Mobile:Library:Toy:CIL2010

I... am a lazy, lazy blogger.

Back in early April, I attended* the Computers in Libraries conference in Crystal City, took extensive notes, and then sat on them for the last few weeks. (Bad blogger, no cookie.) So, now that we've all had sufficient time to process, here's a quick run through of my thoughts from those two days.

CIL2010 was my first conference of any kind, and I admit that I was a bit starry eyed and excited about the whole business. I did not, however, feel out of the loop during the sessions, or as if I didn't fit in with the crowd (although the librarians who have been to a lot of these are a bit clique-ish). There were more sessions than I could manage to attend all at once (where's a time-turner when I need it?), but I got to one in every time block while I was there. In all honesty, the subject matter was a bit disappointing. I was hoping for more cutting edge stuff I'd never heard about, and instead I got... "cool blue alien hot stuff" and way too much hype about smartphones and ipads. In some ways, the conference solidified my desire to be some sort of special or academic librarian, not a public librarian. I'll try to reserve judgment on a lot of the conference on the grounds that it was my first and I don't know the presenters or the insider drama very well.

On to my notes!

The first session I went to was a presentation of a fancy, interactive, online, visual collection exploration application that was entirely fake. The Smithsonian Commons is this big idea for a way to get visitors into the collections from outside the physical museum, allowing them to develop personal collections and so on. But it's only a prototype! It's a huge project, oodles of effort and money spent on something that doesn't exist. Argh. Plus I disagree with the concept of an online version of the collection in the first place, but I'm just kind of elitist about museums and keeping things proper.

Which brings me to a question I had a lot: do people really want all this change, all this web 2.0, ebooks, mobile devices... or do they want Classic Library? It's certainly true that librarians are a bunch of geeks, and think that all this 2.0 stuff could be useful/cool/blue, but are they also forcing it down people's throats? I heard a lot about how books are dead. Well guys, personally, I can't afford a smartphone, or an ipad, I dislike reading on a screen, and I love collecting hard copies on my shelves. I'm not the only one (even if I can't find a supporting study right this second).

The counter argument is that librarians are "complacent," and are saying "we're great, why change?"

I also made long lists of things to research and understand better in the future: Drupal and OCLC, par example. I signed up for Google Analytics right away, and now I can collect ridiculous amounts of data on traffic to this very website. I'm a sucker for pretty charts and information visualizations, especially if it live-updates! Watson Library created a spiffy "dashboard" that does this kind of thing. Another neat tool I heard mentioned was the Google Public Data Explorer. (Further exploration and maybe a post on the Google tools later).

I just realised that this post will be epically long and dull if I don't cut it into bits. Consider this Part I.

*It should be noted that a very kind co-worker/mentor loaned me his conference pass for two of the three days, for which I am very grateful.

Classic library image from Trinity College Library, Dublin, by Candida Hofer.

Modern library image from Francis Martin Library, a branch of the NYPL. Design by 1100 Architect.

ps. Some of the random links in this are well-worth clicking...

EDIT/PPS: at some point the formatting got all screwy on some of my archived posts. Sorry about that, maybe I'll fix it all in the future... [9.7.2012]

Quizzes! Games! Real Science!

It seems that the BBC (who I still find more trustworthy and comprehensive than the average US news service just because they're foreign) has a website (called Lab UK) dedicated to conducting studies on the internet through quizzes and such. Their big tagline varies along the lines of "Real Science!!" which I find quite amusing. You do what you have to in order to get your readers interested, I guess, but the biologist in me flinches when they say "Real Science!!" They have an information tab for [Real] scientists, which is more illuminating than the FAQ and info pages. Anyway, at the very least it's a more productive way to waste time playing online than the usual quizzes and games, and you still get a cute result at the end. Requires a BBC id/pword, quick registration, ostensibly to protect your answers and results. It's really fairly shrewd of whoever conceptualized Lab UK...

I did the "Web Behaviour Test:"

I am a Web Elk! (gr)

Slow-moving - Web Elks like you take their time finding exactly the right morsels of information – just like the real-world elk who carefully browses for shoots and leaves to eat.

Sociable - Real-world elks are social and stay in herds to protect themselves from predators. When you browse the web you are also a social creature, often using social networks, or other sites whose content is created by its users, as sources of information.

Specialised - Web Elks perform best when they focus on one thing at a time, rather than trying to multitask. Just as the real-world Elk is perfectly specialised for its environment, you have learned that while the web makes it possible to multitask, it’s not always the best approach.

Googlevoice, or, Lost in Transcription

So, in the interest of exploring the entire range of somewhat silly google products that may or may not improve my life, I signed up for googlevoice, and thereby googlevoicemail. I feel like I haven't explored all of the services involved (at least I think I haven't), but voice is definitely useful for when I'm at work without mys cellphone and need to make a long distance call. I just plug in the number I want to call online, and it rings my desk phone (which I had to set up, a simple procedure).

The voicemail service, however, is basically a good thought that doesn't entirely float my boat. I would love to have transcriptions of my voicemails, but the transcription algorithm or whatever just doesn't work that great. At least not for message-leavers without perfect diction (or with a sense of humor). Here is the transcript of a voicemail from Dan, telling me that he was coming home, that it's very nice out, trying to figure out where I was, and subsequently saying heck with it, he was coming home anyway. More or less:

Hey Pat, F, F, F, F. A. So, okay now. I've heard your message and I approved just trying to figure out where you are. It's a beautiful day. If you were over at the house thinking I was going to drop by if you could be a beautiful day, but I would go home. Viruses, Jeff, I was just like to away if you could do the big day, but it's I was. Barry.

The "FFFFA" was actually him laughing. Thank heavens I can still playback an audio file, too.

...without man, it sank back into the realm of the unimagined and unconceived and hence into meaninglessness...

"...if, in his house in the mountains, he was being observed less and less, so rarely that, when he pointed his mirror telescope at people who he presumed were observing him from the cliff, they turned out to be observing not him but something else through their field glasses, chamois or mountain climbers or whatnot, this state of not being observed would begin to torment him after a while, much more than the knowledge of being observed had bothered him earlier, so that he would virtually yearn for those rocks to be thrown at his house, because not being watched would make him feel not worth noticing, not being worth noticing would make him feel disrespected, being disrespected would make him feel insignificant, being insignificant would make him feel meaningless, and, he imagined, the end result might be a hopeless depression, in fact he might even give up his unsuccessful academic career as meaningless, and would have to conclude that other people suffered as much from not being observed as he did, that they, too, felt meaningless unless they were being observed, and that this was the reason why they all observed and took snapshots and movies of each other, for fear of experiencing the meaninglessness of their existence in the face of a dispersing universe with billions of Milky Ways like our own, settled with countless of life-bearing but hopelessly remote and therefore isolated planets like out own, a cosmos filled with incessant pulsations of exploding and collapsing suns, leaving no one, except man himself, to pay any attention to man and thereby lend him meaning..."

-from The Assignment, or, On The Observing of the Observer of the Observers, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Agee translation)

Dürrenmatt surprised me, when I opened the book and the chapter long sentences left me breathlessly trying to keep up with a hyperactive train of thought that continued until it found its destination: the sub-text. (I would try to pull off un-punctuation here, but I just haven't got it in me right now. A few long sentences will have to suffice.) I think that kind of free-form, rolling structure left the book much more open to exploring the ideas behind the text because the characters were not immersed in keeping track of "he said, she said" and all sorts of awkward exposition. The point of the book is definitely not the plot. I've been considering the difference between "literature" and popular novels lately, and it seems like "literature" is more often about the ideas behind the story, while popular works are more plot-centric. These of course follow Freytag's dramatic arc of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution (also see Aristotle's Poetics for a good lesson in why your writing isn't up to snuff). The Assignment does follow the same arc, but manages to sound like voices in your head rather than words on a page, thus, at least for me, expressing itself without needing analysis.

And if any of my writing about books seems a bit odd, it's because I've been voraciously reading Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. By book four I've grown to accept the fact that popping in and out of chalk pavement pictures books and working alongside fictional characters like Emperor Zhark and Hamlet is just as normal as time travel. Highly recommended, although I haven't finished books four and five just yet.

Seitan Recipe

I posted this elsewhere a while ago, but when it was difficult to find again today, I thought heck, I'll repost it here. Plus I'm making it right now, first time in the new kitchen. Eventually (soon, I hope, cause I'm hungry) it will become salad rolls.

This entire recipe is easy to change around, but here’s a starting point:
-4 cups UNBLEACHED (or whole wheat) flour (use more on your second or third try if you want, but probably not more than 6 cups)
-enough water to make your pile of flour (which didn’t need to be accurately measured at all) into a solid ball of flour dough. The ball is very important, so make sure it’s all stuck together and not too wet or dry at this stage.
-Once you’ve got a ball, fill a mixing bowl with water and begin to gently knead the ball under it, keeping it together as best you can. It does get a little too soggy sometimes and tries to come apart, but if you just keep going patiently and keep the bits together you’ll be fine. The water should be changed fairly frequently, once it becomes opaquely white. The white is the starch coming off of the gluten, which is what we want. Gluten=protein=yay.
-So you knead for about 45 min until your ball becomes a bit more solid and rubbery. The water should be a bit less opaque when you refill it now. Ideally you might want it to be clear, or quite close to that. Definitely don’t stop until it’s close or you’ll get sponge instead of seitan. I like to put a cutting board in the bottom of the sink and knead under a light flow of water for a while, sometimes picking up the ball and rubbing it or spreading it under the water to get those pesky lumps and starch out.
-Now that you have a squeaky lump of what looks like beige brains...
-Get a large frying pan with a lid, about 2” deep. Make up your simmering sauce to cook the seitan in. I think it can also be baked and other things, but I like doing this for some all-purpose seitan. Using a 2 cup measure, mix about 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/8 cup olive oil, 3 tbl (ish, really, I just dump some on) sage, some thyme, maybe a couple drops garlic oil, salt, pepper... sautee some onions first and use those, too. Again, this is pretty arbitrary and variable, so maybe start with something simple (soysauce/oliveoil/sage) and then experiment later. Pour this into the pan and fill up with some water, about an inch deep. Bring to boil.
-Cut your lump of “brains” into half inch strips. Squeeze each of these carefully over the sink to get out the last bits of water, and lay them into the hot simmering sauce (turn down to simmer now). Put on the lid and let them sit for about 10 minutes.
-At this point the seitan lumps should have puffed up and look like poofy beige blobs. They can be coloured with this sauce, too, so more soy sauce makes darker seitan, etc. After 20 mins turn the blobs over, simmer another 20. Remove from heat and lay your blobs on a cutting board to cool. The sauce can be saved for another (slightly weaker) batch later.
-The seitan can be cut up again from here and used in stir fry, spring rolls, on salads, in tomato sauce.. whatever you like. I think it lasts about a week, but it’s usually gone so fast I haven’t tested that.

Miso soup, of a sort

As usual, the fridge was empty, the cabinets were bare, and it was dinnertime. We tend to have some basics lurking in corners, a few carrots, some ginger, noodles... And what better to do with odds and ends than soup? With Tampopo in mind, I set about to make something tasty, simple and filling.

It began, as most soups do, with a pot of water. I used my dutch oven for the heck of it, about half full of water (6 cups). Into this I chopped one onion, about an inch of ginger (would have used more if I had it, ~2") and four cloves of garlic. After letting it boil for at least half an hour, I strained out the bits, and put the broth back on the stove with the heat off.

Meanwhile, in a blender I had been working on the miso. First I squeezed a lemon, retaining the skins, and put the juice along with a large (1/2 cup+) spoonful of red miso paste into the blender. I used the lemon skins to grate some zest and set it aside. I also chopped some dried kelp and set this aside, as well. Then I added the strained out onions, garlic and ginger bits to the blender as well as a splash of vermouth (because it made more sense than soy sauce (overwhelming) or water (thinning), and because I didn't have sake, which would have been more appropriate). [Blend] You could also use some of the broth, but make sure you have enough left in the pot for cooking the veggies in the next step. The broth is not strong on its own, but there should be about 6 cups left by the end step. I added water twice during the cooking process.

While everything was blending and cooking I also prepped some rice noodles (vermicelli style) and chopped a cube of tofu. Note that as a component in this soup the tofu pretty much tastes like plain tofu. I like it this way, and it's traditional in miso soup. The noodles soaked in a bowl of warm water for ~10 minutes. They don't need to be completely soft, as they will finish cooking when added to the soup.

At some point I managed to get two chopped carrots and about a 1/4 head of cabbage into the broth on the stove and turned it back on for a few minutes, maybe 5. The cabbage got a little overdone in my case, and could be replaced with a different green soup veggie, possibly bok choy or some such.

Check list:
-Soup base: broth + carrots + cabbage
-tofu squares
-rice noodles
-blended miso mixture
-chopped kelp
-lemon zest

To assemble: I used a couple of conical bowls, which meant that things stayed in the order I added them in instead of spreading out across the bottom of a wider bowl. First about a cup of tofu cubes went in (mine were largish), then a handful of noodles, then several ladles of soup to fill to the top with hot broth (ideally there should be a good pile of veg, but not so much that they emerge more than 0.5 cm from the broth . On top of this I spooned a generous helping of the miso mixture (er, 1/4 - 1/2 cup?), then a sprinkling of kelp and lemon zest and voila! a rather pretty bowl of soup.

Of course, the whole shebang should be at least partially stirred up before eating, or you'll get all your miso in one bite. It should be mixed into the soup on the table to create a new broth. Miso cannot be cooked or it will die a horrible horrible death.

~ ~ ~

In retrospect, and if I had my choice of ingredients, I wouldn't change much. I might ditch the onion in the beginning for some shredded spring onion on top, and find something more pleasant than cabbage. There was also a vote for soba noodles instead of the rice noodles I used. The lemon really makes this dish, so don't you dare go using bottle lemon juice. Tsk.

This makes me sad::

I wonder sometimes if writers read other stories in their own papers. The New York Times earlier this week published articles about veganism and the healthfullness of organic, local farming, promptly followed by an article on Saudi Arabia buying up Ethiopia for arable land. Half the time one writer elucidates a problem and suggests a solution and then another writer publishes something on a similar topic that ignores the first writer's exposé completely.

*sigh* It's just really been getting on my nerves. I may have mentioned before, but it was listening to NPR for an extended period of time that made me really acknowledge how much I want to disseminate information amongst the masses. Also known as being a librarian/information tech etc. It was the hour or two of listening to people reporting on misinformation and rumor and not covering all the points that could have been very relevant that put me over the edge. Point being, I make it my personal goal to educate as many other people about as many things as I can. Hey, a blog's not a bad place to start trying.

The entire point of this post, however, is to present the ironic juxtaposition of two articles on tonight's Washington Post (online) lead page. On the right we see a picture of some icebergs near New Zealand which have broken off of Antarctica and are threatening ships in the South Pacific. Right next to it is an article entitled "Skepticism on Global Warming: Percentage of U.S. that believes in global warming dips from 80 to 72."

...

Icebergs? anyone?* Part of me wants to be fair and say that perhaps science *is* a belief, maybe I worship the all-mighty laboratory gods instead of Allah, Zeus, Vishnu, whoever. But then my degree in biology comes over and kicks me and makes me repent my blasphemous words against the doctrine of Fact. Am I any better than a TV evangelist if I go around saying "Yes! Convert to my way! Science is truth!"? While pressuring others to take up your own beliefs is a questionable practice, the facts (cough) remain: science is tested, true and tangible, and I'll be damned if those ice caps aren't melting.

*To be fair, these things do happen as the result of local shifts in weather and temperature, and may not be linked to global warming. The irony stands.

I have no words

Last fall I was beginning to explore ideas for my Plan of Concentration project in the world of children's books and attended a book making workshop with Linda Lembke of Green River Bindery. At that point it was my intention to create my own wordless picture book using my own photographs to tell a semi-autobiographical story. The original concept was a little too much to execute in the time I had, so the eventual product was simplified considerably (result is the purple book with the leaves at left). Now apart from the fact that the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (BMAC) is awesome (It's one of the things that enamored me to Brattleboro in the first place, thanks to an Andy Warhol exhibit) there's the fact that I love children's books and bookbinding as an art. So, all of this led to my being at an exhibit of artwork from Kaori Hamura's book Dream Seasons, a wordless narrative illustrated with stylized paintings on wood (if you like paintings on wood, also check out Audrey Kawasaki). The exhibit also included a list of other wordless children's books and related works, and I thought I'd share some of it here. The list was originally produced by BMAC, but I'm adding a few books of my own, as well.

Wordless Children's Books
David Wiesner is pretty good at purely illustrated stories, and wildly popular, too. My favourites are Tuesday, and Sector Seven, but there's also Flotsam and Free fall and a few others. He's very adept at putting the extraordinary into a context that makes it seem quite, well, ordinary, as in the cloud factory in Sector Seven, but while maintaining a sense of wonder, as in Tuesday.

Chris Van Allsburg put together a book of illustrations that are explained only by a single line of text that merely alludes to a greater, unknown story and inspires plenty of speculation among readers. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick goes under wordless books for me because so much of the value of the book comes from what the reader's mind creates to fill in the whole story behind each illustration.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is just a plain beautiful book. It's more of a graphic novel, with many, many detailed illustrations in order to get the story across, but still with plenty of room for imagination (which is what I think wordless books are really all about).

A few more, which you may look up on your own (builds character):
Home, by Jeannie Baker
Museum, by Barbara Lehman
Oops, by Arthur Geisert
The Red Book, also by Lehman
The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs
Trainstop, also by Lehman
Un-brella, by Scott Franson
Yellow Umbrella, by Jae-Soo Lui

If you're into this sort of thing, go check out the tag lists for Wordless, Stories Without Words, and Wordless Books on LibraryThing.


Do you prefer book links to LibraryThing or to Amazon? I think LT provides more information on a book, but if you want to go buy it right away you might want Amazon. However, I highly recommend hunting down books at your local bookshop, or at least clicking through a website like FlashlightWorthy, which provides awesome books lists and could use some support. If you're actually reading this, why not comment? Comments are constructive!

Wishful listing

Dear Santa,

This year for Christmas I would like to receive the following...

My computer has been acting up lately, fighting back against my overuse by occasionally turning itself off and complaining constantly, or just refusing to comply with my commands. Don't get me wrong, I love my little iBookG4, especially because it still runs OS9 applications (read: games, aka Power Pete, which technically came with OS7), but if I could relieve it of some of its burden we'd both be happier. I'm torn though. Since I also need my computer to be able to handle advanced graphics work, a desktop with a tower and wide-screen might be best, but I'd also like a more competent laptop... For now, the 15 inch solid state MacBook Pro (previous link) would fill in fine; I can always add the larger display later. And the Mac Pro Nehalem can just wait until I pick up the Epson 9900(with orange and green inks. whoa).

Meanwhile, my communications capabilities are suffering from another case of outdated technology. Three years of being in my left pocket have been hard on my Nokia. At the same time, my ipod classic did the thing ipods do and broke its headphone jack, and quite likely has a hard drive failure as well. My immediate thought was to get another ipod, but as it turns out I might as well get an iphone 3GS 32 GB and solve both problems at once. And again, the solid state drive will help a lot when it's bouncing around in pockets and bags. Next issue: bluetooth earbuds/headset and laser keyboard (although I'd prefer if it were a smaller device. If only someone would develop it further!).

If I'm going to be getting that Epson 9900, I should really also have a digital camera. I'm conceding the point of digitization in photography only because buying a few medium-large format film cameras (with lenses and different backs), learning colour processing and setting up a colour darkroom (or at least getting a film scanner and settling with the printer) all poses slightly more difficulty than spending a few grand on two pieces of equipment. A quick browse through some old Photocritic posts pointed me at the Nikon D90, but further research and recommendations are welcome.

On a less selfish note, a good way to connect with other artists/photographers in the area is to hunt down your local darkroom. The Washington School of Photography, for instance, has a camera club and workshops for community members.

...Anyway, Santa, I don't know how to prioritize my phone, computer and camera needs, but there you have it. My best to Mrs. Claus and all the elves. See you in two months!

Yours,
Elli

Self-development...

...is really what this blog business is about for me at this point. It's a good way to get my thoughts out in a somewhat public way without too much pressure, but still enough to keep me on my toes (hopefully). In lieu of spending a few hours collecting links and thoughts right now, and in the interest of posting *something* (it's been a while), here are some thoughts I've written out in other forums recently.

Someone asked me how I relate my interests to each other, specifically, Biology, Photography and Librarianshippy:

I would have to say that it's a lot about documentation and archiving visual information. I started out taking photographs (years ago) with the intention of putting them all in albums and preserving them for posterity. My intentions have shifted since then, and now I feel as if I try to document fleeting feelings I have about a place or time. This is actually extraordinarily difficult. How do you capture all the feelings, nostalgia and hopes of a sunrise without making it look like just another sunrise? I can't say as I've found the answer to the problem. My interest in biology also motivates me to examine landscapes and fauna [especially in close-up form].

And in the process of applying for a job I wrote out this, in response to some questions on the application:

The degree I received from Marlboro College is in photography and biology because I am also a photographer with a passion for knowing how things work on the molecular level. You could say I have a weakness for genetics. However, on a recent 13 hour solitary drive, I came to the conclusion that I really want to make information and knowledge available to as many people as possible. This solidified my conviction that I would like to become a librarian, which had previously been based on my love of books.
It is hard for me to pinpoint specific areas of literary interest. My personal collection is greatly varied, ranging from classic children's books to mysteries and science-fiction, with themes of food, history and, of course, books about books. It's always been very difficult to name my favorite books, but the two that spring to mind are Gastronomical Me, M.F.K. Fisher and The Big Golden Book of Elves and Fairies.

So that's kind of what I'm up to these days. Thinking a lot about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, where I'm going, and trying to make long and short-term plans make sense together. Meanwhile, my life, built here in Vermont for the last four years, and in this apartment for the last two, is being packed into boxes and shipped off to the future. How strange it will be when I get there to meet it all, and open box after box full of the past.