Head Tale - Yet Another Librarian's Blog

I don't know if I've had a day in the last six-plus months where library school didn't occupy my mind at least partly - either becasue I was thinking about it heavily or it was lurking in the back of my mind.

Today was close though. I have no pressing assignments so I went down to Home County Folk Fest and met my "co-birthday" colleague, Marco and bumped into Florence as well. We all went for a drink at a nearby pub since there was a brief rain then back over to listen to music and wander the Festival site when the rain stopped. Marco mentioned he was meeting some classmates who'd gone to a film at the Rainbow so after maybe a couple hours at the Folk Fest, we went to the Rock Water Grille and sat and visited for maybe another two hours.

So how can I say that it was a day without thoughts of library school when my entire day was basically spent hanging out with library school students talking about library school-related topics? I don't know - I've only got three big projects (and a few fairly small ones) left to complete in the next three weeks which is a pretty light load really. In some ways (although I can't let myself think this too much) it feels like the semester is over already. And in a weird way, today even felt like library school was over too - sitting and talking to first-termers about which classes are good, which profs are good, tips about co-op and housing and so on.

I had a flashback to January/February when every week saw me "sitting at the feet" of Sabina and David and Mike and Melissa, taking in their thoughts and comments about the program in a similar fashion. It's kind of cool that this oral history gets handed down like this but also unfortunate too since there are a lot of people who might miss out because they don't mix with people in upper terms as much or whatever. I guess the information filters out - just like I did with everything that people told me, the first-termers today will talk to their classmates over the next week or two and pass along the tidbits that resonated. But it's too bad there isn't a central repository so that all this stuff is available in one spot and people could consult it as needed.

I guess that's part of what I see this blog as - a way for students who are new to the program (who haven't started or are in first-term) to get a sense of the stuff they don't tell you - mainly just the day-to-day flow of things, a few examples of assignments (I've put up a few things including my Statement of Intent already and will probably put up more when I get a chance), some tips and suggestions of things that have worked for me (or just as often, the things that were already passed on to me by others.)

I know it's useful. It's funny to think how this blog has grown - it started being read by classmates who saw it when I did it for a 505 project. Then by other students in the program. Then I heard that some profs and staff read it. Then I found out that some alumni read it.

The latest "plateau" is that I got an e-mail from a student who's been accepted here for a September start and found my blog while looking for information about the program. She said "your blog has been a great resource for me in making my final decision about which program to choose, so i owe you a few beers, at least, in the fall."

Very cool (and if FIMS wants to give me a discount on my tuition for next semester for helping to recruit people, I wouldn't turn that down!) The unfortunate thing is that she was also writing to see if I had any tips about finding housing outside of the usual channels (she knew about the Western Housing board for instance.) I copied all of the links on the Student Council intranet site and told her of a couple other things she might try but again, my frustration at the fact that the Student Council web site is housed on the department Intranet was reinforced. Re-reinforced.

I'm quite close to a guy who's on Student Council next term so maybe he can help the Council come up with a way to get this information out to the people who need it in a better fashion.

That's about it. If you're like me and are finding yourself with more free time than usual as the semester comes to a close, you can't do better than Stylus' magazine's list of the Top 100 Music Videos of All-time - although they made one mistake - #2 should be #1. And man, do I love YouTube. (via Metafilter)

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A Failed Experiment? 2.0

by Jason on Sun 23 Jul 2006 02:19 PM EDT

Overnight, one other person voted for deletion of the Spirit of Librarianship article I put on Wikipedia as well. So now it's four votes to delete, none to keep and so if you're going to look at the original article, you should do it soon since I'm not sure if it'll exist "behind-the-scenes" once it's deleted.

Let's summarize...
REASONS FOR DELETION
- "Internal award within a University faculty"
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information
- possible Vanity page
- not (encyclopedically) notable (three votes including one comment that it belongs on the University server"

(MY) REASONS WHY IT SHOULDN'T BE DELETED
- there's basically unlimited space on the site

- there are small villages in rural England that probably have less people than have been nominated for this award over the years yet they have stub entries of a single line at least (my SoL page had three sections, historical background, a description of the process and a photo)

- there are entries for things like reality TV shows and celebrities that are also inconsequential to most people. But because they're widely known via their media exposure, articles about these things aren't challenged and instead are considered "notable". As an experiment, I created a page for a contestant on a current reality show and as of this typing, it hasn't been challenged in any way.

- although it would seem that a page for the Spirit of Librarianship Award would have a very limited audience, there is potential that someone, somewhere, someday might find the information useful (ie. students at another library school wanting to set-up a similar award.) As a librarian, I always think of the anecdote from a Nicolas Basbanes book about a researcher at Harvard who finds the perfect book for the project he's working on. He opens it up and sees that it was purchased in 1893 and based on the paper "date due slip" sleeve inside the cover, sees that it has apparently not been checked out once since then. He comments to the librarian on this and says "I wonder who the librarian purchased this book for, nearly 100 years ago?" The librarian serving him that day replies, "Why, for you, of course." Doesn't that sum up librarianship right there?

- they have pages for library-orientated awards (though this one has a connection to ALA and Harvard so I guess that makes it more notable. But again, how do you decide that? At least SoL doesn't have big gaps of 2-3 years where it wasn't awarded unlike the one I link to. That says something as well, I think.)

- ...and the most important reason why I think it should be kept. Wikipedia has a stated goal, expressed many times by its founder Jimmy Wales, of capturing the "sum of all human knowledge". You can't do this if you delete articles. Wikipedia's guidelines say they don't want entries about "your neighbour's dog" but I think they're erring on the side of too much caution when they delete legitimate entries like this one. They say too many non-notable entries will clog or confuse the site but I don't think that's really the case at all.

Some library students (the ones who like cataloguing

) might fall on the side of deleting it to help maintain "bibliographic control" or something. But I'm a library student who's a big fan of the principle: "maximize access to information" (tm - Elisabeth Davies) so I really think articles like this one should be kept, even if they don't meet the strictest interpretation of Wikipedia's guidelines. Rules are rules but there should always be room to bend them, especially when it makes you err on the side of inclusiveness.

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