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.

Intellectual Freedom - Post #7

So apparently, a professor in England has decided to ban her students from using Google and Wikipedia. Tara Brabazon said she did this because "Too many students don't use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis." Which of course means only using print sources!

Romeo Wahed from the blog Download Squad has some great insight: "Call us old fashioned if you will, but banning things generally doesn't really solve problems...It's highly unlikely that students will be more motivated to work harder just because they are denied using Google and Wikipedia in their coursework."

We’ve been talking so much lately about banned books; it’s nice to see something else being banned for a change! But seriously, I think this is a great example of how a misguided person, even with good intentions, can do something monumentally stupid. Also, the same principles apply to this that apply to (almost) everything else that seems to get banned: whether it’s a controversial book, or the Internet, it’s here to stay, so banning it won’t make it go away, and it certainly won’t stop people from reading the book or using the Internet. The answer is…education! If this teacher would teach these kids how they can use Google and Wikipedia for legitimate research (just for example… Google Scholar, searching .edu sites, looking at citations in Wikipedia to confirm the information and do more research), it would prepare them much better for the future. Instead, they probably will say, “Remember that batty old prof who wouldn’t let use Google?”

Library Systems - Post #8

Hooray, it's another story about Joel losing the battle with technology!

First let me set the scene: I am a musician, and I enjoy recording my music on my computer. I recently decided that I wanted to get a 4-track cassette recorder (here's an example of one), because I enjoy the charming low quality sound you can get out of it, plus its much more portable than, um, a desktop computer.

Well, there was a specific model I wanted, so I started checking out eBay to try to get a good deal, but I discovered that there were two versions of this model; one was gray (Tascam 414), and the other was blue(Tascam 414mkII). I figured there must be something different with the blue one with that extra “mkII” on the end, whatever that means. So I started Googling it to find out more info. However, all I could find was info on the newer version. I tried all kinds of fancy schmancy searches like “tascam 414 –mkii –mk2”, but still nothing. I tried searching for only PDFs, hoping that I would find the instruction manual (I did, for the newer one; no mention of the older model). After trying this for over a week, I just gave up and ended up buying the older model on eBay.

Well, the other day it dawned on me to try Google Image Search, and I found a picture of the older model. I clicked on it, and it took me to a page where someone compared the two models. Of course, I found out that the newer model had some significant upgrades that I really would have liked. Oh well. Live and learn.