Am I being shortchanged in this online setting?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

That's all she rote

I really enjoy the way Bruce will instruct us to do something we did weeks or even months before, and expect us to figure out how to do it again. He is very offhand as he does this, isn't he? As if he doesn't realize that most of us are going to have to go back into this video from week 2, that tutorial from week 1, the install guide from 672 (which hopefully we have, since D2L sure doesn't anymore!), and click back and forth between three different pdfs all the while. UNTIL four hours later, you successfully reach line 2 of the 9-page TechAssignment document for the week.

Obviously this is the best way to make us learn these steps on our own, and in fact I feel fortunate he walks us so carefully through the steps of each install the first time. But I always wonder, is he laughing when he writes those simple statements?

Installation of DSpace wasn't horrific for me. But the more complex an install is, the less I am able to know what the meaning of each step is, and this install was more rote than any I have done this semester. It only helped, oddly enough, to be using VirtualBox instead of VMware. This is because I learned this week that I may be the only one in our class doing this, when I discovered that my version of Linux is older than most of the other students', who installed theirs in 672. (I installed one on a VMware machine in 672 as well, but had to switch computers. Now I hope to never go back; VirtualBox is much less awkward about mouse and keyboard integration than VMware.) So I sometimes have to troubleshoot a little differently than the others, and this gets me thinking.

Tagadelic, for a "retro" tag cloud

In another assignment configuring a Drupal site for a digital collection, I used Tagadelic as my chosen extra module. I used this site as an installation guide, which was great, except that I wanted a tag cloud because I think they're new and hip, and this guy refers to them as "old-fashioned." Will I never catch up to these people?

In any case I recommend Tagadelic; it's very simple. My collection has plenty of repeat metadata and this allows those resources to immediately appear on the same page, as well as showing the viewer what we see a lot of thanks to the larger fonts for frequent tags. Here are two screenshots of my tags, one a cloud since it's every tag from my collection, the other a list.

Change of Scope

OK so I just read a post from our instructor and I am seeing now that I've been approaching this project in a very non-librarian sort of way, in that I imagined opening it up eventually to users, provided they first authenticate. But he answered a question about terms with a reference to those "doing the catalog", which assumes there is one unified group with one goal and one catalog.

With that in mind...I still like this project. But those entering resources will have to be part of a smaller and more involved group than originally envisioned. Which is OK, but it really reigns in the scope of this project.

Puppet Library is a go!

I am very happy with the results of my Puppet Library so far. I have been designed websites for a long time and this is by far the best functionality I've ever been able to provide for users.

In the ideal world would I use Drupal for this site? Yes probably...but I would know how to use it better. Which I will. Soon.

This week I am adding only selected resources from the Awaji shima puppet theater. Next time I will deal with Suchart Subsin of Thailand, and try to add all my pics of his workshop in one node, with a big long description.

One thing that's annoying me is the way it all looks once entered. I imagine changing themes would help a little but it all looks very metadata-y, which is not user friendly. I'm hoping to learn to make some fields bold, place them on separate lines, and make the pics appear in thumbs, in the future.

New Job, New Program

I just started working this week as the student Drupal web tech, helping UA faculty with their Drupal websites through The Office of Instruction and Assessment. (I'm experienced in some web dev but new at Drupal, learning fast thanks to tutorials and now this class.) I really like Drupal because it lets users be responsible for so much on their own sites. I also like that I can do advanced web development that I never mastered the code/coding languages for.

On the other hand, as a site administrator I will sometimes want to work in code. I am working on Views right now for one site and it is a little frustrating to try to figure out why my displays show up with no records in them. When I'm looking at a block of code I can eventually see what's missing. But with Drupal's GUI there are so many different screens and menus that pop up and disappear, it can be hard to troubleshoot. (I'm going to be going through http://drupal.org/node/272912, working on Views in code, next time I'm on the clock.)

If we were already working on Views in IRLS 675 I would probably ask for more specific advice in the forum, though since these are live sites belonging to UA folks I guess I'd be careful not to reveal too much, for both security purposes and because word gets around in small communities. Nonetheless, I may be asking for the 675 forum's assistance sometimes. And I'll be sharing some of our class resources on our webdev blog, http://blog.ltc.arizona.edu/productionservices/2010/09/drupal-taxonomy-plus-smooth-ja.html.

CMS: Costs More Skronk

I just finished reading the following article: "Building a local CMS at Kent State", by Rick Wiggins, Jeph Remley, and Tom Klingler, of Libraries & Media Services, Kent State University. To summarize, the Kent State University Library website, made mostly of static html pages built in Dreamweaver, was looking and functioning worse and worse due to inconsistencies created in the collaborative environment in which it was being created. The project was undertaken to create a website for the library that more effectively met the needs of the library's staff and users, including metadata creation and more effective database functionality. A variety of Content Management Systems were researched by the project team, who determined that none of the CMS's they examined was the right fit. The project then became the writing of a local Content Management System, with the team for this new project given the tight deadline of fourteen months to accomplish the task. The new CMS was developed using the input of focus groups, then implemented with the training of staff. The layout of the site, including the content creator interface, and the tools for the varying levels of management, have been laid out in the article. The CMS and resulting site have been pronounced successful.

Of all the articles about CMS's in Library Hi Tech's 2006 issue, which focused entirely on these systems, I was interested in this one because I have just begun working with Drupal, and I was curious what needs the Kent State Library had that Drupal could not meet. It seems the main areas of unmet need, in the original project researchers' 2006 estimation, centered on metadata. First, they wanted metadata to form a basis for the site. The resulting CMS uses metadata to organize the pages, and allows metadata search, as opposed to keyword search. Another need not met by Drupal or the other existing CMS's was to have the site send an email when a new resource was added that would alert library staff to play their respective roles in metadata creation. This was also ultimately accomplished by the new CMS and site.

The site in question, http://www.library.kent.edu if I'm not outdated, is indeed smooth and professional. It feels like there is more content and more streamlined function than many of the Drupal sites I've seen. But I wonder if project 1 would have turned into project 2 in, say, 2009? Not likely. For one thing, the metadata tools they required may have been added to one of the Open Source CMS's by then. Plus, days grew dark. As in:

Question: "Should we initiate project costing many thousands of dollars, or just create a module for Drupal or another pre-existing CMS?"

Answer: "Well, considering we just cut all of our part time staff...".

But this article is a valuable resource, a map of a road less traveled, successfully illuminated. So libraries, mark the metadata below. When the recession is over, you'll know where your roadmap is!

Article Type:

Technical paper
Keyword(s):

Content management; Information management; Libraries.
Journal:

Library Hi Tech
Volume:

24
Number:

1
Year:

2006
pp:

69-101
Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN:

0737-8831

Puppet Library

I've decided to start a digital puppet library, of images, sound files, scripts and other artifacts related to puppetry. (Not digital puppets; digital artifacts of real puppets and performances.) I have access to a small collection already and it is definitely of interest to a limited and weird but passionate community of puppeteers and puppet appreciators. I am currently trying to see if there is anything similar out there, and I will likely use performance, art and sculpture collection sites as guides in developing the taxonomy of puppetlibrary.org, as it will be called and located.

There are 229 records returned in response to a search for puppet in ARTstor at http://library.artstor.org. Here is one ARTstor puppet record:



Information:

Culture	Javanese
Title	Shadow Puppet representing the Giant Kumbakarna
Work Type	puppet
Date	19th century
Measurements	66 cm high
Description	from Java, Indonesia
Repository	British Museum, London, United Kingdom
ARTstor Collection	Art, Archaeology and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives)
ID Number	03-07-02/70
Source	Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. http://www.artres.com/c/htm/Home.aspx http://www.artres.com/c/htm/TreePfLight.aspx?ID=LES
Rights	Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. Please note that if this image is under copyright, you may need to contact one or more copyright owners for any use that is not permitted under the ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use or not otherwise permitted by law. While ARTstor tries to update contact information, it cannot guarantee that such information is always accurate. Determining whether those permissions are necessary, and obtaining such permissions, is your sole responsibility.

File Properties:

Image Id	LESSING_ART_10311440311
Download Size	1024,1024
Collection	ARTstor Collections
Accessibility	Public
Format	fpx
File Name	lessing_03070270.fpx
Width	5046
Height	6000
Image URL	http://library.artstor.org.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/library/secure/ViewImages?id=%2FThWdC8hIywtPygxFTx5RnksX30of10%3D&userId=gzdMejE%3D&zoomparams=

There are also puppet collections, like the Center for Puppetry Arts:
http://www.puppet.org/museum/VeWebsite/exhibit3/vexmain3.htm . Their taxonomy will certainly influence my collection metadata.

Many questions remain. I will limit the collection initially to what I have, but what I have includes modern puppets from puppet artists who are not well known. If I want to grow this collection, I will have to limit it more clearly.

Project Management, in case your manager didn't tell you...

Project Management is very complex! Let's simplify.

What is a project?
A project is an effort with some kind of measurable result, an effort that is definitely going to end.

What are the stages of a project?
These 4 stage are also known as the project "life cycle":

1. Initiation - defining objectives, critical factors, and success
2. Planning - breaking it down into tasks
3. Execution - carrying out the plan
4. Closure - completion and review

What is a program?
A program is a group of related projects. A program will only end if all of its projects are over.

What is an organization?
An organization is a group of people and resources employed together with the same objectives. An organization is not definitely going to end. However, an organization may employ people specifically for projects or programs. These people should know that their jobs may end when their main projects or programs end, even if the results of the project live on.

What is Project Management?
Most simply, Project Management (PM) is the use of models to manage the scope, time, and budget of a project.

What are the parts of Project Management?

There are 9 Knowledge Areas of PM and 5 types of processes in PM, often laid out this way:

	Initiating	Planning	Executing	Monitoring and Controlling	Closing
Integration
Scope
Time
Cost
Quality
Human Resources
Communications
Risk
Procurement

Why use PM?
Here are some of the risks if we don't use PM:

• "Scope creep" is adding new objectives as you go along, and it can seriously blur the original objectives.
• A lack of common understanding among team members always keeps them from performing well.
• Projects that take a while (and most of them do!) run out of steam if all involved don't know what stage it is in.
• Running out of money is such a drag!
• When there's trouble there's panic UNLESS the possibility of that trouble and a solution to it were addressed in the plan.

Do I really need to know all this?
This entire list is not something all staff members of every organization involved in projects need to know. However, the project manager should be sure that all staff members have a general idea of their roles in both the project and the organization.

Where can I find more information?
Look at http://pmi.org for more information, or if you're involved in a project, ask your project manager for a breakdown.

Technology, grade school style

At the beginning of this course it was difficult to know what we were learning the command line interface for, and it didn't really sink in until the last few units, when PHP and MySql were introduced. This I suppose is because I have a hard time reckoning with information until it is somewhat organized already, in databases. Then it is easier to say, This should be accessible to users and this should not; this is something that will be requested frequently, while this is a good area to let users structure their own commands.

My perspective on digital information at this point is a little frightened at the hugeness of that sphere. What I am wishing for is a poster of commands and examples for the command line, the sql monitor, of php and html code. A huge poster. Working in this field you of course become familiar enough with using these programs to get these things down.

Keeping it brief; have to work on that poster!

SQL is SoQooL

SQL is one of my favorite parts of this class so far, because the most difficult aspect of using a virtual machine has been struggling with how it is organized. I didn't make the directories and in order to see what is where I need to remember commands. But with MySQL I am organizing things myself, and when I query and recognize results returned to me I feel good. Powerful. Organized.

The conceptual organization of databases is the part I get stuck on sometimes, but as this is what I hope to do with my life, at least in part, I'm workin' on it!

SQL N ERD R Q!

(Q is my husband's textese for Cool)

Why is it that when I'm not in computer class I feel like such a geek for over-organizing every little object and interaction? Yet when I study database design I feel incredibly outgeeked?

In any case, I've adopted a tentative rule to keep up: If you've got a many to many, M:N, MN, or mucho a mucho relationship, just stick a bridge in between entity number 1 and entity number two. Borrow the primary key from each of those two entities, maybe throw on a date or time to make the bridge represent unique instances, and voila: normalization.

The hardest part for me has been to figure out what is and what is not many to many. We read of an example of plants and waterings. The author said one plant can be given many waterings, but one watering can only be given to one plant. This was confusing. I garden. I water more than one plant at a time. It's called the mist setting, a big cloud of water. Get outside database designer, experience the bounty of the mist setting!

But of course that author has a point. He's talking about an instance, a measured and clocked watering instance. The hibiscus got two cups of water at 1:32pm on June 24th.

I enjoy this parsing and labeling business very much, by the way. I've started wondering how I can find an internship that involves this kind of activity. I enjoy ERdiagramming too, and even decided to use a SmartDraw free trial. Unfortunately it's only 7 days, and it stamps a huge proprietary watermark on everything I create. Don't these people know I'm unemployed? I don't pay for software that irritates me, I don't even pay for software I like!

Tech Plan...or Toilet Paper

In his post Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans, Blogger Michael Schuyler calls the technology plan "a political document." You bet it is. Of course it's been said in other discussions of technology plans, but I like Schuyler's because it discusses one reason for the phenomenon, which is that most of the people reading a technology plan know very little about computer craft. Like those folks in Washington talking to the millions of Americans who know so little of statecraft (in addition to the few who do know a thing or two): you have to pack a real plan in its own mystique to sell it to those who don't get the science.

Technology plans remind me very much of grant-writing, and reading some of the poorer ones call back the days when I was a lowly administrative peon (which is less lowly than my current state of pure unemployment, but still). If you were like me, you may look upon the instructions for the E-rate tech planning with hope, thinking, let's use this huge document as a reason to remake our organization. But then the boss says, oh for heaven's sake just make something up so we can get the funds! And the boss is right--with resistance at the top, that organization is probably doomed to writing fiction to bring in funds. Once the funds are acquired, TP stands for toilet paper.

The best thing the administrative peon can do: Move on. Move up. Build a better organization, or at least start working for one, that embraces opportunities to improve.

xlink, xpointer, xml, xciting....

I learned quite a bit about XML in IRLS 515 last semester. But of course questions remained. One big one was answered by the following section from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_usedfor.asp :

"--XML Separates Data from HTML

If you need to display dynamic data in your HTML document, it will take a lot of work to edit the HTML each time the data changes.

With XML, data can be stored in separate XML files. This way you can concentrate on using HTML for layout and display, and be sure that changes in the underlying data will not require any changes to the HTML.

With a few lines of JavaScript code, you can read an external XML file and update the data content of your web page. "

As fits best with my learning style, my remaining questions were best answered by searching online myself. I was wondering, how do you link xml and html documents together? I saw the examples of xml docs enhanced with css, and I know how to do that, but what about adding links and such? How do you link a photograph to its xml description?

Of course my question sent me right back to the W3schools site, to the xlink and xpointer tutorial. I'm working through it currently but you'll see a link to my use of it if I ever get there!