Legends, Libraries & Literacy: Welcome to the Girls Guild

The Girls Guild Legend

Long ago there was a princess named Sophia who lived on the island of Atlantis. Atlantis was said to be the most beautiful place in the world, but there was one problem: It was forbidden there to teach girls how to read or write. Unhappy with this, Sophia often sneaked into the Library of Atlantis, the greatest library ever built, and secretly learned how to read. Armed with her new knowledge, she soon made a terrible discovery: Atlantis was sinking. But when she told her father, King Canute, that the sea was rising, neither he nor any of his advisers believed her as she was just a girl.

To find out what happened to Atlantis and Sophia and how Girls Guild came to be formed, download and print the free e-book. . . or continue reading The Girls Guild Legend. . .

(via Boing Boing)

Bloomsday on Twitter

There was a more-or-less real time Bloomsday performance on Twitter this morning, for anyone who cared to monitor the public stream.   Here’s the details of how it worked:

We took Wandering Rocks and adapted it into a large series of 140-character or less utterances in the first person. We organized and timed these and built a database for them. We registered key characters in the novel as users on Twitter. For example:

STEPHENDEDALUS: I see Dilly’s high shoulders and shabby dress, shut the book quick, don’t let see

Then we wrote some software to automate the performance of Wandering Rocks on Twitter, so basically we just turn it on and it runs.

The performance was automated so that the scene, which occurs in the book at 2:55pm, could align with the Bloomsday tradition of celebrating/reenacting along Dublin time (which was a tad early here in the U.S.).

Here’s a screenshot of some of the first tweets of performance:

Buck Mulligan's tweets

I’m more or less in love with the “@STEPHENDEDALUS” here.  All of the conversation in the performance uses this:  @DENISBREEN, @BOODYDEDALUS, @CORNYKELLEHER, @MANINMACINTOSH, but this is the first bit of dialog in Wandering Rocks (apart from Introibo ad altare Dei, which maybe should have been @GOD?) and it’s kind of shocking and kind of fun to see it here in a medium where most expressions in the public timeline are along the lines of “ Freaking out!!!! This economy sux big time!!!! (less than a minute ago from mobile web)’” and “@XXXXX lol!!! yeah on that show degrassi he got shot and was paralyzed (less than a minute ago from web)”.

I guess I’m especially interested in this performance because the main organizer, Ian Bogost, seriously dislikes Twitter, calling it “gimmickry that doesn’t even rise to the level of the gadget” and ” a kind of softer soft-pornography determined to make identity-assertion the new masturbation”.  I can hardly argue and can more or less agree, actually, even though I use this gimmickry on a daily basis.

Bogost goes on to ask “What if the focus on socialization and identity is actually the least interesting way to use Twitter?”  Well, it is the least interesting way to use Twitter– that’s an easy one.  Plenty of Twitter users have already taken the medium and made it less egocentric, more external, more culturally signifcant and aware.  Ultimately, the problem with Twitter isn’t the medium– deriding Twitter for it’s content is like deriding Film because of Gigli and The Hottie and the Nottie.

But I’m not necessarily defending Twitter, either.  I’m not in love with the technology and could, really, take it or leave it.  If Twitter were to disappear tomorrow, I’d remove TweetDeck from my computer and update my Facebook status more.  But Bogost’s performance is a great reminder that Twitter, like all social media, is a tool– we can use it for utility, for inanity, for art.

So this is what I’m doing on Bloomsday.

Tango on the Table: Snazzing up the wiki

My Social Software workshop is running on Wednesday so it seemed like today was fine time to peek into the Blogs, Wikis & More wiki to make sure the links were working order and that the PBwiki transition to PBworks didn’t gum up anything.  Instead, I tackled the pressing problem of unattractive graphics.

For a couple years now, I’ve been using this Business Week graph, Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online,  to run a poll of workshop attendees and get an idea of what kind of exposure everyone’s had to social media.  I liked the categories and descriptions, but was never a fan of the Atari-like graphics and the demographic info, while interesting, wasn’t useful for my purpose.

I’ve tried, in the past, to put something functional and aesthetically pleasing together, but with little success.  I think I was hung up on the idea of creating an image and then importing it into PBworks, then getting frustrated while resizing my image to fit the narrow wiki page while maintaining readable graphics.

My new attack today took the form of a table.  I know nothing about CSS or legitimate web design, but I’ve been told that I’m not supposed to use tables to format a webpage.  Nevertheless, I keep coming up with excuses to use them and they seem to be doing the job, legitimate or not.

So here’s what the new graphic looks like:

What people are doing with social software: new & improved

Not at all fancy, but so much cleaner and more useful than the Business Week chart.   I think that I solved the whole problem with a combination of shaking the table maker in PBworks until it did what I wanted and liberal use of  Tango icons.  I love these things– they’re simple, they’re clean, they’re bright, they’re open-source; and it’s a lot of fun to scroll through and find images to match your concepts.  We even changed my Online Students & Faculty page to incorporate Tango icons.  As much as I loved my first redesign, the icons bring it more in line with other Library web pages.  Plus, my first version used a table…

Community Colleges and the First Year Experience

From Nan Schichtel on the cjc-l listserv:

---

ALA Annual 2009 FYE: Connecting First-Year College Students with the Library Program

ACRL’s Community & Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS) and the College Library Section (CLS) are sponsoring what is sure to be an interesting and useful session on library interaction with First Year Experience (FYE) students and faculty. The program will be held on Saturday, July 11, 2009, from 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Check your ALA Conference Planner for the venue.

Dr. Donna Younger, Director of the Learning Center, and a nationally recognized educator from Oakton Community (IL) College, will identify best practices leading to student success in First-Year Experience programs. Librarian panelists will suggest strategies for integrating the library into these college programs for freshmen based on their own institutional experiences. Panelists include: Judith Arnold, Coordinator for Information Services, and Carrie Croatt-Moore, Reference Librarian and Instruction Coordinator, both from Wayne State University; Sarah Greene, Librarian, Tidewater Community College; and Olga Conneen, Director of Library Services, Northampton Community College. Lora Mirza, Associate Library Director,Georgia Perimeter College will moderate.

First Year Experience (FYE) programs are a growing program model or format in higher education. FYE faculty work to improve the quality of the first college year experience for students through modification of teaching styles, increased interaction with students, and through educating students about the myriad of resources available from their higher ed institution. For more on FYE programs, see National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

What to do with Wolfram Alpha

I didn’t know I needed a computational knowledge engine, but now that Wolfram Alpha has provided me with one, I’ll surely be reaping the benefits of this “long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone”.  Pie.  They should be done by the end of the month.

I’ve only just begun to waste time playing with this thing, but if you take a look at the Examples page, you’ll see there is an endless variety of procrastination exploration to be done here.

Looking for a more thorough evaluation of Wolfram Alpha?  iLibrarian can point you to a few,  Lifehacker has a first look,  and if you want 140-character first impressions, it’s trending high on Twitter.

UPDATE:  Okay, so immediately upon posting this, I started in on a post for Josh Is Interested and wrote:  “It does a tidy little job of pulling in information from all over, Google-style, but goes that extra step and synthesizes it into a tidy little orange and grey package.”  Then I thought, whoa, wait a second.  How the hell are we going to cite Wolfram Alpha?

When you get that tidy little package of data, there is a “Source Information” link at the bottom which will give you a pretty Flash pop-up of hyperlined source information and a line that says “Primary Source:  Wolfram|Alpha curated date, 2009″.  This is problematic for several reasons:  1. it’s not sufficient citation information 2. you can’t copy and paste the text 3. it’s not a primary source.

Additionally problematic is the text at the bottom of this screen (which I can’t copy and paste here, annoyingly) which basically says “just because something is on this list, doesn’t mean we actually used it as a source for this information”.  Finally, there’s a helpful looking link directing researchers to “detailed information on the sources for individual Wolfram|Alpha results”.  I was eager to see what kind of detailed information they might provide, but sadly, the link is dead or nonexistent.

Yes, yes, the site is “alpha”, so throw all expectations of function, consistency, right, and wrong out the window.  Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder what we’re going to do with Wolfram Alpha.

There Can Be Only One

Earlier today I mentioned to a colleague how happy I am that the Library is relatively insulated from the politics and goings-on in our institution currently.  Then, not an hour later,  I’m reminded (once again) just how isolated libraries, and our realms of interest and expertise, are from academia in general.

This is an honest to god discussion question from the online class I’m taking now:

The first link that follows is an article about wikipedias. And the second link is to the wikipedia site. Can you help us understand what a wikipedia is? And what value do you think there might be in instructors having their students develop/share knowledge by creating/participating in class wikipedias? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5430-2004Sep8.html
http://en.wikipedia.org

Sadly, not assigned to me, because, wow… Well, where to begin?  The student assigned to this question hasn’t responded yet.  I’m hoping that this is because she’s wrestling with that same question.

And check out the date on that Washington Post link.

The Twitter League of Libraries

I just learned two things.

1. Library Secrets ranks 9th among libraries with Twitter accounts by followers, according to Twitter League.
2. TwitterLeague is a thing.

The ranking is an interesting bit of trivia.  With my current 1081 followers of @LibrarySecrets, I have significantly less than 1/7th the number of followers that the current no. 1 ranking champion, @Library of Congress has.  And I’m not sure how complete this list of Twittering libraries is or what criteria the creator,  @aarontay, is using to determine what qualifies as an “official library Twitter account”.  Technically, LS isn’t our Library’s official Twitter account.  I hope this doesn’t disqualify us– via @LeagueLibrary, Aaron Tay is tweeting ranking libraries to point them toward the list and probably generating interest in his project, in TwitterLeague and in twittering libraries.  Will this lead to stepped up efforts to boost followers?  Bribes and unsavory acts?  A Twitter-off frenzy to rival that of @aplusk vs. @cnn?

Twitter, for me and my Library Secrets purposes, isn’t a contest, though a steadily increasing follower count is undeniably satisfying.  If it weren’t I wouldn’t have included a graph in my ACRL poster presentation and I wouldn’t keep a weekly tally of followers on my desk calendar.  It’s flattering to have 1097 followers (yes, it’s gone up by 16 since I started writing this post), and it’s thrilling to get retweeted– but I’d rather do well by my standards, not pit myself against @yalescilib.

Though I only need 223 more followers to tie them.

I’m a sucker for a pretty GIF

I have a crush on my redesign of our Online Students and Faculty Resources page (which is neither “wordy and dull” nor in need of fixing, btw!)

Quick Links for Online Students & Faculty

All of the images are Microsoft clip art, amazingly.  They came out pretty crisp looking and I only had to do minimal editing to make the images square or the backgrounds transparent.  Not bad, eh?

It’s not connected to anything yet, though I’m hoping  it will become the Library link from all Blackboard course menus.

ALA Scholarship For A Day

Do you know a college student from a racial/ethnic group that is underrepresented in librarianship?  Do they also happen to be interested in possibly maybe becoming a librarian when they grow up?  Well then, the  ALA Scholarship For A Day sounds just about right for this unique individual!  Scholars have the opportunity to attend a full day at the ALA National Convention in Chicago this July, get to meet real live librarians, go to exhibits, presentations and even a Scholarship Bash at the Art Institute.

It really does sound like a pretty cool gig.  I’ve shared the information with my LTA students and hope you’ll pass it on to anyone you know who might be elligble & interested.

Biblioburro

Donkey Bookmobile via National Geographic