Current Cites for September 2013 is out! You can find the issue here...
Roy has got the latest version of Current Cites up. I wrote about an interesting article that looked at how librarians can appear more "approachable" to patrons by smiling and looking up. It's something I think about every time I'm at the Reference Desk waiting for students to drop by.
File this under the 'Usual Disruption': Media types are dying, just dying, to jump from one technology to the other -- I mean, otherwise what do they have to talk about? In this episode, the usual disrupters are so hell bent on declaring email dead that they don't bother to consider an obvious possibility -- that maybe little Johnny or Suzie don't use their college-supplied email accounts because they're already using their own Gmail or Outlook accounts. Yeah, I know, common sense -- the ultimate disruption:
Technology and the College Generation
Regarded as too slow, e-mail is barely a second thought for college students, who prefer texting. But that sets them up for trouble with their professors.
UPDATE (9/29): P.S. Surveyed the student worker in today at the library. She says she uses email -- Yahoo -- all the time (since 5th grade). So that settles it: NYT article is totally clueless.
Old pal, Tony Millionaire, best known as the illustrator of Maakies, adds me to one of his comic strips this month. He portrays me singing 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' -- in German -- at a concert in either Munich or West Berlin at sometime in the mid-Eighties. I can't exactly recall the episode but he follows up (offline) with a description of my attire:
...[Y]ou had a potato sack on your head and shoulders with a hole for your mouth.
You can see the complete comic strip in all its original glory here:
https://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/9df6/maakies.jpg
Part of the Saturday Crew at DePaul on the first week of the new school Year.
First day of the New School Year (Fall 2013) at UIC. Kind of warm this week.
We've been moved up to the 2nd floor while they're remodeling the first floor. The seat is probably no higher than normal but for some reason -- maybe because we're bang up against the main entryway or because the desk is smaller and more like a music stand -- it seems like a perch to me. Just as well. We'll be back downstairs in a couple of weeks.
This Week in Library of Congress Subject Headings: 'Pewter as an Investment'. Who knew?
Draft BBC Mobile Accessibility Standards and Guidelines:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Accessibility-Mobile-Apps
Interesting that they worked with a firm from "the States" (USA! USA!). A summary of the guidelines can be found here...
Interesting points include:
h/t .net magazine
Peter Merholz serves up a welcomed reality check amid all the hoopla of 'mobile first':
My concern with "mobile first" is that we'll mistake that for "mobile only" (the way that the Web was seen as the end-all be-all for quite a while) and not appreciate just what our customers are actually doing, nor prepare ourselves for what's next.
I'll be the first to admit, proudly in fact, that 'responsive web design' was clearly the right way to go. We had multiple devices and we needed some coherent way of accommodating them.
But I've never been able to comprehend why this required (at least among some) a second -- and to my mind completely unrelated -- step, namely that of having to start your design at the level of the least capable device (i.e. mobile) especially since 'least capable' doesn't necessarily mean 'least complicated'. You might as well have told people back in the old days, 'design for telnet' -- 'telnet first'!
Taking the Blue line home from O'Hare I couldn't resist getting off at Western Ave. which put me within a couple of blocks of Honey 1 BBQ. It was a Sunday and they weren't going to be open for long but I had just enough time to order (and partially devour) an extra-large order of rib tips. Mama mia, Chicago has its advantages!
Okay, they say this happens every time but maybe 19 people signed up for the event -- and 67 showed up. I'd say it was 'standing room only' except that maybe a dozen people were sitting on the carpet in the central aisle. People were standing alongside all the walls and needless to say there wasn't a free chair in the place.
Even with that number of people, we went from person to person, each telling us his or her name and institution. We had a good mix of academic, public and special libraries. This variety showed up repeatedly in the quality of the discussion.
Nina started things off with a presentation of the new Arapahoe Library District website. We next moved to an open discussion on everything from Drupal's compatibility with repository software such as Islandora to the possibilities of Drupal replacing the ILS entirely. One theme that manifested itself through the course of the discussion was the strong desire to collaborate more on projects. Possible vehicles for this include the Drupal Library Group, the Drupal4Lib ListServ and of course, the Drupal4Lib LITA IG.
Clearly we could have gone another hour but 60 minutes was all we had. People were encouraged to continue the discussions throughout the day and also, at our Drupal4Lib IG Meeting at ALA Chicago on June 30 (10:30a-11:30a).
I know a couple of library people are going to DrupalCon in Portland in a week or two.
Looks to me like a great opportunity to get together and talk shop. So how about if we organize a Drupal4Lib BoF -- maybe on the Wednesday (5/22) sometime mid-day or in the early afternoon?
Topics could be open or suggested ahead of time. People could present projects they're working on, ask whatever questions they want. It'd be a great time!
If you've got a suggestion, either email me back or leave a comment here.
Is this a good general time to meet? Do you have a topic you'd want to suggest?
Any feedback would be appreciated! And hope to see you in Portland!
(UPDATE1): I set up a poll at the Drupal Library Group asking people what timeslot they prefer:
Poll: Drupal4Lib BoF - 10:45a-12p or 3:15p-4:30p? http://groups.drupal.org/node/297483
(UPDATE2): Okay, '10:45a-12p' wins. Here's a link to the event on the Drupal Library Group:
Library BoF at DrupalCon Portland (5/22, 10:45a-12p) http://groups.drupal.org/node/297878
From a short cursory look at some of the proposed sessions, in no particular order:
I may have missed something so feel free to add.
I swear if I get another one of these as a design proposal for the main page of a website, I'm going to sue Microsoft for crimes against usability. (P.S. Why Microsoft? Hint...)
Slides from the presentation I gave today (larger version here). A couple people came up afterwards and said it had inspired them to go off and try it themselves.
So because someone on the blog The Scholarly Kitchen writes a post or two criticizing publisher Edwin Mellen Press (EMP), EMP sends their lawyer after the blog with the equivalent of a 'cease-and-desist' letter -- not just to the blog but to a person who left a comment on one of the offending posts. Huh?
I know diddly-squat about Edwin Mellen Press and even less about the quality of their work but this way of reacting to criticism does nothing but lend credibility to the arguments of their detractors.
The two offending posts have since been removed but both are still available thanks to online archival services (h/t Gary Price):
Matt Enis from Library Journal writes about the 'Fail4Lib pre-conference workshop' at this year's Code4Lib Conference where people talked about failed or problematic projects and the lessons they learned.
As I wrote in comments to the piece, I find the greatest cause of failed projects to be those based on received wisdom. Let’s call it, the ‘Wrong Bandwagon Effect’. Some mis-identified trend is taken up and you can’t argue against it because “everyone knows” (i.e. received wisdom) that it's the way of the future. Everyone knows! Only "everyone" never seems to include the end-user. But that doesn't matter since before you know it, yet another mis-identified trend pops up and nothing says ‘cutting edge’ like jumping from one of these trends to the other. (Classic example.)
This isn’t an argument against innovation. Rather it’s an argument against not doing one’s homework, of coasting along without anyone ever looking back and asking, what’s the guru's record so far?
UPDATE (3/28/2013): Here's an even better, not to mention more contemporary example: link ...
I'm kind of pooped having spent a fun morning at Dominican University with the "Chicagoland Drupal in Libraries" group. I then hustled back to UIC (thanks Gwen for the lift!) where I had the usual list of web editing chores. I also had enough time to upload this baby: http://admissions.uic.edu [6/24/2012]
This marks the final phase of a redesign that I've been working on since the beginning of the year -- spurred on by two requirements: 1) fresh new look 2) gots to work on mobile
Happily, 'responsive web design' came along right at the time I was tackling this project. (What's 'responsive design' you ask? When looking at the above page, slowly make the window more narrow. Then go back out. That's responsive design.)
Anyway, I still had to do the 'landing pages'. This one, the Admissions page, is the first of four.
But back to my itinerary: At around 5:15pm, I left UIC and headed over to DePaul for a couple of hours of 'Fun @ the Reference Desk'. It was a relatively quiet night. In Summer, Reference closes an hour earlier (i.e. at 8pm instead of 9pm) so I made it back home before 9pm.
In any case, as I said, long day -- productive just the same.
[Historical note: a certain other unit claimed it was the first to launch a responsive site. Yeah right...]
Party in Dahlem! With Jesse Jackson! The moment we heard that, we headed straight to the location -- a lefty social center for students. Unfortunately what Jackson forgot to mention -- probably because he didn't know -- was that they were charging at the door! Charging at the door? Impossible! So instead of going in, we waited. Finally a car arrived and Jesse Jackson got out. "Jesse," I said, running over to him, "I'm from Chicago and they won't let me in!"
He turned to me. "You're from Chicago", he asked. "Come with me!"
We walked arm-in-arm into the place. I headed straight to the liquor table. I filled up my glass and then sauntered back to the entrance to wave to my companions who were still outside. I motioned to the doorman to let them in. Having just walked in arm-in-arm with Jesse Jackson, the doorman assumed that I had a certain elevated degree of mojo -- so he let my friends in.
I reminded Jesse of this episode when I saw him in Milwaukee. He was in good spirits and laughed.
The 9th Congressional District Dems held a kick-off rally in Evanston today. Great chance to see a whole bunch of old friends -- including Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky who's speaking to the audience way in the back of this photo.
We worked together to find a few books he needed. I was on the phone AND doing chat reference when he came back -- so he switched to handwritten communications.
In the middle of 'project hell' as a colleague put it, but why let that stop me from giving a talk on Google Analytics at the UIC Webmasters Brownbag next week? (Actually it was the talk I was supposed to give last February when I blew it away in favor of talking about Responsive Design).
The Next Chapter of Responsive Web Design
By John Yuda on April 27, 2012
For designs to be truly responsive, we need to move beyond flexible grids and media queries. John Yuda outlines five building blocks for the future of RWD
I notice that this is .net magazine's third article/post on responsive web design in as many days. I think an interesting follow-up would be something along the lines of 'the next chapter of responsive web design' -- from the perspective of visual design -- an aspect that's oftentimes forgotten in the rush to praise, for example, the Boston Globe site which if you ask me is visually rather bland and unexceptional.
We already know there are other sites that are 'responsive' and still appealing -- so one doesn't rule out the other (unless we want it to).
I got a stern warning from Facebook telling me that I might be "blocked from commenting on public posts" if I went through with posting the following strong words on a post originally by Tony ('Maakies') Millionaire about chickens being found with caffeine in their feathers:
As someone who in a former life actually was a chicken, I'd like to strongly object to the arrogant assumption by pampered human beings with double vowels in their names that chickens don't appreciate coffee. We do! In fact, it's common knowledge that coffee beans were first plucked out of the soil by enterprising chickens -- long before humans even stopped swinging in trees.
Note to self: when uploading a file creating a whole bunch of new accounts for your content management system, remember to include passwords along with usernames, or frankly there might be one or two people who can't log in. Oops.
You can't tell by the photo but there were around 50-60 people at the event -- all levels from programmers to newbies. There was free beer and pizza -- so you know I had a good time. To sum up, it's just plain interesting to see what's happening in the 'community'. Different perspectives are great -- invigorating even.
Got a call from a student wanting to research a topic in marketing. I coached her through finding the right database for her subject and only after we had found a number of promising articles did she mention that some of the pdf files were giving her problems -- using her screen-reader. I can imagine what a mess some of these pdf files are for someone with a screen-reader. I showed her how to look for other versions (i.e. text versions). Also, the Disability Office will convert the PDFs to MS Word which is a big help.
It's bad enough you see these things all over the place -- usually without any indication of what they're going to do. Here, not only do you have the usual enigma but you're required to choose your operating system before taking the plunge.
Midterms -- computer labs are full, plenty of students needing help finding articles. Subjects ranging from Biology to Original Sin.
I came upon of slew of emails I had written while at NYU in the mid-to-late 90's. I hadn't seen them for years. Here's one from 1997. In it, I'm telling the Grad Adviser from NYU's History Dept. that I'm dumping him in favor of the far more attractive "Multimedia" Program at NYU's 'Interactive Telecommunications Program" (ITP):
Dear Mr. W*:
You were assigned as my adviser, so I guess you're the one to whom I should address this message.
The gist of it is that I am a new grad student in the History department. Over the summer however I had a moment of epiphany while taking an intense course in multimedia. It was something I found intensely rewarding and when the course ended (a week ago, by the way) I felt like a kid at the amusement park when a really good ride is over. In other words, I wanted it to continue or at least for me to pursue something similar. Since then, I heard that Tisch offered a program in this area called the Interactive Telecommunications Program. So I ran over there and spoke with a Mr. G* who told me to come back on Friday, Aug. 29.
I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen on Friday except I think he may be able to sign me up for two courses. I won't be an official student there of course since I've succeeded in missing every deadline for application possible and will have to wait till next year to be officially entered into the program.
I know this is rather pathetic--much like being engaged to be married and then falling in love with another woman. It's particularly awkward since I don't know exactly what I am supposed to do or how to go about doing it other than I want to somehow be involved with that program at Tisch. After I meet with Mr. G* again on Friday, I'm sure I'll have a clearer idea.
Sincerely, LEO
Okay, so here are the slides from my presentation on Responsive Web Design that I gave today at the UIC Webmasters Brownbag. It's not the longest thing in the world -- I was only supposed to talk for 30 minutes but ended up going the whole hour. The group was great -- very engaged and asking a whole lot of good questions.
UIC Web Professionals,
Join us for a discussion about Responsive Web Design on Thursday, February 2, noon - 1 p.m. Leo Klein, Coordinator for Web Communications in the Office of Admissions and Records, will discuss Responsive Web Design as a significant development in how we approach web design -- what's got us to this point, the need to design for various platforms from PCs to tablets and smartphones. The session will include discussion of key topics including Media Queries and Mobile First.
Audience: all levels. Also, experience and thoughts from others on this subject is encouraged and highly appreciated.
Not much fun at the moment. Working on a big web design project (with a deadline).
Ethan Marcotte on the inadvisability of setting up a purely mobile site:
Current Cites for November 2011 is out! You can find the issue here...
I've got two 'cites' this month: one on Libraries moving to Drupal and another on the use (or non-use as the case may be) of Library Subject Guides by college students.
Can it be called research when these are the results?
"The analysis revealed that Facebook offers a dynamic environment for academic libraries to cultivate relationships with students. Libraries present information through status messages which suggest who they are and what they do. In addition to being informational, libraries attempt to engage and establish rapport with students through Facebook. The university setting not only creates a context for messages, but also offers a mutual set of experiences and values shared by libraries and students."
Josh Marshall, publisher of Talking Points Memo, looks at traffic on his site and points to the still modest but continually increasing share that 'mobile' is taking:
"The additional wrinkle here is that 77% of that mobile traffic you see in the chart is from iOS devices, i.e., iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc. So give or take, around 40% of the visits to TPM come from computers or devices that use an operating system built by Apple. Compare that to 20% only 5 years ago."
The question is, is this really mobile? iPads for example are far more likely to be connected via wireless rather than through a phone company and screen-wise, it's a whole different user-experience. For purposes of analysis, I think it'd be far more helpful -- in fact, increasingly so -- to approach the data as 'mobile' AND 'tablet'.
Everyone's assuming, for this reason, that Flash's days are numbered. And well they may be, in which case, there's no better time to extol its virtues -- particularly the contribution it's made to our online world -- than now.
It's important to remember that before the Web, most communication online was largely through command line input. In fact, one of the great 'side' achievements of the WWW was that it liberated us from this tyranny, giving us a 'graphical user interface' instead. In the library world, this was the difference between DIALOG which only a consultant could make head or tail of and current versions of Ebsco or Proquest.
Flash (and its predecessor, Shockwave) took this a step further by introducing a far higher level of interactivity. It allowed us to click on things, enlarge them, drag them across the browser window. It allowed us to better coordinate various types of media -- images, audio and video -- into a unified user experience. In fact, it did this with video so well that many people nowadays think of Flash as primarily a video delivery system.
And maybe it is, or was. Things move on. What we used to do in Flash, we're slowly being able to accomplish using Javascript, CSS and eventually HTML5. That's the path -- but it was Flash that showed us the way.
The Dominick's at Fullerton and Sheffield had signs on all the entryways saying, 'Sorry, No Masks Allowed in Store!"
Here we go again. Everyone's talking about the following comment by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia:
[Chicago's Deep Dish Pizza is] ... "very tasty ... but it should not be called ‘pizza.’ It should be called ‘a tomato pie.’ Real pizza is Neapolitan. It is thin. It is chewy and crispy, OK?”
Here's the third report I've come across, this time in the Chicago Sun-Times.
This is a complete myth based on ignorance of what qualifies as 'pizza' in Italy. It's not just thin crust! Naturally that's what you get if you only go to sit-down pizzerias but there are also places, particularly in Rome or Naples, called 'Pizza Rustica' which are walk-in carry-out places where you can order elaborate thick-crush pizzas that put our Deep Dish variety practically to shame. These are the forerunner of Deep Dish! It's there for anyone to go and see.
Another example is 'Pizza Bianca' which is a staple of good Italian breakfasts -- served up practically at every Cafe/Bar in the country: a totally plain very thick crust which is filled with cheese and other delicious things and then toasted and served crispy hot along with your cup of cappuccino. Again, a harbinger of Deep Dish.
So I'm sorry, but this really is a sort of idiot test: if someone doesn't like Deep Dish or claims it's not Italian, bingo, they win the Bozo Award!
Today was a big day. I started it off at MPOW with a meeting at 9am sharp. At noon I left for Rosemont and the Illinois Library Association Conference. They were featuring not only a free pass to get in to see the exhibits but a free lunch as well: carved roast beef and turkey along with two kinds of pasta and either a tomato or cream sauce. Heaven! Following a quick stop home, I next headed downtown for the monthly meeting of the Chicago Drupal Meetup Group. The meeting this month was starting early because they had three people giving presentations instead of the usual 2. One was on the switch to Drupal over at the Field Museum.
We've been here before -- from a usability study looking at how students use (or don't use as the case may be) various library database pages:
"In 2006, Steve Krug said internet users were mostly looking for something clickable to click on; BGSU students, by contrast, often looked for a search box to search in. When a search was unsuccessful, instead of retooling it, the student looked for a different search box and tried the same search again. The students in the study tried to change the subset of information they were searching, not the search they had already decided was the best one."
Okay, so the next logical question might be, is this a student preference or is there something about the design of the website that drives them to it? Maybe yes, maybe no but considering the effort we put into all of this, it's certainly worth testing.
But hark! A bit further down in the same study -- apparently vendor consolidation will save the day:
"Therefore, if we want students to use a wider range of our resources, it is crucial that we teach them to recognize the resources that will be useful for them. As the brand diversity of our resources narrows, vendors and publishers merge, and vendors market more and more to end users, this strategy may become easier to adopt."
Everyone has their own story about 9/11; here's mine.
I was living on 12th St. between Avenues A & B in lower Manhattan. That day, a Tuesday, was like any normal work day. I was getting up, listening to the radio. Suddenly reports started coming in of an airplane crashing into one of the towers at the World Trade Center.
How could this have happened? I had just been there on the preceding Saturday if only to use the bathroom in the basement. The twin towers were a prominent fixture in the skyline whenever I looked south. How could something like this have happened?
Speculation on WNYC, the radio station I was listening to, ran the gamut from pilot error to intentional attack. One way or the other it was still too early to tell. Then the second plane hit and all doubt was put to rest.
I left the apartment stunned.
As I walked up 1st Ave., I ran into people equally as stunned. Many stared in my direction or beyond me further down the street. One woman just leaned against the wall crying. She didn't move or go anywhere. All she did was look down the street. I turned my head to see what she was looking at and it dawned on me: everything I was feeling up to now was based on what I had heard on the radio but there behind me in the distance, as visible in the skyline as always, were the actual towers, only now burning and giving off huge plumes of smoke.
It's this association -- the association with the literal horror of what I had only been hearing about -- that I'll never forget.
And what to do? The only thing I could think of was to go to work and in a sense 'report for duty'. Not that there was that much to do once I arrived. For most of the day, I followed the news as best I could. On occasion the Internet would go down. In lower Manhattan, the subways were shut down so at one point thousands and thousands of people flooded the streets, all walking north, trying to get home.
Next day pretty much everything shut down. You couldn't get south of 14th St without an I.D. due to a police cordon. Getting south of Houston was unthinkable. I went to Washington Sq. and Union Sq. Something stood out that seemed to exemplify the utter tragedy of this event -- something I couldn't find links to online which meant quite possibly that few outside of New York were aware of it. I posted the following comment on the popular group blog at the time, Metafilter:
"To Those Not in New York City: You can walk down the streets of Manhattan and see handbills taped to the streetlights with the pictures of loved ones, their names, a sentence saying they were last seen in one of the WTC towers and, lastly, contact information just in case anyone has seen them. (I don't have a link for this but this describes the one I saw at Lafayette and Astor)."
It was very quiet in Manhattan. It would remain so for many weeks to come.
Picture of your's truly at the Ref Desk on my first day at least of Fall Quarter 2011. Lots of questions about whether we have textbooks for classes (generally we don't). Plus to add to the excitement, our Chat Reference pooped out for a couple of hours.
Last but not least, Are These Fighting Words? -- a shot of the flavors available at the Bean Coffee Stand at DePaul including the (controversial) "Decaf Librarian's Blend".
Actually I think it's move-in weekend. The quarter doesn't start till next Tuesday but people are moving in already. I saw one guy with this huge large-screen tv maybe 5' x 6' that probably cost a fortune in the 1990s. It's strange to think he's moving that monster into his dorm.
P.S. The sign says,
"LOADING ZONE: Please limit your time in this space to 20 minutes so that other students can move in. Thank you."
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."
