A glimmer of hope

After months of fruitless job hunting, I've finally been granted an interview for an Assistant Branch Manager position. The library branch sits in an urban setting that I will likely investigate tomorrow. The position sounds well-suited to my current qualifications/experience/goals and within a reasonable distance. I can only hope that the visit and interview reinforce that perception.

On the symbiotic search engine/directory relationship

If you've ever wondered if dmoz and Google were somehow in cahoots, this article will provide some enlightenment: Google and Dmoz - Are They in Love?

As the article clarifies, getting listed in dmoz is a fairly reliable way to appear in a variety of search engine indexes. So bring it on people.

Experiment over?

If I understand Pat Delaney's post correctly, the future of the great blogging experiment at MLK, Jr. Middle School is in jeopardy. This would be a real disappointment as it's the broadest endeavor I've seen at any academic level (perhaps with the exception of Harvard's effort). To see evidence of the collaboration between the library and the rest of the school, take a look at the mlk Digital Library Agenda. Education needs more of this interconnectivity, not less. Hopefully, someone sees the light before it's too late.

Hiatus

I'll be breaking down and packing up my computer tomorrow, which means that you should expect a) infrequent updates to the Blogger incarnation of Open Stacks for a few weeks and b) my Movable Type version of this blog to be down until I have a new ISP set up. Thanks for your patience as I relocate and begin to pursue the job hunt full-time. For now, please stay tuned to the Blogger-based Open Stacks for new posts.

Ballot archiving

A post over at Slashdot talks about electronic voting as negative in its lack of a paper trail. This got me to wondering about the long-term maintenance of paper ballots. How long do we keep the actual ballots, particularly for bigger national elections? Are they archived or discarded after some statute of limitations runs out on challenging the results?

In looking for an answer, I found this viewable PDF archive of "the ballots from Leon County, Florida that had no machine readable marks in the [2000] Presidential Race." The so-called undervotes. More to come as I find it. Anyone know anything about the fate of presidential ballots?

Calling all youngsters...

Someone on one of the GSLIS bulletin boards kindly posted a link to the the new nexgenlib-l group over at Topica. From the list info: "This list is open to the next generation of librarians - those of us who are under 30, of any gender, political persuasion, race, etc., and our friends (those who welcome us into the profession)." There are definitely some over-30 individuals on the list, so all those young-at-heart are encouraged to join in what are proving to be very active discussions.

[5/14/2003 - ]

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Job opportunity?

It looks like a new facility is being built in my part of the world. Let's hope they left a little in their budget for personnel expansion.

Scholarly journal directory

I learned from the liblicense list today that the Lund University Libraries have put together a directory of open access scholarly journals. While I have little love for scholarly publishing in general, I am a big fan of open access and efforts to aggregate resources, especially when they are "free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals." Nice work. Hopefully, this project will encourage others to venture into open access publishing. And let's hope for enough open access LIS publishing to warrant its own category.

Blaming the bloggers

I was intrigued that Google has plans to create a separate search tool specifically for blogs. In reading the Register's article about it, I was led to this article by the same author from the April 3rd Register that essentially decries the ability of the blogging community, particularly the "A-list" tech bloggers, to transform the meaning of ideas in such a way that the original meaning is supplanted. Because of the incestuous linking amongst blogs, content from these authors takes precedent over other sources in Google's PageRank system, forcing the original sources into virtual invisibility (a process called Googlewashing). The implication is that this is a form of censoring the original idea by driving it into obscurity.

The author talks about how it took a million people to create the original meaning of the term "Second Superpower" and only a few people to take it away. This is utter nonsense. First, you know as well as I do that it only took one person to create the term and associate a meaning with it. Second, the Web (and Google in particular) is not the only tool of meme propagation and if the term had some legs in its original form, then it would have been picked up more widely. But it really didn't, mostly in my opinion because peace-seeking people don't really want to be seen as part of the Superpower paradigm, with all of the inherent combatativeness that it implies. Third, he bemoans that this happened in only 42 days. Well, let me suggest that those 42 days included the 41 days after the mainstream media forgot about it.

I think the real issue is the short-sightedness of the author. How can a thriving community that works to create new meaning through interactivity and collaboration be a bad thing? Rather than bemoaning the "power" of the tech community, why not learn something from it? The question shouldn't be why bloggers can make these transformations possible, but why more people aren't making use of this unharnessed potential. I'm not saying there aren't avenues for abuse, but the more participants, the more balanced the coverage will be.

I think I mostly resent the suggestion that bloggers are to blame for the loss of meaning, rather than celebrated for its creation and transformation. The author's perspective seems far too limited, much like the music industry's take on peer-to-peer. The one thing he did correctly was to repropagate the phrase's original meaning by writing about it in relationship to blogging. This article has be much-discussed and heavily linked (already replacing some of those top 30 Google listings that are the crux of his argument), which has provided more people with the origin of the term than any other media had up to that point. He should be thanking bloggers for the exposure.

A plea for help

Fellow members of the LIS community, I have reached the crisis zone. Graduation is in 10 days and the job hunt has been utterly fruitless. Not so much as an interview. I have a strict geographic limitation that limits my options. So I ask of the blogging contingent: if you have any professional connections in southern Indiana, Louisville or Cincinnati, please consider working them on my behalf (or directing me to them, so I can).

Why would you want to do that? Well, first, so you don't have to read of my unemployment on an ongoing basis. Second, it can't look good for an LIS blog to be written by someone who can't find a job. I don't really want to rename this site "The Unemployed Librarian." Third, a rookie can use all the help he/she can get, especially with networking.

Any other advice you might have would be welcome. This is my working resume, which is just a recreation of my paper resume (no web design quality - that will happen after graduation). How can I step it up?

BTW, to those who take the time to read my posts, a heartfelt thank you.

Enetation disappears

It appears that my commenting system Enetation has gone down. I don't know if this is a long-term situation, but it has encouraged me to at least attempt an import into Movable Type. The new location of Open Stacks is at http://planetneutral.gotdns.com/openstacks. Please come check it out. I'll be adding categories and trackback soon, while avoiding my last grad school project (If you know anything about implementing Questionpoint, let me know). I'll plan on posting to both sites, until I've relocated my computer and established a new ISP. So for now, please leave any comments on the new site.

Update: Apparently, this was just a temporary problem, but the Movable Type transition will continue as planned.

Low-income conferencing

Jessamyn West, newly elected ALA Councilatrix, suggested a low-income/retired fee category for conferences. Good idea. I wonder how she envisions the implementation. Would the definition of low-income (and/or retired) be spelled out plainly by the ALA or would individuals petition on behalf of their own circumstances (and interpretation of the term), as on page 3 of this example (.pdf!)?

If I understand correctly, retired ALA members already get a conference discount, so I'll suppose that Jessamyn is referring to non-members. Reaching out to non-members in this way would seem a small, positive step toward broadening the membership base in the long run. Low-income conference rates would definitely increase the feasibility of attendance for those who get no organizational support, particularly paraprofessionals. I'd like to see perhaps a sliding scale that can be applied on a petition by petition basis, but with some fairly specific guidelines to help people decide if they qualify.

I hope that Jessamyn plans to continue to circulate ideas into the community for us to consider and contemplate, as well as share tales from behind the Council doors. I'm not at all surprised that she was elected and hope her particularly strong showing (top 5!) reflects a high voter rate amongst the blogging community.

Stats are information too

The sports world produces an astonishing amount of data in recording the nearly infinite minutia of athletic events. A new course called "Information in Sports" looks at athletics as a "perfect setting for probing information challenges, from research to competitive intelligence," according to one of its instructors, Mike Eisenberg, Dean at the University of Washington Information School (co-taught with Joe Janes!). I bet they don't get into the profound statistical realm of bowling though, which would be a shame.

Public access portal

Peter Scott reports that OCLC has given a name to the portal they have been developing. "WebJunction will be an online community where minds meet to share the ongoing successes and challenges of supporting public access computing." When it launches sometime this month, it will be a forum for discussion related to providing open access and resources to support the cause. Looks like they did some good research (links available here).

At first glance, this seems like a great concept. A place to hash out the challenges of providing open access. But then one starts to consider OCLC's motives in investing so heavily in such a community-building project. I smell a new service rising from the ashes of our collective wisdom. Perhaps OCLC is trying to get into the content management game. Imagine a portal or other form of content management system developed directly from the collaborative insight of unsuspecting, well-meaning librarians. Always be wary of the investor's motives - what's in it for them?

Update: After just a modicum of additional research, I learned that the true investors here are...who else, Bill and Melinda Gates, to the tune of $9 million. Here's the original press release.

Collaborative Liblogging

I really like to see blogs that are the collaborative work of a single library staff. The Oak Lawn Public Library (IL) has started a new blog called the OLPL Daily Hearsay. Right now, only two staffers appear to be contributing, but it'll be interesting to watch and see if the rest of the personnel catches the fever. Strangely, I could find no evidence of the blog from the library web site. It is clearly hosted elsewhere, but there doesn't appear to be any mention of it at all. The only reason I know of it is a message on Publib. Where's the promotion people?.