URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/jobcentre_jedi/
Really, just read the article. It's fabulous.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Carol's Blog, "Metadata, Cataloging, and Various Librarian-Like Stuff"
URL: http://carolslib.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/metadata-shemtadata/ (Linked in title.)
My friend Carol, who works at a library services company training folks to learn how to create and work with metadata, has started her own blog about metadata and cataloging. In addition Carol is my fiercest Scrabble competitor. She regularly beats me, in fact.
But, aside from Scrabble, Carol has some important ideas to get across about metadata. I've enjoyed reading through her blog so far.
My friend Carol, who works at a library services company training folks to learn how to create and work with metadata, has started her own blog about metadata and cataloging. In addition Carol is my fiercest Scrabble competitor. She regularly beats me, in fact.
But, aside from Scrabble, Carol has some important ideas to get across about metadata. I've enjoyed reading through her blog so far.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
"These aren't the droids you're looking for."
Except to brag about what a great week and a weekend it's been, there is little of value in this post. I just housed two of my closest friends and their three year old all week, and we had a ton of fun; my feline, Wulfram, is inconsolable that the child has left. I think three year olds are the most charming energy vampires in existence.
After cleaning house and doing laundry, I got to conclude the week with building a new computer--for myself, have needed a new desktop for a while; planting rose bushes (I'm attempting to start a rose garden); and making buttery buttermilk biscuits. It's spring, finally! Also, unless we get a late hard freeze, I should have peaches this year. (Playing in the yard is so buzz-worthy!)
It's been a great opportunity to put my brain into a cabinet and tell it to stop thinking. Well, there was a little trouble with installing the AMD CPU, but once I had the correctly-sized screws, the brain went back into the cabinet.
As I was digging the hole for the rosebushes, I kept trying to think of something profoundly Zen that connected building a computer, making biscuits, and planting, but all I could think of was a song by Chris Sand, Sandman, the Rappin' Cowboy, "Holedigger." "Diggin' holes don't pay the bills. I guess I do it for the thrills." (Here's a link to his site, though "Holedigger" isn't among the listed songs.) His best, most fun album hands-down is the one on which "Holedigger" appears.
Soon, pretty flowers will be appearing--purple and coral.
Also soon, I will return to server and software posts.
After cleaning house and doing laundry, I got to conclude the week with building a new computer--for myself, have needed a new desktop for a while; planting rose bushes (I'm attempting to start a rose garden); and making buttery buttermilk biscuits. It's spring, finally! Also, unless we get a late hard freeze, I should have peaches this year. (Playing in the yard is so buzz-worthy!)
It's been a great opportunity to put my brain into a cabinet and tell it to stop thinking. Well, there was a little trouble with installing the AMD CPU, but once I had the correctly-sized screws, the brain went back into the cabinet.
As I was digging the hole for the rosebushes, I kept trying to think of something profoundly Zen that connected building a computer, making biscuits, and planting, but all I could think of was a song by Chris Sand, Sandman, the Rappin' Cowboy, "Holedigger." "Diggin' holes don't pay the bills. I guess I do it for the thrills." (Here's a link to his site, though "Holedigger" isn't among the listed songs.) His best, most fun album hands-down is the one on which "Holedigger" appears.
Soon, pretty flowers will be appearing--purple and coral.
Also soon, I will return to server and software posts.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Collaboration or collaborators?
Interesting article from the Winter 2009 Texas Library Journal, "Seven Keys to Sustainable Digital Collaboratives," by Liz Bishoff
http://www.txla.org/CE/Collaboration/Bishoff.pdf
Quoting from the article, "Collaboration virtually unifies
content that is distributed across multiple owners, allows
organizations to capitalize on strengths of diverse organizations,
and takes advantage of economies of scale. As a result, many
funders will give preference to collaborative to proposals where
all other things are equal."
Very true. Very interesting. Looking at the big picture, I can bluntly and with complete veracity state that, if collaboration doesn't occur in digitization, we're going to lose major portions of our cultural heritage. This brings us back to my earlier question of what would I have saved had it been the year 764. Fortunately, there's no imperative to make that decision--but it might be a good idea to recognize that we have a lot of resources, both technological, human, and artifactual, that must be incorporated and considered in digitization.
(Which Bishoff seems to be highlighting, though it is only a highlight.)
As I've been observing digital collaboration, I am an outsider coming from an IT and technical communication background; I'm trying to "break into" the field, though my main purposes in doing so is to recognize how communication needs to be improved, how workflow should be developed and managed, and where skillsets currently are being wasted. In some ways, I'd even argue that so many digital collaboratives fail not because the resources were lacking, but because no one recognized they existed or could figure out how to engage them. And there is the angle of politics in academia.
The most important step in collaboration is getting all participants to recognize that the final product is most important; the other reason most collaboratives fail (not just in digitization but in any sort of team effort) is that individuals are too busy competing to recognize that the integrity of the end product is the only thing that is important. In digitization, the reason the integrity is important is because the end product is what we pass on to our heirs. If we collaborate well, we'll leave a strong cultural history for future generations, and if we collaborate poorly, well, what will future generations think?
http://www.txla.org/CE/Collaboration/Bishoff.pdf
Quoting from the article, "Collaboration virtually unifies
content that is distributed across multiple owners, allows
organizations to capitalize on strengths of diverse organizations,
and takes advantage of economies of scale. As a result, many
funders will give preference to collaborative to proposals where
all other things are equal."
Very true. Very interesting. Looking at the big picture, I can bluntly and with complete veracity state that, if collaboration doesn't occur in digitization, we're going to lose major portions of our cultural heritage. This brings us back to my earlier question of what would I have saved had it been the year 764. Fortunately, there's no imperative to make that decision--but it might be a good idea to recognize that we have a lot of resources, both technological, human, and artifactual, that must be incorporated and considered in digitization.
(Which Bishoff seems to be highlighting, though it is only a highlight.)
As I've been observing digital collaboration, I am an outsider coming from an IT and technical communication background; I'm trying to "break into" the field, though my main purposes in doing so is to recognize how communication needs to be improved, how workflow should be developed and managed, and where skillsets currently are being wasted. In some ways, I'd even argue that so many digital collaboratives fail not because the resources were lacking, but because no one recognized they existed or could figure out how to engage them. And there is the angle of politics in academia.
The most important step in collaboration is getting all participants to recognize that the final product is most important; the other reason most collaboratives fail (not just in digitization but in any sort of team effort) is that individuals are too busy competing to recognize that the integrity of the end product is the only thing that is important. In digitization, the reason the integrity is important is because the end product is what we pass on to our heirs. If we collaborate well, we'll leave a strong cultural history for future generations, and if we collaborate poorly, well, what will future generations think?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Time to Pay for that (free) TC Degree
I've spent the past few days researching grant opportunities and extant partnerships amongst institutions in the State of Texas. Now I need to apply this work toward applying for a grant. I plan to focus on getting funded digitization for a small-sized project, something that appears to be unique amongst current Texas digital collections; it is also a collection that both the subject matter expert and I believe will draw a wide teaching audience.
The field of technical communication and rhetoric is apparently known for producing students who are good at writing grants. Since I have not had the opportunity to take the TC grant-writing course at my university, I will have to be creative and persuasive in my argumentation, and I will have to try to write a document that is free of flaws and written with strong elocution.
In short, I'll try to write good. I'm excited. The research I've done on extant partnerships and grant recipients in Texas basically tells me that there is a dark void in West Texas, as far as digitization grants go, and it also seems that most institutions that receive grants are in large cities for corporate- or urban-based collections. (There are a handful of grants that fund large institutions to digitize small communities' materials.) But I haven't seen very much in regard to digitization of things like what we have here at the SWC/SCL.
Researching grants appears to be similar to researching inventions, or even to researching arguments. What makes one invention unique or relevant? Why should an organization fund this invention?
These are very minor, small, initial questions. As with everything, only time can tell the story of who receives funding and who gets stepped on by the Jolly Green Giant.
Oh, and this is a nifty link about the oldest writing in the world and where it was found.
The field of technical communication and rhetoric is apparently known for producing students who are good at writing grants. Since I have not had the opportunity to take the TC grant-writing course at my university, I will have to be creative and persuasive in my argumentation, and I will have to try to write a document that is free of flaws and written with strong elocution.
In short, I'll try to write good. I'm excited. The research I've done on extant partnerships and grant recipients in Texas basically tells me that there is a dark void in West Texas, as far as digitization grants go, and it also seems that most institutions that receive grants are in large cities for corporate- or urban-based collections. (There are a handful of grants that fund large institutions to digitize small communities' materials.) But I haven't seen very much in regard to digitization of things like what we have here at the SWC/SCL.
Researching grants appears to be similar to researching inventions, or even to researching arguments. What makes one invention unique or relevant? Why should an organization fund this invention?
These are very minor, small, initial questions. As with everything, only time can tell the story of who receives funding and who gets stepped on by the Jolly Green Giant.
Oh, and this is a nifty link about the oldest writing in the world and where it was found.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
German High Court Restricts E-mail and Phone Data Retention
This could prove interesting--I'm sure it will come up again.
"The government's commissioner for data protection and freedom of information needed to be included in the process of controlling the use of the data, it said. The information could only be used in secret "if that is necessary in individual cases and ordered by a judge," Papier said.
The ruling follows a warning by the government that private sector Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft need to be more transparent about the personal data they store on Web users."
"The government's commissioner for data protection and freedom of information needed to be included in the process of controlling the use of the data, it said. The information could only be used in secret "if that is necessary in individual cases and ordered by a judge," Papier said.
The ruling follows a warning by the government that private sector Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft need to be more transparent about the personal data they store on Web users."
Monday, March 1, 2010
Google Patents Location-Based Advertising
Here we go, it's Web 3.0, coming to get us. As soon as you sign on, rather than receiving ads for some random company, Google will now advertise a tea shop to you if you're searching for drinks with your Android in the middle of London, or a silk worm factory if you're hanging out in Thailand trying to find a cloth distributor. According to the link above, this also gives power of price arbitration. It will be interesting to see how online companies like Amazon will be affected by this. Of course, a company like Amazon is large enough that they probably won't have troubles, but smaller companies might.
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