Today is (was?) Blog Day. I’m slipping in under the wire with a few blogs that I’ve enjoyed over the last year.

• Information Aesthetics: Data Visualization & Information Design. I just love visual information, IA keeps me happy.
• fresh+new: chronicles the work on the Powerhouse Museum in Australia. Their recent release of “OPAC 2.0″ is breaking ground for how museums share information about their collections.
• Grand Text Auto: A group blog about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art.
• Caveat Lector. A fairly new addition to my blogroll, but I’ve been enjoying CavLecs personal style.
• Since all work and no play makes us a dull blog, here’s some places to have some fun. Physics Games and Select Parks

This semester I have been struggling about one of my course choices – Inquiry Based Learning – for a variety of reasons. I’ve gotten very mixed reviews of the course from colleagues and so far it’s been – how shall we say – loose in it’s organization. I’ve largely decided to use my time here as an independent study of sorts, which I guess fits the spirit of inquiry. So far the readings have been centered on K-12 and undergraduate education methods and how inquiry based learning can fit in those environments. My inquiry will be more about how these methods might be applied to adult professional training. I did lots of workshops at CDP and will be doing more through MfYM. While I generally get good reviews for the workshops I give, they do fall into the traditional model. I stand up in front with a powerpoint and pour knowledge into my audience. Granted, I use lots of story-telling to illustrate the points I’m making in the presentation and avoid reading PPTs with a passion. We tried to incorporate more hands-on opportunities but it was difficult to find labs with sufficient numbers of scanners, etc.

So now I’m wondering how can you use more inquiry here. People often show up already self motivated, with questions in mind, seeking answers. What are the points of inquiry for shareable metadata? How could you build lessons around this instead of lectures. Will money-paying adults be receptive of this approach or will they demand answers to their questions? Hands-on activities have been warmly received, hopefully if the purpose of inquiry exercises is clear it can be as useful.

I will be interested to see if there’s more literature about inquiry in adult or professional situations – most of the readings on the syllabus seem to continue in the k-12 vein.

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.

This fall will mark another series of changes for me. It will be my first semester as a doctoral student, and I’m pleased to announce that it means a change of job as well. Starting September 1st, I will be working as the graduate assistant for a new IMLS funded grant “Metadata for You & Me: A Training Program for Shareable Metadata.” This grant builds on the experience of the OAI community and the development of the Best Practices for OAI Data Provider Implementations and Shareable Metadata. For me, it will also builds on the experience I collected at CDP manually manhandling a varied collection of metadata into Dublin Core and the many hours spent working on the CDP Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices under the guidance of a great working group. This time around I’ll get to work with my good friend Sarah Shreeves and the Inquiring Librarian herself, Jenn Riley. Expect to see some of my thinking here, particularly as it relates to the implications for museums and other cultural heritage organizations!

Oh, and speaking of shareable metadata – I promise to get Technorati tags working here soon. The “categories” list is a little uncontrolled at the moment and needs some tending.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t written much of substance recently, thanks in large part my my thorough enjoyment of this last summer before starting the PhD program. I’ve been a little hard on myself for not accomplishing all the grandiose plans I laid out at the begining of the summer, but my colleagues here in Chambana have encouraged me to lighten up. OK, so I only moved my blog, configured a few wikis, worked full time, and got to see Tom Waits twice. Not bad work for a summer. And I’ve moved..again…to another nice old house in Champaign. After I moved into the last place I went to the local history archives at the Urbana Free Library (as the seat of Champaign County, Urbana holds the best collection of local history records) to do a little research. This weekend I made another trip back to learn about my new abode.

It always feels good to go back and do historical research. I’ve committed a lot of time to make resources available to researchers online, with some gut feeling about ways to do that. Sometimes I worry that I’ve gotten too far removed from the real work to still have a clear sense of what needs to be done. A little research trip now and then usually fixes me right up. I had to consult about 6 different databases, an unindexed folder of materials, newspapers on microfilm, and my best resource was still going year-by-year through the city directories. This isn’t to impugn the good work done at the Urbana Free/ As research experiences go, the local history archives does provide a lot of help, access to great resources, and a supportive and friendly staff. But it does suggest the large number of opportunities to improve access to these types of resources.

For a while, I’ve been interested in this history of “apartments,” having lived in so many of them (and I blame watching too many Thin Man movies.. It seems to be an under appreciated area of architectural and social history. I haven’t found much in libraries within reach, but there are lots of leads in Amazon. Even architectural journals don’t seem to talk much about them (at least from a quick search). I brought 740 Park: History of America’s Richest Apartment Building home from the library tonight – we’ll see where citation chaining takes me from here. Even though these are some of the largest and most impressive houses in Champaign, local history resources appear to ignore homes that have been turned into apartments in favor of family-owned homes or those that have been put to institutional purposes.

My previous home was commissioned in 1893 by A.C. Burnham, who funded the first library in Champaign, the Burnham Athenaeum, later to become the Champaign Public Library. While the Athenaeum was being built the library briefly took up residence at the house I lived in (although probably not my apartment). The house was later sold to the Harris family, who made their fortunes by first ranching cattle and later as bankers. I lost track of it’s history after 1929 (not the best time to be a banker). By the early 1950s the house was already turned into apartments.

My new home has a similar history. Lura and Marion Tackett, another banking family, built it in 1903. It was noted by the Champaign Daily Gazette for it’s unusual “southern” neoclassical style. Between 1908 and 1912 William F. Goss owned it. Most interestingly however, the house became a sanitarium from 1912 until 1918. Anna Balding and Irene Howell ran the sanitarium for “non contagious” cases using the Battle Creek method. – aka Dr. John Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes. Although formally known as the Balding & Howell Sanitarium, around town it was known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium. I haven’t turned up any digital historical pictures yet. The house passed through a few other hands before being bought by S.K. Hughes, another banker who owned it until 1928 when the building was turned into apartments. Thankfully through all its incarnations, the house has kept many of it’s charms. The pocket doors don’t work anymore, but the woodwork hasn’t been painted over, the hardwood floors are still original, and though the fireplace doesn’t work, the mantle-piece is still in great condition.

Signing off from home sweet home, I have to get back to my corn flakes before they get soggy….

Go to Illegal Art  to read the best user license agreement evah…

4. No Warranty. The Website is being delivered to you AS IS and we make no warranty as to its use or performance. WE DO NOT AND CANNOT WARRANT THE PERFORMANCE OR RESULTS YOU MAY OBTAIN BY USING THE WEBSITE. LOOK, WHEN THIS WEBSITE GOES ALL CRAZY AND DESTROYS YOUR COMPUTER, KILLS YOUR PET, SLEEPS WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER, DIGS UP ALL YOUR OLD POETRY AND LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, THEN CALLS UP YOUR FRIENDS AND READS THEM ALL THOSE REALLY EMBARRASING PARTS OUT OF YOUR JOURNAL, LIKE WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE “DESTINED FOR BEAUTY” OR SOME SHIT LIKE THAT, WE MAKE NO GUARANTEES AND WILL SIMPLY JOIN WITH EVERYONE AND LAUGH AT YOUR SORRY ASS, BECAUSE DAMN, THERE’S NO FREAKING WARRANTY HERE. GET IT? NO WARRANTY. NONE. AT ALL. 

End of file, end of line, end of summer. I have been traveling since the end of July with intermittent internet access, so consider this penance for my absence.

NDIIPP Partners Meeting – Washington, D.C.

First stop was Washington, D.C. for the NDIIPP partners meeting where we had an opportunity to catch up on where other projects are and upcoming activities for digital preservation. The highlight of the meeting was the reception in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress where Senator Ted Stevens gave an address. This being the week after his “internet is tubes” speech, we were all waiting to hear what he had to say about digital preservation (are we a bucket? a digital cistern?). Sadly, I don’t have any juice bits to report, since he read from a fairly straightforward speech congratulating us on our hard work.
When I traveled for CDP I was often left to my own devices sitting in a hotel room without transportation. On my recent trips I’ve made an effort to find locals to take me around and show me places you won’t find on tourist guides. This trip gave me the opportunity to catch up with some new friends at the University of Maryland’s i-school for some offline socializing.

Home and Back Again

I took the opportunity of being back on the east coast to visit family and friends I haven’t seen in a while. After I left for Colorado I lost touch with some of my old friends who were part of life as a history masters student. Since I’ve been back living the student life, I’ve been thinking more about those folks and was glad to have the opportunity to re-establish some of these connections. It was a good reminder of the rarified technical air that I’m breathing these days, I’m not sure any of them had established MySpace profiles or participated in any other social networking systems. Now I’m curious to spend some time looking for other long lost acquaintances in these spaces to see what turns up. But I suspect that there are big holes in these social nets that many people slip through.

I returned to pack up and move to a new apartment that I hope will suffice over the next several years that I’m in Chambana. The DSL has been slow to move over to he new address. I haven’t decided whether having home be an internet-free zone is a good thing or a bad thing. There were several nights that I ended up doing other things than surfing the web or writing blog posts. Overall it felt good to be offline for a while to reboot and recharge.

Tom Waits!!!

And just to make this end of summer that much sweeter, Tom Waits decided to go on tour in my neighborhood. I tried to get tickets for Chicago but they sold out in a matter of minutes. After spending a few days fuming at the idiocy of Ticketmaster I was able to get a single seat for Memphis. A few days later another friend was able to get us Chicago tickets for tomorrow night. Harp magazine has a good review of the tour to date, with an interesting interview with tour manager Stuart Ross talking about anti-scalping methods they used. I don’t know how to fix it, but the experience withTicketmaster was frustrating. After reading this article, there is a small part of me expecting to not get into the show tomorrow. However, we did get tickets from a face-value fan site, not a scalper. If you’ve tried to get tickets and haven’t been able to, try the day of the show. Tickets were available just before the Memphis show.

The next few weeks will be taken up by settling into the new apartment and battening down the hatches – my first semester as a PhD student starts August 23.