Just stumbled onto this very cool visualization of library systems and vendors over time.

History of Library Automation by Marshall Breeding.

Hi there. Yes I’m still alive, just being a busy PhuDdie. The brain2blog interface I requested is still on backorder.

I’m working on the draft of my History & Foundations paper which looks at the intellectual roots and branches of museum informatics. Essentially I’m trolling the citations of papers published during the early days of museum computing looking at what they are citing, where they are publishing, who pops up where and when.

One one of the nifty tools at our disposal is the ISI Web of Knowledge database, which includes many social science indexes. Among the things included are Museum News, Archeology, American Archivist and most of the LIS journals. The “web” part of this is the ability to analyze articles for their topic area, how often they’ve been cited, where the author has published. A quick any easy snapshot of a literature or an author and where they’ve made an impact.

Oddly nothing from Museum News popped up until I did a very broad search and then a very specific search to find an article that should have come up in my other analysis (Sarasan, L. (1981) ‘Why Museum Computer Projects Fail.’ Museum News 59(4), 40-49.).
Click.
“Subject Category: Art” WTF?
Back.
Cick. Click. Click.

Everything from MN is classified “Art” whether or not it’s actually a museum informatics article (only tangentially related to art) or on making accessibility ramps for a historic house. Somebody needs to hire a better indexer.

Not that the CS lit is any better – articles about computers in museums are not classified as art or museum..just computer science. So much for whipping together a quick Venn diagram using WoK. mmmm museum informatics stir fry…slightly aged computer science, a little humanities computing, a sprinkle of business practice and a dash of natural science, archeology or art history to taste. No LIS. ( LIS usually served with a Bearman/Trant platter).

Speaking of diagrams, I had Thanksgiving dinner with Yana and friends, including Brandy who is a “graphic facilitator.” Trying to make all these connections via outlines, text and a 12″ iBook screen wasn’t cutting it, so yesterday I fought my way through Black Friday traffic to Office Max for a gigantic pad of paper and pack of sharpies. Thus armed, I’ve been mapping my way through conversations about data banks, mainframe systems, punch cards, and yet another article identifying why a task-oriented museum computer project failed to live up to the over-hyped promises that this new system/format/approach/ black-box magic was sure to solve. ahem..more on that later. My sketches won’t be as fantastic at Brandy’s, but it certainly has cleared the mental logjam. This sums it up pretty well.

Technorati Tags: citation analysis, museum informatics, graphic facilitation, web of knowledge

Today marked the first full week of classes and the start of my History and Foundation of LIS course. It’s a class I’ve been looking forward to since joining the PhD program as a return to my earlier roots as a historian.

Tonight I started the readings with excerpts from Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s Online Pioneers It was a nice compliment to my out-of-the-blue curiousity to find a good reference bibliography for steampunk fiction this morning.

Like most other modern technologies the Tubes are not without precedent (nor is Sen. Stephens, “One wiseacre imagined that the wires were hollow, and that papers on which the communications were written were blown through them, like peas through a pea shooter.”). The Victorian Internet provides a popular and enjoyable read about the history and development of the telegraph beginning in the 18th century. I tend to hold the cyclical notion of history close to my heart and usually find that there’s really nothing new under the sun – or at least less than what we think. 19th Century telegraph operators created their own IM-like shorthands to chat with each other during slow periods, played chess, and people were even scammed out of money. Surprised that all these things happen online today?

The Victorian Internet exploded across the United States and Europe, increasing it’s reach almost 600% in less than 10 years. (note to self: has anyone put the growth charts of the telegraph, telephone and internet side by side?) Like the Internet, television, radio, and the telephone before it boosters of the telegraph saw it as the solution to world peace, harmony amongst peoples, and broaden of cultures. At least if, by culture, you meant the rich white businessmen who could afford access to it. This of course makes me wonder where libraries stood on the question of the telegraph or the telephones that followed it. Did researchers send telegrams to the library seeking answers to reference questions? I seem to recall seeing some in
Speaking of historical messes, Dorothea and Meredith have been discussing the different forms of sexism among information professionals. Thomas Jepsen‘s site that includes several articles about gender issues among telegraph operators that might offer them inspiration from their professional ancestors who struggled for recognition amongst “the rougher sex”.

“a prejudice exists in the minds of some of the male members of the profession, against the employment of ladies as operators,” due to what he termed “the indisputable fact, that much the larger proportion of errors, in transmitting and receiving messages, are made by the female operators.” -‘My Sisters Telegraphic’: The Letters of Nineteenth-Century Women Telegraphers”

I’ll leave it to others to comment about their experiences in the world of library tech at UIUC. Personally I have been taken aback on more than one occasion by the blatent sexism I’ve seen from members of the CS department….colleagues sounds too colleagial in this context. From my perspective it’s seemed like deep seated insecurity on thier part and a great lack of social graces. Although women may bear the brunt of their hostility, I think users of all sorts eventually feel some of it. I have a fairly good comprehension of some programming theory, but I am only a moderately good programmer. The subtle passive-aggressive scoffing at my programming skills seemed to only abate after several confrontations that I felt were necessary but not entirely comfortable or enjoyable. There is a real and tangible divide amongst technical vs. non-technical students that seems to cleave along gender lines. I still haven’t quite figured out how to breach the gap, since both camps seem to cling to their sides. This will have to be an issue that I keep an eye on as we progress through the readings for Foundations to see whether there is a thread that runs through the profession along similar lines.