Top 10 Things You Probably Shouldn't Attempt to Do All at Once Especially at This Time of Year

1. Move in the Winter.
2. Move in the Winter -- with you doing much of the work yourself along with your trusty hand-truck.
3. Redesign the website at work while everyone's off on vacation -- and you ought to be schlepping boxes.
4. Embark on a 2nd ambitious web project before the first one is complete (see above).
5. Install that brand new copy of Adobe's 'Master Collection' (CS5) even though you know you could probably do without it for the next week or two.
6. Assess your hardware and software needs for the coming year and try to order everything before the end of this year.
7. Warning! Warning! Your health insurance plan is no longer any good since (1) your primary care physician (PCP) is retiring and besides (2) the medical group he worked for (Rush Medical) is no longer available through your crummy plan (BCBS IL HMO). Either you pick a new plan before the deadline or you'll automatically be enrolled in...
8. Is there a smart phone out there that's caught your eye? Well, if not, you'd better start looking since your 2 year contract with AT&T is about to end and if you don't get a new phone now, AT&T will make you wish you had.
9. Here's an idea: Why not just sit on your butt and try to think of 10 things you should be doing? That way, you'll avoid doing anything at all!
10. And finally, just say 'What the hell', throw a party and invite everyone you know.

Goodbye Cruel World

I think I’m going to jump off a cliff -- the lords of platitude have won: http://tinyurl.com/3yndb62

In a Perfect World (Adobe Acrobat Ed.)

So I'm reading about 'Reembedding Fonts in a PDF':

"In a perfect world, all parties which contribute to a regulatory filing would properly embed fonts. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world . . . there are times when you may need to embed fonts as a post process."

First Snow

Hey, San Diego and Tampa: Eat your hearts out! (Corner of Fullerton & Kenmore, just outside of DePaul's Richardson Library).

Berlin, Oct. 3, 1990

 

I remember the ceremony out in front of the Reichstag very well. The flag was raised and they played 'Deutschland, Deutschland'. It was the culmination of events that had started a year earlier with the opening of the Berlin Wall (11/9/1989) and the upheaval all over Eastern Europe.

This date has always had personal significance for me. I had been in Europe by that time for 10 years (Paris, Rome, Berlin). The reunification of Germany represented a new beginning. I had known the old way: the two Berlins, the Wall, the crazy lovable nut-house ('Bonnie's Ranch') on one side and the police state on the other.

That was coming to an end -- and thank God it was -- but the new beginning prompted me to think about what I was doing and where I wanted to go.

I got into an airplane and flew back to the United States the next day.

Citizen Action/IL Annual Dinner

The good people at Citizen Action/IL had their Annual Dinner at the Chicago Hilton yesterday. Congressman Phil Hare received the Lerner-Egan Award. On the dais, from left to right: IL. Senate President John Cullerton, CFL President Jorge Ramirez, Citizen Action-IL Co-Director Lynda DeLaforgue, IL Governor Pat Quinn, Congressman Phil Hare, Citizen Action-IL Co-Director William McNary and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (partially hidden).

Dem Day at the Illinois State Fair

Photos from the County Chair Breakfast and then the Rally at the State Fair later on.

Humanities -- the Salvation of Technology?

Being an English major, it's nice to read reaffirmations such as this one by Daniel Paul O'Donnell in The Edmonton Journal, called 'Humanities, Not Science, Key to New Web Frontier':

"Engineers and computer scientists are not the only ones who have played important roles in building our new digital economy; students of the humanities and social sciences have played an equally significant role."

It reminds me of the time when two Business librarians asked me what it takes to become a programmer and I replied, a knowledge of English poetry.

That said, I've never been a fan of 'all one way or all the other'. I've seen too many ambitious initiatives go sour because the people implementing them simply lacked the technical chops to figure out whether they were headed in the right direction or whether the product just recommended by their vendors was worth its high price.

So although I still think a knowledge of English poetry is perfect preparation for programming there still is the part about learning the programming -- or the systems development or whatever technical aspect is required. Hearing that you don't need one or the other is probably a sign that you should go elsewhere for advice.

Is Steve Jobs a Role Model for Librarians?

I'm hijacking the title of an editorial in the latest issue of Journal of Academic Librarianship because I believe it illustrates a problem rather than a solution to our approach as librarians to technology.

In the piece, the author describes two approaches to meeting user needs:

...[To] wait for someone to tell you what they want (which assumes they know their needs and the solution possibilities clearly) or to know your customer and the solution possibilities well enough to provide a useful solution that would likely never have occurred to them.

So which, according to the author, should we pick? Why the latter, of course, which the author calls "opportunity-driven" and characteristic of Steve Jobs:

As trained information specialists who are also dealing daily, upfront and personal, with the changing information environment, I believe we are particularly well positioned to develop the insights and perspectives that allow us to see opportunities and possibilities that are not as clear or as obvious to our patrons.

The obvious, almost classic problem with this approach is that it moves the focus from our users to ourselves and while that might make for applause lines at library confabs where we're basically talking to ourselves, it risks ending up with solutions more suited (surprise, surprise) to our own needs rather than to those of our poor 'benighted' users.

The fact is, the library doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sure, we're in the information business but so are a lot of others. When our users come to us, they don't want a "19th-century library" as the author jokes. They want everything online and easy to find -- just like they've come to expect on every other site that seeks to attract their business.

To do this, we don't have to reinvent the experience. We don't need Steve Jobs even if we could afford him. All we need is to do our homework, to keep the focus always on our users, seeing what they prefer and how they prefer to work, melding our own wares to their requirements. Our users have already told us what they want. It's in the usage statistics of the most popular websites. Now all we need are librarians smart enough and sharp enough to listen to what they're saying.

Oy, What a Day

• 8:30a UIC Digital Accessibility Expo (UIC Forum)
• 10:45a Prospective student tour (UIC SCE) - take pictures
• 12:00p Lunch and see 2nd Keynote at UIC DAE (UIC Forum)
• 2:00p Visit the folks at Partnership READ about video
• 3:00p Back at the OAR Office to check pictures of tour
• 5:30p Reference at DePaul
• 9:00p You can go home now...

Eric Meyer on What Makes Web Designers Special

Do people designing for the web need any special skills beyond a knowledge of Photoshop? The question comes up every once and a while. Here's what CSS Guru Eric Meyer has to say:

Designers need to know mark-up. They need to know HTML5. They need to be able to write CSS and understand web layout. And they need to have at least a decent grasp of what JavaScript does. I don't necessarily insist that everyone who ever touches the web be able to write their own web app by hand, but designers should understand how JavaScript works.

There are a lot of people who call themselves web designers who are really just designers who put their designs on the web. And there's nothing wrong with being just a designer. But they're not necessarily web designers. They're visual designers. There's a difference.

Springtime at UIC

It's that precious moment in Chicago when the trees start to bloom.

Net Neutrality Is Internet Freedom

What Fred said...

Place I Was Born in Now Up for Sale -- $2.6 Mil (Marked Down from $3.1)

Daddy had good tastes. The apartment at 155 W. Burton Pl. was his 'bachelor pad', designed by friend Sol Kogen, where he lived in the Fifties. At the time, he was owner of United Film & Recording Studio on Erie & St. Clair and producer/announcer of the German-language radio show, The Germania Broadcast.

I remember seeing a short film of the place. It was a duplex with my mother and grandmother waving from the 2nd floor. That's about all I remember -- by the time I was two we had already moved further north to Barry Ave. near Pine Grove. Note on the Kogens: One of the Kogen brothers was our first pediatrician. Another was our dentist.

[h/t mommy]

Happy 13th Birthday, WebDesign-L

"Happy 13th Birthday, WebDesign-L" -- that's how "List Mom" Steven Champeon titled his post reminding us that the hallowed Listserv for web designers and web developers that originally started way back in 1997 is now celebrating its 13th Birthday.

As he remarks, "the Web was smaller and the field of Web design smaller still". Anyone with even a passing interest in web development was a member of that list. That's where the original arguments about design, usability, web techniques and web standards were waged. Our skills and knowledge have progressed infinitely since then but part of the learning process was helped immeasurably by the community created on that ListServ. The good news is, that it's still going strong today.

The Joys of Content Management - In the Business of Dramatic Improvement

The best definition of a trade or skill that I can think of is being able, through your 'expertise', to make a significant improvement either in people's lives or in how they get things done. This applies to many things; it even applies to Content Management.

I remember the website I did for a relatively large non-profit organization. The original site consisted of nothing but a drab collection of web links and PDF files. It didn't take much work to automate the site and in that way to fundamentally change how people in that organization approached online content -- to the extent that the energy and dynamism of their activities "on the ground" finally were reflected in their web presence as well.

I was reminded of this again today at UIC. A number of people from Classroom Scheduling were looking at an application I had put together for students to find what room their final exam would be in (see page here). Since it's getting close to the end of the Semester, something like this might be kind of handy.

The demo went well. I had promised that the application would be easy as hell to maintain and it was. But what really impressed them were the feeds. These were formatted not as RSS files but as MS Word and Excel files (thank you, Views Bonus Pack module). This meant that every time they had an edit, they no longer had to distribute or print out for the entire University a completely new Word or Excel file. They could just point to the feed which like all feeds is updated on-the-fly. This they really liked!

Anyway, the time it had taken me to put this feature together wasn't much. In fact, the whole project didn't take me more than a day or two. So what's most gratifying then is the positive effect it produced in others -- almost sinfully out of proportion to the amount of effort I put into it. And that's a good thing!

Current Cites for March 2010

Current Cites for March 2010 is out! You can find the issue here...

Unfortunately, I missed the deadline by a mere few seconds so the following review of the article, "Engineering the Web's Third Decade" will have to wait till next month's issue. Here's a sneak-peek:

As we enter the Internet's 'Third Decade', it's only natural to speculate on what 'Web 3.0' will look like. One of the characteristics, at least judging by this article, will be a healthy dose of 'modesty'. Development will be "more evolutionary than revolutionary". We can expect a "more dynamic, pervasive, and perhaps even more human experience". The focus will be on semantic mark-up and how this can be used to bring together an unprecedented amount of data, fashioned specifically for the particular needs of the individual user. Probably more attention could have been paid in the article to the role of individuals not simply as consumers of content but as creators. That said, it presents an interesting portrait of the work and thinking behind the much anticipated 'third generation Web'.

Live-Blogging the Empty Library

10:30am: What do you do as a reference librarian when you're the only one who showed up for work (hello Circulation)?

11:00am: The person supposed to be at Circulation just called saying he was stuck at the Airport in Minneapolis.

11:26am: Problem: A student came by wanting to charge out a book. I explained we didn't have anyone with access to the system. He said he'd come back later in the day.

11:35am: A female student wants to make some copies. Problem is, the copy room is normally opened by whoever opens up at Circ -- and as the world now knows, that person is trapped at the Airport in Minneapolis.

11:42am: The security guy came over to open the copy room. He says he's going to Minneapolis next week. Is there a pattern emerging here?

11:46am: Yea, hallelujah! Jim the Circ. person just came in. He's the back-up guy at Circulation. We have lift-off.

Library Database Pages & Research Guides Using Drupal

Way too long ago -- about a 100 years ago -- I asked people on the Drupal4Lib ListServ to send in links to their Database page(s) or Research/Subject guides that use Drupal.

I got a couple of very good responses which I've now finally posted as a Wiki Page on the Drupal Library Group: http://groups.drupal.org/node/58423

I just sent a follow-up message to the Drupal4Lib ListServ asking people to have a look and to post their own pages if they want.

I guess the goal is to develop an idea of just what the possibilities are using Drupal in this way.

Bill Clinton without Health Insurance

We're all relieved to know that Bubba's going to be okay but I couldn't help notice that the guy's only 63. That's still two years till Medicare kicks in. Imagine if he didn't have health insurance.

Pass. The. Damn. Bill. Now.