2018 Community Service Award (DCLA)
One a very positive note for this summer of 2018…
I was honoured with the 2018 Community Service Award by the District of Columbia Library Association (DCLA).
Thank you
(Now, I just need to get it on the wall in my office…) 🙂
MARC = > XML and … Beyond-ish
I am currently reading: Coding with XML for Efficiencies in Cataloging and Metadata by Timothy W. Cole, Myung-Ja (MJ) K. Han, and Christine Schwartz.
I have been working with XML for a few years now in different contexts – but I have always been working with the structure itself – not its search, transformation, or display.
So this text has been a useful intro to xsd (schema document), xPath, and xQuery – especially as the library where I work migrates to Exlibris’s Alma – which allows for metadata manipulation in XML.
The other key relevance to work is a digital preservation platform we are migrating to from contentDM may force us, for certain types of digitally preserved materials, to write XSL. If we need this, I will be able to help more now. 🙂
Thank you to the authors for this book
Cheers
#RadioBookClub v. 7 – The Expendable Man
The time has come once again to get into some words – LIVE – on the radio.
This is our 7th such discussion over the internet waves – thanks be to Dennis Price of Home Improvements by Dennis Price.
We will be reading THE EXPENDABLE MAN by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993).
Time/Place: 16 January 2018 – 8 PM EST.
Location for listening: Radio Fairfax.
Number to call with comments and ideas: 703-560-TALK (8255).
We look forward to the discussion and your comments.
Future of #Computing is actually “Personal”
I just saw this article, written by Muneeb Ali, about the future of computing, computers, and how people use their “personal” computers to manipulate their information themselves: He says users own their data and cloud computing becomes storage instead of “mainframes.”
(image captured from Ali Muneeb’s posting – accessed 16 August 2017)
Seriously worth a read. Thank you Ali Muneeb.
Cheers
#RadioBookClub v. 6 – Parable of the Sower
The time has come once again to get into some words – LIVE – on the radio.
This is our 6th such discussion over the internet waves – thanks be to Dennis Price of Home Improvements by Dennis Price.
We will be reading PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006).
Time/Place: 29 August 2017 – 8 PM EST.
Location for listening: Radio Fairfax.
Number to call with comments and ideas: 703-560-TALK (8255).
We look forward to the discussion and your comments.
Freedom and #Diversity in #Libraries
I read Marshall Breeding’s May 2017 “Library Systems Report 2017” way back when it was published in American Libraries magazine – but something struck me this morning while reading a completely unrelated article on politics/culture in the US…
(accessed from American Libraries magazine, 27 July 2017)
That if, as Breeding states, in the internet age, libraries are moving toward increasingly centralized, for-profit “solutions” for their tools and services – from technical services, authority syncing, reference chat tools and vendors for research materials of all formats (and I think he is correct), then libraries are moving away from their democratic ideals towards arrangements with a more fascist bent.
This trend in libraries of course simply reflects the state of culture at large that works by default with the internet.
But the end result, as I see it, is at least twofold:
- That the number of librarians and interested connected professionals are able to engage less and less in the design and implementation of those technologies across almost every front- This not only affects those people’s ability to engage in deep-dive lifelong learning, but it also means that “design local” as a guiding metaphor is being thrown out the window. Even as libraries’ staff talk about how much they like to serve their patrons/community/users (whatever each library wants to call its local constituents, it is actually less able over time to to design solutions built specifically for those very people.
- That one major result of the above trend as partially commented upon in bullet # 1 is a significant decline in diversity – this even as diversity & inclusion committees and working groups are being formed across libraryland in the United States. We talk about diversity and intellectual freedom in libraries. But we define those ideas in increasingly narrow terms if we do not take into consideration the elaborate tools that might be built if local libraries maintained their own servers, ILSs, and well defined privacy policies that could be much better managed if local libraries (of all types) maintained a higher level of control over their own systems.
The result of this trend migrates thinking & tinkering away from local decision making, policies, technological innovation towards a totalitarian model wherein diversity is discouraged and intellectual freedom is hindered across several important fronts – especially meaningful fronts in the information age.
A few thoughts…
Thank you for reading.
Beginner’s Python
I am officially starting my PYTHON training.
(accessed here, 24 july 2017)
I note two things to begin.
- Python itself can do things based on libraries it already has.
- I have not gotten to tasks that will make use of source material or code external to python itself – this will be a little while yet.
I do, however, have a modest goal to motivate myself: to move a script I currently run with PERL for a monthly task at work to PYTHON – I think it is simple enough to learn – but will prepare me for ever more tasks running with this language.
Next step – install and configure git (github) for work across machines and between windows and linux.*
Wish me luck.
Thank you.
- I am running UbuntuGnome as my preferred distro at home.
