of time (at least in the short-run) [Sorry, Dorothea. I completely forgot to mention LIS 644, but I would honestly put it in this list!]. I want to work in digital libraries; maybe even become an ‘emerging technology’ or metadata librarian. But to do so, I need to have something to show that I am competent with an array of technologies. There just aren’t enough opportunities at SLIS for that!

Those of us who are here for the ‘I’ and not the ‘L’ need real experiences and it forces us to find them through extracurricular activities. And time for extracurricular activities is something I don’t have. Now, it could be argued that “Hey, that’s the price you pay for trying to rush through the program!” but I guess that depends on what you perceive as the purpose of school. (I only go to school so I can get as far away from factory work (or worse retail) as possible. I’m not in school for a piece of paper; I just want a job that matches my interests and natural skills…and that can provide me with a sustainable income.) I believe that the experiences I need to land a job should be found on the way to obtaining my MLS, but maybe that’s because I come from a hands-on/technical background.

But, again, what’s the purpose of school? We students are here ultimately to get jobs, but instead we’re required to focus on jumping through the hoops of quasi-meaningless exercises so we can move on to the next assignment or course which will provide us with more of the same. I perceive a lot (certainly not all!) coursework as nothing more than a means of attributing grades to students so some numerical value can be placed on us so as to inform others of our supposed interest, passion, or competency for the coursework we have completed. Rarely, if ever do these grades equate. (I think of all the ‘A’s that should have been ‘C’s and vice versa.)

In the end, we students walk out into the ‘real world’ and show our potential employers our grades for which we’ve labored so hard and apparently meant something to somebody only to be told, “That’s nice but we really don’t care about your GPA. Do you have any experience? Anything you can show and prove to us that you’re experienced?”

I keep finding myself saying, “I can’t wait until I’m done with school so I can learn something that can help me get a job.” At this point, my game plan to enhance my technical skills (and create something tangible for employers to look at) by creating a personal website that employs all the popular scripting languages/grammars: PHP, MySQL, AJAX, CSS, and XHTML. I have purchased a few books (most build off the technologies and languages that I am already familiar with) and have been making a grocery list of things I want to create using those popular technologies. I don’t know that that alone will suffice, but I have had numerous requests from potential employers looking for tangible evidence of what I’ve done or can do. My plan is subject to change, but it’s the best idea I’ve come up with thus far.

I can’t help but wonder if it’s harder to prove yourself for the more technical positions than say, for a youth services librarian position. I would think that in their case they just have to say, “Yes, I worked here for x amount of time, and these people can vouch for me,” and that’s it. If the employer likes you and the people vouch for you, then, you’re in. I don’t know, I’m probably being short-sighted. (I have a tendency to do that.)

Maybe all that needs to happen at SLIS is a firm division between those interested in the ‘I’ and those interested in the ‘L’. Maybe that would resolve a lot of my problems with the program. Of course, in order for that to be a richer experience, those of us in the ‘I’ would probably be sent to study with the computer science students.

To be fair, this conundrum of ‘I’ versus ‘L’ really informs us of the concerns that actually are in the ‘real world’: libraries need ‘computer people’ but can only afford to pay them as ‘librarians’ so they hope that MLS students pick up enough ‘I’ in grad school so they can be competent enough to get by. What a quagmire we’re in.

It is probably needless to say that I am in the camp who’d like to see the road to librarianship being paved with apprenticeships. I think an MLS is simply overkill for a field that I see as being on the brink of extinction. If an MLS is required, I would much rather the program’s coursework consist of real projects and/or practicums and nothing else. If there weren’t lectures every week, both students and professors could be freed up to complete their respective research. Professors could serve more as mentors to students on particular projects. Maybe they would hold a class or two on occasion just to inform students on new and relevant issues, or to simply bring the group together to discuss how things are going.

Having courses instead of projects is not a very flexible plan. Especially for the professor who needs to get his/her course approved so new technologies/issues/topics can be practiced and studied. Projects, on the other hand, would be more flexible and responsive to changes. They might even be more permissible for experimentations where students could explore the relevancy of a new technology in librarianship. Instead students either have to go it alone outside of class, or wait 2 years (I don’t know how long it takes; I’m being facetious) before a professor can organize a ‘meaningful’ course full of assignments and get it approved through whatever bureaucratic process courses must go through. This route is grossly inadequate for the ‘techie courses’ that us ‘I’ fans long for! Conventional courses can’t change fast enough to keep up with the trends, and it’s not realistic to expect the professors to keep up on them all. I say give us students something to set our sights on, a real library (or real library data) to work with, a little direction, and a fair amount of time to figure things out on our own and great things will happen! Learning is organic; it cannot be stopped (although grades definitely make us all extrinsic learners; See Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, an excellent book that one of my management professors had us read during my undergrad studies).

[Sorry for the tangent. I hope you don’t feel I aimed my frustrations over SLIS at you or any other professors for that matter. I think the problem is larger than all of us. Not that that’s an excuse to let it sleep. I just hope I didn’t offend. I’m sure I’m short-sighted on many issues I’ve addressed, so you can interpret my ranting as nothing more than a therapeutic exercise if you like.]

[I]n case you’re wondering, I did not meet with the ALA people [who were on campus a couple weeks ago], mostly because I didn’t have time (reason: never-ending schoolwork, what else?!), but partially because I was afraid I’d give too negative of an impression of SLIS resulting in me and my colleagues graduating without ALA-accredited MLS degrees. Besides, I heard from one of my colleagues that it was a waste of time. She showed up with all sorts of ideas, suggestions, and maybe a few complaints, and she never was granted an opportunity to express them. Apparently, it was just some time to schmooze and make small talk. Why am I not surprised?

[END]

Seriously, the lighting is pretty low to accurately critique all of my mannerisms. Half the time I look like a floating head hovering above two Arsenio Hall-sized hands (only mine are White, of course). If you turn the audio down it’s almost sedating to watch the head and hands float together through the darkness.

My hand gestures were OK, but I did spot myself scratching the back of my head once or twice. I really hate that tick of mine. Whenever I get nervous or I think I’m in a situation where I should feel nervous (I don’t know if that’ll make sense to anyone) I tend to scratch the back of my head. It’s really stupid. In fact, I can almost remember the first time I did it. It was almost like I subconsciously thought, “I need a tick to comfort me when I’m nervous.” [Please don't report me for being a nut!]

I also caught myself (how do you describe it?) pinching my thumbs(?). It’s where your middle and pointer fingers try to pinch or hold on to the thumb of the opposite hand. One might be able to do this to make an aggressive gesture, but if you relax your body and make this gesture it looks more pinched and nervous than you probably feel. I did exactly that at the end of my presentation and I know I was relaxed by then, but it didn’t look it judging by those hand gestures.

During this presentation my hands were a bit busier than usual with handling the iPod and DVD, not to mention having to advance my own slides from the keyboard. I also noticed how I was tied to the corner of the room; I needed to keep returning to that corner to press the space bar.

One positive that I was really pleased with is I didn’t think that I went too fast! I am absolutely tickled about this. I winced the second I clicked the start button of my presentation’s video, because I was anticipating my delivery to be something like that of an auctioneer. I think what helped in my pacing was that (a) I rehearsed about 6 to 8 times and (b) I liked my topic; if I would have been derailed I could have found something to talk about and that comforted me. Having plenty of rehearsal time also allowed me to produce a Power Point presentation that had a lot of the kinks worked out of it. This gave me confidence and comfort as well.

My only regret, aside from any head scratching, is that I chose to mention the DVD’s Easter Egg of Yoda break dancing. I delivered it as if I was stretching for a joke which it wasn’t, even though it is a fairly humorous clip. It was as if I was assuming my audience consisted of Star Wars geeks like myself. I should have chosen from the following options (1) avoided it entirely; (2) explain what an Easter Egg is; or (3) been more comprehensive by explaining what the other titles on the DVD were. The only titles I acknowledged were the feature film and the Easter Egg; there was 2 or 3 other titles on that DVD that I didn’t even acknowledge.

Overall, I think I did a pretty good job. It certainly wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. That being said, I still have plenty of mannerisms to improve on.

When you double-click on any of the files listed, my default audio file player (for me, this means iTunes) opens and plays the MP3.

In addition to MP3s I have been able to add and open the following file types:

• .jpg (originally picture files were only opening through the ImageMajick plug-in, but now they’re opening in my default viewer)
• .doc
• .pdf
• .url
• .avi (I thought I was going to have plug-in issues with this file type, but avi files are opening just fine)

My first observations…

• Greenstone duplicates the files on my PC whenever I add them to my collection.
• Some files, when opened through my Greenstone collection for the first time, ask for plug-ins in order to open or display. Oftentimes, these plug-ins are readily accessible, while other times I fear that I’m not going to be able to open certain file types unless I scour the Internet looking for their respective plug-in(s). But so far, these seemingly problematic files types are opening my default player/application on the second attempt.
• The look of the Greenstone interface is so Windows 3.11! It has been a long time since I’ve seen any GUI display windows or applications looking like this. That distinct font, man, what a riot! Also, notice in the above image how my “Dan’s Music” collection title has been reduced to the 8-character restrictions of old. My collection is now called “dansmusi”.

My next attempts are going to be investigating other file types, working with Greenstone on my Mac laptop, and/or exporting collections to CDs (I’m going to try for DVD).

How the scamming scumbags even knew I had a Citibank account is beyond me. Maybe it was just chance. Maybe a disgruntled employee. I don’t know.

Anyway, if you were to mouse over the hypertext links in the email the paths would reveal themselves to be something different than the ones in the email. Each of the hypertext links were actually aiming at a different location:

http://www.citibank.com.923791.001azvu7.com/_cqr/

Note the domain name between the ‘www.’ and the ‘.com’ parts. It’s not quite ‘www.citibank.com’.

I notified the real Citibank immediately. (I never heard back from them which kind of annoys and discomforts me. I thought they’d at least say “Thanks” or “We’ll look into this,” but no.) I assume this was a hoax because (a) I checked my balance by using Google to get to Citibank – I purposely avoided the links provided in the email – and saw that there were no transactions made on my account, and (b) the real URL that the hypertext was going to take me to is now a dead link so it kind of reaffirms it for me.

Let me tell you, getting a message like this will really freak you out. I thought, “Oh, no! Somebody must have stolen our card number from some past transaction we made!” Our physical card was accounted for, so I figured it just had to be the numbers. Like some online vendor I had previously done business with was hacked or something.

I am really proud of myself that I tapped the breaks and logically thought this out before just clicking the link(s) and throwing down my login information.