Windows 8: The Animated Evaluation

December 20, 2012 in Technology | Permalink

I came across this video in my RSS feed from Slashdot and found it interesting for a couple of reasons:

  • Although I am not intending to use Windows 8 on my own computers in the foreseeable future, it’s important to stay abreast of what is happening and reactions. I do this for Apple products as well, even if I despise them.
  • The evaluation approaches Windows 8 through the lens of userability, which provides lessons in designing for any sort of user experiences.

Somewhat snarky and watch out for language.

The evaluator gets downright snarky at times and tends to hyperbole occasionally, but I think that’s purely for entertainment value. I also think he also sounds like Vizzini from The Princess Bride, and kept expecting him to shout out “Inconceivable!”.

So (spoiler warning) in the end he declares that Windows 8 is unusable to the point of requiring a recall or at least Microsoft should allow the sale of Windows 7 and let the market decide. I have not used Windows 8 myself yet, so I cannot declare support for the evaluator, but he does take an excellent deep-look at the potential userability flaws present in the operating system.

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Skillful Thursday–Bringing Mail Merge onto the Web

December 6, 2012 in Skills | Permalink

This post was something requested by a friend awhile ago, and the idea in my mind is what originally led me to planning a series on different tasks and skills.

A few months ago at my former job, I was tasked with creating a corporation page on the Voices’ Living Memorial for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, one of the corporations that had been in the World Trade Center on September 11th. I collected the various memorial content that we had for the corporation including:

Additionally, I thought it would be useful to have a page that linked to each Living Memorial page for KBW’s victims. Almost all of these pages were built in basic flat HTML, as the content management was rather borked and was not designed for work like this. So I was faced with the prospect of entering HTML code for 67 victims. The code was not difficult, in fact after creating the first one, the rest was cut, paste, and edit. Here is the code:

<div><p>
<a href="http://www.voicesofsept11.org/dev/memorial_biography.php?idbio=974871097" target="_new"><img src="http://www.voicesofseptember11.org/dev/corporatememorials/kbw/images/portraits/abad_marie.jpg" alt="Marie Abad" width="125" height="125" hspace="5" border="0" align="middle">Marie Rose Abad</a>
</p></div>

This was really really tedious though. The tedium was added by the various parts that I had to highlight and type over, and also double-check the information from our database to ensure I was linking to the correct person.

After doing about a dozen of these, I thought that I was doing a task that could be easily automated, and surely there was some tool out there that would take a snippet of HTML code and change little bits of it based on some source information. So I turned to Google and did not really find anything. So I sat and thought about it, something which involved a lot of personal mumbling, which may have driven my coworkers nuts. Finally I realized something. The task I was trying to do was very similar to creating mailing labels in that I was trying to take a good amount of information that could be easily organized in Excel. In fact, with a little work I could easily export the necessary information from our database right into Excel. Then I was trying to insert that information into a bunch of text. Rinse and repeat. This was an ideal case for MS Word’s Mail Merge feature, if I could make it work with my snippet of HTML code.

  1. First you have to get the information you need loaded into Excel. This was an easy export from our database, but you can also enter the needed information in as well. I had the bonus benefit that our database had the URLs for each person’s Living Memorial page, so I could grab that whole chunk instead of building it in my Mail Merge.
  2. Next, open Word and start the Mail Merge process. This can be done in Word 2007 by clicking the Mailings tab on the Ribbon and choosing the Start Mail Merge button. In the menu I was given, I chose the Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard since I was unfamiliar with everything that is involved in this process.mail_merge_ribbon
  3. The wizard gives you a few choices for type of document you are working on. I chose Directory as that would give you a single document with each merged item. Then just select Use the current document from the next step.
  4. The next step will be to select the “recipients”. Since Mail Merge is designed primarily for formatting mailings, the common information imported in is names and addresses. In this case, my recipients will be the information bits I imported into Excel. So browse for the Excel spreadsheet created before (it was saved, right?).
  5. The next step was to insert my code into my “letter”. Tip: Include your line break code as well, then you can create a single document that can be copy and pasted into your HTML editor. At each point where you want to have information from a field in your Excel sheet, just click the Insert Mail Merge button and choose the field from the drop down list.insert_mail_merge
  6. Once you have all your fields inserted into the HTML code, click on the Finish & Merge button on the far right of the ribbon. From the drop down menu choose Edit Individual Documents, select All in the box that pops up, and then click OK. A new Word document will open that will show all your HTML code with the fields filled in from your spreadsheet.finish_merge
  7. Next, I would recommend copying everything from the Word document and pasting it into a basic text editor before copying it into whatever software you’re using to edit your webpage. Word sticks a lot of hidden HTML tags around its text, and these tags can be carried through to rich-text document editors. By pasting into a plain-text application, you clean up any of those hidden tags, leaving you with only the HTML you wrote.

Voila! You have now made an extremely tedious and repetitive task and made it more efficient using tools that were not designed for this. If this is going to be a page format that you are going to repeat or change in the future, you can save your spreadsheet and the word document you initially setup the Mail Merge in (not the final merged document). Then you can edit the information in the spreadsheet and just hit the Finish & Merge button again and it will recreate the list of code snippets again.

Feel free to reach out to me through comments, Twitter, Google+, or email (fskornia (at) gmail.com) if you have any questions about this process.

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Digital Bubbles: Information silos and how are we going to deal with them?

December 5, 2012 in Technology | Permalink

Oops, already missed out on a day right at the beginning. Sorry about that. It’s all good though, because today’s (yesterday’s?) technology post was inspired by something that just started making the rounds today.

One of the crises on the Internet today is the fact that Instagram posts shared on Twitter are no longer being displayed properly on Twitter’s site. Yeah, I know, this sounds like a first world problem, but it does continue the conversation of how we share our content online and where our communities are. Wired has a pretty good post about this issue. I’ll just wait here until you’re done reading that.

So we have two commercial entities that are each trying to vigorously defend their online territories with ever higher walls. The whole objective of online services like these are eyeballs, and more specifically eyeballs on their specific sites. When you are on their sites you can see the advertisers that are paying them and use the for-pay services that they offer. Seeing Instagram photos on Twitter is seen as stealing precious eyeballs from Instagram. Just like my using an old version of Tweetdeck and avoiding Twitter’s own site like the plague is stealing my eyeballs from Twitter. This competition becomes fiercer when you throw in Facebook (now owners of Instagram) that is in a tooth and claw fight with Twitter to connect you to your people. We can have all the fun we want chatting with people and sharing photos, but we have to remember that these companies exist to make money, and they need you and your content to do so.

In this current state of affairs, the two entities are creating divisions that may not be so clear in the consumers’ minds. The capability to share Instagram photos automatically to Twitter has been there for much of the former’s lifespan. Many also use Instagram as their photo hosting service that allows them to share their visual tidbits through the day as well. It can breed confusion and anger when suddenly it is no longer easy to share your content with your community, or your community has to take additional steps to access your content.

I see a parallel in this with the different information silos maintained by libraries. Look at your typical library. There are the print collections which has to be searched in different ways – books can be found through the online catalog, print journals can be found through indexes or indexing services. Then there is the electronic content. Each database has its own curated collection of content, and in many cases have to searched individually. EBooks, if they’re available, often are not in the online catalog and need to be browsed or searched for separately as well. And in nearly every case, the search is different – using different commands or different limits. Now, we understand the differences between all these different types of sources. We know the reason why we have to search databases separately. We know enough to understand that searching a Proquest database is going to be different than searching JSTOR. Do the community members understand this though? Do they even want to understand this?

There has been progress made on bringing down the walls of the information silos with things like federated searching and even bringing in elements that commercial search engines like Google or Bing use. Libraries are still having to deal with the walls erected by the various vendors, who are like Twitter and Instagram – fighting for eyeballs and subscription dollars. Proquest and EBSCO are not going to want to combine their information because it would be easier for your community members to use. They really would just like you to subscribe to one of them, and then there would be no problems with information silos. The same way that Twitter and Instagram/Facebook wants people to just look at their site, who cares what else is out there.

Also like the division between Instagram and Twitter, most people are not going to know or understand the difference between all the databases and your catalog. More importantly, they’re not going to care. They want the fastest and easiest way to find the information they are looking for and libraries need to find the way to do that better.

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DRM–Big Deal or Not?

December 3, 2012 in E-Books | Permalink

I am going to posit an opinion here that is bound to be unpopular. That’s fine, as long as it triggers a dialogue on the issue. Here it goes: DRM on ebooks is not as big a deal as the arguments claim.

First, a little info dump to make sure that everyone is up to speed. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is encoding – either software or hardware – that provides controls on how digital content can be used. It could be something like an encryption that can only be unlocked by approved hardware (this is how DVDs work, although the encryption was broken years ago). It could be a limit for how or where the digital content can be accessed (you can listen to a song on your registered music player, but not on your friend’s music player). It can also provide time limits for digital content, like the checkout period for a library book. DRM can also prevent tasks like copy & paste, and printing. It almost always prevents resale. In many cases, DRM is used to place an artificial limit onto digital content so that it can mimic a non-digital analogue and allow past and current business models to exist in a post-shortage economy. I’m not going to get into post-shortage stuff here, that is something I’m planning on covering in next week’s eBook post.

Okay, so we have a a digital lock on our digital content that limits what we can do with it. This is a bad thing, right? Well, yes, in a way anything that limits our actions can be considered an affront to freedom. A lot of the rhetoric against DRM is along the lines that it treats the consumer like a criminal, since DRM is often seen as an anti-piracy measure. The argument goes that pirates will break the DRM anyway, so the only people it is hurting are legitimate customers. I see the validity of these arguments, but I do not believe that DRM is something that prevents the majority of people from buying digital content.

For the past couple of years, the publishing world has appeared to be in a strange war with Amazon. They are threatened by Amazon’s hold on the eBook realm and their huge push into self-publishing, lowering the obstacles for writers to publish and sell directly to readers. At the same time, Amazon represents an enormous portion of book sales. So the publishers hate Amazon for disrupting their business models, but love them for their commercial success, even if latter success is a result of former disruption. As I said, strange war. There are some that consider in this conflict that the publishers’ reliance on (and possibly addiction to) DRM is crippling them in competing against Amazon. There are others that suggest that the publishers should counter Amazon by pulling their ebooks from the digital shelves and sell them from their own sites. I believe that this would be a mistake for reasons I will soon explain. There is plenty of other information out there about the fight against DRM and all the wonderful things that will happen if it disappeared forever.

So, back to my opinion that DRM really is not that big of a deal. My main reason for saying this is that the majority of people do not care. Only the tech-savvy really care about DRM and its potential threats to our digital freedoms. For your average Joe and Suzie Blow, as long as they can read a book on their device, they do not carry if they are locked into Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Kobo. They do not think about selling the copy of that book when they are done with it. Maybe they think that it would be nice to share it with Mary Doe who lives next door, but Mary has a different eReader so it would be a hassle. Besides, the book was only $10, Mary can buy her own copy. Joe and Suzie bought the book for their personal enjoyment, and that is where it ends. You ask them about the evil DRM on the book, and they will look at you blankly for one very important reason – the DRM is invisible to them.

I believe that “invisible DRM” is the reason why Apple was so successful when they released the iPod and why Amazon had the same success when they released the Kindle. Each of their products had DRM on them, but you did not see any sign of it when you bought from their respective stores – which the majority of users are going to do. In both cases, all a user needed to do was click on the buy button and then sync their device to their accounts. Amazon took this one step further with wireless cellular syncing in its earliest models (now they offer cellular and wifi connections). In a few seconds, the book you bought on the Kindle was on your device and ready to read. Prior to Amazon’s Kindle, purchasing an ebook involved:

  • Browsing to the appropriate vendor’s store
  • Buying the book
  • Downloading the file (including going through whatever DRM scheme was involved)
  • Connecting the reader device with a cable to the computer
  • Using the vendor’s specific software to copy the downloaded file to the reading device

It was not easy or straightforward. Apple and Amazon changed this for digital music and eBooks respectively. In no part of the process of buying an Amazon eBook are you presented with the words DRM or security. You may have to log in to your Amazon account, but that is normal when you buy something from them. Amazon took what people were used to doing, and just continued it. They did the same thing when they launched library lending through Overdrive for Kindle eBooks. A Kindle user did not need to bother with the Adobe Digital Editions or even the Overdrive software and a tangle of account names and passwords. Instead they log into their Amazon account and click the download button. DRM is one of those things that lives very much up to the cliché, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It is only when something happens (like a woman finding that B&N prevented her downloading books because of an expired credit card*) that prevents access that it becomes an issue. Until that happens though, and someone is aware of the effects of DRM, it does not matter to them. Therefore whether DRM exists on eBooks or not, it is not going to be a factor in the majority of buyers’ decision making about eReaders or eBooks.

To return to a earlier point, there is the contention that publishers should remove DRM and sell books directly to readers from their own site as an Amazon runaround. There are a couple of reasons why I feel this will not work. The first is that publishers have done a poor job of marketing themselves as a brand in the past. Usually the marketing focus has been on creating a brand around an author or series. People know to look for Stephen King or Harry Potter, not to look for Viking or Scholastic. Most of the time lately that publishers’ names have come up in the media lately has been in largely negative connotations, further damaging the option that they could successfully represent themselves as an online retail source. Now branding and PR image is something that can be overcome; the second reason I feel that publishers breaking off into their own independent eBook stores is the convenience of shoppers. Book shoppers have gotten used to being able to go to a single vendor and buy pretty much any book they want to. They have gotten used to being able to browse the shelves, or in the case of the online store browse recommendations, sales lists, or genre categories. When all the books are available at Amazon, a user can browse all the options. Furthermore, since readers are used to shopping at a single site, and their devices are designed to shop at those specific sites, if the readers do not find it at their selected store, they will not buy it. They will buy something else that they can find.

Additionally, the online site can use previous shopping information to recommend other products, even if they are from another publisher. If publishers were to create their own eBook stores they would be creating limited silos of products that would require users to  search multiple sites to find anything. This would be an incredibly devastating blow to eBook discoverability at a time when it is already difficult to sort through the huge amounts of information out there. Each publisher would also only have purchasing information limited to their own silos of content. Publisher 1 would not know that Joe Blow bought Book A from Publisher 2, so could not recommend Book B which would be very interesting to Joe because he liked Book A.

So, is there a solution to all of this mess? We could educate consumers about the perils of DRM and push them to DRM-free sources, but I feel that will go over the head of most users and reduce the convenience of the eReader device enough to push them back to buying print books (which publishers would like) or not buying books at all (which hurts everyone). I recognize that there are legitimate reasons for DRM and that a whole blanket movement to remove it would never fly or work. What is probably needed is a DRM-scheme that is connected to a person’s secure digital identity (once we have a secure digital identification system, of course) instead of it being attached to a specific vendor account or device identification (a couple of the current schemes). With something like that in place, a user could use their identification to log into a device, and therefore that device would have access to any of their purchased digital content. Something like this already works for Steam, the digital store for PC gaming. I can log into my steam account on any computer, run an authentication check (the secure part of a secure digital identification), and then download and install any game I have purchased. It doesn’t matter if it is already installed on my computer at home – as long as both computers aren’t trying to play it at the same time. Amazon does something similar to this with their multiple platform attack of their Kindle apps. I can use the Kindle app connected to my account on any of my computers, my phone, my tablet, or even through any web browser and access the eBooks I have bought from them. There is DRM there, sure, but it is invisible to me as a user, and I can get the content when and where I choose.

So, readers, I ask you this: Given that DRM is a necessary evil, at least for now, how would you improve the system to make eBook systems better?

*That article has little follow up or research into the issue. If you read through the comments you find that B&N uses the active credit card on record as their DRM-encryption key. If the credit card

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Apprentice Librarian Relaunch

December 2, 2012 in Welcome | Permalink

So I figure it is time to start posting in earnest here again. As I am on the job search and many of the opportunities I am looking at are related to digital technologies, I should probably make sure my digital house is in order. Therefore, I’m going to be working on a redesign of my Apprentice Librarian, especially regarding my portfolio section. It was originally designed to match the requirements for my MLIS degree, and now I want to readjust it to better fit my own organization scheme and aesthetics.

In the same vein, I need to make sure that I am posting here more regularly. The way that I am going to initially try to accomplish this is to develop a posting schedule, where each day of the week will have a post based on a different theme or idea. Right now this is what I’m considering:

  • Monday – eBooks – These are an obsession of mine, especially the intricacies and difficulties that are existing here. These posts will be either on recent eBook news, or my opinions on some of the conflicts and challenges in the eBook world and libraries.
  • Tuesday – Technology – Another one of my passions. These posts will generally be my opinions on the general state of the technology world and ways that it may affect libraries.
  • Wednesday – Libraries – This will be the day where I will be posting on affairs in the library world. This may include or continue topics brought up earlier in the week. This will also be a way for me to get through all the library journals I’ve received, as I plan to do a miniature literature review monthly.
  • Thursday – Skills – These posts will be about various skills or processes that I’ve learned and feel that it would be useful to share (even if the information is already out there). For example, one of my projects this coming week is to install and configure a LAMP server at home to give me an experimental sandbox to play with various software software and develop stuff for my website.
  • Friday – Fun – This is the day where I will allow myself to be less serious and allow my geek flag to fly high. Don’t expect much library substance here.

I will also have posts that don’t fit into these categories that I will post as I deem necessary, as well as anything that I consider “breaking news”.

In addition to this, I have several other projects on my horizon. The first is something that I thought of when I was finishing grad school. As I was working on my portfolio and sorting through two years of work, that I had a good sized collection of articles and library resources that were either assigned to me or I had gathered them in my own research. These were all spread through various class syllabi and research project folders. I thought that having a singular resource I could share with everyone would be pretty great. Therefore, I’m intending to build what I’d like to think of as a “Grand Bibliography of Library Science”. This is something that my monthly literature reviews would feed, as well as anything that other people suggest to me.

For a fun project, I am also planning on playing around with Drupal to develop an online system to provide resources for pen & paper roleplaying, especially if the game is played online. There will be more information on this as I plan it out.

So there is my grand plan. Now to see how long it will last. I hope you enjoy reading!

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ALA 2012 Annual Conference in Sunny Anaheim!

June 16, 2012 in Conferences | Permalink

ANAHEIM_AttendingNext week I’ll be winging my way out to Southern California for the 2012 American Libraries Association Annual Conference. This will be my third Annual Conference (not counting this year’s Midwinter in Dallas).  I will have more to write about the conference, either during or afterwards. I have my schedule posted below, but I’m flexible so I’d love to meet any of you there!

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Library Day in the Life – #libday8 Day 2

February 1, 2012 in Library Day in the Life 8 | Permalink

libday8This is the second post in my Librarian Day in the Life series where I bravely attempt to document how I spend my days as the digital archivist for Voices of September 11th. The other posts in the series can be located here.

In my job, I am a solo librarian which puts me in the position of being the organization’s “expert” on topics like information organization, technical support, and sometimes instruction. At times, these expectations are very intimidating; especially to a newly-minted librarian like myself. So far I have skated along on my research skills and personal knowledgebase. There are classes from library school which have helped me, especially my library management and instructional design class. When I am not feeling like a schoolboy faking as the teacher, I certainly appreciate being considered a valuable asset to the team and a reliable resource for the organization.

Yesterday my role in the organization was one of project manager and grant writer. Today I got to play several roles through the day. My day started by checking e-mail and responding to a family member that I have been working closely with on managing the huge amount of audio and video content she has given to us and the 9/11 Museum. Following September 11th, she took it upon herself to conduct an extensive range of interviews (nearly 60 hours!) with family and coworkers of her brother-in-law and other people that were involved in the tragedy in New York City. She began transcribing some of the interviews and writing a book, but stopped when she learned that there would be very little publisher interest. She also had several hours of video of her sister and brother-in-law which was included in the materials sent to me. I have had these materials in hand for a while, but it has been only recently that I have been able to set aside time to begin properly processing them into our archives. One challenge that I am facing here is that the video files are enormous – averaging about 5 GB – and when they were copied to the DVD media sent to me the writing process was corrupted. The family member and I are going to working to try and get clean copies made (she paid a vendor to do the digitization, so will be able to get corrected versions). Uncertain about the DVD+R media, I am considering options to send her a portable external hard drive to store the content on – which should improve my ability to retrieve the data.  The other challenge I’m facing is the sheer amount of data to process in this case. I have over 60 interviews to archive and catalog – and I’m not even considering the effort for transcription yet. It may be a project I can focus several of our interns this summer on. Some may ask me, “What is the point of all this effort?” especially since I have hundreds of gigabytes of other content to process. I think I may handle that question in a future blog post though (yes, I am dodging the issue for now).

One of the things I try to do while working is maintain several ongoing projects so that I can break up my day with different activities and focuses. Another area in the organization where I play a large role is in technology development and decisions. Most of this responsibility comes from the fact that so much of my job relies on the computing systems we have place, as well as the computers my coworkers are using. One of the issues the organization has struggled is being too reactive to technology needs rather than proactive. This has led to a great deal of running around and putting out fires as one emergency follows another. In addition, we have ended up with a patchwork of servers, computers, and accessories from different bouts of donations and purchases. Lately, there has been a lot of conversation about our technology priorities and preparing a purchasing plan to improve the technology being used throughout the organization. Personally, I would love to take the time and develop a proper technology plan (my library school education focused on a blending of academic reference and systems librarianship – look where I ended up!), but there are limits to what I am able to do and only 24 hours in the day. Part of today was spent in a small meeting group discussing the justifications for the technology we feel is needed to present to our director and business manager.

After the technology meeting, I had been asked to work with the two new social work interns we have with us this summer and teach them how to use our office management database. Intern training (and training in general) is another area that has been sort of slap-dash (I’m sure you’re seeing a pattern here by now) and one that I have begun working on improving. I have the goal to develop a proper training course and have it ready for the group of summer interns we will be getting so that their learning will not be so informal and piecemeal.

Finally, I closed out the day by spending some time beginning to work on my monthly report and catching up on my timekeeping notes. The monthly report is an initiative I am beginning on my own to help demonstrate to the organization what I am doing and the current progress on our archive’s development. In addition, I feel it will add a greater degree of accountability to my job, which is something I feel is lacking. While it is nice not to have someone always looking over my shoulder judging my efforts, I feel that I could get away with spending the day watching cat videos on the internet.

Tomorrow, I plan to finish my monthly report, continue working on the audio and video content, and start tackling my long list of procedure writing. As with any plan, it is perfect until the armies enter the battlefield, so it’s possible that tomorrow’s post will talk about something completely different. Until then, good night and safe journeys.

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Library Day in the Life 8 – #libday8 Day 1

January 30, 2012 in Library Day in the Life 8 | Permalink

libday8

Hi folks, this will be my first attempt at chronicling my day for Library Day in the Life. For those out of the know, Library Day in the Life is a project spearheaded by Bobbi Newman at Librarian By Day that seeks to spread understanding of what librarians do everyday of their lives beyond the stereotypical shelving books and shushing unruly library-goers.

First off, a confession – I do not work in a library. Instead I work at Voices of September 11th which is a non-profit organization providing social work and mental health services to people and families affected by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Since 2007, the organization has also worked on creating a online Living Memorial to all the lives lost on that day. Since the start of the Living Memorial project they have collected nearly 1.5 terabytes of digital content. As the organization’s archivist, it is my responsibility to work on managing this collection and find a way to shape it into an effective digital archive. This includes monitoring content collection as well ensuring that storage meets the standards and that proper metadata standards are being kept. While this is my main focus, I find myself filling a great many roles throughout the organization as well. I am the ad hoc tech support when our web master/IT specialist (who only works part time) is unavailable. In addition I am trying to improve the general information management culture in the organization – which is a difficult endeavor as many years have pass with little thought to such ideas. I’m sure more of duties will become clear as this week progresses.

I spent today actually doing none of the above. Instead I spent almost all my time (and staying late for an hour or so as well) completing a draft for a grant proposal which was dumped in my lap the morning before I left for ALA Midwinter in Dallas. The grant is a small project grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission to fund an oral history project that we have been discussing for a little while. The project will be to interview a small number of 9/11 survivors and rescue workers in New Jersey and learn about not only their experiences on that day but also their recovery and healing process afterwards. While meeting our social work mission, it also looks at the historical context of how New Jersey responded to the 9/11 attacks through the lens of those most directly affected.  Our director of business development handled many of the more tedious tasks of the grant application, such as the budgeting details (he is really really experienced at this) and acquiring the additional materials we need for our submission. I was responsible for the larger grant narrative, including the project definition, goals, and schedule.

I find this to be a pretty incredible job – especially since it is my first professional job after library school. I have a great deal of responsibility and autonomy in my sphere of influence (namely the archives and anything involving information organization). Resources are tight, so I am looking at a lot of open source software options as I develop the archival system (such as Collective Access and Omeka), and having to learn a lot as I go along. It can also be frustrating when I come in with a plan for the day, which gets sidetracked by something that suddenly claims precedence. At the same time, it’s the extremely fulfilling and mentally-challenging environment that I desire.

So on that note, I’m going to bid everyone goodnight. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (although I do have plans to handle some of the procedure documentation I need to do), so check back and see what I have been up to.

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ALA Midwinter 2012 Reflections–Starting Conversations

January 30, 2012 in Conferences | 1 comment

ALA_imageAnd I am back! After a rather long hiatus on this blog due to a combination of my new job and school, I am finally able to turn my attention back to it. During the course of the hiatus I had intended (and did) shift the content of Apprentice Librarian to the Drupal site I have developed for the online portfolio I had to produce as a completion requirement for my MLS degree. Since I did that, I found there were reasons of convenience and ease of use that made me decide to return to WordPress for my blog, except that this time it will be in my own hosted webspace.

All of that is not the main purpose of this post though. This past weekend I attended the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, Texas. This was a new experience for me, and in some ways different from what I have come to expect when I attended the Annual Conferences in Washington, DC and New Orleans.

Midwinter is a much smaller affair than Annual. Where I saw attendance numbers of 25,000 and 21,000 in DC and New Orleans respectively, this event came in at just around 10,000 including exhibitors. This smaller attendance lends itself to a much different atmosphere than the frantic hustle and bustle of Annual. Much of the focus here is on meetings that help ALA run and organize the upcoming year.

From what I understand, there was a new emphasis at this year’s Midwinter to focus on discussion and conversations. I found myself rather disappointed by the few “discussion groups” I attended. I guess I was expecting something similar to a seminar guided by the organizer of the session. What I got though seemed more like the same sort of panel and information dump programs experienced at ALA Annual. There seemed less participatory discussion and more passive intake of information.

The couple of sessions that did hold up really well in my expectations was ACRL’s Trends in Higher Education and LITA’s Town Hall. The former started off with a panel presenting their perceptions on developing trends in higher education and then allowed for the listeners to ask questions and respond to the presented trends. The discussion eventually included most of the audience, with attendees responding to each others’ comments. Overall it was a session that you left feeling invigorated and with a greater awareness of the viewpoints of the the other attendees.

The LITA Town Hall on Monday morning was a fascinating exercise in democratizing the conversation about the division and its responsibilities to its members. In the past LITA has worked to include its far flung members in the activities by video streaming the Top Tech Trends Panel. At this Town Hall meeting, they did an audio stream of the discussions, inviting the virtual attendees to comment as well.  The audio streams can be found on LITA’s blog. You can hear me in the Values discussion led by David Lee King. The session began with a general introduction, and then the group broke apart into three sections, each with their own discussion topic. The smaller groups made it extremely inviting to engage in the discussion, even with the somewhat intimidating microphone in the middle of the table.

I was also involved with this Midwinter’s NMRT orientation session on Saturday morning as part of my committee membership. Unfortunately much of the planning and preparations occurred during one of my crunch times during the last semester, so I hope to be more involved for the orientations at ALA Annual in Anaheim. The orientation session had a pretty good turnout with about 30 people showing up. The “Conference Attendee Bingo” icebreaker seemed to be quite successful and worked well to encourage conversation. So well that it was a little difficult to restore order when we wanted to continue with the agenda. We had a panel that included a range of people representing ALA, the vendors, and Dallas. ALA President Molly Raphael even took time in her busy meeting schedule to come and say a few words to the newcomers. It was also great to see the orientation attendees at other events and sessions at the conference.

One area I did not spend very much time at was the Exhibit Hall. I know, I know, bad conference attendee! The vendors help make much of it happen. Dealing and speaking to vendors is something that I know I need to improve (it is certainly not a skill taught at library school). Part of the problem is that there is very little the vendors can offer me in my current position. We’re not going to be served by having any database subscriptions, and funding is so tight we have to struggle to just get decent computers at one of our offices. Although I guess I could use the time to try and build relationships that may help me in the future. That should be a goal I should work on for ALA Annual – I’ll hold you all to check up on me there.

Aside from a lot of confusion with the shuttle we took from the airport, it was a stress-free trip. This was my first time in Texas, and I had a great time in the host city of Dallas. Almost all of my time was spent in the Downtown area, with a little exploring into the fringes of the Historic District. I did find time on Friday to go and visit the 6th Floor Museum located in what used to be the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy from. The museum was very well done and took a look at Kennedy’s entire political career and the ramifications of his assassination, although with a large enough crowd it was a little difficult to see some of the exhibits without waiting.

Overall the food was very pleasing with a couple of excellent Tex-Mex places in close proximity to the Convention Center. Librarian Kate and I also found a decent Italian place for dinner one night that had good food and great prices. I understand that there are more and better restaurants in the Uptown part of Dallas, but travel there was a little outside of my means (I’m one of the folks that refuses to takes taxi cabs – if it’s under 2 miles, I can walk it).  I did find an excellent little BBQ Smokehouse in the Historic District called Sonny Bryan’s that had to die for smoked jalapeño sausage. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend checking them out.

In short, this was an excellent and educational conference for me. It allowed me to see a more sober aspect of ALA beyond what I normally find at ALA Annual. It also reinvigorated my desire to get involved with the organization. It was just the week before the conference that I had started to question whether my professional organization memberships were really worth it, since I felt that my job was taking so much of my time and effort. Attending this conference was exactly what I needed to see that ALA really is what you put into it. In order to reap the greatest benefits, you have to get involved. It also helps to have an excellent network of friends and colleagues to help make it great.

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Migration to Greener Lands

August 16, 2011 in Drupal, New Technology | Permalink

A lot has happened since January 12, when I last posted here.  Starting an exciting new job, a full semester of classes, a couple of library conferences, and my summer class focused on developing the proposal to my special project.

One of the biggest changes that has just happened is that I am moving my blog. I mentioned back here that I was exploring the use of Drupal for my MLS portfolio as well as my personal/professional presence on the internet.  Well that has progressed quite nicely at frankskornia.com. Progressed nicely enough, that I have now moved my blog there.  So for those of you that have subscribed to Apprentice Librarian, please shift your subscriptions there and I look forward to hearing from you all.

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