The lunar landing in 1969 -- I remember it well. We were kids hanging out at Camp McCormick in Eagle River, Wisc. There in the darkness, under a star-lit sky, sitting on a hill overlooking the pine forests and lakes and streams of northern Wisconsin's 'Land O'Lakes', we listened on our portable radio -- TV not being allowed in summer camp -- as the Apollo 11 astronauts made their landing. When it happened and Armstrong said those famous words, we jumped up and cheered.
Suggested alternatives to 'UICNursing' courtesy of YouTube (i.e. Google).
"They didn't want to lose control of their local library."
"Few people try to or want to use tablets like laptops, save for when they feel like they have to justify the cost and get every last inch of mileage out of it."
"I don’t want a laptop. I don’t want a tablet. I want a tablet-shaped laptop-looking thing with a snap-on keyboard and a kickstand and a 3:2 screen and an Intel Core processor and a stylus and it has to run full Windows. Bueno?"
(Discussion precipitated by Microsoft's recent release of the Surface Pro 3.)
Suburbanite Economist (4/30/1958):
"United Film and Recording Studio has been awarded the production of a full length motion picture on the subject of rehabilitation of the men- tally ill, by the State of Illinois. William L. Klein, owner of the Chicago studio expects the awarding of this contract to pave the way to promote Chicago as an able film capital. He says, "Chicago has the manpower and facilities to do a supreme job and does not have to take a back seat as far as New York or Hollywood is concerned." Hear! Hear! Hear! (Suburbanite Economist, 4/30/1958, p20.)
Current Cites for March 2014 is out! You can find the issue here...
I wrote about an article that looked at the various iterations of the library home page at UNLV down through the ages (i.e. 1996-2012): "Tracking Changes: One Library's Homepage Over Time - Findings from Usability Testing and Reflections on Staffing", Journal of Web Librarianship 8(1)(2014): 23-47.
Last snowfall of the year? One can only hope. Anyway, enjoy it while it lasts, as they say. [Link to larger photo...]
Google Analytics recently added a "Demographics and Interests" feature to its set of tools measuring website traffic. They amass this data basically by what kinds of searches you do, your Google+ account, the sites you click on, etc. To see how accurate a picture it has drawn of you, click the following link (updated):
https://myadcenter.google.com/?hl=en&sasb=true
UX Quote of the Day*:
"The designers of the Phelps farm tractor in 1901 based their interface on a metaphor with the interface for the familiar horse: farmers used reins to control the tractor. The tractor was steered by pulling on the appropriate rein, both reins were loosened to go forward and pulled back to stop, and pulling back harder on the reins caused the tractor to back up."*
The authors go on to say:
"It’s clear in hindsight that this was a dead end, and automobiles have developed their own user interfaces without metaphors based on earlier technologies."
*Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen. 1996. The Anti-Mac interface. Commun. ACM 39, 8 (August 1996), 70-82. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/232014.232032
"High speed" Internet provider AT&T tells me that my connection speed sucks but instead of trying to fix it, they're throwing in the towel and lowering my monthly rate.
"About Your AT&T High Speed Internet Service - We regularly test the speed of your AT&T High Speed Internet service to ensure you have the best Internet speeds possible. Recently we sent a letter to let you know that our testing has found that your modem speed is slower than the speed shown in the AT&T High Speed Internet Terms of Service. We're moving you to a lower-priced plan more in line with your current speed, although we cannot guarantee specific speeds."
At MPOW, we each volunteer for a whole month to clean the office microwave. Being the last day of work for the entire year, I thought it about time I fulfill my promise.
Interesting photos from the historical photo blog, Calumet 415:
Also, links to Ultralocal Geography (Chicago).
Hanging out with one of my esteemed colleagues at the library.
Current Cites for November 2013 is out! You can find the issue here...
I wrote about an usually sharp article in IFLA Journal from a librarian who obviously was writing from (less than happy) personal experience. The article is called, "Non-librarians As Managers : The Case of State University Libraries in Saudi Arabia".
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/comics/maakies-11758616/
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.
