Final Post

I guess, to continue my regrets, I am sorry that I did not get to understand as many aspects of HTML and CSS as I would have liked. My computer skills are not very high and I do not do to well with technology in general - it makes me nervous and insecure. However, if I do not do to well in in this course I suppose I will continue in the program though I'm not so sure what kind of a future I will have in this field. I intend, if I do pass, to continue "plugging along" and learning more incrementally so that I will finally have a good grounding in the aspects of technology in library science.

Quick Blog

In a hurry...regrets or course: wish i had more time to do work, especially read the course material more closely. Also, i need to manage my time better next semester in order to fit in lectures at a time when i can watch them all at one time. other regrets: will post later...

Final Week

This is the final week of class. All of my assignments are in. I really enjoyed this course and think I learned quite a bit thought I know that I did pretty poorly. My favorite part of the course was the Quicktime and Realplayer videos. I especially enjoyed the Weissberger talks on "Miscellaneous." Thought I do not agree with everything he says regarding the how information is organized, I do agree with his sentiments that the world is not necessarily an orderly place...

Final HTML assignment

Am working on my final assignment. I think I have done most of the work ok (yet, in I am never sure how I am doing in this course). The only trouble I am having is trying to point my links to secure web pages. I provided the links but am not sure how they can be accessed by someone else???

Finishing up...

Well, this semester is almost over and I hope I did ok. I just completed my final essay for LIS 2000 on copyright. The books by Lessig and Litman were very informative though I cannot say that I have much more of an understanidng of copyright law than I did before. In fact, I may be more confused. I canot give any concrete examples (this is all off the top of my head) but I am amazaed at the complexity and detail that lawyers create in order to keep the copyright issue alive. I like Lessig's idea that we need to take the warlike language out of the debate and not treat borrowers of content like criminals. This inhibits creativity and leasds to a more stratified society.

HTML final assignment

I guess we are supposed to create a portfolio of the work we have done so far in LIS2600. I don't feel like I did too well in this course. The funny thing is that I know this is an introductory cousre to the fundamental aspects of digital librarianship, but I had a hard time with some pretty basic tasks. It is not that the tasks were difficult in themselves but that doing this course online makes it very hard when one has questions, or when soemthing is not working the way you need it to. I found that overall the assignments were quite easy but when it came to actually completing them (without a hitch) was the hard part: I understood what to do but not how to do it.

The final LIS 2000 essay is proving to be difficult as well. I am having a herd time geting a grasp of all the complexities of copyright. I know that I could never be a lawyer in any case (no pun intended). To follow just what laws are being broken, especially, after the milleniium copyrigh act is enough to make one's head spin. It seems that there are so many laws that there is no way that they do not contradict each other. I like Remix's tone and style in regards to how it treat the way in which copyright laws should be rewritten. we need not go to "war" over people who break these laws. the laws are on the whole overbearing and "arcane" indeed.

Confusion

Had problem with the secure file transfer. Yesterday, I quickly downladed WinSCP on my home computer in order to go into my public files and change the permissions to 744. Hopefully they will be viewable now.

Semester is winding down and I hope all of my assignments are found (getting a little anxious) about this because we do not have all of our grades back and I cannot tell wheter or not my work is recorder. Oh well, guess I will find out soon enough...

Google Sites

Spent a long time yesterday trying to complete the web pag/css assignment. I had a lot of trouble with trying to transfer the css file from Amaya to Google Sites. Thought i was going crazy or would go crazy until Dr. Tomer posted a message about Google Sites not allow style sheets etc.

Pitt

Got here Saturday night. Hard to remember where everything was since I was last here, so had a hard time getting re-oriented. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday have been a whirlwhind and very hard to remember everything that I have learned (or at least been presented with) in these last few days. Met all of my cohorts and they are all very nice and most , thankfully, are a bit overwhelmed with all of the reading, etc. I was afraid I was the only one who was in the "what have I gotten myself into" boat. Most felt, as least somewhat, the same. Did not get to the International Rooms in the Tower because we got there too late (they close at 2:30). Will check them out next time...if there is time.

ALso tried some of the various ethnic restaurants in town: I highly recommend ALi BAbba! must try it agin when I get back here...

Late assignment

The Jing/Zotero assignment below was due a few weeks ago, and I just realized yesterday that I had not done it properly. I figured I should get it in even though it is too late for a grade. I thought that I could just link to the Jing page, and that would be the embedding. admiteddly, I was struggling with it the whole time and was surpirsed that I even was able to do as much as I did (make a video recording!). After working on the HTML Thoreau "fragment" assignment, another one which I am not so sure I am doing correctly, I realized that what I hade done was incorrect because I found the embedidng directions in our lis2600.info page.

Next post from Pittsburgh...

Zotero

Post Two Today

Getting ready for my trip to Pittsburgh. Been in much contact with other members of my "study group" re. the hot topic of social networking in libraries. I have not been able to find much negative in this regard. All opinions of librarians seem to be pointed at sn and web 2.0 as being inevitable and positive for the future of libraries. This is really a no-brainer but I just wanted to point out that it was hard if not impossible to find a negative opinion.

Jagd Versuch

This is the name of my new website. Jagd is German for Hunt and Versuch is German for, among other things, experiment: so the site is my experiment.

I chose Google Sites for my site because it seemed the most convenient and easy site to learn. I spent quite a long time yesterday trying to figure out how to format the fragment of Thoreau. And no, I did not get caught up in reading the fragment though I would have liked to -but who has the time for that?!! I also chose Amaya as my site composer/editor though I am still learning just what all that means. As far as I can tell, it does the HTML work for you though you can manipualte it if you want to. I am still learning how to do this via the tutorials, so I do not feel too confident or sure about it all. I have posted the fragment on my site and may change it around some more to give it a more 19th c. "look." However, I just wanted to see if I could even do that much.

Pittsburgh

I'll be back in Pittsburgh next week. It's been almost ten years since I was there last. Wow, I never thought I would be gong back for more school! I'm looking forward to seeing the Pitt campus again and checking out all that the school has to offer. I am especially interested in finding out as much about the other student's lives and comparing notes with them a to see how they are dealing with the fasttrack program...

July 4th Weekend

Lots of eating (and drinking) this weekend. Am really trying to get things done for LIS 2000, book review. Not sure what else to say now except that I really enjoy what I am learning in this program but I wish I had more time to absorb it all...

Thoughts on the Fasttrack Program

Seems like everything is coming to a head now. I have to write an essay on three books that I am reading, help prepare for a presentation and continue to do all the other regular keeping up that we are required to do for LIS 2000 and 2600: lectures, blogs, other readings, etc... The work is not difficult, just intense...I guess the best advice I would give to anyone entering the MLIS fasttrack program is to, first get plenty of sleep before you start, but secondly, manage your time wisely. That is is the most improtant thing that the program has taught me so far. As a regular, full time student it was easy to get work done and have plenty of time to do it, but the fasttrack is just that fast. I love what I am learnign but I only wish that I had more time to absorb everything.

Eprints Probelm Again

Just tried to deposit more searches into Eprints and am not sure they are being deposited. I keep getting the feeling that I am doing something wrong, but I think I am following the steps correctly. Oh well, I left an email in the discussion board so I hope it gets figured out.

Eprints nightmare (sort of)

Just spent about an hour this afternoon trying to post my research onto the EPrints repository. I would enter my metadata, review the information and send it to the repository but nothing would go into it. Or at least it does not show up on the browse. I thought I was going crazy because I thought I was doing everything correctly. It seems there is something wrong with the browse and search functions...

Taufschein Database

I am still working on my Taufschein inventory. I am using an Excel file to work with because I feel more comfortable with it than using Access. I have copied files over before from Excel to Access but it is sometimes a hassle and cannot do it all at once. Hopefully it will not give me any problems this time. I am going to read (not sure if i should have already) the database chapter in our computer textbook to try and get a better idea of what I can do with databases. All I really know now is that I am basically entering information based on what I think people will want to search for: names, dates, locations, etc...I want to be able to, first of all, learn how create searches with a soundex so that I can allow pepole to search without exact spellings. Not sure if i can do that with Access??? A big problem is entering the same names with different spellings. I am entering 19th century German names that had no standard spellings, the same name is often spelled differently or names were simply phonetically spelled so that it is difficult to know how to enter the names. I know I could standardize the names (which is what I do with place names) but I also want to record the original spellings in order to be sure I am getting the name correct. It is possible that the odd spelling was retained and that is how it is spelled today.

Sunday night

Very tired. Just want to say that I did not get a chance to work on my assignments this weekend but did have a chance to talk to someone about social networking (my LIS 2000 Hot topic) and how it is affecting our everyday lives. I did not realize how out of it I am regarding this and education....more on this later....

Quick Post

Have been working on my essay for week 5/6. Very tough reading. It was difficult to try and combine the three books :Willinsky, Borgman and Wright into one coherent essay. there was so much information and I didn't know where to start. I really enjoyed Glut though. I liked how is uses history to show our need (not just humans but all animals) for organization and the creative ways in which people have created organizational systems of over the centuries. It is alos a good overview of library history and introduces us to inventions that never made it for one reason or another and ideas that did make it but have sort of become obsolete: re. Dewey. Nonetheless, our library uses Dewey because it is convenient for us and the subject classifications all fit in nicley with out collection.

Taufschein Inventory

I have been working on an inventory of our Taufschein collection at work. Taufscheins are printed birth and baptismal certificates that were used by the Pennsylvania Germans as a decorative memorial to record the birth and baptism of children in the nineteenth century. They were printed in English or German and record information which is useful to genealogists today. The majority of the document is printed, but the personal information is manuscript. The manuscript was done either professionally by a scrivener or done by a family member. Taufscheins record parents' names, including the mother's maiden name, the child's date of birth and baptism, where the child was born, who performed the baptism, and who the child's sponsers were. They are not official birth certificates, but merely decorative and commemorative. They are also sometimes mistakenly called Fraktur. Fraktur are a form of illuminated manuscrpipt, and while Taufscheins are closely related to Fraktur, they were really another form of folk art. Both are ususally written in German script and use bright colors to decorate but Fraktur are all manuscript and Taufscheins are printed (in other words, mass-produced) and filled in. My inventory includes all of the information mentioned above and will hopefully provide our researchers another source of genealogical information.

End of Week Five Redux

Just posted my discussion response to the Bradford's law question in LIS 2000. There were some very interesting posts and most people covered the question from the bibliographic database angle. I was a little intimidated by some of the responses and feel that perhaps I misunderstood the question. Anyway, I am just noting my insecurity here...Also, in LIS 2000, I signed up for my Hot Topics assignment and got in the group covering social networking. Before the course started I would have thought social networknig meant things like the "Old Boy network" so I had no idea it meant there was an area on the web for an exchange of information which individuals could sign up for and get feeds for, etc., very exciting, and makes me feel a little behind. Sometimes I wonder if everything I do where I work is obsolete and pointless. I simply catalog books and manuscripts into a local database (PastPerferct software) and it has no further use than as a catalog for our own collection. I need to find how and if I can ever get this information on the web. More on this later I hope...

End of Week Five

I posted my Jing assignment (see below) but am not sure how well I did it. The hardest part was creating a narrative and then reading it while trying not to mess up and have to start over. I have a new appreciation for actors and acting. 

I am also still trying to work out the best way to juggle school and work. The most difficult thing for me now is finding time for all of the reading. I have never been a fast reader so this course is forcing me to really skim over articles and get the gist rather than studying what I read - there is not enough time for that. I think I am getting the important points and concepts so that if I do not understand the details at least I will be familiar with the major ideas presented.  

HuntSchenkel's Library

HuntSchenkel's Library: Zotero Assignment

Jing Anxiety

I am trying to share my Jing demonstration onto Screencast and do not seem to be having any luck. It is either downloading too long or not sharing at all - very frustrating! I know it is simple but I must be missing a step somewhere. I seem to be spending a lot of time on projects that should be very simple - I hope that I can get all of this technichal stuff down now so that I will not have so much trouble in the future.

End of Week 4

This course if really hard to keep up with. Another short blog here before...I have been trying to keep up with all of the readings and the lectures (and other videos and RSS feeds) but it is very hard, if not impoossible for me to take it all in. I not only have to take it all in, but I have to process it. Right now I am just reading very fast and not really understanding everything. I Just want to keep up and get an idea of the concepts and theories introduced. I feel that in the long run it will all make sense but now i am just keeping my head above the water...

Digital Technology and Copyright

Just finished my essay for Double Fold. It makes me think about technology and all of its applications concerning information and libraries, etc. I wasn't aware before how much copyright and ownership of ideas are debated between publishers and libraries. In Sarah Thomas's article from "Double Fold to Double Bind" she shows how publishers are now considering holding back distribution of digital literature (if I am remembering this correctly) in order to be able to maintain rights to these books. It seems this creates an entirely new dillema for libraries in that they now may not even have access to these books. Hard copies will always exist I hope but if publishers plan to only publish certain books electronically, does this greatly diminish the role of the library? I am just trying to sort this out through the blog. Hope to understand more of this soon...

Short Entry

Still reading Double Fold and am amazed at the lack of competence and arrogance of our so-called experts (at least in the Cold War period). I guess I shouldn't be too surprised however when so much money is thrown at projects that much is wasted: I am thinking especially about the story of the Library of Congress's attempts at de-acidification and their lack of success.

End of Week 3

This week has been a little less hectic. I am getting used to Blackboard and understanding how to navigate it...

I am still reading Double Fold which should be required reading for all librarians and archivists, no matter if they are in school or not. At least they should be made aware of its existence. Though the tone of Baker is a little too overwrought, I like his passion and detail in regards to the history of the cabal that has been advocating microfilming and downsizing collections. Baker takes on the supposed leaders in the field (ca. mid-20th century) and shows how their zeal for technology and ruthlessness in regards to destruction of hard copy has wiped out entire blocks of our history - very 1984 in a way (sorry for the hackneyed analogy). I also like how Baker equates or associates the CIA and academia during the Cold War. I was not aware of how close they all were (I don't have the book handy to make detailed references but there are many examples) and how this affected the information sciences. I guess it makes sense that our national interests during this period in our history would want to understand all aspects of data through the intelligentsia's research habits though it is just a little scary.

World Cat, RIS, etc.

Having a bit of trouble with the World Cat project. Trying to export RIS format to is tricky and I'm not sure I am doing it correctly. Basically what I did was to export the references as RIS's and then export them as CSV's in Excel to my computer. My next step iss to upload them to Google Docs. Hope it works...

Week 3 : Starting Late...

Memorial Day kind of messed up my schedule : I have not been able to contribute (and read) as much as I would have liked. Anyway, I am still reading Double Fold for LIS 2000, and it is very good but makes me second guess myself about every other page. I still am not clear about whether or not it is a good idea to deaccession items (not destroy) because of space issues. Baker seems to think, at least fo rthe larger institutions with vast resources, that it is better and even cheaper to store than microfilm and destroy. I see his point but what about smaller institutions? Perhaps he talks about them later, but we have very limited resources and space and a large collection. I would be great to keep everything but i woulsd be stepping over boxes all of the time. for instance, we have many books on subjects that are not part of our mission statement but belonged to prominent Schwenkfelders. What should be done with them? More on this later...

End of week

Started reading Double Fold this morning. Looks like an interesting book and it is a relief to be reading something easier to understand than Kuhn! So far the book has touched on aspects of preservation relating directly to our situation at the Schwenkfelder Library. We have major space issues, and have been in the process of trying to decide what we need to de-accession. This has been going own for the past nine years now so we have sold (at auction or book sales) many books, newspapers, etc. However, we have not destroyed any material (except for items that are so badly damaged that they are beyond repair - mostly water damaged books). We are keeping all of our local newspapers even though we have them mostly microfilmed. I have to admit it is tempting to want to throw away items that are on microfilm in order to create space, but I am not convinced that you are preserving only for information. More on this later...

Tough Week

Well, I'm wondering what have I gotten myself into. I spent much more time than I should have yesterday trying to figure out how to download rss feeds into Google Reader.I am still working on it yet the mechanical aspects of it are all simple. I really need to catch up on my reading so I can understand what I am actually doing: I'm still not exactly clear about how to capture these feeds, at least through Scopus - don't know why this is bothering me so much but I guess I am thinking too much about it. My most important problem right now is time management - there is so much to take in (reading especially) and little time to get it all done.

Speaking of reading...LIS 2000 lecture on Kuhn was very good and helped alot in understanding the book. Thought it was interesting that peolple from the liberal arts in general do not like the book because it is poorly written - which it is , but the concepts are simple to understand - makes me wonder how much easier life would be if we all had our own editors so that others could understand us and vice versa.  Good night.

Getting Started

Well, this is the beginnig of my personal blog for LIS 2600. I am really looking forward to learning about all of the technological aspects of librarianship and particularly how to apply these skills toward making historical documents and books available online. At the moment, since this is supposed to be a sort of diary, I just want to say that I am a little overwhelmed by all of the material coming at me at the beginning of the MLIS fasttrack program. there is so much to keep up with and absorb that I hope I will be able to stay afloat. Anyway, I wanted this to be a short entry since it is a first time experiment and I am anxious to see if I am doing things correctly. More in a day or so...