Current Cites for August 2011

 

Current Cites for August 2011 is out! You can find the issue here... [see also the CurrentCites website]

I wrote about an issue of Libraries & the Cultural Record that looked at libraries during the Depression and contains this rather depressing report on the state of the Chicago Public Library by its Chief Librarian at the time:

"We are afflicted by the worst financial hardship we have ever suffered.... We have bought no books for eight months, the magazine subscriptions for 1932 were cancelled."

It's not the People that are Stupid, It's the System!

Okay, I've got way too many things on my plate at the moment to go through this report, "Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project" but Sarah Kessler in a write-up for Mashable sums it up thusly:

"Students in a two-year ethnographic study referred to Google more than any database when discussing their research habits. But ironically, say the study’s authors, they weren’t very good at using it."

Now, as a librarian and lifelong user of Google, I know you can limit it (kind of) by date or content type (eg book, article, image) plus a thousand other fancy things using a minus sign ('-') or quotes, etc. but should requiring knowing these things always -- or ideally -- be the ticket of entry? Doesn't sound very Google-ly to me.

Kessler in the Mashable write-up quotes one student:

"I know there are books but I don’t really know how to find them. Really the only thing I know how to do is go to Google and type in what I’m looking for."

My reaction was, I dunno. Sounds more to me like 'system fail' rather than 'people fail'. Ideally all that user should have to do is go to Google and type in what he or she is looking for. That at least is what I'd consider the 'Holy Grail'.

1st Day - UIC Fall 2011

Yippie! The students are back!

NY Times ArtsBeat Blog: Stew in Africa: A Long Time Coming

"Pathetic Eurocentric Negro!" That's how Stew, an old pal of mine from my Berlin days begins an account of his first trip ever to Africa. He's working as one of the creative advisers for a program in Kenya that coaches upcoming African theater people. He's also agreed to share his experiences by posting regularly on the New York Times' ArtsBeat Blog. Stew was the lead guitarist of a good-time band we had in Berlin called 'The Wonderful Guise'. Tony Millionaire was also a member of the group. Anyway, it's good to see Stew maintaining the spirit of those free-for-all wild times in passages like this:

The workshop I'm giving on Manda will probably consist of a song by song analysis of the Rolling Stones 1966 release "Between the Buttons" which I'll compare and contrast with "King Lear," even though I've never read "King Lear" and I'm almost certain absolutely no connection between the two works actually exists. But Sundance can handle this sort of thing.

You can read the whole post here...