I was quite pleased to read via UIUC GSLIS‘s RSS news feed that a current master’s degree student there, Jenny Benevento, has been chosen to receive one of six NASIG Conference Student Grant awards to attend next year’s NASIG annual conference in Denver, Colorado, May 4-7. Congratulations to Jenny! More UIUC GSLIS students have been chosen to receive this award than any other ALA-accredited graduate library school program.
This has been a stressful week. I have not felt up to writing blog entries for a while. On Wednesday when temperatures plummeted and we had some snow, we discovered that our furnace was broken. We were without heat until Thursday afternoon, when the repair man was able to replace the heat exchanger that had a crack in it. We made it through ok, but this incident helped us to remember to be thankful for things we often take for granted.
Cohen, Brinley, and Tristan have been struggling with chest colds for a couple of weeks now. ‘Course the cold temps didn’t help but they seem to be getting over it. After about 10 days of taking muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory (naproxen) to cope with the severe headaches I’ve been having, I was glad to report to my doctor that the medication had helped. This vindicated his diagnosis, that the headaches are caused by muscle tension. He said that many people who think they have migraines actually have headaches caused by muscle tension. The pain profile from muscle tension headaches is apparently indistinguishable from that of migraines. Anyway, my doctor prescribed physical therapy for 4-6 weeks and I had two sessions already. In addition to the therapy sessions I am supposed to do exercises three times a day. I think this treatment is helping.
On Tuesday a.m., Michele discovered that our dog, Maddie, had gotten ahold of an avocado pit and appeared to have eaten half of it. She noticed that Maddie had thrown up and decided to look up information about the situation on the Internet. She discovered that avocado pits are toxic to dogs, so we called a vet and asked for advice. The vet urged us to get her to the clinic as soon as possible. $160 later we thankfully found out that she was ok. It was a pretty stressful day for Michele since she had to go by herself with all three little kids, who were quite sick and crabby to boot.
Last night as I was going to the bus to start my commute home from work, I felt in my coat pocket and realized that I had lost my monthly train and bus pass (an expensive loss). I had to run back to my office to get enough money for the train and bus fares and in the meantime, missed the connecting bus. Unfortunately by the time I got to the Metra station, all trains outbound from Chicago were running up to 45 minutes late due to signal problems. I left work shortly after 5p and didn’t get home ’til after 7p.
Am I the only one who finds it incredibly irritating to hear or read about Adam Smith of Google Print, constantly refer to their digitization work as building a ‘card catalog’ of books? HELLO! Card catalog, it isn’t. Please do not refer to it that way, folks. Modern online catalog systems are nothing like the card catalog and, in my opinion, should not be referred to in that way. Not to demean the card catalog; it actually is/was a very useful tool that could/can be better used to find things in certain ways than an online catalog can. (E.g. I think a card catalog is a much more user-friendly tool for browsing than an online catalog will ever be.) I just think that those who continue to use the term ‘card catalog’ to describe an entirely different technology are displaying an irritating ignorance of the state of library technology these days. Most people have no clue as to how technologically advanced most libraries are these days. The use of the term ‘card catalog’ by people outside of our profession tends, in my mind, to reinforce the incorrect stereotype of libraries as backward and only concerned with print materials. This is just as negative in its own way as the eternal stereotype of librarians as spinsters with their hair in a bun, shushing patrons.
Also let it be known that I am not at all anti-Google Print. I heartily welcome this development and do not share the suspicious and/or distrustful attitudes of some librarian colleagues toward Google in relation to their work in this area. It will be quite interesting to see how their interpretation of fair use in copyright will play out. I think their pursuit of this digitization effort, including copyrighted works, will play a central role in redefining copyright law.
Keegan and I are at home by ourselves this weekend because Michele and the younger kids went with her family to her uncle’s funeral. Uncle Donny died last week from an unknown form of cancer. I wish we could have gone to the funeral but Keegan had a test at school yesterday morning and I couldn’t take another day off of work on Friday to be able to go. Yesterday was a guys day out for the two of us. We had a lot of fun. Yesterday afternoon we drove downtown to the big Apple store on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I weakened my resolve and allowed Keegan to buy a Star Wars game, which he is currently deeply engrossed in playing on our iMac downstairs. After that we had supper at Heaven on Seven, a Louisiana/Cajun eatery that I like. Keegan was dubious about going (he’s not really fond of trying new foods) but he ended up liking it a lot. After that we bought tickets to see Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It wasn’t showing until about an hour later so we killed time by walking down to the Borders next door to the historic Water Tower. After we saw the movie we both agreed that it was definitely worth watching and that we really had a good laugh. I like the movie a lot except that it seems to be taking the Shrek approach to kid’s movies by slyly incorporating many adult-themed jokes here and there. I don’t remember previous movies doing that so much. It was late by the time we got home but we had had a really fun time together. I am glad we were able to do this — we don’t often get time to spend together, just the two of us. It seems like lately we have been in constant conflict with each other. Spending time together helps us reconnect.
I saw a link to an interview with Tim Spalding, creator of LibraryThing, via Library Stuff. The interview itself is available at Emily Chang’s eHub. LibraryThing continues to be one of my all time favorite sites, even though I haven’t had time lately to devote to it. Upon first look, I quickly bought a lifetime membership because I liked what I saw and wanted to support and use it regularly.
In the interview, Tim mentions that his hardcore support comes from book lovers, academics, librarians — those sorts of people. That means I’m in good company as a librarian and technogeek 
One of the things that most stood out to me in the interview was the fact that although Tim is obviously very tech savvy and works with computers for a living, he does not have an academic background in computer science. Instead, he apparently studied Classics. I find this very interesting. My observation over the years is that there a lot of people in the computer world who have gone through computer science curricula or who have extensive, formal training in computer stuff. Then there is a huge group of others who tend to have a humanities background that does not include much, if any, formal computer science education. This latter group has largely learned the techie stuff on its own. Some of the brightest and best people I’ve known in terms of their computer knowledge have no formal compute education. I happen to fall into this category, too (not of the best and brightest, just the fact that I have no educational background in computer science, yet I work with designing software for libraries). My background is in history and German, with a graduate degree in library and information science. The latter degree had certain technological requirements and I had one programming class as part of completing the degree, however, the emphasis back when I was in library school was most certainly on libraries, still, not so much on the information science aspect like it is today. And frankly that was the way I wanted it (and still do).
So…if you’re interested in working with computers, should you pursue the formal computer science type of education, or should you just learn it on your own or by experience? I don’t know which is better; I just find it interesting (and beneficial) that there is a diversity of backgrounds in the techie world.
I haven’t posted anything in several days. Those (few) people who may be checking this blog regularly may wonder what’s up. Unfortunately I’m having massive headaches with some frequency and they are impairing me in a lot of ways, including work and blogging. I hope to have some help soon to figure out what’s wrong by going to see a doctor. I just bet this is somehow part of the aftermath (still) of having meningitis a while back.