Data Obsessed

Ah, Technology

2004-10-28T08:01:00.000-05:00

So, after Mura and myself spent most of yesterday, pulling our hair out about it, my blog has moved to http://data.obsessed.renji.org. Due to our difficulties with it yesterday, I'm no longer using Blogger, but WordPress, and the archives from over here have not been set up. We're going to work on that later.

Anyway, if anyone reading this wouldn't mind changing their links and feed information, that's be super. Everything you need is available at my WordPress blog.

webstuff

2004-10-27T13:23:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in the process of figuring out how to move my blog over to my brand-spanking-new domain, renji.org, which is more complicated than it really should be. (for the interested: the blog address shall be http://data-obsessed.renji.org. When it wants to work.)

I still like to think of myself as technologically adept. ._.

Edit: We are now officially moved, and using WordPress, as Blogger continued to cause pain and suffering for myself and Mura. Visit at http://data-obsessed.renji.org.

Firefox

2004-10-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

I've added a button for Spread Firefox, even though I tend to use Safari, for the simple and shallow reason that it's prettier.

Nonetheless, Firefox is my backup browser, and I only use Explorer these days to occasionally check website compatibility. Or when I'm at work and there's nothing else there.

But Firefox is much better - much faster, much more secure - and it should gain prominence.

Plus, it's always fun to promote non-Microsoft.

flummoxed

2004-10-24T16:32:00.000-05:00

Newsflash! Marine animals do not have the authority to sue the U.S. Navy.

Sometimes the news makes my head hurt.

interesting commercials

2004-10-22T13:31:00.000-05:00

Errol Morris is an Academy Award winning documentarian, and the director of those nifty "switcher" ads that Apple used in an advertising campaign last year. Now he's created these, a collection of testimonies from Republicans who are voting for Kerry in this year's election. (via BoingBoing)

It's really sad when members of your own party are saying this: I don't know if George Bush ever knew what America was about.

random post about nothing in particular

2004-10-20T15:31:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my very short post last night, I spend yesterday evening in Milwaukee at the SLA monthly meeting. The presentation was by Dr. Iris Xie of the University of Wisconson-Milwaukee's School of Information Studies. It was interesting. She's a digital libraries expert, and I think I picked up more from her presentation then I have in my class on the subject.

Also networked, and that's never bad. One of the things we heard was that there's a lot of library opportunities in D.C., which could be cool. I have no objections to D.C.

In other news, I am done with the dreaded Comm A's and have set up my independent study for next semester. The librarian here would love help indexing, and I can do it from home. Since I'm practically connected to my laptop via an IV, this is a very good thing.

...Wonder what I'll write my paper on.

it's a classic, really

2004-10-19T23:13:00.000-05:00

I was reminded of this on the drive home from the SLA October meeting in Milwaukee tonight...nothing like being in a car with other Democratic-leaning librarians to remind you of a literary masterpiece.

So for Amy and anyone else who wants to be incredibly amused, I present: Sisters by Lynne Cheney.

I do hope it doesn't discourage any potential authors out there.

note to self: check electronic equipment for signs of insubordination

2004-10-19T13:26:00.000-05:00

Like Chris Van Rossman, my parents recently bought me a new television (27", flat screen, speakers, JVC. Anime will be much cooler on this lovely piece of equipment), but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been sending out S.O.S signals.

Well. I hope not.

hey, I'd like a reservation at the lizard motel

2004-10-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

My roommate has been reading Barbara Feinberg's Welcome to the Lizard Motel this semester as part of her youth services class, and now Whitney Joiner from Salon has an article on it here.

Have to say I'm with Whitney on this one. Many young adult books may deal with dark themes, but that's part of why the best of them resonate with us. Because they reflect life, and there's something about them that we can relate to. And what's wrong with characters facing things like death and peer pressure in books anyway?

Guess what: real kids face those same things.

hmm

2004-10-17T22:39:00.000-05:00

Johnny Depp reckons he's no great movie pinup.

*glances at poster on roommate's door*

Well. That's news to me.

curiosity

2004-10-16T13:39:00.000-05:00

I'm been spending a lot of what would have been my spare time this semester doing work for LIS 620, the Information Literacy 120 hour practicum, and a part of it, I've been doing what we call Comm Req A's, or Communication Requirement A (many majors at University of Wisconsin then require a Comm Req B, which is more specific to the field). Some of these have been for the ESL courses offered here, and I've seen an interesting pattern with the Japanese students in those classes.

See, all the students in the ESL classes have to write a paper on some aspect of marriage, and almost without fail, the Japanese students choose to write it on the problems with interracial/cross-cultural/international marriages in Japan. It just seems to be odd that it's chosen so often, and I wonder if it's considered to be becoming a major problem in Japan?

I'll have to do some research. This has gotten me intrigued.

Practicing Selective History is Fun

2004-10-15T09:55:00.000-05:00

Rick Berg wrote a column in today's Wisconsin State Journal (the column itself is sadly, not online) that makes the amateur historian in me laugh out loud. There's no ploy quite as obvious bringing Abraham Lincoln into a campaign, in my opinion. But John Kerry isn't General George Brinton McClellan; as far as I know, he isn't intending to "cut and run," as Berg so eloquently puts it. He's intending to work on getting us out of Iraq. There's a difference.

And if George W. Bush is Abraham Lincoln, I will eat my shoes.

Universe and Me

2004-10-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

Today's Calvin and Hobbes is one of those I have the urge to print out and paste on my door.

Because it's the kind of true thing that makes me smile.

More on EBooks

2004-10-13T19:37:00.000-05:00

Michael Pastore posts on 26 Benefits on EBooks, which include the speedy delivery of information, promotion of reading, preservation, and encouraging the development of small presses. I'm not sure I buy these last three.

Though this may be a vast generalization (and I'm sure it is), many people find EBooks difficult to read - at least if the complaints I've heard in my LIS classes are any indication. Preservation is iffy; there is no format that is completely reliable, and paper has proven itself to be one of the more reliable. As for encouraging the development and support of small presses?

I think I may be a little too cynical to buy that.

yeah, I probably should be ashamed, but who has time to read?

2004-10-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

Bookslut has announced the nominees for The National Book Award, and I only recognize one of the titles. Normally, I would take this as an indication that I am no longer well-read (which I'm not, and which is sad, considering I spent my childhood devouring books whole), except that Jessa apparently doesn't recognize most of them either. Which indicates that the National is going the way of this year's Booker...AKA "Who the hell....?"

Anyway, the one title I recognize?

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

It might become a literary giant. *nods sagely*

tilts head

2004-10-12T17:30:00.000-05:00

Hmm. While I am not entirely sure whether this post is directed at my complaints about impracticality or not (I don't, after all, read all the SLIS blogs under the sun), I feel the sudden need to clarify my position on library programs and practicality and theory and all sorts of fun things like that.

Theory's all well and good; I like theory. I majored in Economics and minored in History in college, and believe me, neither field is particularly high on the practicality side. And I quite agree that a background in history, ethics, et cetera is quite necessary to make good librarians. Having said that...

Is there something wrong with a part of each course being "This is usually how you do this in the working world"? I mean, I don't know about the rest of my fellow students, but I'd never worked in libraries before I got here. I don't have a terribly clear understanding of what librarians do. And that was part of the reason I came to school here - I wanted to know before I dove headfirst into the profession. I thought knowing how was worth the $40,000 I'm shelling out for this education.

I'm certainly not saying that theory isn't important; theory's very important.

But practical knowledge is certainly worth spending time on as well. And most library programs have nixed teaching most of the practical aspects of the profession. Some don't even require that their students take practica.

That, I think, is very, very foolish, and turning an MLS into a solely academic degree is rather dangerous.

But this is, of course, only my opinion.

mmm...temptation

2004-10-12T09:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently Ha Jin has written another book, called War Trash, which is reviewed in the New York Times. (thanks to Bookslut for the link) I only discovered Ha Jin this year and devoured both his short story collection The Bridegroom and his novel Waiting; he's one of those writers I probably would make time to read.

I shouldn't buy anymore books until I finish the two short story collections I've been trying to read for the majority of the semester, but Ha Jin is tempting.

et cetera and so forth

2004-10-11T11:58:00.000-05:00

The job search doesn't officially begin until the end of this semester (which is good. My schedule is such that I don't really have the time for a full-fledged job search right now. Searching for employment is a full time job on its own) but I keep looking at possibilities. Such as an "Information Specialist" position at RadioShack's corporate headquarters. On the plus side, it's a full time, entry level position paying $50 an hour. On the down side, it's in Texas. Fort Worth. My beautiful collection of sweaters would rarely get used.

Yes, I'm a northern girl clinging to the evil cold. Don't ask me why.

In other news, I've pretty much decided to drop one of my reference courses next semester (either advanced reference or online, I haven't decided. Gov Docs is STAYING.) in favor of an indexing independent study, hopefully at The Pleasant Company indexing articles from American Girl Magazine. A girl who did her independent study there last semester is getting me the contact info. Personally, I think the contact would be more valuable than another lecture course. Now I just need to decide which lecture to get rid of.

Cat arrived this weekend. Cat's name is Dominick, and previously belonged to my older brother. However, Dominick and older brother's dog were unable to reach an amicable truce, and thus he has moved to Madison with me. He already in the prince of the household and came equipped with a water fountain and his own collection of fiestaware.

My cat's dishes are better than my own. There's something wrong with this picture.

'if you see Iowa plates, you've gone too far'

2004-10-08T23:21:00.000-05:00

So, I got lost tonight. Tried taking a shortcut, missed a turn, ended up driving through the nice residential neighborhoods on the west side of Madison. (incidentally, why must I live on boring Brooks Street and not Star Fire Drive? The subdivisions get all the cool street names.) After we got out of the nice residential neighborhoods, we got to see corn. Lots of corn, before finally finding the glowing and recognizable landmark of...Target. Which allowed me to get home without much further trouble. Where I made myself a celebratory bowl of ice cream.

Who needs to find Wal-Mart anyway?

On the subject of OPACs and everyone's favorite search engine...

2004-10-06T18:44:00.000-05:00

This is really quite interesting (via LISNews). I can't speak for its likelihood to succeed as discussions of OPAC designs have this terrible tendency to make my head swim, but let's face it. Google is the favorite search engine of lots of people, including librarians (I rather like Vivisimo as well, but that's a tangent we won't go off on today). I don't know that the algorithm they use for their online searches will be the best for all information, but maybe they'll come up with something cool. Something cooler and more usable than the OPACs that many library systems currently use at any rate.

In other news, set up a new blog for my Information Literacy practicum with the immensely silly title Fluent in English, Pig Latin, and Library. I'm hoping to use it as a replacement for the tedious journal entries that I always, always leave to the last minute.

*spent two hours reminiscing over the past month of practicum experiences*

Organization, the lack thereof, and the general frustration of a library school student

2004-10-04T18:13:00.000-05:00

Mondays are my marathon day, though not because of class (I only have one) but because of work, where I start early in the morning and often go until nearly ten o'clock at night, after class is over.

I get cranky on Mondays.

Which is probably why I found my database class so frustrating today. I can usually tolerate the professor's lack of organization (though one has to wonder: why are so many professors in what is essentially an organizational science so...Disorganized?). I like her as a person; she's perfectly friendly and willing to help, but the lack of preparedness drives me insane sometimes.

For instance, I took Telecommunications and Networking from her last Spring, and she'd be changing the slides during class - which defeated the purpose of actually printing them out. And this semester, it seems that a good half of the workbook problems are wrong.

I won't even get started on syllabi. Let's just say that I'm beginning to believe that professors need to have them approved by a test group before distributing them to their classes. I can count on one hand the number I've had in library school that are actually comprehensible.

The Da Vinci Code and Nutcase Readers

2004-10-04T13:14:00.000-05:00

I tend to adore Jessa from Bookslut, as she's intelligent, well-read, and likes comics, though occasionally she exercises her gift for making me feel defensive. Her apparent dislike for manga is one example, and her posts about The Da Vinci Code is another. I enjoyed most parts of The Da Vinci Code, it was a decent enough thriller and a quick read. I don't expect it to win a Booker.

But enjoying the book doesn't mean I'm going to do any of these things. Just for the record.

tiny revolutions

2004-10-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Internet Explorer is the default browser here at the business library, which I've been tolerating for the first month of school here. I don't like IE, not by a long shot, but I can work with it, if forced to do so.

It crashed three times in the first ten minutes of my shift today.

We're now using Mozilla Firefox.

It hasn't crashed once.

so...

2004-09-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

I should most definitely be doing homework of some kind, perhaps the database problems due Monday that I've not even started on...but after a day of Comm Req A --> Class --> Home Library work --> bar for 30th birthday (not mine), I can't be bothered to summon the energy. This is, after all, what work's for.

So instead, I'm contemplating my next and final semester of graduate school.

I only need four or five credits, thanks to taking twelve credits a semester for the entirety of my first year, but I'll probably end up taking three classes, and the current three are Online Reference, Advanced Reference (which I'm pretty sure is called something else, but I'm too lazy to filch my roommate's copy of the schedule), and Government Documents. The first two are because they're things I'd probably use quite a bit as any kind of librarian, even in the more specialized, private sector and/or government libraries I'm interested in. And Government Documents is because I've been told it's a useful course.

Truly useful courses have been few and far between at SLIS, in my experience. I found Networking and Telecommunication Concepts vaguely useful, and Cataloging would be, I suppose, if I ever had any intention of ever cataloging. However, when the content of a class fails to grab you to that extent, I'd think it's a pretty safe bet that it's an area you should stay away from.

But the point is that so much of everything in this "professional" program seems completely theoretical, and I'd personally enjoy some more practicality with my education.

"Meal Interrupted"; Or, The Real Reason Your Waiter Interrupts Your Meal Just as You Are Getting into It

2004-09-29T20:33:00.000-05:00

So, I was reading the online version of the Chicago Tribune this evening, and had to laugh at this, and not only because Emily Green has an amusing tone - also because I've been in the waitress's position before.

I've never worked in a restaurant and never want to work in a restaurant, which is part of the reason I'm here in graduate school. (newsflash: Amanda did not wake up one morning having experienced a career epiphany. Amanda woke up and went 'well, librarianship has to be better than this') However, I spent one lovely year in the purgatory that is retail, which included countless seminars on "customer service."

Armed with that information, I can safely tell you that, yes, there is a corporate conspiracy to interrupt your dinner. The corporate types think that this constitutes quality service, and it thus gets drummed into the waitstaff's heads by their managers, who in turn have had it drummed into their heads by their managers.

As for why they never approach when you genuinely need them? Deal with enough extremely rude, irate customers, and I'm sure it'll be easy to discern the reason why.

Welcome to the service industry. I do hope you'll enjoy your stay.

in lieu of the requisite Banned Book Week post...

2004-09-29T14:32:00.000-05:00

(though if you are particularly interested in that sort of thing, I recommend reading what Jessamyn at Librarian.net has to say on the subject.)

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about Emory University receiving what is apparently the definitive 20th century American poetry collection. To be honest, I'm not particularly big on poetry - I think I wrote a poem in the fourth grade for a PTA Reflections contest, and I did Verse Reading my freshman year of high school (everyone else: Sylvia Plath. Me: Walt Whitman). But other than that, poetry has never been a huge thing for me.

I do find it rather amazing, however, that someone would love something so much to build this kind of collection for it, and I love this quote about Raymond Danowski's experiences and what drove him to do this:

"The corridors were lined with books, and there were reading rooms with large tables, and windows looking out on trees, sometimes a tennis court," Mr. Danowski said. "There were a lot of students working there, and those of us doing the shelving, we'd push carts around and then we'd disappear and start reading. I'd read for an hour and then get caught, and go back to shelving, and then find another place and read."

It was the first time, he said, that he understood books to be a sanctuary.

"When I decided to create this collection, as I found the books, I was shelving them in my mind," he said. "It was an imaginary library, based on the Burgess-Carpenter experience. It was really like being a librarian in my dreams."

Maybe that's something librarians need to be sure they remember - that we're the curators, and sometimes the creators, of other people's sanctuaries.

Vampire Queen Versus Amazon sounds like a bad B movie

2004-09-23T09:38:00.000-05:00

Anne Rice once again demonstrates that her ego continues to be roughly the size of the North American continent.

I find it more amusing - hilarious, really - than anything else, particularly as Ms. Rice brings to mind several amateur writers I have known in the past few years. It's rather sad that after more than twenty years as a professional writer, Anne Rice has either lost or never developed the ability to swallow criticism and move on. That was a skill that I was careful to develop before I ever started to post any writing in internet forums, and it should be the first rule that any writer/creator/artist should accept: if you post your work in a public forum, then you open yourself up to criticism, and that is a consequence you need to deal with. Period.

Having said that, the best parts of this whole thing come from Neil Gaiman. My favorite bits:

I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so.

and

I think Anne Rice going on Amazon and lambasting her critics was undoubtedly a very brave and satisfying thing for her to do, was every bit as sensible as kicking a tar baby, and, if ever I do something like that, please shoot me.

The first is so clearly true, and the second makes me laugh out loud.

Freedom of Information

2004-09-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

An interesting perspective on the online access debate comes from Wired News. The article details the curious phenomena of *gasp* people buying information they can access free of charge online.

Really, when you think about it, this actually does make sense. While I'm perfectly comfortable reading online and will, in fact, do all of my reading for classes online given the opportunity, my few attempts at reading novels online have failed miserably. Case in point is Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe which I downloaded in pdf form and started to read (and really, it's quite interesting, and I fully intend to finish it someday. I swear.). I couldn't get into reading it on the screen, though, and this is from someone who does a lot of online reading. I would imagine that it would be the same with most people - with something of any great length, a lot of us tend to want to be able to hold it in our hands. There's somehow more control when you have a physical copy.

When we want to read a book, we want to read a book, and a computer screen is a poor substitute for pages between our fingers.

And that's why things like the 9/11 Commission Report sell, despite the entire thing being available online. Because, seriously, who wants that many words onscreen?

I don't, and I spend half my life in front of the computer.

a small bit of late night/early morning truth

2004-09-20T01:21:00.000-05:00

You will not notice little maintenance things that need doing - like, for instance, the fact that your curtain rod is falling down and needs to be hammered back into the windowpane - until it is after midnight and far too late to be waking up your roommate and the other residents of your apartment building with the hammering.

Likewise, you will compulsively notice said maintenance problem simply because you can do nothing about it.

Yes, I have issues. It's past one in the morning; I'm allowed.

Pennies

2004-09-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

My random thoughts on two of Dorothea's latest posts:

My supervisor at the business library was on the Ex Libris/SFX/Citation Linker committee, and suggested (mostly jokingly) that they rename SFX SEX. That way the undergraduates were at least guaranteed to notice it.

And I don't know what the stats are for my site...haven't bothered to put the handy-dandy site tracker up over here yet, because I am essentially lazy at heart. But if it's anything like Pitas was, it's 90% IE. Which is sad. Firefox is a much better browser. It would be my default, but all my bookmarks are in Safari.

miscellany + books

2004-09-15T13:13:00.000-05:00

Trying this again, as Blogger is evidently hating me today. Note to self: Never preview.

Jessica Baumgart will be speaking to the Wisconsin Chapter of the SLA tonight; I'd love to go, but I will unfortunately be at work, and getting a sub will be impossible. See, LIS 450 meets on Wednesdays, and since the other two night reference assistants are in that first year seminar, there's no one who can work. I'll undoubtedly be spending the night memorizing my MadCat script. Bummer.

Oh well, I'll go to next month's meeting.

A few days back, Jessa at Bookslut posted a list of the books that marked a "watershed" in her life. She had 23. I can only think of 10.

Well, I'm young yet.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Bridegroom by Ha Jin

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Each of these books did something different to me, I think; Wuthering Heights, for instance, I read at a far too impressionable age and is probably to blame for my not-so-secret love for all things angsty, melodramatic, and tragic. On the other hand, Huck Finn and practically everything else I've ever read by Mark Twain is the root of my love of a good sarcastic wit.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Little Princess, and Anne of Green Gables were my growing up books. I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Anne of Green Gables so often that the books fell apart in my hands. My copy of A Little Princess was hardcover and managed to survive the shy, introverted, rather unhappy little girl I once was.

The Tao was the book that made me think about what I really believed and how I expressed that belief, and it eventually gave me more inner balance and self-esteem that was finally based on myself instead of what the rest of the world saw. Ironic when you think that I published it because I was obsessed with CLAMP's manga and anime.

I read The Jungle when I was too young to really understand it, I think, but it still managed, along with a handful of other books (including the aforementioned Huck Finn and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath) to shape my political and social consciousness. Though I'm much less idealistic about it these days.

The last three on the list affected me more as a writer than as a reader, I think - though I read two of them years before I ever started to write. When I write, I like to think that my characters are strong, but they have human frailties that must seem so silly to other people, and that can be attributed to both Amy Tan and Helen Fielding. Bridget Jones is famously obsessed with her weight and relies on self-help books to work through her problems, and Jing Mei in The Joy Luck Club is never able to shake the feeling that she's not good enough for her mother. These are both insecurities that are unbelievably accurate to modern life.

And someday I hope to achieve the combination of spare, matter-of-fact words and raw, intense emotion that Ha Jin manages in each one of the stories in The Bridegroom.

sometimes you have to wonder...

2004-09-14T10:19:00.000-05:00

The State of Illinois is soliciting bids for an Official State Beverage (link via BoingBoing):

The concept of designating an "official state beverage" could bring in millions of dollars to Illinois' cash-strapped state budget, as soft-drink companies compete - and pay - for the right to hawk their soda, juice or other beverage under Illinois' state banner.

Okay...what? I mean, I'm from Illinois, so I know that as a state we're essentially...well, we're broke. But an Official State beverage strikes me as ever so slightly problematic. Ever so slightly insane, even.

Possibly even plain nutters. *continues to boggle*

Citation Software: RefWorks, and the problems therein

2004-09-11T17:16:00.000-05:00

Dorothea mentions the University of Wisconsin's implementation of RefWorks and the problems associated with it - and it is hardly problem free, that much is for sure.

But while the glaring problem Dorothea has with it is the frustration of having to tell RefWorks what kind of database you want to import from, my concern tends to be the lack of Macintosh compatibility. See, I have an iBook. I never use IE except to check compatibility; my preferred browsers are Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari. So a lot of the functionality of RefWorks is lost...and the in text citation plugin is still not functional for Macintosh.

I attended my RefWorks seminar back in July. We were assured at the time that Write'n'Cite would be working for Mac within a month. I attended another one this past week...and no, it does not work.

The joys of living in a PC world.

a portrait of a chicken and its severed head

2004-09-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

No, not really. But Thursdays always give me that feeling...something about the combination of two long classes starting at one when I'm already starting to lag and then hearing and seeing the latest additions to my schedule at Information Literacy. And in addition, the LITA student chapter wants the website redesigned, and I'm in charge of organizing that. And at least one of the people who want to help is the kind that tends to take over projects; I've experienced this before.

In this case, that might not be such a bad thing.

I need to buy a planner today. And actually rehearse ALL of the MadCat workshop scirpt since I'm practicing it on Saturday afternoon and haven't even looked at the other sections.

Someday I will remember what an actual day off feels like. Really.

Risk Analysis

2004-09-09T10:28:00.000-05:00

An interesting essay penned by Paul Collins of the Village Voice concerning the NEA's "Reading at Risk" study. Apparently less adults than ever are reading, which is something I can actually believe - reading is, for many students, not something that is fun but something that has to be done, and the emphasis by some parents, teachers, and even librarians on simply encouraging the reading of "good" books instead of just encouraging reading, period contributes to this, in my opinion.

This is not to say that the NEAs study was a particular good one. You see, the NEA, in all of its wisdom, only included the following as "counting" towards reading: novels, short stories, plays, or poetry in their leisure time (not for work or school). So those who like to read nonfiction in any of its forms, such as biography, history, or memoir are not included. Those who enjoy reading Japanese manga and comics in any of their myriad forms - not included. And those who are unable to find the free time to read for leisure because of the sheer amount of work they must accomplish as students are not included, even when their degree programs are in the reading-intensive areas of English and history.

There's something wrong with this picture.

Let's begin with a short case study of a graduate student in her mid-twenties...namely me. I have two jobs, one working in Computer Services at the University of Wisconsin Law Library and one working as a reference assistant at the University of Wisconsin Business Library. I take three or four courses a semester. I'm currently enrolled in a 120 hour practicum on Information Literacy.

My leisure reading tends to be limited to manga and short story collections; things I can digest quickly. Does that mean my reading is at risk? I don't think so.

I do think that the NEA needs to re-evaluate what constitutes reading, and what constitutes literature. Stories told in comic form can be extraordinarily complicated. Nonfiction can be as fascinating and as mind-bending as modern fiction. And works read for classes or for work can affect the reader just as much as those read for leisure. Not to mention that students aren't the only ones who have unbelievably tight schedules; reading for leisure can be a difficult thing to make time for.

It's time for the NEA to do what many librarians have already been forced into doing; it's time for them to re-evaluate what reading is. Only when that has been accomplished can they judge the true state of reading in the United States.

The Prejudice of the DDC

2004-09-08T19:38:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting link, but it discusses something that I would have thought was patently obvious.

Yes, the Dewey Decimal System is obviously prejudiced, and has likely been so since it's inception. The classification of Religion within the classification scheme is the most widely cited and obvious example of this; nine-tenths of that particular division is devoted to the dominant faith of Melvil Dewey's day: Christianity. Even if Christianity remains the dominant religion today, it is hardly the only dominant one, and in the era of globalization, the need to make room for other, more diverse subjects is clearly required.

But what are we to do about this? Such a change would, as the author of this article points out, wreak havoc in the libraries that use the DDC - libraries that include school media centers, public libraries, and even large academic institutions such as the University of Illinois. It would involve re-cataloging entire sections, and having visited the cataloging department here at the University of Wisconsin, I know that idea would not be greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm.

To say the very least.

Moving~!

2004-09-08T18:24:00.000-05:00

I've stuck with my Pitas blog for a while, after moving from blogspot back in 2003, but I think it's time to come back. Blogspot has pretty templates now!

Plus, I'm really lazy and tired of entering html code everytime I post.