Am I missing something?

In the spirit of information technology and the social networking that technology has driven society toward, I have opened a Facebook account. I am not sure how I feel about it yet. I have been looking around checking out the socialization process of it all.

I was reminded of how NPR had a segment with Andrew Keen in which he basically said that Web 2.0 is sort dumbing America and information seekers because there is no authority. He wrote a book about it called “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture.” (I only link to the page in the freedom of information democracy that we live in and in the spirit of Michael Moore paying the medical bills of his nemesis so he could continue a website to argue against Michael.)

Anyway, I am cruising along looking for groups to possibly put on my Facebook account when I find the group Boycott “Web 2.0″ to join. I have to scratch my head at this. Facebook is the ultimate in Web 2.0. Oh wait, it is Web 2.0. So why have 74 members joined this site?

In my puzzlement, I had to see more. Luckily I found out that Boycott “Web 2.0″ is not about getting rid of the technology, but a group that is against the name changing from “The Web” to “Web 2.0.” Oh, that clarifies it even more doesn’t it…?

So why is it that only information and library scientist know the difference between “The Web” and “Web 2.0?” Since more and more Web 2.0 sites are being created and more and more information is exchanged this way, isn’t it the responsibility of the librarian and information scientist to educate the users of the Internet between the two?

I had a debate recently with a fellow grad student on why it is our educational system finds it important to teach English to kids whom already speak English. English has to be taught so the English speaker knows the rules of the language in order to better utilize it (or use it…just to make writing educators happy). The same must occur with the Internet. More individuals use it but they have no idea what rules there are (or lack of rules, just strictly social monitoring) and how users are unaware what authority anyone has in putting something on the internet. I mean look at this blog, and I haven’t even started grad school yet…I have absolutely no authority…right?

So could Andrew Keen be right? I don’t want him to be right because, well, you can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because someone doesn’t jump through academic hoops doesn’t mean they don’t know crap. So how do we know what is legitimate and what is not? What are the rules? Where is Einstein when I need him?

Holiday closure

I have pondering my thoughts on the recent holiday closure of the local public library for Memorial Day. Not only is the library closed for Memorial Day, but it was closed on the Sunday before. I will be honest, I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it as a library patron. I had things I wanted to return, new things I wanted to check out, and other general library duties that one does while visiting a library. Being that the library was closed, it seemed to throw a monkey wrench into my rhythmic schedule of the weekend somehow, or at least it felt that way when I wanted to go. And it is not like my library visits are very long. I do a lot of searching on-line before I go, so I might spend a total of 20 minutes in the library itself. But the amount of time out of the library is filled with what I achieved in those 20 minutes in the library. So those 20 minutes I needed the library to be open, I now feel like I have hours of time to fill.

I was also a bit peeved because it was not until the late afternoon on Saturday when the website noted it would not be open on Sunday and Memorial Day. In fact, it was posted after the library closed on Saturday as far as I could tell. And I did not notice any signs posted at the library to notify the patrons of the change in Sunday hours. So this seemed to feed my emotional backlash of the library closure.

Then I thought how I longed for days off or shortened hours when I worked in an academic library. When the library was open till 1 am and then all the sudden because school was out and the library closed at 10 pm, it was a nice change. Or when a holiday did come about, it was nice to get the day off. But never do I remember getting the holiday off and a day before or after, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I really tried to tackle what the role of the library is in the community, and if taking off days (not just holidays) is beneficial to the role. I know that many would argue that a day of closure might mean that patrons that tend to “camp out” in the library will have to find a place to go when it is closed, but I would argue the library does not just cater to those types of patrons. There are also patrons like me who do 20 minute visits. I would suspect that the majority of library patrons fall into this category. I think this is the community that I refer to when talking about the role of the library. And somehow, I feel failed by my local library for the extraneous closure.

I guess I would just have expected the library to have communicated better to the community to which it serves so the closure was not such a surprise. Then maybe I would not feel failed by the service of library to me as a community member.

Ice Cream Social

For an end of the term get together, a library student invited fellow students to an ice cream social.  As individuals filtered in and out, I saw the stereotype of the librarian only in one individual, ya know, black rimmed glasses, thin, with her hair tied up, and wearing the innocent look.

I felt the mood of the social quite odd, as invited guest were told to bring toppings, with various types of ice cream being be provided, and not one person brought a liqueur to top their ice cream treat.  Where was the Gran Marnier?  My mind grasp the concept by explaining the get together as a “library ice cream social.”  No further explanation needed.

Then the individual sporting the stereotype of a librarian discussed with an individual who stated that Oreo cookies go with everything.  Stereotypical librarian pipped in to state that Oreo cookies actually do not taste good with whiskey, but do taste good with vodka tonic.  The whiskey somehow ruins the taste of the cream filled center, while the vodka tonic accentuates the cream flavor.  Later in the conversation, she also let us know that whiskey can be done in shots, instead of sipped, depending on the quality of the whiskey.

My friend pointed out this was valuable reference librarian material.

I am wondering if anything was needed…stereotypes are so wonderful when they are not satisfied.

Oil influences

I just got done watching A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, which is a brilliant reminder of how everything we depend on is oil dependent. In doing so, I want to relate some of the issues that might impact the future of library science.

Some would argue that we have moved out of the industrial age into the information age, but no age has been able to identify itself until the age has passed. I have always been leery of those stating we are in the midst of the information age. The movie does a good job of not stating the age we are in, but in a round about way suggests that we are actually at the end of the industrial age which will crash when the oil supplies run out. And when this happens, civilization that has been built using technology that is steeped in oil will cause a huge crash, and I just don’t mean cars.

The movie talks about how computers, computer chips, agriculture, modern American cities and their development, the population boom, transportation, medicine, electricity, and almost everything produced and sold in the world is a by product of oil. And I don’t just mean in the transportation of these goods. Petroleum products are used to manufacture computers, computer chips and grow agriculture. American cities, with all its roadways and buildings, along with the idea of surburban neighborhoods, depend deeply on oil to operate. The population boom is linked to oil by the process of better agriculture because of the petroleum products used on the farms. Aircraft, ships, cars, and railroads all depend on oil in various forms to operate. Petroleum products are used in medicine and are oil is necessary to explore for the next cure. Electricity is formed by the by product of oil. Anything having some form of plastic in it is an oil product, much less the oil used to transport goods to retailers to buyers. Oil is interconnected in everything we know as an industrialized country. Thus, when oil is gone, the impact will be huge. Some say that we have reached the peak of oil production and we are now going to be on the downward slope and its impacts will begin to be felt. And the steeper the slope, the changes are going to be felt in an endless wave with no relief in sight.

So how does this effect information science? Digitization is a huge focus of library and information science, which depends on computers and computer chips. As we enter the downward slope, less people are going to be able to afford computers, therefore less individuals are going to find information accessible. So, already in the beginning levels of the downward slope, the poor will automatically be left out of information access. Will only the rich with computers be able to access library records and Google books? Then comes in transportation issues. Protocols of interlibrary loans, library consortiums, and the like will be come a thing of the past. Whatever libraries have on hand is the information that can be accessed. This brings up the black hole of digital information; all the information that was ordered online instead of getting a hard copy. Who knows how many decades of information that was received digitally will not be able to be accessed, thus creating a gap of information gained prior to digital formats and those gained after the oil crash. DECADES OF INFORMATION…LOST!

I am not saying that we will go back to card catalogs but I am saying the way we have organized and saved information could be in jeopardy in a shorter amount of time than we think and as far as I know, no library and information science program is dealing with the issue of what is likely to happen when we reach the oil crash, when we have no internet and patrons do not have computers to access information much libraries can’t afford computers to operate the way they have in the past.

Conference going

This is in response to Librarienne’s post about going to the ALA conference.

I hope the video is far less boring than the conference itself!

Funny stuff

Graduate school

In some weird evolution of life, space and time, I found myself accepted into a library science school as a graduate student. I never expected to be accepted as I applied three weeks late, am in my late thirties with the only library experience coming when I was an undergraduate and I worked in the library re-shelving books and doing other unrelated librarian things.

And I will be honest, I detest the idea of becoming a librarian. Librarian has such an undesirable connotation that it really creeps me out. Intensely! But there is no way around the label since my interests are in archives, conservation and possibly special collections. And these interests might be stretching it because I will be honest, my idea of what people in these areas do might be completely off from actuality. I do know some individuals doing graduate library science course work and they seem so different from me, which is also concerning.

There are also some things I question about information science. I don’t think digital is the end of technology as we know it and we might find ourselves in an information black hole with all the information saved and stored digitally that won’t be compatible with the next newest technological feat. In today’s information age, too much emphasis is placed on information saved requiring a software program to retrieve it and everyone knows software is updated, becomes obsolete, and new software is developed. And with this cycle, information scientist play a huge role in transferring information from one form into another. Are the days of information where no software is required long gone? Will Google pioneer books being online and brick and mortar buildings be a thing of the past? Will tangible items be replaced by merely getting information via a computer screen? This is especially interesting to me because then the tangible items in a conservation or archival sense may not seem valuable to hold, just as all the tangible items destroyed when they were placed on micro fiche.

I also wonder about information being created digitally. Since there is already no tangible form there already exists a dilemma on how to store these items that might become obsolete when digital is old technology. Just like photos taken by my digital camera, created digitally, saved digitally, and not printed into a tangible form. Thus, a black hole created by digital technology once digital become obsolete. The impact could be huge. This is a focus which I think information scientist need to be focusing now.

I also wonder about information science theory concerning meta data being created to make information easily accessible. Many books I have flipped through talk of the theory of how meta data should be performed but no one talks about the theory of meta data itself. Could the theory of meta data itself be a problem? Why jump right to the issues of tagging, lets say, when this all falls under the meta data theory?

I think all this classification of information is important and should be looked at closely. As my friend writing a paper for a final said last night, “why does writing have to be in paragraph form, with periods and commas, when everything I need to say could be said in a bulleted list?” Why do information scientist have to follow the rules of information management? I know it is necessary to create guidelines for information management in order to have an understandable form in which information can be retrieved, but are the guidelines outdated and understandable/fair to all users? I don’t want graduate school to be a lesson of theories based on other theories. Isn’t this the reason why archival items have not been added to catalogs in the first place? There is too much melding of old and new theories and technology that information is not treated the same across the board causing things to lag behind. This is why information scientist are always playing catchup.

Anyway, those are just some of my concerns before I start graduate school. I am rather excited to start classes, get involved with the information science community, and to explore my options in the profession that I currently don’t know about. I love learning new things and I look forward to getting to the nitty gritty of school work.

And dare I say it, I might be able to someday swallow the idea of being a librarian.