Assignment 9 aka my portfolio of LIS 2600

Well for better or worse it is done.

http://www.pitt.edu/~cee14/

I'm not sure how I feel about it. It is much harder to get things where you want them to go/look and eventually I gave up so it is what it is. I also ran into a snag where I was just about to add my last 3 files to my account when I started getting an error message. It turns out I had used up all my space so a quick call to the Technology Help Desk and voila I got more space.

Off to wipe the sweat from my brow.

Priavacy and online books

As if we don't have enough to worry about in terms of libraries - Seattle Public closing for several days b/c of budget cuts, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh having to beg for funding, Philly closing many branches of the Free Library- Google is stalling on privacy policies for it's users.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/advocates-ask-google-for-privacy-guarantees-in-online-library/


I would like some good news please.

The trouble with XO.

I just finished reading One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality by Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, and Prakul Sharma. It was interesting to me for two reasons. 1) A lot of the issues with the OLPC program that they discussed were the same points that I brought up a year and a half ago when we discussed the program in my Resources for Young Adults class. Things like access, support and training. 2) I have lived in several developing nations and it often seems that the great ideas of developed nations to 'bring the developing world into the 21st century' tend to forget that you can't really skip steps in terms of infrastructure. If there is little or no access to electricity it doesn't matter how efficient your laptop is. If you can't read it is very hard - if not impossible to utilize the internet. I am very interested to see where this all goes.

Feeling Stupid, yet Successful.

So I finally managed to get my Pitt website to appear. Don't you just love when you have tried (what you feel is everything) only to be told two small things and suddenly everything works? That is what happened today. Apparently I needed to change the page I had named as homepage to index and then I needed to upload each file individually rather than the whole folder and bada-bing bada-boom I was in business. So here is my webpage http://www.pitt.edu/~cee14 , finally!

CSS and Dreamweaver

So far using CSS and Dreamweaver has gone well. I bought the Adobe Suite which includes Dreamwaver, PhotoShop, Acrobat, etc. from Pitt for a price unheard of anywhere else. If you can spare the $250.00 for over a $1000 worth of software you should do it.

So far the CSS and link additions have seemed really simple and straight forward but if I can't manage to get the Pitt hosted web page to work I will no doubt resort to once again pulling out my hair.

Still singing

I just cannot get the Pitt web page to work for me. I read all these things and look at the tutorials and whenever I try to open the page it says the files are not found. I used Google Sites for the assignment but I really wanted to use the Pitt site and it is just irksome to still be unable to figure it out. I am feeling really let down by technology at the moment. Any suggestions?

Singing the (X)HTML blues

After viewing the PowerPoint on HTML and web pages I feel even more confused than I already had been feeling. I don't know if there is some mental disconnect for me or what but almost none of it made sense and I am really feeling stupid right now. My only consolation is that after reading many of my classmates' posts I feel like I am not alone in this.

HTML and I are in a fight

Well after much wailing and gnashing of teeth here it is - not so much the way I wanted it to be but more so the way it is.

http://sites.google.com/site/ceeiche/

I am just hoping to make it through the last two assignments.

argggh!

i am having a bit of a tantrum at the mo'. Can I tell you how much I hate HTML? Don't get me wrong- I loves me some interwebs but this whole writing your own code stuff is for the birds (and by birds I mean people WAY WAY smarter than I). I have been trying to configure my Pitt web page - that took like 4 and 1/2 hours (and I am still not sure it is functional). Then I tried to use Dreamweaver (which I own but have never used - nor was I ever really sure what you did with it) that so far has been an epic battle, one that I am sadly losing. So I'll stop ranting and go cry quietly in a corner while I snivel and mutter imprecations about html under my breath.

I hope to schnell your day is going better than mine.

ummmm...my personal website?

I have some time this week and I wanted to be working on the next ASN for 2600 but I feel like I missed something big. My personal website? Am I supposed to have one? Where do I get one? Does it matter? Am I a total loser for not knowing this?

Off to investigate.

Koha and AccessPA

I found Koha very easy to use for the most part. There were a few puzzling things, for example, I tried to add Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and Koha said that it couldn't find the record yet when I went to the LOC record it was there with the full MARC record. Then I used the ISBN that the LOC record used and the record would be found but when I would try to import it nothing would actually import. Strange. All in all the assignment gave me flash backs to this winter when I spent what felt like a bazillion years adding and changing records in AccessPA. I feel like I need a stiff drink.
PS Happy 4th of July!!!

Information for everybody.

As I was watching Creating Usability and Sociability in Online Social Spaces I was reminded of something I wrote back in the day when I took LIS 2000. I have pasted it below as it seemed to go well with many of our themes for this class as well.

"The main idea put forth by The Information Commons: A Public Policy Report is that we can create a world where information is truly free and accessible to all. As Marybeth Green writes in her book review, Kranich “conceptualizes a future in which information recourses are freely available and communally managed in a shared space” (Green, 2004). [That sounds a lot like Wikipedia.] Kranich offers viable options to the public in regards to common information. The six key recommendations that she makes on page 35 offer a well thought out and well rounded approach to the idea of free information. Her links between information commons and environmental commons is restated in her first point “create a movement similar to environmentalism”. She gives a clear starting place for action, which is something that Benkler was never able to create in The Wealth of Networks. As librarians the sixth idea of “value the public domain” should be our battle cry because these principles are the essence of librarianship."

Librarian - goddess of information

I was watching the Social Tagging@Harvard, Part 1 video and thinking about categorizing and tagging and I was struck by how much power you have as a librarian in terms of placing items. When I was completing my Practicum in a school library for the SLCP part of this program I had to recatalog and categorize titles and it is a pretty heady feeling to know you are the one who decides -no this book is more about instruments than it is about craftsmanship so it will go in the 780's rather than in 680's etc. I think this is the same sort of power that gives rise to tagging. People want to have their thoughts on what an object is, or does, or says to be known and so they tag a picture, or book, etc. I is funny to me that so many people seem to be up in arms about the unregulated-ness of tagging but categorizing is and always has been a pretty subjective process. I think tagging is amazing and I think it IS the future.

My crush on Merlin Mann

I was watching Inbox Zero the other day and it reminded me of so many things. When Merlin Mann talks about having his first e-mail address in 1993 - I laughed because when I went to college in 1995 I had only heard about e-mail I could not imagine why I would need it and I kept putting off doing the paperwork to get my school account. My father however, had email and he kept bugging me to get it, this bugging culminated in him sending me a letter in the mail that simply said "get a life, get email! Daddy". So I finally caved in and signed up for my e-mail address (accessed by two DOS prompt computers at the far end of my dorm hall). My father was so proud. Two years later I went off to Australia for six months armed with 14 email addresses that I used, as Mr. Mann stated, as a "international network of hugs". Today I can barely grasp what my life would be like without the Internet. How the times have changed. I also really liked what he said about having a system for dealing with emails b/c it is so easy to be overwhelmed by work email that you end up missing the important stuff mixed in with the dross. All I can say is I <3 u Merlin Mann, I really do.

ePrints

Well, I completed the assignment but I am still left wondering how/why I would use this as a librarian. I seems like an interesting application for perhaps high school or college professors but I just don't see how it would be helpful in terms of patron use? Am I over thinking this?

video testing

I have been wanting to try embedding a video clip (other than through Jing) so this is my test run. Fingers crossed!




Oh - sweet. I think the test was a success.

Bing.com

Well I never thought I would give up Google but I decided to use Bing.com today and I really really like it. 1) It is attractive to look at. 2) It is easy to use 3) the results were great. I haven't tried mapping yet and I have only used it for an hour or so but so far I give it two thumbs up.

Google Chrome and the "what is a browser" video.

I wasn't surprised that most people didn't know what a browser was or that they kept confusing a browser with a search engine. But what I did think was interesting is how many of them mentioned using Google but that had never heard of Google Chrome. It seems like you are not marketing yourself very well if a ton of people use your services but you don't really advertise (on your own website no less!) all that you have and can do. Hey but what do I know, I'm no marketing major.

Dystopia NOW

I was watching HLN the other day with my grandfather and they were showing live footage of the protests in Iran over the elections. It was amazing to me b/c all the footage was amateur footage from people's cell phones and I thought it was so awesome that we could see news as it was happening from the people the news was/is happening to. Then I watched the Clay Shirky: How Twitter Can Make History talk and I started to wonder if all this freedom was somehow going to lead to an anti-technology backlash. Like what if China doesn't just shut down Twitter? What if they shut down the Internet completely or take away cell towers etc. Are we all going to end up in a dystopian future that resembles North Korea? Should we perhaps be "fighting the future"?

webcams

I need to buy a webcam and I have a MAC, it was made before MACs got the Intel processor. Any thoughts, suggestions or concerns that I should be aware of during the selection process? Also I don't want to spend a ton on this so keep that in mind. Thanks!!!

Asn 4 - Zotero + Jing = the ripping out of hairs

Can I start by saying how much I hate the sound of my own voice. Perhaps if I hadn't just spent my life savings on Library School I believe I would take up mime. So for better or for worse here is my assignment.

Jing-aling-aling

Jing,

you led me on. I thought you were amazing and easy to use. You made me believe you were user-friendly and free. Then came the first blow - one small mistake and I had to begin anew. Another blow- you didn't pause. The next blow, you crashed. Jing - I think you need serious counseling before we can be together again.

You need help.

Cat

WorldCat I <3 you.

I have long been a fan of WorldCat but our assignment 3 made be love it all the more. I just wish I had know about the spreadsheet function sooner. It would have made the many collection development assignments I had much easier. So for those of you in the SLCP track of Library School remember the WorldCat spreadsheet and you will find you finish those collections in a snap.

(photo by davidking)

boogie-boarding the Google WAVE

SO If I am understanding this correctly it looks like Google WAVE is a platform for iPhone-esque "apps" that Google is calling "Gadgets", or at least this is one of its features. Thus enabling everyone to have a place to create these "gadgets" and to use them? I am still confused as to what a "wave extension" is and how I might use it but it all looks interesting if not terribly original.

The Cloud

So maybe I have watched too many episodes of Alias or something but I am wondering about security in the "cloud". If you are not physically tied to your servers and you may not even know where they are, how do you maintain security? And if security is one of the provided services how do you know it is really secure? On the surface it seems really awesome to not have to deal with severs and a server room and bandwidth issues etc., but if you have a business with sensitive data how can you trust the "cloud" or do you just say "my data is so sensitive that I HAVE to have my own servers"?

Similari

I thought that the study It’s Personal: Similarities and Differences in Online Social Network Use Between Teens and Adults
was funny because it seems like we were supposed to be shocked and amazed the teens and adults were using social networking sites in similar ways. I am sure you could use these sites for nefarious purposes and that some people do but for the most part I think people just want a place to connect to others, be you young or old.

Dimdim remix

So I wasn't able to log on to the chat on Thursday night and I have tried to find a recording or copy of the chat to no avail. I really love technology and all its amazing and myriad
applications but when technology lets you down it is one of the most frustrating feelings in the world. (I realize I am preaching to the choir at this point but I guess I needed to vent.) I just really want to spend my class time being productive rather that having to look in 22 different places for things and then realize that NONE of the things I tried worked!

Ok - rant over. Cheers.

a wee bit confused

So for those of you taking Understanding Info. is this blog for both classes? I am often confused by the assignments that are referenced and Db remarks that you make. I took LIS2000 many moons ago so I only 1/2 remember some of the things y'all are mentioning.

I am feeling generally more at ease with this class after having completed asn 2 but I already feel like I am running out of things to blog about. Maybe I just have a poor attention span, I started a personal blog last summer an posted to it twice before loosing interest. Perhaps I am fickle?

overwhelmed with information

I feel like all of this technology and information sharing in the web 2.0 world is great but I often feel that we overwhelm patrons with information. They want a monologue that is suitable for a teenage girl trying out for a performing arts high school and we give them 5 books, 6 websites, 3 articles and 6 related blogs and then their eyes glaze over or they have now become afraid of the amount of information that we are able to access for them. Is that really the future of librarianship?

There is NO time like the present.

I thought (it turns out erroneously) that this semester would be a breeze since I have only one class to take. I just can't seem to find enough time to get everything done. I guess I am just going to have to hone my multitasking skills to a much finer point. I feel like I spend hours just reading the blog posts. OK I will stop whining now. And go to my happy place.

Good Luck classmates!

Canned Intro

I am going to post my standard introduction (with a few modifications) here:

Hello. My name is Cat Eiche. This is my 6th semester in the LIS-SLCP program. I spent last semester completing a Practicum in a high school library, it was an interesting and enlightening experience. I have I high hopes that I will soon finish the program.

I spent a year and 4 months living in Pittsburgh’s South Side (before that I lived in Seattle, WA) attending classes full time on-campus. I also worked for 6 months (6/08-12/08) at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main) in the Teen Department. However, I have now switched to the Fast-Track program to finish up my degree. I have moved temporarily back to the small town where I grew up, which is near Reading, Pa and quite close to Pottsville, PA (home of the Yuengling Brewery) in eastern PA.