As Sontag observed in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), “Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store…” (p.119) I (who have no trouble being serious regardless of my location or situation) would replace “being serious” with “thinking” (something I have a great difficulty doing.) This is the traditional value of both public and academic libraries–places/spaces to think. My concern (not complaint) is from the perspective of a naturalist (humanist), that is, someone who is first concerned with what is here and now–the particulars ala Aristotle.

However, I am intrigued by the increasingly abstracted (distracted?) ways people around me are living. The more fluid sense of place/space and of time (I think TVO [did I spell that right?] became imaginable let alone doable only thanks to the internet), as well as a more fluid sense of ownership (thank you napster), social interactions (facebook, etc.), and even reality (SIMS, second life–although D&D was there first, it always had a fringe attraction as far as I know) make me feel sometimes that I have been raptured to planet Plato.

Libraries do not seem to be thinking about technology in terms of information access alone, but also in terms of user expectations and services. I think that means user space. Libraries are still (accidentally–though not in the Aristotelean sense) upholding the same traditional value of a place to think. It’s just that “place” has changed…and so has “think.”

DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based On Risk Assessment) (the acronyms are only getting worse) is a self-assessment tools designed to enable an archival repository to audit its capabilities and effectiveness in preserving trustworthy digital records. (<digitalpreservationeurope.eu/announcements/drambora/> accessed November 31, 2008.)

Another tool developed by the archival profession mentioned in the same closing plenary was the InterPARES modeling tool that describes the entire process, in all of its complexities, of preserving authentic digital records. This model enables a repository or a systems design team or a preservation manager to focus on the activities that have to occur to successfully preserve these records. (<interpares.org> accessed November 31, 2008.)

I think that part of what has made me more of what you call a skeptic of technology is the overwhelming complexity of this process of preserving digital records. It is an activity entirely out of scope for librarians, but is burying the even less valued profession of archivists. I have no intention of becoming a whiny archivist, but being hit with such a behind the scene view right from the beginning tends to have an effect on one’s perspective.

I happen to think that money is going to catch up with the issues of technology in libraries and archives, and solve these problems one way or the other. Once the cost of technology in these professions is clarified to institutional administrations, lawmakers, and the public, either they will decide our professions are not worth it–and we will be out of jobs; or they will decide we are worth it–and those of us who are prepared with the appropriate job skills (thanks in part to your class and related tech classes in MLIS programs) will be more or less set. I am hopeful that the latter will occur, and will do so during the next decade or so. Our society is still in the initial blush of a consumer oriented tech/economy, once businesses realize that their digital business information is endangered and valuable, and once lawmakers realize how ephemeral their digital records and information are, those who are aware of both the technological issues and the information/research and authentication/evidence issues will become more valued–I hope.

And a bit more from there…”Despite appearances I am not trying to condense the encyclopedia into 200 pages. I am at best trying to provide the average reader with a few tools for dealing with the heteroclite mass of undigested information hurled at him daily and monthly and set to entangle his feet in volumes of reference.”

In an earlier post, “Information v. Idea”, I contrasted these two intellectual currencies by asking how one could audit will in the idealess information world where we librarians serve alternately as priests or prophets in the wilderness…

Ezra’s ess(pr)ay on Greek v. Chinese v. Christian modus cogitandi asks of each in absolutely no particular order how or whether they interested themselves also in constructing a modus vivendi. He concludes with this, “At this point we must make a clean cut between two kinds of “ideas”. Ideas which exist and/or are discussed in a species of vacuum, which are as it were toys of the intellect, and ideas which are intended to ‘go into action’, or to guide action and serve us as rules (and/or measures) of conduct.”

In my previous post “Aether and the Net”, I claim that it is impossible to escape the moral necessity of every decision we are faced with. I categorically reject the false distinction between professional and personal ethics. The difference is only one of context. What decision I am responsible for in my capacity as librarian or archivist, I am responsible for as a person. This is the full circle–information gives us ideas about our world (the nature of things), from which we construct ideas that inform our moral decisions–including decisions on how we support (or don’t) internet access use in the library. This was the subject of my previous post “Ethics and Technology.”

“The present writer like a dog turns three times round in making his bed? Very well, he turns three times round.”

E. Pound. “The New Learning: Part One.” In Guide to Kulchur, 23-34. New York: New Directions Books, 1970.

As if metadata (the name) itself were not nonsense enough. I am happy to be taking LIS 488 with someone who had an education in language and literature. Not enough people who create technology vocabulary have any knowledge (or respect) for language. Meta is a Greek preposition that means with, after, among, and about (spatially not logically). Data is a Latin word which means “a given.” No true word smith mixes prepositions (which often serve as prefixes) from one language with a root word from another. The word is nonsense. Also the literal meaning makes far more sense in English that the popular definition. Metadata is that which accompanies, but is not part of the, information.

I have been around enough anal retentive Classicists to know better than to fuss about this too much. Here is what I do think is important though. First, Language is the most important invention to date of the human species. Second, natural language (Music first and then the spoken languages that have evolved naturally) is unsurpassed as a mirror of a people. Third, the greatest gift of computer technology is its role as an aid to conversation, both academic and personal.

Fourth is what this blog is about (logically and spatially): Metadata. Yes, I am skipping programming language, which, like mathematics, shares some characteristics with language, but not its goal. The goal of programming and mathematics is to describe, not to communicate. SGML, HTML, XML, etc. and the proliferation of metadata standards and schemes that use the mark-up languages are an important part of the way that technology acts as a communication tool. I prefer the greek preposition/prefix para which mean along side of (as in paramedic and Paraclete). If I could have picked the name for this important computer related technology it would have been perdata-the Latin equivalent-which means around and about data, and also means thoroughly data. It also might sound disconcertingly but appropriately similar to perdition to those of us trying to learn a new language after our cement brains have hardened.

I tried to find data for this kind of question last year when I was working on a project that considered the use of climate control approaches for archival materials that avoided a central HVAC system. It is hard to get data about energy consumption (to say nothing of the environmental, economic, and social impact of the manufacturing of computers and other telecommunication devices). Suffice it to say, computers and the internet, I think, are responsible for a much smaller–though still substantial–negative impact on the environment that the gains for the environment that the increase of the ease of information and communication and political and social action that has been a product of the internet and computers.

If a hurricane can be caused by the stroke of a butterfly’s wing, we will (those of us with consciences) simply melt under the impossibility of avoiding causing suffering and injustice somewhere in the world in today’s crowded global economy. As I discussed in more depth in my essay responses, the internet has from the beginning been a tool for communication. This is often displaced in the preferred emphasis of library school with a focus on information. If it isn’t clear already, it will become increasingly more so that we live in a world where every decision we make is a moral one, communication thus becomes education, and the internet is the perfect tool to help us deal with the world that it helped create.

By using the Turn the Pages software, the library has made it possible for scholars to study the writings/drawings even more closely: they can turn the book to view it from different perspectives, “move” in on the page or out from the page, and “turn the pages” as if they were handling the book itself. Each page has zoom, grab and drag, and rotate functions. These capabilities add informational value to the viewing of these items. It still does not help real bibliographic scholarship, where actual handling, even closer scrutiny, and smelling are required to be able to study the paper, binding, type casting, printing, or the nuanced details in the sketches. It also does not allow for changing the light direction for a close inspection of the paper or watermark.

I have used other software programs that try to simulate handling of a book, but this is my favorite so far. I wish that I could add the plug-in that allows audio, so that I could listen to the musical excerpts that are part of the Mozart music diary.

Like Google Earth, this is a technology that is really fun, and really informative. Another software application that is serving a similar function is the Digital Sample Book at the Image Permanence Institute website http://www.digitalsamplebook.com/home.htm. This software allows you to view sample images of photographs, compare different samples, change the magnification of the zoom, and change the angle of light of the samples. This is a wonderful tool for photograph archivists or other scholars of the history of photographic printing methods.

The archival and records management professions are panting with the effort of trying to address the complexity and short life expectancies of digital records, including e-mail. These other, more fleeting platforms are going to be impossible to catch up with.

To my (non records manager) mind, this kind of business communication sound more and more like the oral/verbal world of the barter system. The difficulty of recording every business interaction combined with the speed of communication will make it increasingly difficult to hold individuals or companies responsible for their actions or inactions. This could lead, I suppose, to a revival of the pitchfork and torch approach to agreement enforcement.

On a related tangent, I am curious about the overlap of communication and information in the use of these technologies. After all, the internet was created to communicate information, so it makes sense that both distinct fields of activity should develop with distinct but related roles. Blogs are good examples. Are the blogs on the Huffington Post sources of news information or a communication? When a business person posts a business idea on a blog and asks for discussion in the form of replies, is this communication or information about a business activity? Are all communications reducible to information transferred to another’s mind, or is information something separable from the act of communicating? This may not matter in a library: providing access to internet job searching information requires both communication and information gathering capabilities; but the distinction matters to an archivist or records manager.

Also, if data is going to be collected about users’ computer searching habits (which information the Patriot Act suggests might be called upon), this data would have to be collected through the network, wouldn’t it? If it is actually stored in a server (and then deleted from said server by contientious librarians), it gets there through the network, right? Or wrong?

In class could we touch on privacy concerns specific to library networks? For example, are the safe guards for a patron’s privacy in place at the individual desktop level, or at the network level, or at the server/master database level? (I am not sure if my conception of the server as the “master database” is correct, but where is all of the library’s functional information stored if not on the server?

I am finding that many of my concerns are rooted in my confusions regarding internet privacy and all the bad stuff like viruses, spam, spying, fishing, etc., which I don’t know how to spell let alone prepare for rationally. I am looking forward to the privacy and protection part of the course. In the meantime, if networks have anything to do with privacy, could you let me know either in class or in your reply.

P.S. I keep forgetting to talk to you about the possibility of missing the class of November 15 due to the NEA (New England Archivists) conference held this year at Simmons. I believe my morning class will be canceled (it’s an archive class), and several of us are planning to attend. Do you think this will be a problem? If so, class comes first.

I’ve never had a real job, not one that was a permanent, support-(or do my fair share of supporting)-a-family, kind of job. This has been on my mind now for about five years (as long as I have been a father). Before I applied to library school, I visited the Brownell Memorial Library in Essex Junction, VT. This is a smallish library with a newish addition, directed by an exuberant woman who loves to experiment with her library (and who happens to be my daughter’s godmother). I signed into a log book for one-hour on a computer, and looked on-line for jobs, wrote a resume and cover letter and saved them to a disk, and could have applied on-line and attached the resume and cover letter if I had found one that would have sufficed. It was a wonderfully reassuring experience. I did not have a printer or internet access at home, and, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had a very old Mac laptop with a very old version of Word, neither of which were compatible with on-line application processes.

Up here on the soon-to-be frozen tundra, there is a dearth of broadband internet, and many households do not have a computer. [Quick slightly skeptical comment: This is a central reason why I do not equate the internet with democracy.] There is also, in many communities, a dearth of coordinated social services, especially employment services. I am lucky in that I have UVM (as an alumn) and VSAC as two great employment services that I can turn to in this area, however, once you leave Chittenden county help is far harder to come by.

It seems to me that this role, that of social services coordinator, is one that the public library could fill. I do not mean that they should provide services, but should, as a standard reference service, be able to connect their patrons with the nearest and best services to meet their needs. Employment searching aids like the internet, word processing, free printing of resumes, print copies of career service guides, and referrals to appropriate town services are just the kinds of services that librarians and libraries could be providing, and will be if their focus is on community support.

The basic computer technologies needed for one of these services, employment and career services, would be: high-speed internet, a first page link to community services that could gather information and resources with some description, a word processing program, a free printing service for resumes and cover letters, and some basic staff training to help patrons use these resources.

Long live technology in the library!

My next step was ridiculous in some ways: I “googled” internet public library. Guess what I found? The Internet Public Library, a project started by your alma mater’s school of information science and hosted by Drexel’s school of information. It is a website that collects and links to other websites that contain information (and further links) on a plethora of academic, civic, and popular topics. There are also IPL webpages specific to children and young adults. 

Like a library, the intenet resource collections are arranged by topics that expand into specialized foci. The “Ready Reference” section includes resources like almanacs, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference tools one would expect to show up in a reference section. This section also includes specific on-line reference resources like the Bloomsbury Magazine Research Center and the Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Utopia website.

IPL also has a section they call Special Collections, which include popular and educational collections on elections, literary biography, U.S. Presidents, U.S. States information, etc.

The exhibits are links to online exhibits, many from the U. of Michigan libraries. Current topics include anarchism, quilting, and trains.

The “Reading Room” offers links to links of full-text, free, online, books, magazines, and newspapers. (I cliked four times, and found out that McCain plans to debate after all.)

These resources certainly look great from the (soon to be non-existent) reference desk of a public library, but what would this resource mean to a patron? Is the sight good enough to make it a top link on a library’s homepage? I am not sure. I looked at the Classics list of resources, and they ranged from uselessly popular (and heavily advertized) to the clunky and huge Perseus website. There are certainly some good resources there, but who wants to read the Aeneid in Latin on a public access computer in a public library? They had no specific resource devoted to Greek drama, by far the most important aspect of Greek or Roman culture (not that I am biased). 

I am glad I found the resource, and applaud the UM I-schoolers for the project. If a small public library had a multipurpose help desk that was often peopled by non-profession reference persons, the IPL could be a wonderful go-to resource, one that a patron might take with her/him on future internet researches.