Library Systems - Post #12

Here it is, kids - the end! Our team is done with our training materials, so the wiki is pretty much finished. All I've got left is the reflection paper, so it's time to kick back and relax, right?

So why do I have this sense of impending doom hanging over me? Oh yeah, because I'm graduating and I have to find a job. This resume/cover letter rigmarole is just driving me bonkers. I can’t imagine what the library job search was like before computers. I guess it probably consisted of glancing through the newest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, talking to friends in the profession, and maybe making some phone calls. Now, RSS feeds can spew thousands of jobs at us, not to mention all of the e-mail listservs dedicated to job hunting. There’s also some great websites, such as ALA’s JobList and one I just found out about today called indeed. It’s not just for libraries; you just put the job title or keywords in one box, the location in the other, and voila, tons of results.

On the other hand, it seems like for all of the positive aspects of technology on resumes (e-mailing instead of snail mail, easily updateable, no more typewriters!) there are almost as many new problems (formatting problems make your resume unreadable, don’t forget to make your resume a PDF, not to mention forgetting to attach it to the e-mail!). But in the long run, it’s a heck of a lot easier to get your resume out there. I just wish it were easier to get a job!

Byebye, blogosphere!

Intellectual Freedom - Post #10

Wow, this is my last post of the semester! This has been fun.

I thought I'd end with a story that I find both hilarious and scary at the same time. It's about 6 weeks old, but I couldn't resist.

According to an article in the Times Online (UK), a company has been manufacturing a “teen repellent” called the Mosquito. It emits a high pitched noise that only young people can hear. Its purpose is dissuade teens from congregating in large groups. Amazingly, it has been installed in over 3,500 locations since it was made available!

Not surprisingly, people have been complaining about it. The Children’s Commissioner of England said, “These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving…The use of measures such as these are simply demonising children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.” The creators, meanwhile, don’t understand what all of the hubbub is about. One of them said “Of course it doesn't solve the long-term problem, but it does what it says on the box. It disperses the large groups.”

Can you imagine something like this happening in the U.S.? We hear all of the time about teens being disruptive in the library after school. Well, we could just turn the Mosquito on from 3-6pm and that would take care of the problem! I just don’t understand how the creators of this can’t see that if you make these teens leave, they’re going to go somewhere else; probably somewhere that’s not as safe.

P.S. I’m still not sure if this is really true, but apparently some teens recorded the sound from the Mosquito and made it into a ringtone, so they can receive calls in class without anyone knowing! Brilliant!

Library Systems - Post #11

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the semester has gone! It seems like only yesterday that it was January and I thought I’d run out of topics to blog about.

My group is starting our work on training materials, and although at this point we are just doing text and screen capture, we’re hoping to at least do a screencast that covers the basics.

I’ve been thinking about screencasting and how effective it is. On one hand, it’s obviously a very effective tool. I’ve watched several of University Library’s screencasts on electronic databases, and I thought they did a great job of explaining the sometimes arcane tactics for searching that the average Joe is not going to intuitively pick up on. They’re fairly easy to do; I’ve spent only a little bit of time with Captivate but I’m sure I could make a passable screencast in very little time.

So what’s the problem? Well, maybe I have too little faith in humanity, but I’m just not sure that the average college student (or even most adults) has the attention span to sit and watch and listen to someone demonstrate a library catalog or electronic database. I feel like they’d rather try to figure it out themselves (and fail), or think “Oh gosh is it really this hard? Nevermind, I’ll try Google”. I’m not sure I really have any answers for this, since I think the problem is a combination of a fatal flaw in society that can’t stop for anything, and library resources that seem designed to maddeningly confound even experience computer users.

This has been my Debbie Downer post.

P.S. Have any of you had any positive feedback from screencasts you’ve done for your library? And what age group were they?

Library Systems - Post #10

So by now, I think we all know that having a pretty good grasp on technology is going to be essential for landing a good library job. I think this class does a great job of teaching us areas of technology that we might not have encountered before. We can put on our resume that we are experienced bloggers, we've created a wiki, we've created podcasts, etc.

I’m always trying to learn new stuff, though. Not really to “get a leg up on the competition”; I just feel like I need to know as much as possible. Lately I’ve been wishing that I had more experience with programming languages. I’ve got a pretty good grasp on HTML and CSS, and I have some limited experience with JavaScript, but beyond that I haven’t a clue. I was reminded of this when I was trying to create a form for our wiki, but realized that I would need a PHP script to make the form actually work. Thankfully I got help from Bill Helling, my prof from Info Architecture for the Web, and also from Eric in our class, who had the same problem. Eric actually created his own PHP script!

Maybe I’m just jealous of my friends with computer science degrees who are already making more than I ever will, but it just seems like this is something I should know how to do. What better way to eliminate the divide between “the IT computer geeks who don’t understand us” and “those technologically illiterate librarians who won’t listen to us” than by….being both?

Intellectual Freedom - Post #9

I forgot to mention in class that Facebook recently improved their privacy options, making it much easier to limit who gets to see your information. Well, apparently they didn't quite work out all of the kinks before implementing it. A guy in Canada tested the new settings to see if they worked; he was able to pull up private pictures of Paris Hilton, among other people. The Associated Press confirmed the "privacy glitch" by finding a personal photo posted by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook! It's pretty scary when even he can't keep his profile completely private.

The remainder of the article focuses on the security (or lack thereof) of social networking sites in general. I think we’ve all gotten “messages” or “comments” from our Myspace friends telling us “OMG have you seen this video click here!”, followed soon after by “Sorry guys I got spammed! Don’t click that link!” I actually got one the other day from a friend on Facebook, so unfortunately the spammers have invaded. Now, I’m not 100% sure about this, but I don’t think that spammers just somehow crack your password to get into your account. I think you have to be gullible enough to click on one of those links. Once again, the problem comes down to education. We need to teach people how to know which links are safe to click on, and which ones scream “VIRUS!”

(I’ll talk about this article more in my podcast, especially the last couple paragraphs which deal with legislating social networks.)

Intellectual Freedom - Post #8

Well, according to the Carmel Star, it seems that Carmel parents are"tired of seeing sexually charged images on display in public while they're out with their children". Their solution? To urge City Council to pass a resolution that will remove these things from public view. Their goal is to create a "child-safe community standard", and encourage businesses to support Carmel's "wholesome environment".

Thankfully, the article quotes a council member voicing the same concern that I had when I heard of this. Kevin Rider says "It would give people an absolute blanket to lay over anything they didn't like…You have to be careful legislating morality." Sheesh! That’s an understatement.

While this doesn’t explicitly deal with intellectual freedom, passing this resolution sure seems to set a dangerous precedent. It seems like it would give residents more boldness to come into libraries and demand that a certain book be hidden, or demand that art galleries and museums remove artwork that doesn’t support their view of a “wholesome environment”.

Like a lot of things we talk about, though, I do have some conflicting views. There certainly are a lot of “sexually charge images” on display in public places that, frankly, offend me. To take an example from the article, one of the parents “spearheaded a campaign last fall to remove lingerie-clad models from Victoria's Secret windows at Clay Terrace Mall. The protest garnered national media attention, and resulted in the store replacing the mannequins' lingerie with pajamas.” I find Victoria’s Secret’s advertising to be salacious and inappropriate. If I had children, I’d be probably be uncomfortable walking by their. I just don’t think that demanding they put pajamas on mannequins is the best solution to the problem.

Library Systems - Post #9

Oh technology, when will you do what I want you to?

I'm a pretty organized person. I like to keep track of my work and school schedules with a daily planner (though I've been fooling around with Google Calendar lately, so that may change). I've really enjoyed working on redesigning some of University Library's subject resource pages, because I get to divide up and organize content and make it easier to use. I've really enjoyed that aspect of our project; taking an out of date book and making it more organized, easier to use, and more valuable, frankly.

I’ve had a personal crisis lately with organization. I have quite a few CDs and books, and a few DVDs. What I’ve really been wanting is a way to catalog all of them, so I know what I have, what I’ve loaned out, what I need to read/listen to/watch, and what I can get rid of.

I’ve found decent solutions for 2 out of 3, so far. For books, LibraryThing is great. You can easily look your books up by ISBN, title, author, etc. You can add tags to your books and create a tag cloud. You can also compare your collections with other people, and get some great recommendations. You can only input 200 for free; it costs $10/year or $25 for life to catalog as many as you want.

For DVDs, I’ve been using DVD Aficionado. It’s free, but it’s a bit clunky. It’s essentially a glorified spreadsheet, but all you really have to do is enter the UPC code, so it saves a lot of work. I’ve heard good things about DVD Profiler, which costs $29.95.

I still haven’t found a good free solution for cataloging CDs. At this point I have a text file with artists and albums, but that’s very hard to search, pretty much impossible to format, etc. I started to make a spreadsheet, but that just seems to be a waste of time. What if I want to add more information about each album? I found a freeware application called Libra that will catalog CDs, as well as DVDs, books, etc. It even lets you use your webcam as a barcode scanner! Of course it had to be too good to be true. The developers have apparently vanished and it’s no longer supported. Oh well. I’ll keep looking.