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.