Pop Quiz to see how well you know me:
1. The topics I look up in most repositories are:
A. Puppetry and IPA Breast Cancer
B. Breast Cancer and Native American History
C. Classical Music and Native American History
D. Puppetry and IPA Recipes
2. I attend online classes while managing these other responsibilities:
A. Taking care of an elderly parent and maintaining a full-time job
B. Take care of two young children and an elderly parent
C. A full-time job only
D. A part time job and two young children
3. My experience with technology prior to / outside this class has been:
A. Zilch
B. Extensive, having worked as a computer programmer
C. Moderate, having worked as a website developer
D. Moderate, having worked at the University of Arizona in the Office of Instruction and Assessment
4. I am interested in:
A. Public Librarianship
B. Medical Librarianship
C. Art Librarianship
D. Systems Librarianship
So, how do you think you did? (The answers will be provided in a moment.) My concern - one that I can't shake lately - is that you are one of my professors, and yet you did poorly on this quiz because you don't know me at all.
I came into this program with a lot of faith in technology, but now I'm worried that it's shortchanging me. Let's compare: In my (entirely face-to-face) undergraduate studies I rarely had a single professor or class cohort more than once, but I always made connections, especially with my professors. Asking for recommendations at the end of a class was never daunting.
By contrast, today I am writing the final blog post for my 3rd class with the same two professors, and the idea of asking either of them for a recommendation just feels wrong. It feels premature, but when I examine the feeling more closely, it goes deeper: I fear I may never get to know either of them well enough to ask for a recommendation. Or to even stand out to them.
They do try. Professor Fulton may be the ideal online instructor. He answers questions on the forum practically before the students finish posting them, and never loses patience or ignores a question. Professor Botticelli unfortunately does ignore questions sometimes, but then again, he emails me every week with a brief but individual assessment of my weekly discussion posts, which he clearly reads through with mindfulness.
And I try to stand out. I meet my deadlines. I do the readings and make cognitive connections. I write with feeling. I talk about the authors, my projects, and myself.
Still, there is something missing. Every time I envision initiating a Capstone project, I shudder in panic. Virtual libraries are an emerging field to the extent that I'm worried no one really wants one yet. And my education is so virtual I am having trouble figuring out how to apply it in the real world. I have never, ever met anyone who does what I am going to ask people if I can do for them. And what am I offering? What if they do accept my offer to help with a virtual library, but they want their materials digitized? I've never digitized a book outside of using the copy machine for personal use.
If I get the courage at some point in this semester or the next I'll request a conference to sort out my Capstone concerns. Maybe even my reference concerns. I'll ignore the fact that I've never heard mention of meeting with students or advising related to the DIGIN program, and I'll just swallow my temerity and ask. (Or maybe the clouds will part, the sun will send in a shaft of light, and someone at the DIGIN program will see fit to mention advising and references.)
Until then...here are the quiz answers:
1.A
2.D
3.C and D
4.All of them. So as long as you answered one of them, you are on the right track.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
VM to go: Because collections are A GOOD IDEA
This week I'll discuss "the possibility of downloading a pre-installed VM versus building your own, from a learning and pedagogical perspective."
The lines between user, content editor, and administrator, between local and remote servers, and between front and back ends are blurred as part of library 2.0, and indeed as part of web 2.0. So it has felt strange to me as a library student, that just as I am learning to make use of web tools possible for others, I am being expected to learn the most basic, unassisted computer application: the Command Line.
Should preconfigured virtual machines and similar solutions be available for download? DUH. Yes, they should. Not because this would provide more time to concentrate on the collection, but because it will open the possibilities of collection up to more people, more institutions, more collectors.
Would I use preconfigured systems? No, because I've spent time learning how to install repositories. I don't like the prospect of looking back on my Digital Information Management certificate the way I look back on my English and Women's Studies degrees. I want to feel I learned something useful that others don't know as well as I do. Knowing how a repository is structured and modified by building it from scratch is valuable, for me, because I believe I'm bound to do it professionally. But that doesn't mean it's valuable for everyone who wants to start a collection. It means that it's valuable for those who want to offer professional collections.
I am not one of those library students who thinks that fewer people knowing how to operate repositories means that I will be more in demand. People think repositories are worthless now. Not all people, but many of them. There are universes of data and information being lost because collection is not expected; it is an afterthought. So collection has to become a more mainstream activity first. It has to be happening where the grass is greener, where you're colleagues are spending their time. It has to be HAPPENING. So the more easy it is to start and manage a collection, the more likely it will be accepted as a good idea, then a trend, and finally, a necessity.
The lines between user, content editor, and administrator, between local and remote servers, and between front and back ends are blurred as part of library 2.0, and indeed as part of web 2.0. So it has felt strange to me as a library student, that just as I am learning to make use of web tools possible for others, I am being expected to learn the most basic, unassisted computer application: the Command Line.
Should preconfigured virtual machines and similar solutions be available for download? DUH. Yes, they should. Not because this would provide more time to concentrate on the collection, but because it will open the possibilities of collection up to more people, more institutions, more collectors.
Would I use preconfigured systems? No, because I've spent time learning how to install repositories. I don't like the prospect of looking back on my Digital Information Management certificate the way I look back on my English and Women's Studies degrees. I want to feel I learned something useful that others don't know as well as I do. Knowing how a repository is structured and modified by building it from scratch is valuable, for me, because I believe I'm bound to do it professionally. But that doesn't mean it's valuable for everyone who wants to start a collection. It means that it's valuable for those who want to offer professional collections.
I am not one of those library students who thinks that fewer people knowing how to operate repositories means that I will be more in demand. People think repositories are worthless now. Not all people, but many of them. There are universes of data and information being lost because collection is not expected; it is an afterthought. So collection has to become a more mainstream activity first. It has to be happening where the grass is greener, where you're colleagues are spending their time. It has to be HAPPENING. So the more easy it is to start and manage a collection, the more likely it will be accepted as a good idea, then a trend, and finally, a necessity.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Slick&Simple, Safe&Awkward, and Kah-lunky!!
After dealing with Omeka this week I have enough CMS's and data curation tools under my belt to categorize. There are three categories: Slick&Simple, Safe&Awkward, and Kah-lunky!!
Kah-lunky: This term is reserved for the tools that make you wish you could go back to the hammer, spike, and stone tablet to post your information. Jhove and Harvester inspired this feeling in me. In the middle of troubleshooting (in the case of Jhove) or just plain giving up on the mess my repository was turned into (in the case of Harvester), I decided that if either of those needs to be part of my present ecosystem, I am going to have to leave that ecosystem and rejoin my amoebic brethren in the calm and brothy prehistoric sea.
Safe&Awkward: Hello Dspace! Oh...I'm sorry, did I say that too quickly? Or with too much excitement?
Slick and Simple: This would be Drupal, Eprints, and Omeka. Very impressive and fun to use. A little scary for newbies, but as I am going on my fifth CMS, I am not a newbie anymore. I'm a researcher!
Kah-lunky: This term is reserved for the tools that make you wish you could go back to the hammer, spike, and stone tablet to post your information. Jhove and Harvester inspired this feeling in me. In the middle of troubleshooting (in the case of Jhove) or just plain giving up on the mess my repository was turned into (in the case of Harvester), I decided that if either of those needs to be part of my present ecosystem, I am going to have to leave that ecosystem and rejoin my amoebic brethren in the calm and brothy prehistoric sea.
Safe&Awkward: Hello Dspace! Oh...I'm sorry, did I say that too quickly? Or with too much excitement?
Slick and Simple: This would be Drupal, Eprints, and Omeka. Very impressive and fun to use. A little scary for newbies, but as I am going on my fifth CMS, I am not a newbie anymore. I'm a researcher!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
BASA, the specialty megastore of OAI service providers
Looking at moving large amounts of metadata, I investigated some service providers who put it all together at one site. I am seriously impressed.
Bielefield Academic Search Engine, http://www.base-search.net, had countless resources about shadow puppets. Who in the world has countless resources about shadow puppets? Ok , not countless, exactly; 138 results for "shadow puppet". But that is seriously close to countless in the world of puppet specializations.
How do they do it? By having huge amounts of records in one place, I presume, because there is no stated focus on performance or art. In the case of my focus, this is a very good thing, because few service providers or resource repositories focus in this area, so searches usually involve a little bit here, a little bit there. Kind of like grocery store shopping in Tucson. Good meat here, my preferred tea there, this third one has cheap dairy but terrible produce so for that I go to a 4th store. So it is with searching for anything besides the popular brands, unless you have a megastore that caters to your selection among millions of others, or unless you create a specialized service provision yourself. I'd like to do the latter - create a one-stop puppetry portal - and now that I've found the former, the megaprovider, it will be easier.
Other service providers I've looked at include http://oaister.worldcat.org/, which despite it's reputation for hugeness only had 55 search results for puppets. This is a respectable number but far below the Bielefield. Think Safeway when you're looking for organic, versus Bielefield's Whole Foods flagship store in Austin.
Open Archives.EU (http://www.openarchives.eu/home/home.aspx?lang=en) required an annoying amount of extra decision making - search repositories or objects? and when you choose objects, which repository? but eventually I used it to to search for shadow puppet in the Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ. My results set is not numbered and is presented essentially as a set of Google search results, with DOAJ not written anywhere on the search page. But the results are better than Google's regular keyword searches. If it didn't have an endless URL I would include it, but the path to get there is so confusing I would rather just start at the link at the beginning of this paragraph...or just forget about this feature altogether unless I find a more direct DOAJ route.
Bielefield Academic Search Engine, http://www.base-search.net, had countless resources about shadow puppets. Who in the world has countless resources about shadow puppets? Ok , not countless, exactly; 138 results for "shadow puppet". But that is seriously close to countless in the world of puppet specializations.
How do they do it? By having huge amounts of records in one place, I presume, because there is no stated focus on performance or art. In the case of my focus, this is a very good thing, because few service providers or resource repositories focus in this area, so searches usually involve a little bit here, a little bit there. Kind of like grocery store shopping in Tucson. Good meat here, my preferred tea there, this third one has cheap dairy but terrible produce so for that I go to a 4th store. So it is with searching for anything besides the popular brands, unless you have a megastore that caters to your selection among millions of others, or unless you create a specialized service provision yourself. I'd like to do the latter - create a one-stop puppetry portal - and now that I've found the former, the megaprovider, it will be easier.
Other service providers I've looked at include http://oaister.worldcat.org/, which despite it's reputation for hugeness only had 55 search results for puppets. This is a respectable number but far below the Bielefield. Think Safeway when you're looking for organic, versus Bielefield's Whole Foods flagship store in Austin.
Open Archives.EU (http://www.openarchives.eu/home/home.aspx?lang=en) required an annoying amount of extra decision making - search repositories or objects? and when you choose objects, which repository? but eventually I used it to to search for shadow puppet in the Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ. My results set is not numbered and is presented essentially as a set of Google search results, with DOAJ not written anywhere on the search page. But the results are better than Google's regular keyword searches. If it didn't have an endless URL I would include it, but the path to get there is so confusing I would rather just start at the link at the beginning of this paragraph...or just forget about this feature altogether unless I find a more direct DOAJ route.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Robot4583 at your service...beep beep
Cataloguing was a big concern for me in Eprints. This is because I had already entered every item in other repositories: some in Drupal, some in Dspace, a few in both. So in the interest of being consistent with those previous entries I looked into importing the metadata from those CMS's into Eprints.
In Drupal, this simply did not seem possible because I didn't use Views for my collection. It could be that if I created a view for it, I could export it, and I may try that in the future. I expect there are modules to make this all work better but when you are evaluating systems on the time span that I am, you don't necessarily ever reach this step.
In Dspace I was able to export my collection to a zipped folder, but I couldn't get the hand of batch importing into Eprints if that is even possible. (It should be.) So instead I manually uploaded all 4 or 5 files (including one classified as "other" and therefore requiring a description, which I made DspaceBundleDescription for each) from each dspace item from that bulk export, then manually added title (copied and pasted from dublin core xml doc), abstract, creators, and status. All this me from having to enter details. I also started adding keywords (listed as subject in the Dspace-exported dublin _ore xml doc). And I selected Plain Text for format for the DspaceBundleDescription "Other" doc for each item, and also selected "Additional Metadata" for the dublin core xml docs.
Nonetheless I still had to then detail the record, adding at the very least: Title, Creators, and Status (I selected Submitted). All then had to be approved by me.
Eprints gave me many areas where I had to repeat identical metadata in this collection and this definitely led to human error. I minimized this as best I could by opening the Dspace-exported dublin_core.xml doc for each record and pasting from it and also constantly referencing it as I described the item in Eprints. But this felt like it should be unnecessary, and was certainly less foolproof than a computerized entry system.
One day, they'll sort out repositories so that humans only have to do what humans are good at: enter new concepts. For now, though, this is Robot4583, signing off.
In Drupal, this simply did not seem possible because I didn't use Views for my collection. It could be that if I created a view for it, I could export it, and I may try that in the future. I expect there are modules to make this all work better but when you are evaluating systems on the time span that I am, you don't necessarily ever reach this step.
In Dspace I was able to export my collection to a zipped folder, but I couldn't get the hand of batch importing into Eprints if that is even possible. (It should be.) So instead I manually uploaded all 4 or 5 files (including one classified as "other" and therefore requiring a description, which I made DspaceBundleDescription for each) from each dspace item from that bulk export, then manually added title (copied and pasted from dublin core xml doc), abstract, creators, and status. All this me from having to enter details. I also started adding keywords (listed as subject in the Dspace-exported dublin _ore xml doc). And I selected Plain Text for format for the DspaceBundleDescription "Other" doc for each item, and also selected "Additional Metadata" for the dublin core xml docs.
Nonetheless I still had to then detail the record, adding at the very least: Title, Creators, and Status (I selected Submitted). All then had to be approved by me.
Eprints gave me many areas where I had to repeat identical metadata in this collection and this definitely led to human error. I minimized this as best I could by opening the Dspace-exported dublin_core.xml doc for each record and pasting from it and also constantly referencing it as I described the item in Eprints. But this felt like it should be unnecessary, and was certainly less foolproof than a computerized entry system.
One day, they'll sort out repositories so that humans only have to do what humans are good at: enter new concepts. For now, though, this is Robot4583, signing off.
Monday, October 18, 2010
What is this repository about again?
Well my installation of a third CMS and the creation of my 8th or 9th repository is complete...and I am beginning to feel a little weary of puppet resources.
I did enjoy this installation, however. So many defaults accepted! I am normal! My configuration has been anticipated and all but arranged!
Interesting that you have to go to the CLI monitor to make design changes. It seems like it shouldn't be that way, and yet, it makes the line between the designer and the content manager very clear, especially when the content is entirely distinct from the design, as is the case with many repositories. The user interface is better organized than Dspace, whose creators seem to have never heard of tab menus, and less confusing than Drupal, whose creators got a little too high on menus. And the continued expectation of communion with the command line puts everyone in their place, which seems more attractive as I work with users who expect a mile when given an inch in design options.
So it's more attractive and belled-and-whistled than Dspace yet simpler than Drupal. Not incredibly modular, but easy to introduce without a tutorial. Overall I may like Eprints better than Drupal or Dspace for a few collections I am working on, which makes me see how important it is to evaluate before you launch. You can't very well change the delivery vehicle when the resources are already on the train!
Monday, October 11, 2010
A 2nd repository, for Breast Cancer Resources
I found Drupal to be the right repository management software for my 675 collection of puppet resources, but I am going to be using Dspace in the next two weeks to create a second repository, of breast cancer resources.
This is because I have worked with breast cancer resources in the past, in the creation of a metadata schema, controlled vocabulary, and relational database, for IRLS 515. I've been interested in continuing to develop these modular components to work together, and consequently I just got accepted in the GPSC Student Showcase for my work with breast cancer resources, which I'll exhibit under the name "An Integrated Approach To Information Discovery In Consumer Breast Cancer Research." The resources used for the work so far have been online, with our series of integrated projects designed to direct consumers to them while reporting on the quality of information that is accessed.
I decided that at the Showcase, through lively graphic and digital representation I will also show where this integrated approach to information discovery is going. The user interface I am currently creating will deliver a sample set of online results, along with research I find in Creative Commons stored in a local repository. I don't expect it to be complete by any means, but I feel members of the University of Arizona's rich scholarly and medical communities would appreciate peering into the development of this project while it is still transparent, and while I am still able to incorporate feedback and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
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