Info Glut

I started this post on BART on my way home from a Jeff Mangum concert and it was definitely an experience.

The concert itself was good. Honestly, having never heard Jeff Mangum/Neutral Milk Hotel before I started dating B, it wasn’t on my radar. The band is good, not necessarily my cup of tea though…

What I was more interested in was the fact that there was such hysteria over this concert. Apparently, Jeff Mangum is notoriously reclusive, so he rarely goes out and does promos/concerts/tours. To have him do a tour, especially years after the band broke up, was a big deal.

I started reading some stuff about the shows, and lots of people were discussing how emotional it was and how they or others at the show, started crying. I was shocked…I don’t think I’ve ever been this emotionally invested in one band/musician….EVER. Maybe I’m just not the right person to enjoy this music. Maybe it just never hit an emotional note for me.

Whatever it is, it was definitely some sort of nostalgic hysteria going on. The people around me, more than at any other concert I have been to, where in a state of ecstasy, singing along to songs I’ve never heard, and songs that probably they have never heard before in person, and writhing and dancing to a melody I wasn’t familiar with.

I felt like an impostor, attending because I could. If anything, it was kind of a great sociological experience – witnessing these people listen enraptured by this musician they haven’t seen live before, listening to songs from the late 90s.

Nostalgia has always been one of those things that I’ve been fascinated by, maybe I’ll work on a project related to it sometime…

Until then, I’ll look back 40 years past to see if anything inspires me.

I sometimes like to sit here and fantasize about what I’ll be doing in the future.

I’d love to teach again, and not just literacy/library/research related courses. Like actual, random, curricular courses. Much like how UCLA had the Fiat Lux program, I’d love the opportunity to propose a class and teach it.

One class I’m dying to teach is a sociology of celebrity class, doing a comparison of the lives/fame of a variety of celebrities to build a framework on celebrity. In reality, it’s just an excuse for me to finally create that Kanye West-inspired class that I’ve been thinking about lately. One of the required books would be Kanye’s Thank You and You’re Welcome – a collection of his thoughts on celebrity, fame, and culture.

Another class is inspired by a presentation I was just working on regarding statistical literacy. In this course, we discuss bias through statistics, create our own datasets, and work on creating visualizations. It will heavily rely on visualizations and infographics, and would encourage students to be as creative as they could with their work.

I guess in the near future, I should start/finish planning my lessons for my web design class, since I lost most of my lesson plans when my hard drive died…

Lately, I’ve gotten into the concept of gaming. In this case, I don’t mean playing video games (although you wouldn’t know it by my World of Warcraft account…). I mean, video games are fun and all, but I don’t find them appealing mainly because I’ve lost the social aspect of it. Despite being an MMORPG, I so rarely interact with others in the game that i’s become a moot point. I quest by myself, I level up by myself. I occasionally run dungeons with others, but so rarely and the dungeons don’t encourage much downtime for socialization.

No. Not video games…but board games. I’m kind of glad I added GAMERT as one of my round tables for ALA. I’m curious to see what other games librarians like to play. So far, I’ve played the following games:

• Lost Cities
• Ascension
• Citadels
• Hive
• Carcasonne

Of all these games, I wasn’t a fan of Citadels. Although it was playable with two people, it was too easy to figure out what cards the other player had chosen and then choose the proper response. I grew so frustrated with it, I had to stop playing!

My favorite has to be Lost Cities! Simple, easy to play, quick and has really high replay value. Right now, I’m playing Carcasonne and it’s pretty fun. Especially since I can play it on my iPad/iPhone! Fun times!

As much as this post is about gaming, it’s also about the idea of perfect information. To me, perfect information is knowing what your opponent has to play, what their strategy could be, and anything that can affect how you play and your likelihood of winning.

In (two player) Citadels, the players have nearly perfect information about their opponents. This makes it so frustrating, especially when the game isn’t collaborative. In a game that’s mainly random and luck based, there is little that having perfect information affects. For example, when I look at Lost Cities, I don’t think knowing what your opponent is trying to do will necessary affect your decision – this could be a result of the fact that interaction between players is at a minimum.

I guess, really, this is where the divergence between the need for perfect information and it’s irrelevance occurs: when the game is collaborative, or one in which interaction between players is kept to a minimum, then perfect information doesn’t change decisions or play style. However, when competition is an inherent part of a game, having perfect information plays a more important role.

I’m more a fan of collaborative games, or luck based games. I guess that means I’m a fan of perfect information? Ha! What a weird, logical leap that is…

I just started reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and so far, I’m enjoying the possibilities in it.

The book is organized into 2 levels with multiple chapters within each level. I’m currently still in Level 1, Chapter 5. Despite the setting of a near-future Earth, I don’t feel like it’s too sci-fi-y. In all honesty, it almost feels like a Neal Stephenson book, in the style of writing. Parts of it feel like it could be lifted from Snow Crash, which I have yet to finish too (maybe I should get on that….). That being said, I don’t think this will be part of the pantheon of sci-fi writing at all – it feels too…normal. Nothing is outlandish, everything feels like it could happen, it’s great!

I was side-eyeing the book though, when the history of GSS was being discussed…it felt almost like a word for word description of the founding of Apple. As inspiration, he definitely could have done worst but, at the same time, be a bit more original! I just needed to change the names to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and it was Apple.

I’m really looking forward to finishing this book, mainly because I love, love, love seeing games, simulations, virtual environments, AR, being discussed in a book as part of normal society and not some sort of fringe element. I hope that the rest of the book continues as it’s been so far.

What I really can’t wait for (especially since it’s too early to tell right now) is the element of nostalgia that really drew me to this book. Nostalgia is always such an interesting thing – why do we venerate things that have passed? Why do we only pick out the most interesting elements of the past and hold them up on a pedestal? I’m totally a perpetrator for nostalgia – I always look back fondly at the past. At least in Ready Player One, there is a reason – they need to become well-versed with the past to unlock the secrets of a game.

I’m very excited to finish this book. Here’s hoping it’s as good as I’m building it up to be!

Shelves and shelves of books, wrapped up in paper with peoples names on it. The infamous hold shelf. What once was behind the circulation desk is now out in the open, allowing anyone to come in and pick up their holds.

I used to be a big opponent of these types of self-service changes being implemented in libraries. I was worried that they would reduce the need for staffing, and as I was a library clerk at the time, I feared that these changes would lead to me no longer having a job in the future. However, these worries were unfounded – there will always be a need for some sort of staffing as there are tasks that only humans can handle – such as shelving books, pulling books, customer service and just plain on human interaction.

Back to the main point of this post – self-service holds. I really didn’t like the idea of it at first, because I love dealing with people when I am picking up a book from the library. There were instances when I would breeze into the library, pick up my hold in the shelves and check out at one of the machines, and then leave – not once running into a library employee. It was great for ease of check out, but I kind of missed running into people and then talking about what I’m reading at the moment.

However, I was always kind of wary of the holds area. The biggest issue with this area for me is that anyone can see what you have on hold. What if you were requesting a book that you didn’t want people to know you were checking out? We value the privacy of our customers, yet we flaunt it constantly by putting their holds out there.

Has anyone out there in libraryland come across any instances of privacy violations with holds? I would love to know more about it.

It’s been months since I wrote anything as part of the series Day in the Life of an Electronic Resources Librarian. What a better time to restart it than during #libday8 and talk about my week so far.

Even though it’s only Tuesday, I feel like I’ve had a long week….lots of ebook processing going on. Monday – I had to process a whole bunch of ABC-CLIO ebooks and come up with call numbers for each title. In our library catalog, we have it set up so that we include a copy record with any new ebooks that we acquire. This makes sense for us because this way, if we were to lose access to any ebook or ebook vendor, we could easily clear it out of our catalog.

Actually….let me back up a bit – how many people actually list their ebooks in the library catalog and add copy records for it? When I first got this job, I thought it was a bit silly to add copy records, especially once I looked at other library catalogs and noticed that they didn’t have copy records. Having dealt with them these past few months, it makes sense as a way to future proof our catalog.

Okay, back to the story – so I had to find call numbers for all of these ebooks. Man, was it a PAIN…I had to go through WorldCat and try to find a public library that had the ebook titles. Mainly because most of the catalogs that had these titles were colleges – while I wouldn’t have minded using LC…we’re a school library, gotta live in a Dewey world. Thank goodness I was able to find call numbers for each title.

Can you imagine….if I had to come up with these call numbers myself? YIKES! I mean, I love the idea of cataloging and stuff and building call numbers…but I don’t have access to OCLC…I would have had to use an abridged version of DDC13. *sigh*

One fun thing to come out of these adventures in ebooks is that I figured out the MARC field to add copies to your catalog! Go 852!

=852 \\$hCall Number$pBarcode

What up!

Definitely making dealing with the ebooks easier – before I used to just upload the records to the catalog, then go into each campus catalog and manually add a copy. Now? Only have to upload the records to each catalogs, which takes less time than having to add copies.

In the next installment…we will talk about what happened last October/November (because yes…it’s been that long) J/K – Already talked about my hard drive crash…up next..will be me talking about what I want to do with iBook Author.

I’ve been slacking lately on my posts, but with the new year I feel like I can finally refocus on this little project of mine. I’d also like to start creating original posts, rather than commenting on interesting links that I find online. For now, this will do. Maybe in the future, I’ll start releasing short snippets of interesting bits of papers that I’m writing on, or projects of mine that are mainly offline.

Now, on to the main post..maps.

This interesting in mapping came about mainly in college, and it was because I loved the idea of studying the growth of suburbs and mapping out migration patterns for immigrants. It’s really cool, it’s really visual, and allows you to analyze what is going on.

I especially love looking at cool, unique, or even controversial maps. These maps from Mental Floss don’t really seem too controversial to me, but they are most definitely interesting.

Of these three, the one that I love the most is the one that suggests a reorganization of the United States into new states. How much work would have to be put into that? Even if the supposed new states allowed for a more equal distribution of resources, it would be difficult to break from the connection we have with our former states. There is a lot of emotional attachment connected to our sense of geography. To be forced to reassociate ourselves with a new state, while also internally mourning the loss of our former state would be difficult for so many people – especially given the bonds we have formed and the history behind each state.

via mental_floss Blog » 3 Controversial Maps.

Even though I’m not too big on YA lit, I often find myself having to think about YA lit a lot – and not only because I work at a high school library, but because of the emergence of YA lit as a viable genre for publishers.

I love seeing the new books that come in from Ingram – every time we receive new books, it’s like unwrapping a Christmas/Birthday present (for me, it’s the same thing…) because I can’t wait to see what new books I’m going to want to check out. In recent years, I’ve found that I prefer nonfiction books as my pleasure reading. As much as I love reading a good fiction book and getting lost, I so rarely find that captivating book that just makes me want to READ.

I was lucky this past summer that I found a good fiction book – Almost Like Being In Love. But aside from that, I’ve mainly been reading nonfiction. I looked back at my history of reading, and made a realization today – I’ve read mainly nonfiction nearly my entire life. I wonder why I never got hooked on YA novels…

Then, I saw this list of Top 5 YA novels and made another realization – very few YA novels are geared towards boys. I guess thats an awful thing to say – why must novels be divided up by gender? Why can’t literature be cross-gender? In the YA genre, the last book/series that I can think of that had appeal equally among boys and girls was Harry Potter. The more recent popular books tend to be geared towards female readers.

Is there a reason for this? It’s not as if boys don’t read books – the Library rats at my work can attest to that (mainly boys!) I guess it could be because it’s so much easier to pinpoint what a girl reader would enjoy, hence making it easier to write? Who knows…

Thoughts?

So this is the first post in another series I’ve decided to start, and I’m calling it Delicious’d – a series of posts about things that I’ve bookmarked in Delicious. In this way, I get to review the things that I thought were apparently good enough to save.

For this first post, I decided to go with the first thing I ever Delicious’d: Nurikabe.

What a fun little logic game, similar to minesweeper in that you have to use clues to determine the binary nature of each block. Each reload of the page will bring you a new Nurikabe to work with. You should definitely check it out if you want something to do to kill time

I think at this point, I might have been going through my Sudoku phase…although, was sudoku big in the US in 2006? I don’t recall it being super popular yet. I wonder why this was the first thing I ever book marked. The interesting thing is that it says “Imported” as one of the tags..imported from where? Was I using a different bookmarking tool at the time? I actually think I might have been using Furl – I loved it cause it saved a cached copy of the page!

This is going to be an interesting series…I wonder what I’ll find in my 5 years of Deliciousing! (OMG, it’s been five years? The first thing I ever bookmarked, was on Nov 3rd, 2006…)

So it looks like the United States has finally decided to join the civilized world and have an advertising campaign promoting itself as a tourist destination. Granted, they didn’t really need such a campaign, as most of the world loved to come to America anyway (See: Ellis Island, “roads paved with gold”, etc….) but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt to have a united front to show people what is so great about America!

Let’s take a look at this campaign…I bet it’ll be awesome and cool and all that jazz.

What’s the name again? United States of…Awesome Possibilities? Really? Yikes…we couldn’t have come up with something better? It didn’t NEED to included “United States of” as part of the name of the campaign. Screw it, I’m comparing this to Iceland Wants To Be Your Friend.

Okay cool, Icelands campaign has the name of the country in it as well, but at least it wasn’t a cheesy title! Iceland wants to be your friend implies a warmness, a friendliness, an approachability that is just not present when you title your campaign “Awesome Possibilities”. You just didn’t try very hard. Plus, what I enjoy the most about the Iceland campaign title is that it’s not necessarily about what’s so amazing about Iceland, but that Iceland wants to converse with you. United States of Awesome Possibilities implies (to me) that the campaign will essentially be a more national version of something cheesy like Pure Michigan. yikes! Why can’t America do something fun?

I’m really hoping they do something innovative or at least interesting with how they market themselves. Right now, it seems very plain and uninteresting. However, if they were to take a page from Iceland wants to be your friend, I hope they make it about a story – a story about the United States and it’s people. And that it encourages conversation – one of the best things about Icelands campaign is that it carried a conversation with the audience and included them as part of it’s story.

Overall, it might take a lot of convincing to get people to visit the United States of Aweso…America. While we may be a destination for a lot of people, many others find us to be an abhorrent nation and would never support travel and tourism here. We must target those who might be willing to spend their money in America, but are unsure as to whether or not they want to. Rather than change the minds of those who don’t like America, we have to work to convince those on the fence to just suck it up and visit!

I’ll probably be watching this campaign really closely and comparing it for a while to Iceland Wants To be Your Friend. This might seem unfair, but I’m already thinking Icelands campaign is gonna kick ass compared to United States of Awesome Possibilities.