Fritz Schwartz Serials Education Scholarship
Alena Jewel Rucker, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Information Science

Marcia Tuttle International Grant
Stephanie Schmitt, Zayed University, Dubai, UAE

NASIG Conference Student Grant
···Eugenia Beh, University of Texas at Austin, School of Information
···Barbara Birenbaum, UCLA, Department of Library and Information Studies
···Kathryn Machin, Queens College, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
···Jason Ronallo, Indiana University, School of Library and Information Science
···Pegeen Seger, University of Oklahoma, School of Library and Information Studies
···Nancy B. Thomas, University of Tennessee, School of Information Sciences

NASIG Conference Mexican Student Grant
···Armando Avila-González, Escuela Nacional Biblioteconomía y Archivoeconomía, Mexico City, DF, Mexico

Horizon Award
···Betsy Appleton, George Washington University

Serials Specialist Award
···Marie Peterson, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Warm congratulations to all. To find out more about each of these awards, go to the NASIG website and look here.

It is really important to have a good local library, especially for our children. When we lived in Indiana, the local public library in our small town was a joke. We went there once during the three years we lived there. That was it.

Yesterday we decided to go farther afield to a couple of other public libraries where we knew we could get borrowing privileges. Brinley and Cohen loved seeing their children departments and had a lot of fun playing in an environment that was inviting, full of lots of interesting and fun things to do, and set up for people just their size. The difference between these libraries and our hometown library was striking. One of the libraries we went to also has a very large collection of homeschooling materials set up in its own special room. Very nice. We came home from there with armloads of books. Brinley asked me, “How much do these books cost?” She was quite excited when I told her they are free for us to borrow, and she immediately ran around the children’s area picking out all sorts of books to check out.

One other point that became clear to me yesterday as we visited these other public libraries is how much I dislike — even resent — the vagaries of each library’s circulation policies. One library we went to won’t let reciprocal borrowers check out several kinds of materials, for instance, whereas another one had no such restrictions. Another example is the difference in checkout times for certain materials in various libraries. Our local library only allows movies to be checked out for two days, whereas the other two libraries offered much longer checkout periods. Then there is the oddness of each library’s automation system, all of which are different. Our local library doesn’t even have an automated system. While I have a bit of nostalgia for the card catalog, it is not at all useful to me when I am at home and wanting to check on the library’s collection online. One library may require their specific barcode for patron records, another library may not allow the other library’s barcode to be used, and so forth. Yes, I know, libraries have a great history of cooperation and so forth but frankly it doesn’t go far enough anymore.

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I wasn’t there for the presentation. I wish I had been. What I write here is simply the result of reading various posts about “the incident.” For those who don’t know to what I refer, “the incident” involved a presentation at this year’s NASIG conference that apparently had some negative (and perhaps unfair) comparisons to make between columns in print library literature and information derived from blogs.

Second, my general point here is, calm down folks and try to get some perspective! T. Scott Plutchak writes about this in his blog and combines this perspective with discussion of another controversial blog post by Michael Gorman. T. Scott’s tone is welcome. He also makes the following point:

“We are really still at the very beginnings of figuring out the best ways to engage in discourse using all of these new tools.”

I think this is true, but one could imply from that statement that what we are experiencing in the blogging world is radically different than what we have long experienced in other forms of discourse. (Also, T. Scott seems to question — and I think rightly so — the prevalence of written responses to Gorman’s post that attack him personally. This isn’t new; a few years ago the same thing happened in response to another Gorman statement, and it also happened in a discussion about Indiana’s library school dean.) I don’t think that the struggle to figure out “the best ways to engage in discourse” is something new to blogging. One only has to attend a few scholarly conferences to put the blogging discourse into perspective. It is not uncommon to see faculty presenting papers with opposing viewpoints devolve into very thinly veiled personal attacks as the papers are discussed. I saw a few such scholarly conference exchanges firsthand when at The University of Chicago. It was entertaining at times, but also disconcerting.

One thing that is a little different, though, is the speed and the ease with which such discourse can be articulated, disseminated, interpreted, and reacted to in the world of blogs. And then reworded, or re-articulated, or re-interpreted, or re-reacted to (bad English, I know), again and again until the discourse peters out.

Here is a list of the various blog postings I’ve read about “the incident” just for the record. And be sure to also look at comments for all of them:

Eat-Your-Vegetables librarianship alive and well (metaProjects)

Out of Context or Being a Hypocrite (A Wandering Eyre)

Authority, Formality, Reality, Hypocrisy (Walt at Random)

since when did this become a column? (Eclectic Librarian)

Still in the incunabula stage (T. Scott)

If I’ve missed any others, please add a comment to this post letting me know.

I am a pretty tech-savvy person.  I have probably wasted more time and money on techie things than is healthy for me (although, I would argue, the time and money weren’t all wasted).  I have had high speed Internet connectivity at home since 2001 and used dial up connectivity for at least ten years before that.  I have used a cell phone since the early 90s.  My work has centered on networked connectivity for at least that long, and I use a computer on average about eight hours a day and probably longer, not just at work but at home as well.  I haven’t had a print newspaper subscription since the early 90s, relying instead on the Internet to deliver the news and information I needed.

In spite of my techie orientation and experience, I, too, experience this technology gap at times.  For instance, when I first heard about Twitter from Steven Cohen several weeks ago, I was intrigued and signed up for the service just to dabble with it and understand what it can do.  But it really didn’t “click” with me much; I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was with it and why so many people were so enthusiastic about it.  That is, until I bought a Blackberry along with its QWERTY keyboard and constant wireless connectivity.  I used my Blackberry to post to Twitter quite a bit to report to friends and family about the trip to Mayo Clinic with my wife.  Twitter didn’t make much sense to me until I had the right equipment, something that I had at hand at all times, which I could pull out and quickly type in a brief statement here and there.  This may seem a minor example of a technological gap, and it is.  But my point is that even among the technorati, so much of what is gushed over and around which enthusiastic user communities are founded, is based on access to equipment (hardware, but software as well) that relatively few people, even today, can afford, or can use, e.g. because of lack of service, low bandwidth, or whatever.  The Pew report mentioned above highlights this reality.

I’m lucky.  I can usually afford technology.  I live in a high population area with a ton of service options that provide high performance and relatively low cost.  When we lived in rural east central Indiana for three years, however, it was a far different story.  I couldn’t get good cell reception so I stopped using a cell phone, for instance.  And although we had high speed cable Internet at home, it was pricey.  I mentioned that I now have a Blackberry.  I wouldn’t be able to afford that at all if it weren’t for the fact that I work for a large company and as a side benefit am able to receive significant discounts on cell phones and services.  Without those discounts, I would not have a Blackberry at all.

Another point about the “haves” vs. “have nots” when it comes to technology, is that not everything shiny and new is highly adoptable.  Take RSS vs. email as an example.  This blog was set up to mainly communicate with family and friends, and I estimate that only a very small percentage of that target audience a.) knows what on earth RSS is, and b.) cares to make use of it in any way.  Instead, anecdotal evidence has shown me that it is far more likely that family and friends will simply go to this website to check to see if I have written anything new.  A large portion of my target audience doesn’t even remember to do that.  By way of contrast, when I communicate with my target audience via email, it’s an entirely different story.  I am able to regularly communicate with family and friends via email, and that is much more accessible and usable to them, than RSS will likely ever be.  Another example of a technology gap is with the use of instant messaging services.  I love using IM and now I am logged on to at least four different services almost every day.  In spite of that, only a very tiny fraction of family and friends regularly uses IM, preferring email instead.  I’d love to use IM more regularly to keep in more constant communication with them, but hardly any of them uses it.

I’m certain that I haven’t made any revelatory points here but this issue is something I have been mulling over for a while.  Call it the frustration of a technogeek when the people with whom he most wants to communicate don’t use the tools he loves to use for that purpose   Let’s not even talk about stuff like MySpace or even Second Life, which are really foreign planets.

This is discouraging for a number of reasons and we are uncertain about how we’re going to cope. The main thing about this that’s discouraging is that last time, Michele’s symptoms, which lasted for several months, gradually disappeared. We hoped they had disappeared for good. Obviously, that’s not the case. It’s also discouraging because as yet we have no more information about what is causing her symptoms than we had previously. Her symptoms closely match common symptoms for Multiple Sclerosis, but it doesn’t mean that’s what she has. She is basically in a period of re-taking all the same kinds of tests she had before (e.g., EEGs, MRIs, blood tests, urine tests, etc.). She has a further appointment with her neurologist this week and we hope to have something more definite to go on in terms of diagnosis after that. We feel good about her doctor and his approach to her condition.

And then there is the fact that yesterday we discovered red spots all over Brinley’s body. Yep, she has chicken pox. So far she hasn’t been acting all that sick, which is good. Yesterday we also learned that my father-in-law has chicken pox, too, at 60 years of age!

I was pretty surprised to read that a 17 year old from Gaston, Indiana, is the chief suspect in recent sniper shootings on I-69 and I-65. Gaston is only a few miles south of where we used to live and we drove through it at least 2-3 times a week. Previous to this Gaston had been famous (or rather infamous) in our household as the little town with the worst streets (lots of potholes) within a 20 mile radius.

The house we are buying is new; I think it was completed late last year. We have never owned a truly new house before. It is larger than our house in Indiana and it is located in a very nice area that has a small town feel with many of the amenities of a big city nearby.

Finally, now, we know where we will be living, where Keegan will go to school in the fall, how I will be commuting to my job, etc. The uncertainty of the past several weeks has been very difficult to handle. Having some certainty and definition to our lives feels great!

Michele had a really bad weekend with her shaking/trembling symptoms but seems a bit better today.

I heard from the buyer of our house in Indiana that almost everything has come together for the closing, so maybe that can be taken care of soon.

It was a huge disappointment to see Andre Agassi defeated by Roger Federer in the championship match of the U.S. Open. That kind of characterized the weekend, which was full of disappointment and lack of motivation to do anything.

Complicating the week was two trips back to our house in Indiana, which I needed to make in order to move most of the rest of our things out of the garage. I got home from the second trip early this a.m. and it was good to get back safely. I don’t care if I never have to make that trip again. We have no idea where we will find space for everything yet in our new house (the one car garage is overflowing).

It was good to see so many familiar faces at my work that I had known when I worked there before, and to be so warmly greeted upon my return. The place has definitely “grown up” and become more corporate than it was before, and in general, I think that is a very good thing.