Head Tale

It's killing me
but I'm having to change the focus of a a paper I'm doing for my “501 –
Perspectives on Library and
Information Science” class.  Originally, I was going to compare
the differences between the
public library systems in Alberta (the only place in Canada along with
Quebec that charges user fees for library cards) with the library
system in Saskatchewan (the only place in Canada along with BC to have
legislation enacted guaranteeing all citizens equal and unambiguous
free access to library resources).  But it has grown incredibly
unwieldy and
long and so I'm forcing myself to cut it back and focus only on the
Alberta aspect without the comparison to my home province.  It's
still quite long compared to what the word count is supposed to be
but I'm willing to take a penalty just based on the pure joy I got
exploring this topic. 

Well, “joy” isn't exactly the right word.  I got to hear the incredible Lois Hole,
former Lt. Governor of Alberta speak on a couple occasions including at the
opening of the Crowfoot Branch in Calgary and she was such an amazing,
passionate woman, never afraid to call out Ralph Klein or give big
public hugs to people she admired.  She passed away in January
2005 and thinking about her words and how her memory is a large part of
why Banff and Drayton Valley have decided to buck the tide and drop
their user fees is very bittersweet. 

I posted an open
call for comments on the subject of user fees to a few librarians I know in Alberta and to the
Writers Guild of Alberta listserv.  Some of the comments were quite fiery,
some were poignant, and some were surprising.  So that's also a
source of mixed emotions as I work on this essay.  I won't get
into it too much but to hear people who I know  probably can't
afford the fees say they don't mind paying or to hear librarians I
respect say that “we've accepted them now” or that “they're not much
more than the cost of a paperback book” really bothers me. 

Even though I hate to do it, I have to admit that my original essay
wasn't doing what I wanted (I showed it to Sabina and she gently
pointed this out and sometimes you have to hear something you know from
someone else for it to sink in) so I'm changing the focus. 

That's the bad news.  The good news is that I got to change my
original title “The Two-Headed Buffalo: Comparing Library User Fees in
Alberta and Saskatchewan” to the much catchier “Useless at Tits on a
Bull: Library User Fees in Alberta.”  How's that for an academic title? 

After I get my comments back, I'll update both
versions and post them here so people can see them if they want. 

What else?  Looking at the Wikipedia bio on Lois Hole, why is it
not surprising to see she's originally from Saskatchewan?  I
noticed that all over the place in Alberta and I hear about it in other cities from Vancouver to Toronto to various places
outside the country.  There's something about people from Saskatchewan
that often puts them in positions of responsibility and respect. 
(Of course, the flip side of that is that Saskatchewan can't seem to
retain its best and brightest and is like a giant farm system (in the
baseball sense although I guess in the agricultural sense too) for the
rest of the world.) 

In our class of forty or so people, there are two other people from
Saskatchewan and both of them are extremely cool, wicked people. 
I've written a bit about Christina who I've nicknamed “Kinetic” for her
non-stop energy and chatty nature.  The other one is Michelle who
I was lucky enough to be able to meet in Regina a few times before we
moved to London.  She's a bit quieter (at least in class) but no
less remarkable.  She's traveled to something like 40 (?)
countries around the world and not just the usual ones around Europe
that so many people hit to fill out their passport (“I've been to 20
countries in 10 days.  Worship me!”)  Most recently, she
spent an extended period of time in South America. 

Not to disparage my other classmates who all bring their own skills and
abilities to this program but I think it's interesting that the three
Saskatchewaninians (Saskatchewanites?) are some of the most involved
people in my class.  Christina immediately got on student council and
Michelle is involved with the Librarians Without Borders group. 

There truly is something about the volunteer spirit of Saskatchewan
that makes its people special.  As hokey as it was in some ways, I was glad to
be back in Saskatchewan in 2005 for the Centennial and to be part of the
celebrations in the place I grew up and have called home for most of my
life. 

To end, I'll stick a quote (which I'm also having to cut out of my
essay) about the source of the differences between Alberta and
Saskatchewan. 

It's by Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform Party and son of
the longest-serving Alberta premier, Ernest Manning, in an essay that
he wrote for a special issue of MacLean's celebrating the centennials
of Saskatchewan and Alberta.  I'm not religious in the least but I
read this and just went “yeah…”

In
the 1920s and '30s, two particularly spiritual streams cut across the Prairies
as do the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers, leaving an indelible impression
on the political landscape. One came to be named the Social Gospel Movement; J.
S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister from Winnipeg, was one of its main
proponents. He helped found and lead the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation,
a new federal party that later became the New Democratic Party under the
leadership of another man of the cloth, Baptist minister Tommy Douglas, a
former premier of Saskatchewan. From the social-gospel perspective, the most
important dimension of the Christian faith is social justice — the horizontal
dimension of faith, as it's been called — meeting the needs of the young, the
sick, the poor and the old.

At
around the same time, another spiritual stream, later labeled the Evangelical
Movement, rolled across the Prairies. One of its key proponents was William
“Bible Bill” Aberhart. Born and educated in Ontario, he became a prominent high
school principal in Calgary and a pioneering radio broadcaster whose weekly
religious appeals helped knit together isolated Prairie homes. For
evangelicals, the primary dimension of faith is the relationship between
individuals and God — the so-called vertical relationship of personal
salvation — a prerequisite to being able to effectively do God's work on Earth

Classmates of the Day: 
All who came out after 503 class today for what I think of as a very Saskatchewan-tradition –
heading to a patio as soon as the weather's decent.  It was +10
today but a bit windy and shaded where we were so it felt like
+2…which is usually when I'm heading for the patios back home! (See,
I can justify anything.) 

By the way, Christina is in the sunglasses…

I've always
thought one of the best things about librarians/library schools is that
they attrack a range of people from all different academic fields of
study. 

I mean, if you're doing a Masters in English, you pretty much know all
your classmates have English undergrad degrees.  But in this
program, we have one person with a PhD, various people with Masters in
all kinds of subjects and undergrad degrees (usually Honours) ranging
from English to Computer Science to Biology. 

I never thought of it this way but a classmate made a good point the
other day – most of the people in our course tend to be pretty big
overachievers. 

“I'm the kind of person who never got under an 80% in my life
ever.  Not in elementary school.  Not in high school. 
Not in undergrad and I didn't expect to get any here.”  But even
though that person is doing really well and is getting mostly 80's,
she's also gotten the odd lower mark and maybe even one or two quite a
bit lower than 80%.  “It's a shock but I guess it just makes you
realise that you're in a class full of people like yourself and that in
any assignment, someone's going to have to bring up the bottom half of
the class, no matter how the marks range.”

Interesting thoughts definitely.  For me personally, I sometimes
think my intelligence peaked out around Grade 7 when I got a
Proficiency Cup for having a 90%+ average for the year.  After
that, it was all downhill and now I can barely remember how to spell
“proficiency”, let alone win an award for it. 

I guess I received a couple scholarships when I entered University
based on my Grade 12 marks but afer that, my undergrad degree was,
well, not exactly floundering but not as dedicated as many people were.  (That's probably where my theory that “marks don't matter” began to take shape as well! ) 

At the time, I never thought I would even do a Masters program and
because of that, I had serious doubts as if I would be accepted here
based on my undergrad average which was, er, completely average. 

Obviously though, marks don't tell the whole story and here I am – not
overachieving but not doing too badly either all things
considered.  And unless you're planning to do your PhD or win
scholarships or eventually work in a library where you know that
transcripts are one of the major hiring assessment criteria, do you
really think anyone cares if your average was 75% or 80%?  I
don't.  I think marks never tell the whole story about who a
person is and probably often paint a false portrait.  Is the
person who gets the 90% average but never leaves their house or
socializes with their classmates or takes in other events going to be a
better librarian than someone with an 80% average who also does those
things? 

By the way, this rant was in no way inspired by me getting a low mark
in a class or anything.  Just wanted to try and capture some of
the thoughts coming out of that discussion with the classmate
yesterday. 

Classmate of the Day: Kelly
Farrah, Derek Bates, Jim Taron and maybe someone else I'm forgetting
[2006-07-01 Theresa], all got offered co-op jobs today.  While I'm happy for them, I'm
also a bit sad.  The end of the semester is only three weeks away
and this is the first signal that our class is beginning to go our
separate ways.  Next term, some will be gone while all will be
taking different classes. 

It reminds me of my semester in England.  I lived in residence
with a group of people 24/7 for four months and then, poof!, one day it
was over and I was on a plane back to Canada.  Even though we had
bonded incredibly in our short time together, I haven't seen any of
those people in person since then and have lost touch with almost all
of them, even via phone or e-mail. 

Although I don't think the separation will be quite so drastic with my
classmates, it's still going to be an adjustment to not being with the
40-odd people who have been such a close part of my life every day for the past
three months. 

Boy, somebody's in a reflective mood tonight, eh?  And I only had
a few glasses of wine at Kelly's excellent wine and cheese party
tonight. 

I had a teacher
in Grade Seven who strongly believed that “nobody should get 100%
because nobody is perfect.” It was an interesting theory except this
person was teaching math.  To a bunch of grade seven kids. 
We're not talking about advanced calculus here or even something
subjective like English or Art where you could understand nobody being
“perfect”.  It was basic math.  And it was inevitable that
somebody would know the entire ten times table and get everything right
on a test.  And yet, when that happened, you would
get…99%. 

That's the thought in my head today having picked up my latest
assignment.  What I handed in may not have been worth 100% (or
even 99%) but it was definitely worth more than the 85% I got on it in
my (n)ever-so-humble opinion. 

I know it's stupid to get worked up about what is a very good mark in
this program but I hate that it sometimes feels like the program is
based on a range of marks from 65-85%.  Only a few of my
classmates seem to have broken the 90% barrier on the real
assignments (the ones worth more than 5% of our mark and which require
more than just filling out a worksheet) and I've never reached that
exalted plateau yet.

If there was a fault to be had with my assignment, it was that I went
far and beyond the requirements of the assignment.  It was a
two-page assignment and I did that (er, after shrinking my font and
widening my margins ) but I also handed in multiple appendices that were very thorough
with addresses, phone numbers, maps and other information relevant to
the assignment.  Hell, I called the United States to confirm one
fact which is something some library workplaces might not even let you
do!  (The call was acknowledged in the marker's comments as an
inspired technique but was followed by a rhetorical question “Would you
do this everytime?” and my non-rhetorical answer is: “Yes, of
course.  If a phone call was required to confirm a fact, I would
do it.”)   On that note, remind me to do an entry responding
to all the rhetorical questions I get on my papers.  For example: “Because I
wanted to.”  “Wasn't it obvious?”  “No.”  “Maybe.” 
“Yeah, I guess.”  “42.”

I'm doing better in this program than I ever expected (academically
speaking) after ten long years in the “real” world without an APA-style
citation to my name in all that time.  Plus, after hearing how
intense and crazy and hard this
program was from former grads, I  came in with a hope that I could
maintain a 70% average and if so, would've been more than happy. 
Now that my average is sitting closer to 80%, I'm getting a bit too
focussed on my marks and I don't like that at all.  As I said
about awards,
I know that marks are highly subjective.  Yes, awards have
guidelines for jurors and yes, academic departments have grading
guidelines.  But as someone who has served on more than one book
award jury, I know that guidelines are all they are.  I expect the
same applies to grading guidelines. 

None of these examples are from MLIS but here are some things I've heard of happening (these are all completely true):

1. prof admits he never gives a mark ending in a “9” because that all
but guarantees the student will come to ask for a bump to the next
level – ie. a 79% will ask to be an 80% and it's not worth the
hassle.  So they get a 78% or better yet, a 77%.  Then,
there's no arguing room. 

2. a student hands in the exact same undergrad paper in two separate
classes where the topic is similar enough that this can be done without
modifying the paper at all.  The student gets a 73% in one class
and a 78% in the other.

3. an overworked doctoral student asks their spouse (who only has an
undergrad degree) to mark undergrad papers for them.  No one
notices. 

4. a prof does half their marking then has a huge fight with their
significant other and the marks for the other half of the papers are
significantly lower than the first ones marked on average.

5. another busy prof bases the mark on reading the first and last pages of the assignment.

What's my point?  I shouldn't care so much about my marks, good or
bad.  The analogy I always used to describe Book Awards is
“they're closer to figure skating than ice hockey.  Instead of
knowing exactly who won at the end of the game, you get technical merit
and artistic impression scores but nobody really knows for sure how
those exact marks are arrived at.”  I think that analogy works
equally well with marks.  And sometimes you even have biased
French judges!

So yeah, someday when I'm brave and/or drunk, I'll do a real rant on
some of the other concerns I have with this program.  But for now,
I'll end on a positive note…Sabina wrote an e-mail using one of the
academic listservs that was tangentially connected to the program
(again, such a subjective line that's different for everyone.)  A
mini-flame war erupted with people accusing each other of not knowing
the proper use of the listserv, piling on, firing off missives, issuing
personal attacks and so on.  David and I discussed it and decided
to send an e-mail to Dean Leckie and a few other people in power
positions suggesting that an easy solution existed – set-up an opt-in
listserv for students who want to
discuss topics that may not be part of the mandate of the main
listservs.  Then those who think they're being “spammed” because
they have to use their delete key a couple extra times in between
erasing messages promoting penis enlargers and Nigerian get-rich-quick
scams can avoid these messages and those of us who are actually
interested in information can get even more of it. 

We got an e-mail back from Dean Leckie the same afternoon saying it was
a great idea and asking the tech folks she copied on the message to
make it happen.  Honestly, we weren't sure we'd get a positive
response,  let alone a positive one so quickly.  Very
impressive and encouraging. 

Oh, another positive (?)  I was hanging out with Sabina today and
she said she thought I should do my PhD.  Sounds like a good
idea…except you probably have to get at least one 90% in your MLIS to
be accepted!  

Classmate of the Day: As I said
before, she's not a direct classmate but Sabina gets the nod for the
great talk we had today on all manner of issues from Open Source
Software to the Spirit of Librarianship Awards to the relative merits
of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Ontario. 

Next time…