The Work of Knowledge

1. In Wikipedia, look for some of the concepts or topics we have discussed in class and share your impressions and comments about the information presented. Is there anything you would add or edit?

Shedroff’s Model of Understanding is not in Wikipedia at all nor is Nathan Shedroff. It seems like a significant work so I was surprised that it did not have an entry. This sent me to Shedroff’s website. I found the model of understanding in a section called Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design and discovered that the model (which Shedroff labels A Continuum of Understanding) is from 1994, much earlier than I assumed since Shedroff looks barely out of college in pictures I’ve seen of him on the web. The model of understanding is only a small part of his field theory of design which may explain its absence in Wikipedia to some degree. I will consider adding this to Wikipedia but there is not much on the internet about the model outside of Shedroff’s own words regarding it so it may prove difficult to do a thorough entry but the nice thing is that I could give it a start and others can edit as needed.

Nicholas Belkin has a brief entry and his ASK model is mentioned in the entry but does not have its own entry. Belkin’s original 1982 article is linked at the bottom of the entry.

Francis J. Aguilar does have a sparse entry but it could be greatly improved by adding some of the information from this article from the Harvard Business School. I would like to add that information (which will be much easier than adding Shedroff’s model of understanding) but even these edits require me to learn more about how to edit Wikipedia articles. I previously edited some years ago but the markup looks foreign to me now. The entry shows Aguilar as a living person but he passed away this past February and I removed the ‘living person’ category from the entry.

Marcia Bates has an entry and her Berrypicking Model is part of an entry on Cognitive Models of Information Retrieval. This seems like a minimal treatment. The image found on this page could be added and it would benefit from the addition of the 6 specific strategies that Bates proposed as part of her model. Wikipedia also mentions that the main entry is an "orphan” which means that it has no other pages linking to it. This certainly makes it difficult to find the page and it would be worthwhile to find related pages to link from.

Brenda Dervin and Sensemaking are well represented.

2. On page 212, Weinberger gives an example of a third-order description of an imaginary person. Imagine that you are preparing a resume for a job application – a first order information package - how would you better tag yourself in terms of the third order to make yourself more marketable?

I’m reading an ebook version and the pages don’t quite match up but I think this is referring to this description: “a potential team member can be a pretty good French speaker, a great applications expert, a mediocre people person, and very reasonably priced.”

My initial reaction is that the third order allows for more flexibility than I might prefer. Whereas on a first order resume, I could simply leave off certain things that I don’t want to mention, a third order resume might force me to say something like “barely tolerable people person.” I suppose the greatest benefit to me would be that I could feel free to include competencies in areas outside of what would be most directly relevant to the job I am applying for. When applying for my current job, the application was a typical first order type of document but it did provide plenty of space for me to expand beyond simple answers. I don’t recall the entire document or my answers but I doubt that my high level of competency with technology was asked about or answered but my fluency in Chinese was included. By tagging ourselves in the third order and letting employers know that they get MORE than an “assistant librarian” or MORE than a “staff accountant” we can make ourselves more marketable.

3. On page 215, Weinberger writes that “understanding is metaknowledge” – relate this to Shedroff’s model of Understanding as presented earlier in this course. Search for the model on the web if necessary.

Since we can define metadata as “data about data” I suppose we won’t be wrong to suppose that metaknowledge can be defined as “knowledge about knowledge.”

On Shedroff’s website, he writes about his model of understanding within the context of A Unified Theory of Design. He specifically mentions his “understanding continuum” here and includes this image:

There is much we can glean from just this image but there is one additional important aspect about knowledge that I will get to momentarily. From this image, we can see that knowledge is in the “no man’s land” between wisdom and information. Shedroff uses a line to mark this but it might be better illustrated by a gradient between the 2 colored halves of the large circle since knowledge rarely comes on us like the proverbial lightbulb over one’s head. As we gather information from a wide range of sources (indicated by the ‘global’ label in the image, we begin to process it in a way that leadds to knowledge. This newly synthesized knowledge can affect the way we continue to interact with the available information and we move more towards the personal and participatory side of the circle where we may discover some degree of wisdom. This all happens within our particular context as is noted in the image.

Another image from Shedroff gives some more insight into something unique about knowledge.

In this image, we see the important role that our experience has in the development of knowledge. In fact, it completely encircles the knowledge portion of the continuum to indicate its supreme importance.

My own unique experiences have granted a fertile field for the development of knowledge. I don’t mean that my experiences are better than anyone else’s nor am I saying that my knowledge is more vast or of a higher quality. Each of us has opportunities to learn from information presented to us within the context of our own unique experiences and we must choose how we will engage that information. I find it difficult to be critical of Shedroff’s model because my own life seems to reflect that his model may be true. Through conversations, stories, and integration of information into my context and experiences I have gained knowledge – sometimes even to a degree that others will listen to me talk about what I know. Whether this indicates some measure of wisdom I’m not sure.

In the section called “The Experience of Knowledge” Shedroff explains:

With every experience, we acquire knowledge; it is the understanding gained through experiences--good or bad. Knowledge is communicated by building compelling interactions with others or with tools so that the patterns and meanings in their information can be learned by others.

There are many types of experiences that confer different types of knowledge. Some knowledge is personal, having meaning unique to one person's experiences, thoughts, or point of view. Local knowledge is knowledge shared by a few people because of their shared experiences. Global knowledge is more general, limited, and process-based, since it relies on such heavy levels of shared understandings and agreements about communication. Effective communication must take into account the audience's level of knowledge. This makes it more difficult to communicate to larger audiences because the pool of shared knowledge is less detailed and more generalized. Knowledge is gained through a process of integration, both in the presentation and in the mind of the participant. Information forms the stimulus of an experience while wisdom can be the understanding of the message gained through the experience. Knowledge is a fundamentally participatory level of communication and we should always make it our goal because it allows the most valuable messages to be conveyed.

To me, Shedroff’s model and this explanation of our experiences as a source of knowledge is a superb example of knowledge about knowledge, or metaknowledge.

Messiness as a virtue

1. What are some of the messes in your life and how do you try to organize them?

Don’t even get me started!

My biggest overall mess is digital files on my computer. All of them. Every kind of everything.

The most important of those files that need organizing is my family’s digital photos and videos. I *do* have backups (offsite – in the cloud via Carbonite) but our local files are a wonderland of Alice proportions. Thanks to being a somewhat early adopter and to always having plenty of hard drive space, we have zillions of pictures and videos. I would put the over/under on the number of videos on our computer that are less than 1 second long due to the photographer wanting to take a picture but the camera was on video at 200. Yes, I probably have over 200 videos of someone standing awkwardly and someone (usually my wife) saying some variation of “oops, its set for video”.

I understand completely that it is not technically difficult to get our digital images organized but it is going to be painfully time consuming and I can’t foresee a time when I’ll be able to get to it. I really think that our best option may be to make a family project out of this and set up a few computers with access to these files and work on them while sitting around the dinner table for a few days over the next year or so. I will probably pay my children to do this with me.

Here’s what I know. What Gmail is to email, Picasa is to digital photos. But ONLY IF those photos contain something for Picasa to find. Right now, the only metadata included in my photos is facial recognition and I’ve only done that because it was so cool when it came out in Picasa 3.5. I used to have a fairly good folder system for digital images but the volume just got to be too much to keep up with. Furthermore, when I was the only person in my family who could operate both the camera AND the computer, I could import pictures how I wanted and when I wanted and I could add tags as I saw fit. As time passed, other family members started using the camera and downloading pictures to folders all over the computer. This is where things got out of hand.

I do not sort my email at all. I do have some filters set up to flag some different emails so I can be sure and notice them, but I don’t label very many and I never sort them into folders like I used to back in the day. I just search for them within Gmail. I’ve found that learning just a few search operators will put any email I desire on my screen in seconds. Picasa is waiting to do something similar for me but I *must* give my photos some metadata in order to be able to find photos. Picasa is so powerful that even though I don’t have much metadata, I can still find most pictures I want… often just using dates and people in the photos, but I definitely want more metadata.

2. What are your thoughts on the work of Valdis Krebs as presented beginning on page 180? Is this something that would interest you as an information scientist?

I’m extremely interested in this kind of work. My first exposure to how an organizational chart does not tell the entire story of an organization’s workflow was when I was about junior high school age (7th to 9th grade). My mother worked as the secretary (would be called an office manager today) at our church and the church was experiencing some growth. Besides the normal church activities, e.g., scheduling events, there were also some issues that arose from the numerical growth. At this age, I began to realize that people were not kidding when they would say “your mom keeps this place running.” She did! I don’t know exactly what the organizational chart for our church would have looked like, but I’m sure that Krebs would have found that all the traffic passed through my mom’s office and/or her phone line. Later I became aware of what sociologists call “gatekeepers”, which are those people who control access to those who have the power to make big decisions.

On page 173 of my ebook (I think it is probably about p 182 in the print version) Krebs talks about people who are “properly positioned”. I’ve always tried to position myself at the busy intersections of the organizations I’ve been involved with for a couple reasons: I like to know what is going on and I’ve found that I’m good at managing information and solving problems. I have found that a good place to be on the organizational chart is somewhere that gives you access to those at the top levels of your organizational chart but where you aren’t necessarily one of the masses down at the bottom of the chart. In one organization, I was involved with the network administration and other technology issues. I had regular access to the president of the organization but did not have other people above or below me on the organization chart, my job was like a strange growth out of the side of the chart (see below).

Positions like that tend to give a broad degree of freedom with exceptional access to those throughout the organization.

Our school library is somewhat like this although my specific position is not. Just being in the library seems to work well for my skill set and I’m able to serve everyone in the school so it is a good fit.

3. Relate what Weinberger is saying about the definitional view and the prototype view to the information behavior models presented in this course.

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4. What are the library prototypes? Experiment with identifying three levels of abstraction for libraries. Be sure to think about how different cultures may think about/abstract libraries.

Library prototypes would include a building, printed books, a circulation desk, and reference materials. Sadly, the “shushing librarian” also remains a prototype.

Libraries exist in different ways, such as openlibrary.org that we heard about in the Brewster Kahle TEDTalk, but I don’t think that a paradigm shift has occurred in the general population so as to see a digital only library as a prototype of libraries.

As for levels of abstraction… what about:

1st level	civic building	library	local education
2nd level	libraries	children’s section	school
3rd level	public library	story room	school library

It is also worth noting that computer programmers use libraries of code snippets and other tools.

TEDTalk: Brewster Kahle

2. Watch the TEDTalk video: “Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library” and post your thoughts on your blog.

So here we are in module 10 and I’m as agreeable with the TEDTalks as I was in module 1. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising because these TEDTalks were chosen because they are good examples of increasing access but I sometimes wish I could find more to disagree with so my posts might seem more interesting.

I didn’t know the name Brewster Kahle but I was completely engaged in what he was saying. I was very surprised to find out (over 17 minutes in) that he was talking about the Internet Archive. I’ve known of Internet Archive for many years and have used it regularly over the years but I only used the Wayback Machine and never noticed that they also archive texts, video, and audio! As a consumer, I am most interested in the texts and then video and finally audio. As an aspiring information professional, I’m so glad to see that this project has continued from the time of the TEDTalk filmed in 2007.

I hope that Kahle’s project will reach its goal someday of making all of the books in the Library of Congress available in digital format and that interested parties can figure out ways to make profits and secure the rights of the creators. It is interesting to note that even back in 2007, Kahle said that the technology already existed to complete the project, but it only lacked money to pay for the scanning overhead and a model in which people split money.

Not mentioned in the TEDTalk is Kahle’s opposition to Google Book. I have been generally supportive of Google Book because it seemed like the best chance to have all books scanned and made publically available and because it has been useful to me many times in the past few years. It has made me expand my thinking about mass digitization and which organizations might represent the best interests of humanity. The following paragraph is from Kahle’s page on Wikipedia and it is originally found here (original source video embedded below):

Kahle has been critical of Google's book digitization, especially of Google's exclusivity in restricting other search engines digital access to the books they archive. Kahle describes Google's 'snippet' feature as a means of tip-toeing around copyright issues, and further expresses his frustration in the lack of a decent loaning system for digital materials. He states the digital transition, thus far, has gone from local control to central control, non-profit to for-profit, diverse to homogeneous, and from "ruled by law" to "ruled by contract". Kahle states that even public-domain material published before 1923, and not bound by copyright law, is still bound by contracts and requires a permission-based system from Google to be distributed or copied. Kahle reasons that this trend has emerged for a number of reasons: distribution of information favoring centralization, the economic cost of digitizing books, the issue of staffing at libraries not having the technical knowledge to build these services, and the decision of the administrators to outsource information services.

Kahle is a wonderfully engaging speaker and I love the fact that he talks like a librarian and seems to have the larger mission of the library in mind as he tries to accomplish his organization’s goals.

Library ILS Lecture

1. Watch the MediaSite video of the lecture on “Library ILS” and post your thoughts on your blog.

NOTE: ILS stands for Integrated Library System

Open Source ILS vs. Proprietary ILS

It was nice to *see* some other SLIS students and get an idea of what a classroom looks like and how the lectures are recorded.

I like listening to the comments from the students and how Dr. Roland is eager for input about things he didn’t know about such as the WorldCat link that takes users to a website where they can buy the book they were looking for. It is unreasonable to expect anyone to have up-to-date knowledge of features that come and go so quickly and it is through these discussions that we all can gain insight.

If I were setting up an ILS at our library from the beginning, i.e., if we were just now moving away from cards and written ledgers, I would pursue using an open source ILS such as Evergreen or Koha. As we already have an OPAC, I’m not sure I would change due to the convenience of continuing with what we have. Our current OPAC, Follett Destiny, certainly has some positive aspects and seems to work very well for school libraries. I do have some issues with Destiny and since it is proprietary, I am extremely limited with what I can do to acquire the features I desire. Typically, all I can do is wait for an update and hope it has what I want. I am not yet privy to our budget but when and if that time comes, I will still keep an open mind about open source ILSs especially if we feel a need to redirect funds. In that case, the time and trouble spent to convert to a new ILS may be worth the cost savings.

Although I have some nitpicks with Destiny, it does seem like a “good enough” solution for our library. I have come to believe that some of what I perceived as weaknesses are actually due to inadequate cataloging related to what a modern OPAC can do for patrons. Many of our materials are cataloged to a bare minimum necessary find the item’s call number if you already know the title or author but they lack rich subject tags or the proper entries required to allow the OPAC to actively link to all of the materials written by a specific author. Furthermore, many records do not use the correct authority file so it further makes materials difficult to link together. Fixing these catalog entries is very labor intensive and the relative benefit is small so it is difficult to justify spending much time but it is important to realize that some collocation issues we face may be less related to our OPAC software itself and more related to our catalog records themselves.

One Search

I am very interested in the list included in the following slide. I think that each of these points would be of great benefit to me as a library user and surely I am not alone.

In our OPAC, we have a feature called One Search and it does go partway towards #1 in the slide although it only searches databases or encyclopedias that we have already set up to work with it so it doesn’t search *everything* and *everywhere*. However, I think this is mostly good for our students. They tend to need help narrowing down from broad Google searches to narrower and more reliable information sources and these partially curated One Search results are useful to them.

Google search already does all of the things in the list from the slide. I truly do have concerns about Google or any company maintaining so much personal information but it seems that Google will be an important part of the future and although their ultimate goal is to make money, so far they have done a wonderful service to the world in making increasing amounts of data and information available to people who want to find it. At this point I’m much more concerned about what governments do and will do with my information than I am with what Google does and will do with my information.

TEDTalk: Anil Gupta

2. Watch the TEDTalk video: “Anil Gupta: India’s hidden hotbeds of invention” at  and post your thoughts on your blog.

Fantastic. While I love hearing about major technological advances like the Large Hadron Collider, my favorite inventions are the ones like Anil Gupta shows us in this TEDTalk.

I, too, have found the honeybee an inspiration for some of the talks I have given (sermons or lessons on various topics) but I never thought of it the same way as Gupta. Accurate analogies from nature are always more likely to catch my attention and Gupta’s combination of the honeybee analogy with the inventions that bring immediate and real improvement to humanity is sure to hold my attention.

I’m not surprised at all that these inventions exist because people are generally creative and people throughout the world have shown the truth of the adage, “necessity is the mother of invention.” What is surprising, to me, is that Gupta found these inventions at all. I suspect that his willingness to walk throughout the country is a key to finding these wonderful creators.

Look at this. We saw it in Shodh Yatra. Every six months we walk in different parts of the country. I've walked about 4,000 kilometers in the last 12 years. So on the wayside we found these dung cakes, which are used as a fuel. Now, this lady, on the wall of the dung cake heap, has made a painting. That's the only space she could express her creativity. And she's so marvelous.

I have a friend from high school who is involved in something similar although at much higher technology levels. He blogs here about his life and work although I’m not sure where the line between life and work is for Vic. He lives in London as a jumping off point for traveling throughout Europe looking for interesting things that may be of some use to his employer.

Below is a picture that Vic posted on his Facebook profile showing where he’s visited looking for interesting projects. I believe the orange represents more time spent or more projects viewed.

I’m glad that Anil Gupta and Vic are able to get out in the world – in the countrysides and cities – to see what there is to see and report back to us about the great things people are coming up with… both high tech and low tech.

Here in Taiwan, there is a popular saying when people encounter what seems like an obstacle. In English it roughly translates as: We’ll think of a way. It just takes a short walk through any populated area to see the products inspired by those words such as a plumber who modified his motorcycle to attach a hand truck full carrying his plumbing supplies so he can transport it on the road and then disconnect and use the hand truck to get to the customer’s house.

Access, Information Inequality, and Different Ability

1. Watch the MediaSite video on “Access, Information Inequality, and Different Ability” and post your thoughts on your blog.

Different Ability

I agree completely with the sentiment that the term “different ability” has some advantages over “disability” especially as it shows that each person’s different abilities have value. I think that the AP style guide still uses “disabled” and I will use that term in the following comments.

I have had significant interaction with people who have disabilities but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person who is blind use a computer before. I was very impressed with that and it was clearly from a few years ago. I know that Microsoft has done some really great things for accessibility but it was fascinating to watch someone use it and teach others to use it.

I was impressed by the library (Coventry branch?) that emphasized access for people who are deaf. It was fun to hear about the various ways they catered to patrons who are deaf and those interested in learning sign language. The student in the class who worked there sounded proud (rightfully) of that emphasis.

In the school library where I work, we have good wheelchair access with an open layout and wide aisles. It is possible for those who use wheelchairs to use our tables and computers. I am not aware of any services we could offer to students who are blind or deaf, but I am certain we would have the support of the school system should such services become necessary.

Information Inequality

When Dr. Roland asked what all of the places with the highest illiteracy rate had in common, I immediately thought of 2 things: war and corruption.

There are those that would tell you that war helps build economies. No. Never has and never will. No.

Additionally, development workers have concluded that many nations simply can’t be improved until corruption is dealt with.

I know we would all like to see education improve and we see it as a key to reducing illiteracy as well as having many other positive benefits. Decades of donations made to impoverished nations has not substantially changed things as a whole although there are certainly some of the intended individuals who have been helped. I love hearing about stories such as John Wood’s Room to Read and others like it. It seems that people are learning (or more correctly re-learning) that smaller is often better when it comes to these kinds of projects. The more local a project is and the more involvement from those who will most benefit, the more efficient the spending and the more optimistic we can be about outcomes.

I’m reminded of what I learned about Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy in establishing libraries in the USA where one of his requirements for those receiving money was that they spend a certain percentage of it on materials of local interest. He found that it made people more committed to their new library and development workers and donors have found something similar to be true in building schools and libraries in the developing world today.

What Nothing Says

NOTE: This is also late but I want to post for completeness. Like the previous post, I will update as I have time.

1. Weinberger writes about context as both explicit and implicit, p. 150f: what are some examples of both explicit and implicit contextual messages found in libraries?

I’m having trouble with this. I suspect it is in part because my exposure to libraries in the USA in recent years is very limited. I can answer based on my own library and some I have been to in Taiwan. I think my trouble is more than this, though. I’ll have to read others’ posts to gain more insight.

Implicit

• the library taken as a whole
• whether or not help can be found easily
• the apparent level of technology skills to access materials
• more?

Explicit

• the content of each specific item in the library
• signage
• rules and usage agreements (e.g. what certain rooms are used for, how to get a library card, late return fees)
• scheduled library activities
• more?

2. In the section “Mapping the Implicit”, Weinberger quotes the GIS director at Rand-McNally that
“we’re targeting maps for specific audiences” (p. 158). Adapt the sentence to read for librarians as “we’re targeting information products for specific audiences”. Think about your past experience and education and how to combine it with an MLIS degree to create information products for specific audiences. What products would you create, what audiences would you target, what would be your niche?

I am impressed by the targeted information products that already exist and I am having a hard time coming up with specific ideas for this question. I’ll try to come back to this.

3. After reading the section “What Isn’t Said” with the four points about how the Web might overcome the volume of information to make useful connections, think about Kevin Kelly’s point about having to be transparent in order to benefit from The One. How has your position on transparency and information sharing changed over the past few weeks of this course?

I don’t think my position on transparency and information sharing has changed over the past few weeks of this course, but that I have become more aware of my already fluctuating position on transparency and information sharing.

I think information should be shared on a case by case basis and that we should choose carefully who we share with. A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend posted about their colonoscopy and it showed up on my wall. The post was something very close to this:

Just got back from a colonoscopy. Fun.

My reaction was varied.

Since I would not share that information on Facebook, I was a bit surprised that anyone would.

Why isn’t there more information? Surely they didn’t have a colonoscopy for fun.

• Do they have a disease?
• Was it preventative?
• Did they win a free colonoscopy in a drawing?
• Is Facebook going to direct new ads based on this information?
• What did they want from this post? Likes? Someone to ask about why which would end up in a Hallmark movie about the Facebook friend who became the best IRL friend after a cancer diagnosis.
• Does this person not know that you can set up contact lists on Facebook and share with only certain people. Perhaps this was a good post to share with ‘Family’ or ‘Friends I’ve talked with about colonoscopies before’.

Yes, my brain really works this way and, yes, I did think all these things (and more) and, yes, I specifically remember them. I wasn’t offended by the post. I wasn’t grossed out. I know about the first amendment. I just didn’t (and don’t) understand why that information was shared in that way to be read by those people (me).

However, I have given Google access to all of my personal email and 2 work email accounts – one because our organization uses Google apps and the other because I have chosen to access it through Gmail. Google reads *all* of my email. They also have access to nearly all of my digital photos, most of which have faces tagged. They know my location; rather, they know my phone’s location which is typically my pocket. Google actually suggested an address for “home” because I was there at nights. I’m bothered by this, but there is a trade-off. The more access I give Google, the more helpful Google’s products are to me.

In one of the lectures, Dr. Roland mentioned wishing for a mind-map feature in an OPAC (I think) that would remember all previous searches and some other information. Google is becoming something like this for me because I’m choosing to share.

Social Knowing

NOTE: I am late on this assignment but I still want to post. I only have short periods of time in which I can post so I’ll make this main entry and then update it as I have time over the next few hours.

1. Comment on Weinberger's analysis of Wikipedia's definition of neutrality - p. 136. Does this definition work for the library profession,say for example in the book banning situation? Why or why not?

The more I hear of Jimmy Wales, the more I like him and what he stands for. I didn’t have a bad opinion of him before taking this course, but I only knew his name because of the banner ad-like appeals for money I would see on Wikipedia from time to time. I am impressed with his response to Weinberger’s questioning about neutrality. Philosophically, it is unlikely that people would ever agree about precisely what “neutrality” means – but Wales’ reply is the “good enough” answer, “An article is neutral when people have stopped changing it.”

I’m afraid I’m not personally familiar enough with book banning to feel like I understand exactly how this definition of “neutrality” might be relevant. I regret not starting sooner so I would have had time to clear up my lack of understanding but as it stands, I’ll have to make and educated guess that we see the library’s stance on books as “neutral”.

In that sense, I’m not sure that Wikipedia’s definition of neutrality is especially relevant. I see libraries and librarians as “neutral” more like how Switzerland is “neutral” and less like how a Wikipedia article is neutral. It seems to me that those who want to ban certain books and those who fight against banning books (and sometimes the same people switch sides depending on the book in question) are judging the merit or value of a book based on its content. As a librarian, I feel less inclined to judge based on content but upon whether the content exists or not. I prefer to remain professionally neutral about content and actually somewhat enjoy the tension between opposing parties, not in a sadistic way but because I feel like tension provides opportunity for growth, learning, and greater understanding.

Using Wikipedia’s definition of neutrality, we might say that our library collection is “neutral” when no one is complaining about any of our books AND when no one is complaining that we *don’t* have certain books. I really don’t mean to cause trouble for trouble’s sake, but I hope we never become so narrow with our collection that no one ever complains about what we have or don’t have in the collection.

2. On p. 143 Weinberger writes "Deciding what to believe is now our burden" as opposed to being
"passive knowers" who trust what we read in authoritative resources such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Use Schedroff's model of Understanding to describe how your knowledge of a particular topic was affected by the new understanding of authority that Weinberger articulates in the last paragraph of the section on Authority and Truth, p. 143. Schedroff's Model of Understanding was first presented in the Module 3 lecture on "The Information Age" and again in the Module 5 lecture on "ASK and Environmental Scanning".

I still owe a blog post about Reddit that told Dr. Roland I would do. I’m embarrassed it has taken this long and I’ll have to leave it for another time. Spending time interacting with people on Reddit (redditors) has affected my knowledge of particular topics in a pattern like Shedroff's model suggests. Specifically, my understanding of Christian groups such as Quakers and Eastern Orthodox is due in large part because of observing and/or participating in discussions on Reddit. Reddit is completely unfiltered but like in the Wikipedia community, if you pay attention you can quickly learn who you can trust. The most helpful comments will include external links where information seekers can find more information. I had very little exposure to Eastern Orthodoxy but I was fascinated by the input of some Orthodox redditors on a variety of theological topics, some of which I have never found the typical western, evangelical view to be appealing. These discussions opened my mind to hearing more about these and other topics. Over a period of years, my knowledge of Orthodox Christianity was growing… first from data points (e.g. seeing Orthodox churches in movies) and then connecting the data into organized thoughts. This knowledge was acquired primarily from conversations, storytelling, and integration as Shedroff’s model suggests. I am still trying to gain more knowledge but am spending time in contemplation, evaluation, interpretation, and retrospection in an attempt to produce some measure of wisdom about what I’ve learned.

3. Comment on the last paragraph of the chapter and incorporate what you have learned about how you learn through the course. Again, relate to Schedroff's model and remember that context is everything.

I’m not convinced that Weinberger is proposing something revolutionary here by elevating social knowing as the place and means of building knowledge throughout humanity.

From my own reading of history, I would suggest social knowing is nothing new at all and that humanity has always learned socially although technologies have increased the speed of transmission and the reach of the information.

As I have mentioned before on this blog (because others mentioned it in lectures first), oral learning is full-duplex and highly social – if not the most social of activities. I used to believe ancient texts such as the Bible were possibly unreliable due to the fact that the stories would have been passed down orally for hundreds of years (possibly) before being written down. I came to learn that most of the variances are more likely a result of inaccurate copying or intentional additions during copying rather than changes made during the period that the accounts were shared orally. Those on the cutting edge of church planting movements have realized that the most effective way to transmit information about Christianity is through stories – both telling and listening. Previously, it was more common to send translation teams to a people to learn the language and translate the Bible so it could be put in printed form but now the storytellers are the first on the scene.

Reading books and reading blogs are social activities too. We have been interacting with Weinberger’s ideas through his book. I know the possibility exists to interact with him on Twitter, too, but I haven’t thought of any questions or comments yet. We are interacting with our classmates via their blog posts. I missed the Wimba Chat but that was a full duplex opportunity. I found that one of my favorite videos to watch (actually I listened as I scurried about our library troubleshooting computer systems before the first day of school) was the one that was a recording of a 2 hour classroom session. This was the first course that left me feeling like the online version was less helpful than meeting in person might have been. I think it is based on my own learning preferences and personality and not the content of the course or even the potential for interaction with other students via twitter and blogs. I really enjoyed the questions and answers and general banter of that recorded classroom session. I would have liked to have been there and I would have liked even more to have gone for coffee/lunch after the class to continue the conversation. I have enjoyed reading my colleagues blog posts and the articles they have linked to but I always want to think and reflect before I comment and oftentimes too much time passes and I never go back and comment. I personally prefer time to think and reflect before forming an opinion, but I probably grow more from being forced to articulate an opinion before it is fully formed like what can happen during oral conversations.

In many ways, the context for this course (and perhaps for my entire SLIS program) for me has been less about data and basic information and more about filling in information gaps to increase knowledge and generate some wisdom about how to succeed at running or helping to run a K-12 international school library. I came to the profession and started my schooling because I discerned that the data pointed to this being an exciting time to be a librarian. The convergence of technology with the traditional missions of libraries has brought me here because 2 things that I am passionate about have now merged together to forge a new vision for what libraries can do and provide and be.

Obsolete

All in all… another predictable list but a fun one for sure.

PDA – A Taiwanese friend working with an OEM gave me a sample WinCE device back in the early 2000s. I loved that device and its little stylus too. My smartphone has replaced that WinCE device as a PDA but I do have a Nintendo DSi that uses a stylus so the stylus is still around.

Email accounts you have to pay for – Did anyone really ever pay for email? I never paid only for email. It was bundled with my ISPs internet package… my college provided one (early 90s)… I started using Yahoo mail in the late 90s and still use it today.

Dial up sound: Here it is. Actually there was a setting to make the device silent that apparently I was one of only a few people in the world who knew about it.

Maps – I definitely find this a little bittersweet. I remember long car trips when I was a kid and the map was a source of joy and sometimes mom and dad’s fights.

Landline – my landlord won’t allow us to give up her landline because she has a “lucky” phone number. Seriously… that’s what she says. But we don’t ever use it. edit: except for Jajah (see below)

Long distance charges – a favorite of ours is Jajah.com which initiates calls via a website but then rings your own phone so you talk on your own phone and are not tied to the computer after the call is placed. Come to think of it… we use that landline for this… oops.

Public Pay Phones – are still found in Taiwan and they are still an excellent value. NT$1 for a 3 minute call… that is about US$0.01 per minute and most phone calls would fit in the 3 minute time. These phones are not ubiquitous as they once were, but they are still around and still useful.

VCRs – I *wish* they were obsolete because my reading of copyright law is that our library could convert our old VHS tapes to DVD if we can’t find a commercial DVD replacement *IF* VHS becomes obsolete. It is obsolete in its usefulness… but VCRs are apparently still good for something.

CDs – They are not obsolete until my wife says they are. I’m looking at a giant storage shelf full of CDs that could be ripped to digital and done away with. We still even have some cassette tapes… but the tape deck died a few years ago.

Buttons – I love the button on my Samsung Galaxy S3 (and the S before it). I’d give up some other features to keep this button. Fortunately with the Galaxy devices, you don’t give up anything.

Losing touch – I can’t seem to keep people unfriended on Facebook. Even when I *try* to lose touch… these people keep coming back into my life.

World Changing Gadgets

Found here, this is a predictable list that leaves for little arguing. If it were written now, I suppose it would also include the iPad. Certainly, Apple products have a mass appeal but I’ve always been put off by the closed systems of Apple devices. I have an issue with Kindle for the same reason although it is a nice ereader.

The Palm Pilot was maybe the most exciting for me of the devices on this list. I never owned one, but I would go to a local computer store that had one on display and practice writing the special alphabet that Palm used at the time.

I noticed that some of the devices on this list were specific brands – SONY Walkman, APPLE iPod, AMAZON Kindle – but some are generic such as wireless routers and personal GPS. As a child of the Walkman generation, I don’t recall much debate as to whether the Walkman (cassette player or CD player) was the best or not (it was). The other devices each had strong competitors and were not necessarily the best device of its kind. The Barnes and Noble Nook consistently gets better reviews from consumers and from technical reviewers but Amazon’s device has captured the market and Nook struggles to catch up. I’ve never heard anyone say how much they love iTunes as a media player, but it is so strong as a store and content delivery service that people prefer Apple anyway. If you like your music with DRM, iTunes is a good place to get it and Apple devices are the most friendly with iTunes.

I wouldn’t have put wireless routers on my list but it would have been an error. I remember working as a network administrator for a small (50 computers) organization back in the late 1990s. The president of the organization was quite visionary in the area of technology and using it to help workflow. The entire office was largely paperless – using networked faxing and an intranet for messaging. We also had scanners to digitize documents and further reduce paper clutter. He would talk about wireless networking like it was just around the corner but I just didn’t get it. I had heard of the possibility, but didn’t think it would be able to compete with cabled networks. Truly, the first commercial versions of WiFi had security issues and were S-L-O-W. But Mr. Smith soon got his wish as most of the office moved to WiFi a few months after I left. I’m glad that I had regular conversations with a visionary person and I still like to get together with others like Mr. Smith to talk about what might be coming next.

OhioLINK

I’ve used OhioLINK for a previous course and it is difficult to overstate its usefulness to students and teachers associated with schools in Ohio. I did not know about OhioLINK when I applied to Kent State but it has shown to be an excellent resource and I’m fortunate to have access.

I did set up some notifications for searches but they run once per week so I won’t see how/if it works until then but I assume it will.

Module 07 - TEDTalks

Tim Berners-Lee

I’ve seen this before and I still have the same question:

What – SPECIFICALLY – do I do to make my data available?

In a later video, Berners-Lee gives some examples of mashups created from linked data (one was bicycle crashes in the London area) and he said, “Here's more data… put out by the U.K. government, and because they put it up using the Linked Data standards, then a user could just make a map, just by clicking.”

That sounds great but I need a tutorial for how to offer data using “Linked Data standards”. I’m not sure I have any data that people want but I’m happy to share a lot of data if I knew how and where to put it.

I’m sure the answers are available and W3C’s page on the semantic web and linked data is probably a good place to start. I’ll be sure to check it out and try to learn from it but I wonder if any of my colleagues in this course have some specific information for me that would help me get moving on this?

I have the same question about FRBR as I asked above about making my raw data available. What do I do? Do I catalog differently? Do I download FRBR records from somewhere? Do I have to create the links myself? Do they go in a MARC record?

With RAW DATA NOW and with FRBR, I’m ready to participate… except that I don’t know how…

Pattie Maes

This was wonderful and I was glad to see the audience responding so positively. It is important to remember that this was from early 2009. We now have Google Glass – well, I don’t have it but I wish I did! – but some of the things shown in Maes’ demo are beyond what I’ve seen Glass do. I like that she calls this “sixth sense” technology because that’s how I’ve always thought about this kind of technology. I certainly want to make myself available for any wearable computing devices and I’m even willing to have devices implanted in my brain once they become available. Humans have poor vision compared to eagles and a poor sense of smell compared to dogs and perhaps someday we will have the capability to improve these senses quickly through technology instead of slowly (if at all) through evolution.

I appreciated that Maes recognized (as did the audience) that there were some privacy issues with having information about people so readily available. I’m curious, though, if a device like this were to only gather other publicly available information, couldn’t people protect themselves by just not sharing private information? Does anyone else have a Facebook friend that posts about their colonoscopy in one post and about Facebook’s lack of privacy in the next one? I do want to be sensitive to all privacy issues, but I would like to see devices like these force the issue so people can gain more insight into what they are already making available.

Lawrence Lessig – TEDTalks

These are great. I saw the first one years ago probably not long after it came out and it was very influential in shaping my thoughts about modern copyright issues. Unfortunately, there has not been major progress in copyright law to reflect the new digital realities that we live with. However, Creative Commons and other organizations have accomplished much. I was introduced to Creative Commons through it being a default search tool in some version of Firefox several years ago. I’m not sure if it is still installed by default but I still use it from time to time.

In the 2nd video, I like that Lessig was an equal opportunity annoyer by calling out Democrats and Republicans on their weaknesses and pointing to a Libertarian as the common sense solution. However, I felt like he stretched his comments too far by making such assumptions that Wall Street bankers don’t share outside of a church picnic or even that they go to church at all. He’s playing to stereotypes and that lessens the content of his talk for me but his approach does emphasize his point (like in the first video) that there is a reasonable middle ground.

One vision I have for our library is that it becomes a hub of content creation. We are fortunate in that we have excellent computer labs throughout campus and many students have modern computers of their own, but I believe that our library can be a focus point for creation of content beyond specific assignments for class. Our 11th graders all write a lengthy research paper on a topic chosen from a relatively short list of possible topics. At the library, we can certainly help them with this kind of research which is the same kind of research and creation libraries have been expected to help for decades. I’d like to see us go beyond this level of creation to where students are unleashed to create without as many restrictions. If the 11th graders were permitted to choose from more topics (those of more relevance to their lives) or even permitted to choose *any* topic, I believe we would end up with some more creative and interesting research papers. I would like to see teachers give open assignments and students challenged to create outside of class assignments. I think that one of the best ways to teach students about copyright is for them to be content creators and be forced to think through the issue not just as a consumer of content, but as a creator too.

Good Enough and Web of Tomorrow

The Web of Tomorrow

The Web of Tomorrow article was predictable but accurate. Kelly’s talk that we watched earlier was more impressive because he mentioned most of the same things but mentioned them 3 years earlier. This article simply mentioned trends that in 2010 were easy to predict would continue. Since I am not in the USA, I’m not sure how all of these trends and predictions have played out there. In Taiwan, we were already seeing these by the time the article was published. Parr mentions this geographical difference,

At present, we focus our Internet use in the U.S. on our laptops. In Japan though, many more access the web primarily through their phones, a trend that is just beginning to sweep the states. This is just the beginning. New Internet-enabled TVs will allow us to browse from the living room and soon our cars will become Wi-Fi hotspots.

My phone has become a valuable companion/extension of my life. It makes my life richer in many ways and it makes me more effective at work. My laptop is only for work and a few games but my phone is an extension of myself.

“Instead of having to jump onto the computer to check your email, you can just have your girlfriend or boyfriend pass you the tablet to check out what's going on.” I laughed when I read this because young people vastly prefer social media over email. If I want to make sure my kids see a message from me, I won’t use email alone. Even though Parr later mentioned the growth of social media, I think it has become even more popular than Parr or many of us might have thought.

 

Good Enough

This article was far more interesting to me. The “good enough” trend is a fascinating one and Robert Capps provided an enlightening treatment of it. I was somewhat familiar with all of the examples that Capps gave (besides eLawyering) but he mentioned things about each that were new to me and changed my thinking.

I was surprised to see that college students’ listening preference has changed from CD quality to compressed MP3 quality audio files. I’ve always thought that music piracy was not a very big concern, in part, because most of the file sharing is MP3 format audio files (although lossless is also common today) and is therefore noticeably inferior to the original. If people begin to prefer MP3 over CD on audio grounds and not just convenience, then it may affect the way I view sharing these files although there are other factors to consider.

The Pareto principle is new to me. Capps writes,

it's because of the famous Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough.

I will need to give more thought to this principle and what it means when applied to different creative efforts I may be involved in including the library where I work and the school system we are a part of. As a perfectionist (most of the time), I feel like I could gain productivity by learning more about when the law of diminishing returns makes continued effort a waste of time compared to putting that time into other tasks.

I am looking to buy a video editing package for our family to use on our home computer. I am only considering software that fits this description of “Good Enough”. Each is missing some features that would be *nice* to have but since there is a 0% chance that I will pay a premium price for software that will have every possible feature, “Good Enough” software will be… good enough.

The Laws of the Jungle

1. On p. 88 Weinberger writes that order often hides more than it reveals, which may be yet another reason why people prefer the search engine over the library catalog. What experiences have you had in which you discover something of interest through Google or a library OPAC while looking for something else?
2. What do you think of Weinberger's statement on page 89 in the first full paragraph about how the way we organize information limits our vision and gives more power to those who control the organization of information than to those who create it?
3. From your experience of working with Flickr or another web based photo archive for your second assignment, do you agree with Weinberger's statement "that the bigger the mess the more accurate is Flickr's analysis (p. 95)?
4. Check out the PennTags project that Weinberger refers to in this chapter at: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/
Explore and comment on its usefulness as a search tool for a library collection.

1
I rarely use Google for anything more than a specific search and typically find what I need and get out. I regularly get lost in my library’s OPAC. It started last year just after I started my job and started learning about MARC on my own. I noticed that some of the subjects and authors shown in a surrogate record were active links (that I could click on and see all the records for that author or subject. However, some were not. For example, some of the books in our catalog by Beverly Cleary had active links and some did not. If I clicked on the active link for Beverly Cleary, I could see a list of books by Beverly Cleary but those without the active links may or may not be in that list – usually not. I learned that this was related to how the MARC records were entered. When I saw how useful it was to have those links be active and how much better it would be for patrons if the catalog records were updated so the active links would actually return *everything* the library has by that author or subject, I started spending a little time each week finding and updating the MARC records in the appropriate fields. I also found something similar for book series. Sometimes books 2-4 are linked by the MARC 490 field but book 1 is missing that entry – possibly because at the time it came out, it was not thought to be book 1 of a series. Following these links in our OPAC regularly leads me to information that I didn’t originally come to the OPAC for – especially the subject links.

2
I could not recall this exact quote so I re-read it. Glad I did. Weinberger uses that statement about media. He says “editors are more powerful than reporters, and communication syndicates are more powerful than editors because the get to decide what to bring to the surface and what to ignore.”
I certainly agree with him in this context of mass-media. I’m not so sure I agree, though, if the context were libraries and/or librarians. I like my miscellany with a bit of organization and I like my organization with a bit of miscellany. I don’t see it as a power struggle although I’m new to this profession and I’m sure there are battle lines drawn in places that I have not discovered yet. Certainly, the organizer’s bias will be evident in the process, but I hope libraries are organizing with the end user in mind. I should clarify. I do not mean that libraries should decide how the end user will want to use the information and organize it accordingly, rather, libraries should organize information to be as open as possible so that users can access with varying degrees of organization or miscellany – and the choice as to the exact degree is up to the end user.

4
PennTags has potential. I like the idea of bookmarking sites and making them available to others. It seems like del.icio.us but for a limited group of people. That isn’t a bad thing but it does seem like maybe PennTags isn’t very popular now. (UPDATE: After looking through more of the tags on PennTags, some of the tags are still in relatively heavy use through July 2013!) I think something like this might be useful but I’m not sure that it is needed in my organization. We use Google Apps for Education so we all have the benefits of Gmail’s powerful search capabilities. I do still use browser based bookmarks and sync them to all the computers and browsers that I use regularly. However, when I find a site that I *really* want to make sure I can find later and/or one that I want to share with my co-workers, I just send the link in an email with some text that will make it easily findable via Gmail search. I did this recently with the website about explorers mentioned in the 21st Century Librarian article we read/watched a couple weeks ago. I emailed the link to my co-workers with enough explanation that I can find it later in just a few seconds.
Our library does not currently catalog websites, but if we did or if we decide to in the future something similar to PennTags may be helpful even if just as a part of the brainstorming process. We do subscribe to some services that provide a curated list of websites appropriate for various ages on various topics and those websites are searchable through our OPAC… if we could just get students to use them.

Module 6 lecture comments

1. Watch the PowerPoint lecture “Mass Media and Technology” and post your thoughts to your blog. The files are available below, on the Lectures page, and on Blackboard.

I think it would be interesting to do (or learn about) some research about which changes humanity has found more significant. I was fortunate to have more time with my grandparents than most people and I always enjoyed hearing their recollections about the first car they saw or the first TV program they watched.

Our lecture mentioned Photography 1.0 and Photography 2.0. I’m curious which is more significant, the change from Photography 0.0 to 1.0 or from Photography 1.0 to 2.0?

I assume that the change from 0.0 to 1.0 would be most significant because it is a change where creation of something completely new was accomplished. Surely the change from 1.0 to 2.0 is *less* of a change than the creation of photography. However, I regularly interact with people in person and via the internet for whom the shift of various technologies (not just photography) from 1.0 to 2.0 has caused a great deal of stress and confusion. My impression of the move from photography 0.0 to 1.0 is that the camera and taking pictures was widely accepted as a benefit to humanity. Is my impression accurate or have I not been exposed to those who pressed back against the advent of the camera? Photography 2.0 and other similar shifts can cause many people to question fundamental things about humanity. Perhaps the changes from 1.0 to 2.0 are more significant than I originally thought.

Certainly, the actual hardware isn’t much different between 1.0 and 2.0. With old and new devices a photographer still has only 3 basic steps:

1. compose the shot
2. press button
3. process the image

I suspect that it is the 3rd step that introduces barriers for people. For many digital natives, the use of photo management software such as Picasa in order to tag photos and add photos to albums is a common and well-understood task. For digital immigrants however – in my experience – this kind of software causes some dissonance. For many, the notion that a single image file can exist in multiple albums is a difficult one to understand. The fact that a single image file can be tagged in infinite ways is actually a great benefit to the end user, but not if it causes confusion.

Certainly, the difficulty transitioning to Anything 2.0 or 3.0 is not a matter of raw intelligence because those with difficulty may be quite intelligent. I was fascinated to hear that some government officials spoke of the Abu Grahib photos as if there were “originals” and “negatives”. I had never heard that part of the story before. The fundamental concept of digital files and tags/metadata is still difficult for some people.

What can we do? Here’s one idea. Many people come to a premature conclusion that some skill is impossible for them and they would rather give up than continue to try something if it makes them feel stupid. I believe that patience and understanding are still very important to help such people. It is a privilege to be present when someone has an “a-ha” moment and as information professionals, we have more opportunities than most to enjoy such moments.

Module 5 lecture comments – part 2

2. Watch and listen to the lecture "Berry Picking and Sense Making" then post your thoughts to your blog.

Berry Picking Model

After watching the Wimba chat video, now I’m wondering if the way I prepare sermons (mentioned in part 1 of the lecture comments) is really Berry Picking and not the Environmental Scanning. I still think it sounds more like Environmental Scanning but I can see the similarities between Berry Picking and the “undirected viewing” step of the Environmental Scanning method.

I like models that take examples from nature. I chuckled at the beginning of the lecture because of the simplicity inherent in the model. When I heard the name, “Berry Picking”, I immediately thought of foraging through a forest looking for berries (something I haven’t done) and picking strawberries in a field (something I have done). It turned out that both images were relevant to this model. Admittedly I’m not breaking any new ground by commenting in this way, but I feel like it is important to keep things as simple as possible and if a person (me) who doesn’t know anything about the model (Berry Picking) can jump to accurate conclusions about the model almost immediately, it indicates some genius behind the model.

The six strategies mentioned are very clear and I think can help anyone break through the fog that sometimes envelops us as we are in the early stages of research. I’m somewhat concerned that Berry Picking might result in far too many resources but I think it depends on the individual. Some people are more comfortable with casting a wide net and catching a lot of information and others can become overwhelmed by that much information.

I especially liked the strategy called “citation searching” with the example from Google Scholar. I think this strategy can actually help narrow down potential sources because it helps us find what sources might be most important for our use thereby narrowing down our options.

 

Sense Making Methodology

I hope it is OK if I like this method, too! I trust that we learn these 4 methods because they have proven to work over time so maybe it isn’t surprising that we would find value in all of them.

This method is most like the one I might have created because I can only draw squiggly people. Actually, this method strongly reflects the way I view the world especially as it recognizes that groups of people exist but that each individual is unique and even those groups are made up of those unique individuals. Each person – every one of us – meets with barriers or gaps and we desire to find bridges to understanding. This model recognizes that we will sometimes be able to construct a bridge or a part of a bridge largely through our own efforts but that we might find that the assistance of others is especially helpful. We are also reminded that we can assist others in building bridges to understanding. We need help, but we can also offer help at the same time.

I like to question everything… even some of the most cherished beliefs that people or groups may have. If those beliefs can withstand the questioning, they remain. If not… they are thrown out and replaced by new beliefs based on better information. I really like that this model was birthed out of an observation of reference librarians who believed they were helping people but actually were not helping as much as they thought. I respect that sometimes it takes people from “the outside” of our field/organization/etc to help us know what we look like we are doing.

In another post, I mentioned how I can get trapped by my own tendency to be an introverted thinker. The way through the barriers I face is most often discovered by someone helping me talk through it in the way described by Dr. Roland in the lecture. I’m usually not looking for specific advice, but for good questions that will help me clarify what I’m really trying to learn about. I especially find helpful statements or questions that start with some variation of “I think I’m hearing you say that you…” or “If I’m understanding you correctly, you believe…” because those statements and questions help me know how I am coming across to the other person.

Why I missed the Wimba chat

I missed the recent Wimba chat because… something… came… up.

Here’s what happened…

We try to do an inventory at the end of the school year but apparently there had not been one done in a few years and so this spring we discovered many discrepancies and so we did not finish the inventory before school was out and staff left for the summer.

I went to the library several times over the summer – several times a week – and worked on my SLIS program and some other things and also spent some time continuing the inventory. I kept finding mistakes and fixing them and the process was moving along nicely and I felt like I would finish this past week before teachers arrive for work next week.

Our library team had already finished the inventories in all of the sections of the library except for high school non-fiction. Some aides (and my son who I got to work for me) had scanned a few hundred HS-NF books starting at 000 and I uploaded the barcode list to the inventory and then made a printout of the results of what had been scanned/uploaded.

The printout shows the status of every book that was scanned. If the book is in the correct place (both HS-NF and correctly shelved) there is just an entry with no message. If, however, the scanned book has some issue, I’ll see the issue mentioned in a note. Some common issues are that the book is from another area (perhaps elementary NF) or the book was marked as lost (now found-YEA!) or that it is currently checked out (hmmm) or that it simply is mis-shelved relative to the other books on the shelf.

So I took the printout to the stacks and started looking for the first book with an issue – a book that was mis-shelved…

I looked at the shelves for the book and I couldn’t find it because every book on the shelf was incorrect. The books should match the printed report but sometime between the scanning of the barcodes and when I looked at the shelf, someone had rearranged the books on this shelf. My first thought was that someone did it as a prank on the library staff.

But then I looked at the next shelf. Same. Every book is mis-shelved.

Next shelf. Same. Mis-shelved. Are you kidding me?

I run to the next shelf and the next and it is clear that we have a library apocalypse on our hands. Eventually I discover that every book on every shelf in every section of the library is mis-shelved.

The good news was that each book was still on the shelf where it belonged but all the books on each shelf were mixed up.

My mind was spinning trying to think of what could have happened. I started playing back events in my mind and I realized that I had seen our new cleaning lady dusting the books and shelves throughout the library for many many days in a row. I remembered thinking how diligent and committed she was to her job. I even told her how much I appreciated the time she was spending.

I realized that I saw her almost every day for 2 weeks while she was taking books off the shelf, dusting the shelf, and then dusting each book as she reshelved them by height.

YES. OUR BOOKS. ALL OF THEM. WERE NOW SHELVED BY HEIGHT.

I missed the Wimba chat because I lost my mind.

Fortunately, several students, parents, and teachers came to our aid and we have everything shelved correctly again….

By color. ROY G BIV *

 

*not really! :-)

Module 5 lecture comments – part 1

1. Watch and listen to the lecture "ASK Model and Environmental Scanning" then post your thoughts to your blog.

ASK Model

ASK stands for Anomalous State of Knowledge but I appreciate the fact that it is a reminder that we need to admit that there are things we don’t know and that we can ask about those things in order to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. I enjoy asking people about topics they know well (and I’m happy to share about things I know well) because there is great opportunity for learning. At the most basic level, such exchanges can end with 2 people knowing information that previously only one person knew. I like that this model and Dr. Roland’s lecture about it elevate the individual in the information creation and transmission process. It recognizes that real people are generating data and information and that real people are using what has been generated and that generators and users often have the other party in mind as they are involved in the process. It shows that the process is circular in that both generators and users are constantly undergoing changes that affect the continued transmission of information – the perspectives are always changing.
Slide 5 mentioned poorly/well-defined problem structures and the role that reference librarians have. From my own personal experience as an “introverted thinker”, I have found that I run a risk of spending massive amounts of time brainstorming solutions to issues that lie outside the scope of the problem at hand. In a research context, it would be helpful for a reference librarian or a colleague to ask me questions to help me define the problem, but I have found that I need to regularly connect with other people to discuss ideas and realities on a variety of topics that I have been thinking about by myself. This interaction fulfills a desire to discuss the theoretical side of issues and a desire to narrow down a problem so it is possible to craft solutions.
I enjoyed listening to the kinds of searches that Google is good at and weak at. It was helpful to associate Google’s strengths and weaknesses with places on the continuums shared in slide 4. That is information I can share with students early in this next school year that will help them gain a better understanding of how to best use Google for information retrieval.

Environmental Scanning

I think I use all of these IR methods depending on the particular need, but this is a preferred method of mine although I don’t recall having specifically learned of it by name before this week. I have a BS in accounting and with this model coming out of the business world, I am familiar with many of the concepts and have been able to bring some of these informational tools, e.g. SWOT analysis, to my organization.
One specific example of how I use this model is in my sermon preparation. I do not preach regularly at this time but after viewing lecture slide 9 “modes of scanning” I learned that I used environmental scanning in sermon preparation in the past an in my occasional preaching today.

If I know my sermon topic or bible text, it seems that I unconsciously start to experience things around me – e.g. watching the news, engaging in conversations -  through the lens of that particular topic or text. At some point, that "undirected” viewing starts to come together in such a way that I become aware of themes, stories, sources, etc and begin to purposefully seek out information through both informal and formal searches.
Various aspects of environmental scanning as shown in slide 8 will prove helpful to the library where I currently work as we analyze issues related to changing education trends and cast a clear vision for the future and how we will serve and inspire teachers and students. The items listed on that slide will provide a good starting point for this process.