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Is This A Gift For The Baby or the Parents?

Now, we just need:
“My Grandpa Thompson is a Gas Man”
“Help! My Grandma Thompson is Stealing Me (again)”
“How come my Grandpa Hammond has as many teeth as I do?”
“I think my Grandma Hammond slipped some homemade wine in my bottle!”
…and we're good to go!

Thanks to Meshell for the tip!

Posted 08 February 2007 § Baby § Humour § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

Nursing Truths (in the "RN" sense, not the "baby juice" sense)

Nurses, rightfully so, have one of the highest trust/respect ratings of any profession in society.  But like any profession, they're not immune to frustrations with their patients

Here's a humourous look at some of them via a forwarded e-mail my mom (a nurse) sent to Shea (also a nurse):

NURSING – Can you relate?

1.Don't tell me you have abdominal pain as you eat doritos in my triage
booth. Go home.

2. If you come to the ER by ambulance, the first thing I will ask you is
how you are getting home. No, we don't have people on staff to drive you
home, and don't tell me you don't want to “bother” one of your family
members at this hour. You had no problem bothering 911 for the back pain
you've had for 3 months.

3. You don't get to pick your own IV site. This will irritate me and I
will probably miss your IV on purpose and start your site in the place I
wanted to initially to prove a point.

4. “Butterfly” is not an IV size, this word signals me to put in a
larger bore needle.

5. Nausea is not a reason to come to the ER. If you are not in severe
pain, are not vomiting, or pooping your pants in front of me, your butt
goes back to the waiting room.

6. How can you have the worst migraine of your life, but be able to yell
at me about the wait after you just put down a magazine you were reading?
Go home.

7. Don't ever say things like, “I usually get 4 mg of Dilaudid”.
Requesting your med and dosage will prompt me to squirt out half of the
med before I inject, then I lie about the dose.

8. If you are allergic to Tylenol, Toradol, and Motrin, I have already
assumed you are a drug seeker.

9. If you came to the ER having a family doctor appointment that same
day, I will make sure you are still in the department well past the time
of your original appointment.

10. I don't care if you are neighbors with the GI specialist. Unless he
drove you to the ER himself, you can't be that friendly.

11. Just because, “my doctor sent me here”, does not mean you get right
back to a treatment room. This tells me you are a pain in the ass, and
he's pawning you off.

12. The louder you moan/whine, the bigger size IV needle you get.

13. Foley catheters cure pseudo-seizures. They also cure intoxicated
persons.

14. If you are on more than 2 medicines at home, bring a list. Don't say, “you know, the little white pill”. I am not a pharmacist.
 
15. RN is not synonymous with waiter/waitress. This isn't MacDonald's, you can't have it your way. Similarly, if you want a pillow, two blankets,
and the lights dimmed, go to the Ramada, jackass!

16. Don't bitch about missing breakfast when I'm on the ninth hour of my
shift and haven't peed yet.

17. What gives you the right to complain about your sore throat for a
week while I have diarrhea from the antibiotics I've been taking for
pneumonia?

18. Broken toes are not an emergency. We'll make you feel stupid by
putting a little piece of tape down there and kicking you out. Again, go
home.

19. I am currently inventing a trapdoor system in triage to be triggered
when you say the word “toothache”.

20. Cover you mouth when you cough/belch. This is just common courtesy.
When you neglect to do this, I am tempted to bust butt in your room, then
close the door.

21. If you tell me you have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome,
know that I'm rolling my eyes and thinking you're a loser.

22. If you list Haldol, geodon, Xanax, and trazadone as allergies, don't
tell me you have no psych history.

23. Never sign in with chest pain because you were too embarrassed to
write “penile sores” or “foul smelling discharge”. This will piss me off
that I bumped you ahead of other people and I'll make your visit horrific.

24. Although you've been in the ER four times this week, you cannot list
the ER doc as your family physician.

25. Do not talk to me while I'm trying to listen to your lungs.

26. Don't tell me you have no money for medicine while you have a carton
of cigarettes in your purse (next to your cell phone), and each of your
seven children are playing their own PSP's.

27. Gravida 7 at age 22 means you are a slut.

28. ONE complaint/ailment per visit, PLEASE!

29. Just because you have a phone and know how to call 911, we are not
impressed by your arrival on an ambulance stretcher. You had better be
sick. If you came escorted via EMS for multiple complaints that started
more than a week ago, and your entire family followed the ambulance to
the hospital, you will be labeled a pussy. Prepare to be treated like
one, and enjoy the waiting area with your family.

30. If you have one of the following 4 ailments, don't waste my time, see
your doctor in the morning: (1) a migraine (2) the flu (3) a stomach virus
(4) a stuffy nose.

31. Don't ask us how long it will be. We don't know. I don't know what's
coming through my door 30 seconds from now, so I sure as hell don't know
when you're getting a room. Plus, why are you now so happy to leave the
ER, when in the beginning you were just so happy to be here and were
begging for our help?!?!?!

32. If you are well enough to complain about the wait, then you are well
enough to go home.

33. We know how many times you've been to an ER. We can usually tell if
you are faking it in the first 5 seconds of talking to you. Do not lie to
us. If you lie about one thing, we will assume you are lying about
everything. You don't want that.

34. If you are a female between 16 and 42 and our last period was between
28-35 days ago, please don't waste our time if you are here for abdominal
pain and vaginal bleeding. Guess what?!?!?! You got your period, AGAIN!
By the way, pregnancy tests cost anywhere from 5-15 dollars at a
pharmacy. An ER visit costs at least a few hundred. If you haven't
gotten your period in 2 months, don't come in at 2 AM. Pharmacies are
now open 24 hours per day!

35. Do not bring your entire posse with you. One person at the bedside is
all that you need. It is really difficult to get around 7 people in the
event that you are really sick.
 
36. Every time I ask you a question, I learn more about what is wrong
with you. I don't care if I have asked you what day it is four different
times. Each time I ask, its for a reason. Just answer the question,
regardless of if you may have answered it before.

37. If you want something, be nice. I will go out of my way to piss off
rude people.

38. Keep the following numbers in mind. At any given time a nurse has 4
patients (some ERs its 5-8). One doctor may have up to 15.

39. There is a law about a nursing assignment in the ER. Of the four
patients, one of them will actually be sick, one of them will be whining
constantly, one of them will be homeless, or drunk, (or both), and one of
them will be the delightful patient who gets the warm blanket and
pillow. Please, don't be the whiner.
 
40. If you see someone pushing a large red cart down a hallway, and bells are going off, don't ask for a cup of coffee. Someone is dying, you
inconsiderate asshole. Sit down, shut up, and let us work.

41. If you can bitch about the blood pressure cuff squeezing too tight,
or the IV hurting, you are not in that much pain. Go home.

42. If you have any sort of stomach pain/ailment and you ask for
something to eat, you are not sick. Go home.

43. Related to Rule #42, just because you haven't eaten all day doesn't
mean I should have to run around to try and find you something to eat.
You got to the ER at 2 PM, what the hell did you do all morning, and at
lunch
time? You could have had something to eat, no one was stopping you! If
this is the case, I will not feel sorry for you, I will think you are
stupid for not eating something all day long, ESPECIALLY if you are
diabetic and prone to complaining about your “sugar” which is probably so
out of whack it wouldn't matter how much/little you've eaten…

44. Do not talk shit about the other members of the staff that I work
with. The doctor that you hate? I work with him everyday, and I know
that he knows what he is doing. I trust him a whole lot more than I
trust you. I am not here to be your friend, and neither is he/she. I
will tell him everything you said, and we will laugh about it. If you
want a buddy, go somewhere else.

45. If you are homeless, don't ask for a bus token or cab voucher to get
home, it just confuses us. You're homeless, remember?

46. PLEASE don't tell us how to do our job. Do we go to your place of
business and tell you how to do your job?

47. Don't come to the hospital (apparently asking for help) and then
become pissed off with what we're doing. Ya, we may have to start an IV,
or draw
blood, yup, you may have to pee in a cup, you may have to go through a
nasty test. You're at the hospital, we have to try and find out what's
wrong with you. If nothing shows up on the tests, we send you home, done. If you refuse the tests, you'll just wait longer, and if you get violent
(and if we feel the tests are necessary) you'll be sedated until we can
get the necessary specimens/x-rays/CT scans, etc.
 
48. Related to Rule 47, don't pull at IV lines, monitor wires, your
wonderfully fashionable ER gown, or fight with the staff. You came to us,
remember? If you do these things, please keep in mind we have many ways
to restrain you.

49. Don't bring in a show and tell. If you have to fish it out of the
toilet, it's really not necessary to bring it in, we'll take your word
for it. If you did fish something out of the toilet, you may not use my pen!

50. If you want to AMA, just go. Don't make a federal case out of it.
Don't shout expletives as you leave, don't throw things, spill things,
or attempt to hurt any staff. Just go. Again, if you can be that pissed
off, you must not be sick, so we don't really want to look after you anyways. Hope you enjoyed!!!

P.S. Here's a thought for the day… If you save one life, they call you a hero. If you
save hundreds of lives, they call you a nurse.

(Here's one from the archives – Jason's career vs. Shea's career.)

Posted 06 February 2007 § Humour § Jobs § List § Main Page § Shea ‡ Comments (0) °

The OPAC – A Question (Mark)

For many library users, the OPAC is the source of connection to their library – how they find books, movies, CD's, etc.  And it's a well-known issue in libraryland that OPAC's frequently aren't all they should be, something that's increasingly in the spotlight because of how much better Web 2.0 sites like Amazon and LibraryThing seem to be at finding/browsing/cataloguing information – even though librarians are the “information professionals.”

Here's an example I came across tonight:

Search Results at RPL
“Who Killed the Electric Car?” = 0 hits
(not sure if they use cookies to track sessions so that link might be expired by the time you try it)

“Who Killed the Electric Car” = 2 hits
(one result for two copies at Central, another much more detailed entry for a copy at Sherwood Village – which is another issue I won't get into)

But what's the title for both entries in the RPL catalogue when you search for the title without a question mark?  “Who Killed the Electric Car?”  (with the question mark reflecting the full, actual title of the work.)

So if you're a patron searching for the film with the proper, full name and get 0 hits, you're very likely to not refine your search.  In fact, the only reason I did was because I saw this film listed in RPL's “DVD's On Order” and knew other films on that list were in the catalogue already so this one should be too.

Somebody with expertise in cataloguing can maybe explain this – I suspect it's something to do with “?” being some sort of a reserved character in the Dynix software, similar to how Google apparently prefers dashes to underscores in its index, a seemingly simple distinction that can make a great difference in your PageRank. 

Anyhow, this isn't a criticism of the RPL since it's symptomatic of problems in many library OPAC's across the country.  In fact, one thing I have loved about RPL since getting back (and of course, a blog-entry list is pending on that very topic) is their extensive DVD collection on a wide-range of topics, non-fiction and fiction, and not just the National Film Board documentaries from the 1970's and German art films from the 1980's that are the bulk of so many other library's video collections. 

One of the recurring battles in libraries is “give people what they  do want” versus “give people what they should want”.  RPL does a good job of doing both but definitely goes further towards “what people do want” in a way that many libraries don't which is great.  For example, one new feature since I returned in that they now have extensive collections of TV show DVD's – you can get complete seasons of everything from Seinfeld to Alias to Corner Gas. 

They even go further than that to reach people.  Looking at their list of movies on order, one that caught my eye was “The Butterfly Effect 2” That's the direct-to-video sequel to an Ashton Kutcher film that didn't do great business or get great reviews the first time around (though the original is apparently a bit of a cult classic – currently a 7.7 rating on IMDB.) 

And just to bring it full circle, who was one of the stars of the Butterfly Effect 2?  That's right, Indian Head's biggest fan Dustin Milligan!   (Light bulb!  Maybe RPL's media specialist librarian didn't order this film after all.  I'm guessing a patron, maybe 13, maybe female, really wanted to see this film and special ordered it.  But what is cool is that RPL did order the film – some libraries wouldn't.  And even though I just posted it yesterday, why not take the opportunity to use this screen grab of young Mr. Milligan sporting a very cool t-shirt? )

Posted 05 February 2007 § Library § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (14) °

Web 2.0 – The Machine Is Us/ing Us

A cultural anthropology professor has put together a very engaging presentation on what exactly “Web 2.0” is all about. 

(via Digg)

[2007-02-05 – I love MetaFilter but man, sometimes they can be harsh.  The majority are ripping this video a new one in a thread that was just posted.  I sometimes forget that people – especially young, Net-savvy types – are supposed to be jaded and cynicial about everything.  Although I agree that “We'l need to rethink love” line in this clip might be a bit over-the-top. But then again, how many people do you know who met online via a dating site or other methods? How many of you stalk follow with interest the lives of people you know via Facebook?]

Posted 04 February 2007 § Internet § Main Page § Video ‡ Comments (0) °

Randomness (Happy Groundhog Day!)

Saskatchewan Round-Up
Sask Government Insurance, a crown corporation that provides insurance to all drivers in our province, is offering $180 rebates to safe drivers on their automobile insurance and lowering rates by an average of 5% as well (when we already have the lowest auto insurance rates in Canada – why do you think I love public ownership for services like this?) The big question though, with an election looming, is “Calvert Cash” the equivalent of “Ralph Bucks” in Alberta?

The right-wing Fraser Institute think tank has named Saskatchewan as having the third-best investment climate in Canada.  That's so strange-sounding, I'm going to repeat it: the right-wing Fraser Institute think tank has named Saskatchewan as having the third-best investment climate in Canada.  (The Fraser Institute redeems themselves by attacking the Sask government for being too cozy with unions and for excessive spending. Whew – thought I'd dropped into an alternate universe there for a second!)

Nothing is weirder than flipping through the channels and seeing an actor being interviewed in Hollywood and wearing a t-shirt from your small Saskatchewan hometown!   Turns out his name is Dustin Milligan, he's from the Northwest Territories, he recently shot a horror movie called “The Messengers” in Indian Head and he's now moved to Hollywood to make his fame and fortune.  (Reminds me of doing the Saskatchewan thing and going up to somebody wearing a “Moose Jaw” shirt in Ohio last summer.  Turns out “Moose Jaw” isn't just the name of a city in Saskatchewan, it's a clothing company in Michigan.  Oops!)


The last big
celebs to hit IH were Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mischa
Barton when she was still relatively unknown.  So perhaps some similar
good prairie karma will follow this kid?  Those three actors were in IH to shoot a movie called “Skipped Parts”
and I'd highly recommend it as well as the original book by Tim Sandlin.  The
subject matter is potentially offensive – young kids experimenting with
sex around the time of the Kennedy assassination – but the book is excellent.  That's actually where the title comes from – both lead characters are bookish and want to find out what happens
in the parts that authors skip in the books that they write.  (“Avery carried Simone into the bedroom, closing the door gently behind him with a sweep of his foot.”  Chapter Two:  “When they awoke the next morning…”)

Internet Round-Up
I finally broke down and subscribed to Carbonite (well, its 14-day free trial anyhow) which is an online backup utility.  For $5 a month, a small program sits on your computer and automatically backs up any files and folders you designate, working in the background.  It technically has no limit to how much you can upload but they suggest not going higher than 50 GB and won't back up audio/video files during the trial period – only if you're a paying customer.  I could easily buy a decent hard drive for the same amount as I'll pay for this service for a year (heck, I think I have a hard drive or two kicking around that would work.)  That's why I held off subscribing to this service when I first heard about it.  But the convenience factor makes it well-worth it – both because it works wherever I am as long as I'm connected to the Net (ie. 100% of the time at home with my laptop and wireless) and not just when I'm at my desk plugged into an external hard drive.  Plus the big problem with back-ups is a) the software usually sucks in one way or another, b) you have to remember to do it and c) if you do it, say weekly, you're still at risk of losing stuff in a crash.  This service provides near-instantaneous, constant back-up.

Foxmarks is a Firefox extension that helps you synchronize your bookmarks between different machines as well as allowing you to access them remotely.  I've played around a lot with Delicious in the past month and although it has many features I like – sharing bookmarks, seeing who else and how many people have bookmarked things, I was just never happy with the interface.  I'm a librarian – I like folders and think that tagging, although useful to a point, has many disadvantages as well.  If Delicious would allow you to view your bookmarks in a tree structure (other than their “tag bundles” which I don't like either), I might use it all the time.  But until that happens, it'll be my secondary bookmark service, mostly for saving articles and unique sites I come across that I don't want to make part of my main bookmarks. 

I'm really liking Reddit as an alternative to Digg – stories seem to be discussed in a more mature manner and be of a higher quality in general. 

I was looking for an iPhoto equivalent (quiet all you Mac people – I know, buying a Mac would give me the real thing!) as Google's Picasa which we use to manage our digital photos (and like very much) doesn't offer much in terms of creating slideshows.  After looking around a bit, it turns out a Microsoft product, Photo Story, is exactly what I was looking for – very easy-to-use, full-featured  and intuitive.   Plus it's a free download if you own Windows XP.  So after playing around with it a bit, I was quite impressed.  But it turned out that Microsoft can't help but disappoint.  For some reason, I can create slideshows from my digital photos but it won't let me save the project files to work on them later.  (If anybody decides to try this program, let me know if you have a similar problem.  One online board suggested it was a memory problem but it doesn't matter if I create a slideshow of one photo with no music – no saving is possible.  So frustrating!)

Anyhow, here's something I banged out tonight while watching the Flames crush the Blue Jackets.  I didn't spend a lot of time synching the images and music (though there are a couple cool points where it does seem to match up) and I've just used random images from the past year.  Apologies in advance if I used a photo of you that you think is non-flattering or if I used too many photos of you (or not enough.)  I can't save the file to work on it later but I'll leave it open on my computer for a few days (barring a crash or something) and if you really feel strongly about not wanting your photo included in this, e-mail me and I'll take it out.  Alternately, if you want the original version of the slideshow which is much better quality,  e-mail me for that (or if you want any of the individual photos.)  Oh, and feel free to put a link or embed the video on your blog too if you want.  The code to do so is on the YouTube page.



“The Big Game”
There is a major sporting event happening on Sunday but out of fear of infringing on its copyright, I will not mention it by name.  Neither will I invite over friends to watch it on a screen larger than 55″ nor charge any fee to those attending, even to cover the cost of their share of the pizza.  Isn't copyright grand? (via Reddit)

The Blog Survey
Thanks to everybody who responded so far.  How I can get so many responses for it and only two responses guessing the name of my future child when that request for input included prizes, I'll never know! 

I'm going to leave the blog survey open for awhile if anybody else wants to respond.  Lots of good feedback so far and I do appreciate all of it.  I should mention that I originally called it a “ten minute survey” but in fact it's a “ten question survey” that will take you about two minutes to complete.  So if that's what held you back, here's a link to the survey.

I didn't put the survey up as an ego-stroke (honest!) but I have to pass along this comment, which is extra meaningful because it's from a former classmate who I didn't know very well but who is now a lurker that reads my blog every few days. 

“Keep up the great work…Everyone who has had a class with you and/or knows
of your blog sees big things in your future.”

Posted 03 February 2007 § Blog § Canada § Internet § LibrarySchool § Main Page § Photo § Politics § PopCulture § Randomness § Saskatchewan § Video ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , ,

Friday Fun Link – Do The Right Thing (Feb 2, 2007)

DoTheRightThing.com is a new web site that’s similar to Digg
in that users submit stories and others vote the stories up or down.
But unlike Digg, where the criteria for voting up or down a story are
fairly diverse, this site asks for you to vote based on the positive or
negative impact the story has on the wider world.

Posted 02 February 2007 § FridayFunLink § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Another Web Experiment – Google AdWords (and a backlog of Google-related stories)

Google announced their fourth quarter earnings today.  They made a profit of $1.03 Billion which is triple what they made in the final quarter of 2005.   I have to admit that I was responsible for, oh, about twenty bucks of that. 

I've detailed my experiments with creating Wikipedia pages, submitting
Digg stories and my thoughts on a lot of other newish Internet
technologies on this blog (I'm too lazy to add links to the original
posts – search for those words and you'll find them.)  My latest experiment (not even the right word – more like “play activity”) was a Google AdWords campaign. 

In an attempt to learn more about yet another web technology that's having a major impact, not just online but increasingly in the “real” world as well, I signed up for Google's AdWords program at the end of last year.  How it works is you set-up an account, specify the amount you're willing to spend per month as well as the keywords you want to “buy” and you're off.  (I think it recommends a minimum of $30/USD per month but I set my monthly limit to $20 just to try it out.) 

The keywords I “bought” were “mlis”, “university of western ontario” and “library student” so that anytime somebody was searching Google or an AdWords partner site (sites like Gmail that display Google ads to generate revenue) for one or a combination of those terms, there was a chance they might see my ad (see below for image.)  If they clicked on my ad, it cost me $0.10 and each click counted towards my monthly maximum but wouldn't take me over.  (I'm not positive but I think that $0.10 might be the minimum per click that they charge but if you want to bid on popular keywords, they charge significantly more.)

There's a whole art & science to picking your keywords (and designing your ad) but I didn't focus on that too much since I wasn't really trying to sell anything or make money off the ad.  I was mostly just fooling around to see what sort of results I would get. 

In the end (ie. after a month of it being displayed during last November/December), my ad was shown 239 000 times and clicked on 195 (apparently, these clicks were frequently by classmates who saw the ad in their Gmail accounts and thought WTF? if word-of-mouth feedback I got is any indication.) 

Again, I didn't do anything to analyse these hits beyond watching my normal traffic stats.  There was a definite upswing in traffic during that time period but I think that was attributable to my posts on “50 Ways To Improve FIMS” and “50 Good Things About FIMS” that I suspect got a lot of first-time visitors, the fact that we had a blog post advertising our furniture for sale that we advertised fairly widely at UWO via their housing registry and the “For Sale” board Shea had access to at the University Hospital and also because I think I posted my site in a library-related thread on MetaFilter that got me quite a few unique visitors as well. 

(This is fairly uncommon but some new hits may also have come via the Google ads but not have been reported via their system.  This is because some people
might choose to directly type the URL for an ad they see on Google rather than clicking on the ad itself.  They do this for two reasons – because they
don't want to cost the company that's advertising money or because they don't want to support
Google's increasing online dominance.  I've done the former when I've seen an ad appear for a charity or non-profit I'm interested in for example.) 

So in the end, was it worth it?  Sure, it was a great learning experience and I think that Google AdWords is only going to grow as a force in our world so it pays to know about.  Will libraries advertise via this method?  If they already have an advertising budget, why not?  Another feature that Google Adwords allows is targeting geographic regions.  I'm not sure if they allow you to go as narrow as the city level (I think I specified that I only wanted my ads to appear in Canada) but suspect that this is probably the case.  So if you're Moose Jaw Public Library, you can advertise only to people in Moose Jaw or maybe even southern Saskatchewan. 

If you've read the book, “The Long Tail” (and you should – probably the best book I read last year!), this is exactly what the author talks about – how the Internet allows companies and individuals to reach a targeted worldwide audience that they wouldn't otherwise be able to.

In this case, a mom and pop operation like mine that doesn't have any advertising budget to speak of (I mean, what would a business card-sized ad in the Gazette have cost me?) suddenly gets worldwide exposure to a highly targeted audience via the dominant portal for people using the Internet (which is a whole other issue – my “Broadcasting Online” presentation had a section about how insane it is that we'll likely look back at the dominance of five traditional media conglomerates in today's world as the “good old days” when it looks like three companies (Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo) are likely to be the most dominant online by far – and Google is definitely outpacing the other two as the first article I linked to makes clear.)

So anyhow, here's the ad that popped up when I was checking the MLIS Student Council Gmail account one day:

A few other Google-related notes since I'm on the topic…

-> This YouTube hoax for Google's new on-demand GoogleTV service hooked a lot of people (and would've got me too if I'd heard about it before I heard about it being a hoax!)  Watch it anyhow – I wouldn't be surprised if something like this became reality in the next year or two. 

-> One of the big reasons Google is so dominant is that people aren't just using it for search or thinking of it as a web site – they're literally using it as a Internet service like e-mail.  What I mean by that is that instead of typing a URL into their browser's address bar, they'll type the site they want to go to into Google first.  And often, because Google gets around the confusion of “is the site I want .com?  .ca?  .net?  .org?”, it's quicker to do it that way.  But you also end up with embarrrasing situations where “Yahoo” is one of the most searched for terms on Google and even worse, so is “Google” if you can believe it! 

From that last link:
“One of the top search results in Google (number 6 at the time of this writing), is “Google“. Hundreds of millions of users are trying to get to Google through Google.
Does this make any sense? No. But it shows that users don’t think about
Google as a specific web page, they think of it as the service, an
essential part of the internet experience. They’re using this service
to get to the page they want: in this case, Google.”

-> Here's a story from the New Yorker about Google's ongoing book digitization program and quest to create a universal library.  (Thanks to Michelle L. for the head's up!)

From the link:
“No one really knows how many books there are. The most volumes listed
in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat, a
database of titles from more than twenty-five thousand libraries around
the world. Google aims to scan at least that many. “We think that we
can do it all inside of ten years,” Marissa Mayer, a vice-president at
Google who is in charge of the books project, said recently, at the
company’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California. “It’s
mind-boggling to me, how close it is. I think of Google Books as our
moon shot.””

-> Finally, did you know that Google has a blog specifically targeted at librarians
 and one for their Google Book Search?  Now you do!

Posted 01 February 2007 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Tom Carmichael Is New FIMS Dean

Tom Carmichael was recently selected as the new Dean at FIMS.  (Thanks to Linda B. for the tip – it's been a month and I'm already out of touch with what's going on at FIMS!) 

I went to all three information sessions for the Decanal candidates and Tom was my second pick of the three candidates but he should be good for FIMS based on his knowledge of the wider University community.  As someone who attended Tom's session said to me afterwards: “if FIMS is in a 'time of change' like they say, maybe having a new Dean familiar with the University and its politics is a good thing rather than bringing in an outsider and doubling up the changes you're going through.”  Good point. 

Posted 01 February 2007 § LibrarySchool § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Dad's Filing Cabinet

My dad has a heavy old, four-drawer metal filing cabinet.  When I was a kid, that filing cabinet was one the most fascinating things for me in our entire house.  Many times, when my sister and I would play school or store, the filing cabinet had a part in the story.  And it's probably not too much of a stretch to say that my early fascination with that filing cabinet – the various folders holding different papers on all manner of topics, the most important items in the top drawers, the least in the bottom, those topics sub-sorted by drawer, not alphabetically but in a system that made sense to my dad – played a role in a fact that I became a librarian.

To be a librarian (or at least a good one), you should have a certain love of order.  For the non-politically correct, that's a nice way of saying “you should be anal retentive”. (To put it yet another way, you should be the type of person who would find a filing cabinet fascinating.)

Not everyone understands this so I suspect it was a bit of a shock when my mother asked for ideas for a graduation gift and I said “I'd like a filing cabinet, please.” 

“We're not getting you a filing cabinet,” she replied, in a voice that suggested I'd voiced my desire to have a human skull as a graduation gift.

“I can get it engraved,” I added hopefully. 

“No.  Your dad and I want to get you something that has meaning.  Not something that holds papers.” 

I didn't try to explain why a filing cabinet would have as much meaning as pretty much any gift they could get me, especially to commemorate my graduation from the MLIS program.  Besides the connection I already mentioned that it would have to my childhood and why I wanted to become a librarian in the first place, it would also be a daily symbol of much of what libraries are about – classifying, organizing and making accessible all of the information you need in a convenient fashion. 

Beyond these obvious (to me) reasons, a filing cabinet had other features that made it an appropriate gift. Like a fridge, a filing cabinet has an aesthetic value achieved by the artwork, clippings and other ephemera you can stick on it.  And of course, it has a practical utility for the effective storage that it provides in its very small footprint.

I brought the idea of a filing cabinet gift up again during a subsequent conversation with my mom and the utility argument swayed her this time.  I explained that I'd brought home all of the books and papers I'd accumulated over the year but sold off everything that held them – two bookshelves, a desk, even a couple shelves I'd rescued from the dumpster (each went for $10!)  A filing cabinet was something I was going to have to buy no matter what and if her and dad picked up the tab (a decent filing cabinet isn't cheap!), that would be a big help.

So I now have a filing cabinet in my office and have been working to get everything organized.  Connected to the “must like order” aspect of the librarian-type personality, there's also a related sentiment for some of us that says “must be a packrat”.  (But not for all – for some, “love of order” trumps “love of keeping items around” and some librarians take an almost ecstatic joy in weeding their collections to make sure only the most popular, most useful and most engaging books remain.)

My problem is that I constantly struggle to find a balance between my love of order and my love of holding on to otherwise useless items.  And often, the packrat side of my personality wins out, especially if I can somehow impose order on things that suggest no order in and of themselves (“Okay, these maps of Ontario that I'll never need again – or which I could easily get replaced by CAA or at a tourist booth or pretty much a million other locations if I do – will go in a folder called “Ontario Maps”.  Ahhh, sweet order.) 

That's just one example.  I have trouble recycling old magazines and papers. After all, who knows?  I might need our July 2005 London Hydro bill sometime in the future for something.

In a weird way, I think part of the reason I have trouble throwing things out is that all these scraps of paper are like photographs of our year.  Looking at the receipt for a meal we had at Under the Volcano soon after Shea arrived in London helps bring back the evening as easily as if I was looking at a photograph of us sitting there. A ticket stub from Cedar Point takes me back to that amusement park as much as any overpriced souvenir I might've bought on its midway. 

I think the other reason for my packrat nature is the connection it gives me to both the past and the future.  Just as dad's filing cabinet provided so much curiosity when I was a kid (I honestly have no memory of whether I was forbidden to look through the filing cabinet or not – but suspect I did anyhow!) I like to think that someday Oscar will look through the papers and files I've accumulated and get a picture of who I was (and am) and who is parents were (and are.) 

The receipt for our hostel in Montreal might tell something of either Shea's and my values or our lack of money (or both) during a trip we took.   Those Ontario maps might provide hours of imagining future trips of his own.  A thank-you card given by a classmate might show the type of friend I was to others.   Even that London Hydro bill might provide wonder in ten or twenty or fifty years when electricity is provided by technologies we can't even yet imagine, just as looking at old issues of Life magazine in my grandparents' farmhouse provides a picture of their lives then. 

As I said, I really struggle with how to organize information – both in the “real” world and online.  I keep something I call a “memory box” where I store all sorts of items that have special meaning to me.  But then, where does something like that receipt for our meal at Under the Volcano go?  In the Memory Box?  In the London box?  In the Visa file folder?  (It went in the London box if you're curious.)

The same thing happens online.  I recently came across an article (which I of course can't find again!) which says people approach the web in two ways – there are the “settlers” who have their regular stops – Google, e-mail, online banking, perhaps a newspaper site and one or two other favourites – and rarely venture beyond this.  Then there are the “explorers” who lose hours browsing various sites, sampling all types of unique sites and making heavy use of “aggregators” like MetaFilter and Digg to keep up on the latest trends, ideas and memes online.  I think I fit firmly in the latter camp.  But now, if I could just find a way to keep track of all of that so, like that article, I can retrieve it again when needed.  (Edit: Found it – it was an article in the Globe & Mail a few days ago.  And the author didn't use the terms “settler” and “explorer” – I just made that up.  Uhm, anybody know a good trademark lawyer?)

(In the interest of creating order but also collecting information, I have done some tweaking on this blog.  I've dropped the link to my personal bookmarks from the header of this site and you'll now find a list of my most recent Delicious bookmarks on the righthand side instead.  There's now a link to the most recent comments on the left side and there's
also a “log-in” form at the bottom right column where you can create an account if you want and which, in turn, will make it quicker and easier to leave comments.)

Posted 30 January 2007 § Library § LibrarySchool § Main Page ‡ Comments (7) °

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow

Partly inspired by the upcoming keynote speaker at the OLA SuperConference, I finally picked up “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom“, the first novel by SF author, former Torontonian, and co-editor of Boing Boing (one of the world's most popular blogs for those not in the know), Cory Doctorow. 

Corey R. (also a soon-to-be first time novelist) is both a professional reviewer and much more well-read than I so I'll link to his recent review of this book instead of trying to hobble together one of my own.  I agree with Corey that it's a pretty big achievement to create a realistic futuristic world that, given the pace of technological advances, seems increasingly plausible.  One of the big conceits in the book is that money doesn't exist in the future and instead, people trade “Whuffie” which is like electronic credit that denotes esteem/gratitude/sympathy. 

That's a pretty interesting concept as we're already seeing versions of this in online communities, mostly notably Digg where users submit stories and then have both the stories and their comments voted on, positively and negatively, by other users.  [Edit: Wikipedia has an entry on Wuffie that names a couple other sites using the concept – EBay for “feedback ratings” and Slashdot for “karma”]

Doctorow is also a major player in the Creative Commons movement so even if science fiction and “Whuffie” aren't your thing, you should definitely try to check him out at the OLA SuperConference.

Posted 30 January 2007 § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: