Walt at Random

I know better than to comment at The Shifted Librarian. Truly I do. It always gets me in trouble–particularly because Jenny Levine’s writing sometimes pushes my buttons, and because disagreeing with Jenny Levine is dangerous sport. But…

A while back, various bloggers were putting together various lists about all the ways libraries were driving away “techie librarians” (not the phrase all of them used). I read the lists. I have no doubt many of the complaints are valid.

Then, in this post, Jenny Levine changed the rhetoric by following a quote from a comment with this line:

How do we start the discussion about keeping our movers and shakers?

Suddenly, there was that pat phrase, the LJ Seal of Stardom, “movers and shakers.”

Maybe I overreacted.

Here’s my comment, in full:

Maybe you need to ask whether you just want to keep “movers and shakers,” the high-profile, self-promoting elite, or whether you’d also like to keep the people who make sure the innovations work properly and keep working. You know, the ones who’ll probably never be in LJ’s annual festival and might not be on the speaking tour, but who have the skills and determination to see projects through to the end. (Once in a while, a determined project person becomes higher-profile, almost by accident, and usually to their considerable astonishment, but that’s not the typical pattern.) Or are us drudges disposable?

Now, I’m sorry, but does anyone out there truly believe that “us drudges” is meant to be taken literally, as saying that anyone who isn’t a Mover and Shaker is a drudge? Sure, some of the Movers and Shakers aren’t self-promoters; that word was probably overreaction.

I won’t quote Jenny Levine’s entire response; this entry is going to be long enough as is and you can read the whole comment stream from the earlier link. Here’s a relevant portion:

Walt, interesting that you’d call yourself a “drudge,” considering how much publishing (American Libraries, books, etc.), speaking (repeated references in your blog, ALA Top Trends Panel in June, etc.), and now blogging (walt.lishot.org) you’ve done. I’m also not sure where “self-promoting elite” comes from if you’re not including yourself in that (cites & insights, etc.), and not too many drudges get invited to Microsoft’s Search Champs conference (as you were)!

I never said don’t keep a well-rounded staff; you’re obviously reading my post through your own filter. Maybe you’re not aware of them, but there are awards out there for support staff person of the year, trustee of the year, reference librarian of the year, director of the year, etc. that nicely highlight all job roles in our profession. In addition, there are plenty of “drudges” from all walks of librarianship blogging and writing journal articles, which has brought them fandom, readers, new friends, and public notice. Frankly, I’m stunned you’d discont those folks so easily. After all, even “movers and shakers” and “self-promoting elite” had to start out as unknown, young babes in the woods, too. Share with us how you went from drudge to self-promoting elite and I’m sure we’ll see that same pattern.

It’s gone on since then. I thought earlier about bringing part of the conversation over here, but thought better of it–until “Matt” made a comment that I pretty much entirely agree with, but referred to me in a manner that suggested that he thought I felt differently, that I was missing the point. So I tossed in a brief little comment about why I’d gotten embroiled in this discussion in the first place:

Matt, I’ll comment here again since you mention me. Yes, there should be progress and dialogue, respect and credit (which runs both ways). There’s a sentence in your comment that gives me pause (does not being high profile automatically mean that “the work in and of itself” is all the reward you should expect?), but never mind.

Here’s the thing: All of the various lists about how to lose techie (or whatever) librarians were going along. Fine. I might gather some of them up and comment. I might not. I thought the various lists had to do with problems affecting low-profile techies as well as high-profile techies. It was Jenny L. who specifically talked about movers and shakers, changing the tenor of the whole discussion. To reverse your comment: Those who do get a lot of fanfare and credit, the so-called movers and shakers, presumably have their rewards: Fanfare, credit, and most likely an easier time moving to a better job if they get frustrated. (In some cases, maybe those who are frustrated with their library situations just aren’t a good fit and really should be elsewhere; in other cases, probably a majority of cases, there needs to be more mutual respect, understanding, and awareness. Of all “generations” for all “generations.”)

I only got involved here because of Jenny Levine’s sudden addition of “movers and shakers” to the discussion. That simple.

Here’s Jenny Levine’s response to that comment, in full:

Walt, it’s only “simple” in the sense that you define all non-”movers and shakers” as drudges. Talk about over-simplifications….

Hopefully this word count is small enough for you. *

Sigh. I see three different questions here that bother me a lot, so much so that I’m writing this post when I should be writing about library access to scholarship:

• The easy one: Is it really possible that Jenny Levine believes that I’m sincerely labeling everyone but the official Movers and Shakers as drudges, including myself? Am I forbidden from using rhetorical contrast? Is it really necessary to be that doggedly literal? How is it possible to read that comment and believe that I’m “disconting” (or even discounting) the people I believe are overlooked because they’re not Movers and Shakers?
• The tougher one: Am I wrong in believing that Movers & Shakers get a little too much attention in the field, and that they may just possibly have less to complain about than the people who make sure the job gets carried out properly (who probably aren’t devoid of ideas either)? Is the star system really what will move libraries forward in serving their communities?
• The toughest one, I hope: Do most of you regard Cites & Insights as self-promotion, as Jenny Levine labels it?

That one’s toughest because, if you do, then I’m outta here. Or, at least, C&I is outta here.

After all, if it’s self-promotion, it’s incompetent: Speaking engagements have declined to pretty much zero, I haven’t been submitting articles or proposed columns elsewhere, and I could probably write a book every year or two with the time I take doing C&I. (As I noted in a response, I am not speaking at Top Tech Trends at ALA, since I dropped off that group more than a year ago–but, at the request of the committee, I will be moderating the presentation this summer.)

Of course, if it’s self-promotion, it also seems odd that, when I refer to it, I don’t always pound home the full title, Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large. (The only reason I haven’t dropped the last three words is because they are part of the official title and I don’t want to deal with getting a new ISSN and all that…but the type for that portion of the banner keeps getting smaller, and the “real title” doesn’t include the last three words.)

So, where do we go from here?

I’ve had a great run–never as a Mover & Shaker, but as a contributor in a number of different areas. I’ve been able to accomplish a lot more than I ever expected, mostly through keeping on keeping on. (Starting out by writing MARC for Library Use because it had to be written and nobody who was qualified to write it would touch it–so I wrote it out of sheer desperation.) And yes, I’ve even done a few dozen keynotes and a few dozen other speeches, always by invitation, never through self-promotion.

I like to think that I still contribute to the field, primarily through C&I.

But damn, there’s a lot of other stuff I could just as well be doing. All of it suiting my basically-lazy personality better, some of it more fun. If Jenny Levine is right, then maybe it’s time to hang it up.

Comments invited–here or via email [easiest: waltcrawford via gmail].

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*Footnote: The smiley face is WordPress’ doing: It auto-translates certain emoticons from text into icon. The original response has a semicolon, hyphen, right-paren.

Michael Sauers at Travelin’ Librarian posted this, which links to a Microsoft announcement. To wit:

Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) ends on July 11, 2006. Microsoft will end public and technical support by this date. This also includes security updates. Microsoft is providing final notifications to customers to end the extended security update support for these products.

Sauers emphasizes the end of security updates. That may be an unfortunate consequence–but in general, this strikes me as a good and necessary step.

What it means is the end of DOS. Windows ME (”Windows Mistaken Edition”–I know that’s not what it stands for, but that’s the reality) and Windows 98 were the final versions of Windows as a graphical interface running on top of DOS.

Windows XP, like Windows NT/Windows 2000, is an integrated operating system based on the NT kernel. The “DOS window” is a simulation of DOS.

I’m as slow to upgrade some things as anyone. I’m using Office Pro XP (or Office Pro 2001, if you prefer) at home because, well, I have a free copy of the current Office Pro (a bennie from MS Search Champs 4, as arethe fabuloso Natural Wireless keyboard/mouse combo I’m using at home and the Encarta DVD I haven’t loaded yet), but my wife and I haven’t decided who should get it–and Office Pro 2001 still works just fine.

But DOS is well past its pull-by date. Those who still haven’t moved to XP or W2000 probably aren’t coping with security updates anyway. I’d guess that not having to do patches for two entirely different systems should improve the speed and quality of security patches.

All in all, a good thing. I think.

Rochelle Hartman posted this at the LJ Tech blog, pointing to a site that tests a website for readability.

Well, what the heck…

Here are the results for W.a.r., presumably just for the home page, not the whole blog:

Reading Level Results Summary Value
Total sentences 439
Total words 4738
Average words per Sentence 10.79
Words with 1 Syllable 3131
Words with 2 Syllables 1029
Words with 3 Syllables 380
Words with 4 or more Syllables 198
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 12.20%
Average Syllables per Word 1.50
Gunning Fog Index 9.20
Flesch Reading Ease 68.73
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.35

So I write at either a sixth-grader’s level or that of a high school frosh. Wonderful. Well, such is the charm of a pseudo-Asimovian writing style (much of Asimov’s simplicity, none of the grace or creativity).

This doesn’t come as a great surprise. One of my columns is based on word count, and the editor and I found that I need to submit about 20% more than the stated word count in order to fill the available space: I use lots of short words. Not necessarily because I don’t know any longer ones, but if you choose to make that supposition, who am I to argue?

In the last 24 hours there have been more than 30 spamment attempts, not including the ones that are blocked entirely because they include certain magic words. (I know: By some standards, that’s chicken feed, but it’s a big increase from the 2-6 a day I had been getting. But then, traffic to w.a.r. has been increasing as well.)

None have made it through. Each one is an annoyance and a timewaster. Each one encourages me to do something I’d rather not do, like adding a Capcha-style “type in the vague letters” blocker or some other spam blocker.

Complimenting me on the quality of this blog or certain posts won’t do it–particularly when exactly the same compliment appears on 15 posts in 5 hours. Saying “that’s a good argument” really doesn’t make it when pointed to either the welcome post or one of the others that makes no arguments at all.

I just blocked one more medication name; those are easy to handle. The harder ones are spamments where the only apparent motive is to increase traffic to, or Google level of, or whatever, the URL attached to the commenter’s name. As in all those complimentary comments.

The latest group has been truly weird, since the URL doesn’t even work.

Or are there just people out there who dislike blogs and email enough to try to make them useless?

If so, give it up: It won’t work.

Update 4/9: 23 more spamments, 22 of them from the same idiot sender, plus Jessamyn’s; I’ll send email to Blake asking him to add Jessamyn’s suggested plugin to my directory. (There’s actually a Capcha plugin there already…but I really don’t want to activate it.)

Second update 4:11 Blake’s installed Spam Karma 2 and I’ve activated it, starting with “normal” settings for now–but I’ll toughen as need be. (And I was astonished to see just how many dozens of spamments WordPress had been retaining…without me even seeing them.)

Hmm. Since I try to average two posts a week, today takes care of next week entirely…

Before I put the finishing touches on C&I 6:6 (and I’m sure there are goofs–aren’t there always?), I was on the treadmill as usual, finishing up the fourth TV-movie on this set. One winner, one that would be a winner if the picture wasn’t dark, and two OK…

The Pride of Jesse Hallum, 1981, color, Gary Nelson (dir.), Johnny Cash, Brenda Vaccaro, Eli Wallach. 1:37.

Johnny Cash plays Jesse Hallum, an illiterate coal minor who has to move to Cleveland so his daughter can have surgery for scoliosis. After he admits to being illiterate (to Eli Wallach as an aging owner of a produce distribution company, where Hallum gets a menial job), he lowers his pride enough so that vice principal Brenda Vaccaro (daughter of the produce man) can teach him to read. Well done, but the print is dark and occasionally damaged. Even with that, it’s worth $1.25.

Voyage of the Yes, 1973, color, Lee H. Katzin (dir.), Desi Arnaz, Jr., Mike Evans, Scoey Mitchell, Della Reese, Beverly Garland. 1:15.

I was immediately put off by Arnaz and Evans (both sitcom veterans) mauling “El Condor Pasa” under the titles. The story’s absurd: A spoiled high-school grad with his own sailboat wants to sail to Hawaii before entering Stanford, but he’s such a charmer that none of his friends will go along and his parents won’t let him sail solo. Enter Evans, who’s fleeing because he accidentally killed his abusive uncle (Scoey Mitchell, who like Della Reese gets about five minutes in the picture); Arnaz picks him up as a hitchhiker and takes him along. Events ensue, naturally, with distrust, storms, near-death, and bonding…great scenery, acceptable acting. If you can completely turn off your logic switch, not bad; the video quality is very good. $0.75.

Cry of the Innocent, 1980, color, Michael O’Herlihy (dir.), Rod Taylor, Joanna Pettet, Nigel Davenport, Cyril Cusack. 1:33.

A Frederick Forsyth thriller, made (and set) in Ireland, and quite well done. Taylor’s an insurance man who used to be some sort of operative. On holiday, he’s out of the house when a plane crashes into the house, killing his family. The crash turns out to have been intentional, with machinations involving a multinational corporation. Taylor turns the tables on hired guns out to get him. Good video quality, Cusack’s charming as a laid-back Irish police officer, Taylor and Pettet are OK. Good enough to be a second feature. $1.50.

All the Kind Strangers, 1974, color, Burt Kennedy (dir.), Stacy Keach, Samantha Eggar, John Savage, Robby Benson, Arlene Farber. 1:13.

I’m not sure what to say about this one. Photojournalist Keach picks up a kid carrying heavy groceries, delivers him to a house way off in the woods, is forced to accept a dinner invitation when the car won’t start. The household consists of seven children—and a woman in the kitchen they call Mom, who writes “HELP” in the flour she’s working with, when they’re alone for a moment (in a kitchen with a lock outside the door and barred windows). The kids don’t have any parents, and pick up kind strangers who either act as their parents or are “voted out.” Moderately chilling, but it doesn’t go anywhere—the ending basically falls apart. Benson’s better than usual, and the video quality is good. The picture, though, is a real disappointment. Being generous, I’ll say $1.00.

Not that I actually say he is (in this essay in the current Cites & Insights), but I do make a comparison that Dr. Vaidhyanathan finds unseemly.

He takes exception to my comment in this post at Sivacracy, and says I owe him an apology in a comment on the W.a.r. post just before this one. I have, therefore, apologized for comparing him to Gale Norton.

Notably, he also asks me to provide any facts suggesting that he’s wrong in his absolute statements about Google Library Project. I do so in the essay he objects to, and in previous essays.

I read the Michigan contract. I don’t see Michigan “turning over control” of anything to Google. I don’t see Michigan abandoning their own archival-quality digitizing or anticipating that Google will solve their problems for them. I don’t see a lot of the things that Dr. Vaidhyanathan sees as betrayals of library principles.

I’m not in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s league. I can’t imagine calling an NYU professor “some dude named Siva”; it would seem pointlessly dismissive. But I’m not a professor or an academic, and probably don’t understand the mores of the field.

Is “zealot” too strong a term for Dr. Vaidhyanathan’s commentaries on Google Library Project? Perhaps.

As to a possible factual error: When I wrote the commentary (a month ago…), I did not find Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom in GBS, even with as explicit a search as I see in SV’s post, although I certainly found it in Google. It’s there now.

But then, I’ve commented before and probably will again about the issues of indeterminacy and unaccountability in the results of the large web search engines (maybe not as much in C&I as elsewhere). Those are real issues. They don’t negate the value of better ways to discover books–not as replacements for libraries or library catalogs, but as complementary tools.

Added comment: You might wonder why I didn’t add a comment directly to the “Sivacracy” post in question. That’s fairly simple: Sivacracy requires registration in order to post comments. I suspect that’s necessary, given the volume of spam that a high-profile blog attracts. But I’m disinclined to register at such sites. If a blogger chooses to make commenting difficult, that’s their privilege, and may be the only way they can handle the blog, but I generally don’t comment when commenting is made difficult.

No rain today in Mountain View, for the first time in two or three weeks–what better reason to publish a Spring issue?

Cites & Insights 6:6, Spring 2006 is ready for downloading.

The 26-page issue (all essays except the last also available as HTML separates at the C&I home page) includes:

• Perspective: Discovering Books: The OCA/GBS Saga Continues - Keeping up to date on various projects to make millions of books more discoverable.
• The Library Stuff - One featured website and ten articles and posts worth reading.
• Trends & Quick Takes - seven items, fromclick fraud to AllLearn.
• Good Stuff Perspective: Journal of Electronic Publishing Returns! - Notes on all but one of the articles in the first new issue of JEP in 3.5 years
• Following Up and Feedback - belatedly, six pieces of feedback
• Net Media: Blogs, Google and [Prawn] - that last word’s wrong, but I’d just as soon not have this blog blocked.
• My Back Pages - nine comments and curiosities, exclusive to the PDF edition.

I’m doing some early editing on pieces of the next Cites & Insights. In “The Library Stuff” section, I have this sentence:

It’s an interesting treatment, although I wonder about the seeming inevitability of, say, journals in art and architecture going all-digital.

[If you wonder about the context--well, the issue will be out within the next two weeks.]

I do leave Word’s real-time spell check and grammar check on. Sometimes, grammar check has a really good suggested alternative.

In this case, Word gave the evil green squiggle to “all-digital” and suggested “all digital” as an alternative.

So, OK, what the heck. I changed the hyphen to a blank.

And Word gave the evil green squiggle to “all digital.”

You guessed it: The suggested fix was “all-digital.”

Who needs editors when you have advice like that?

I found this post at EFF’s DeepLinks blog fascinating. It’s about the first of a series of hearings on limitations to DMCA (the copyright office has triennial rounds on such limitations)–and this new group (well, new to me!), the Joint Reply Commenters, that appears poised to respond to any outrageous attempt (read: any attempt) to limit DMCA in any way whatsoever.

On the other hand, maybe I’m missing the formation of a new rock group, “Steven Metalitz and the Joint Reply Commenters.” Their first big hit will be a riff on Paul Simon’s Kodachrome, the chorus line being “Hey mama don’t take our DMCA away…”

Actually, I like this: If it becomes clearer that the forces of absolute copyright and locking down everything speak with a single voice, it may be easier to deal with them…or not.

In my post celebrating this blog’s first year I noted, “I’m trying out a new neologism, since I’m as sick of biblioblogosphere as others: any takers?” while using “biblogworld.”

I have no problem with neologisms that serve a purpose and roll pleasingly off the tongue. I can get sick of overused, trendy, or pointless neologisms pretty quickly; the same is true for neologisms that are ugly or hard to say.

In this case, a number of people had noted that they really didn’t like “biblioblogosphere,” mostly because it really doesn’t roll pleasingly off the tongue or keyboard–it’s too Germanic for most tastes. (In construction, not in derivation.) More recently, there’s the other issue–a sphere implies a center, and the world of library-related blogs has no such center.

“Biblogworld” is a non-starter, as the comments have made clear. “Library blogs” has the problem that the part of the arena that most interests me doesn’t consist of library blogs so much as blogs by “library people.” Library blogs–those run by and on behalf of specific libraries–can be enormously valuable if done right, but they really fall in a different, if related, category. And “Librarian blogs” is a little tricky, although it would allow me to investigate as an interested outsider–but it would also eliminate great blogs by other library people who don’t (or don’t yet) hold the degree. (Sorry, but as long as I’m an ALA member and nobody’s chosen to give me an honorary MLS–and boy, is the latter improbable–I’m unwilling to call myself a librarian. Drives my MLS-holding wife crazy, it does, but there it is.)

Suggestions? Some short phrase or pleasing term that encompasses the field of weblogs written by one or a small group of “library people” (as identified by themselves) and at least in part vaguely related to libraries and/or librarianship?

I can even provide a Cites & Insights hook. Yes, I do plan to do a newer, larger, different version of the “investigation” I did last year, and I’d like to have a good name for it.

Two hundred seventytwo posts. Eight hundred eleven comments. Walt at Random is one year old today.

I had no real idea where this was going to go. The description, “Libraries, music, net media, cruising, policy, and other stuff not quite ready for Cites & Insights,” was a best guess (and I think that description has changed over time?).

I knew it wasn’t going to be a heavyweight post-every-day, aiming-for-the-A-list blog: After all, Cites & Insights is my primary outlet in the library field, and that’s going stronger than ever. I was hoping for an average of two posts a week; it looks as though I’ve averaged around five per week, but in wildly erratic patterns.

I was thrilled the first time a non-spam comment showed up. (Two days ago I had the first day in months when none of the comments awaiting moderation was spam. Things are, unfortunately, back to normal.) I was astonished when some posts gained lengthy, serious, involved comment threads. This one, with 35 comments to date, is close to astounding. (The link says that’s post 272. Apparently I must have deleted four posts along the way, or prepared drafts that never got posted, or something… The count that heads this essay is from the administration panel, which says there were 272 posts prior to this one.)

Let’s see. My categorization is as sloppy as my writing can be, but the sidebar seems to show that writing and blogging come first, followed by net media in almost a tie with libraries, followed by movies and TV, followed by “stuff”–my wonderfully articulate description of almost a quarter of the posts.

I haven’t written as much about music as I expected (but that could change). “Policy” in the description covers a lot of ground; I don’t think I’d ever use that as a category, but it includes copyright, censorware, many of the library posts, and quite a few in other categories. Cruising? Well, like speaking, I haven’t been writing about it as much because I haven’t been doing it as much–our most recent cruise was last June, and we don’t have one scheduled. Still, I’d guess I’ve written more about cruising (that is, on boats and ships) than anyone else in the biblogworld (I’m trying out a new neologism, since I’m as sick of biblioblogosphere as others: any takers?).

Yes, this is April 1, and I deliberately chose that date for the first post (although I cheated on that one: It was written the day before and postdated. This post is real-time writing: I started after breakfast on Saturday morning and will post it as soon as it’s done and I’ve done a quick “no bizarre formatting” preview). But this post is no more a joke than the blog as a whole–and the blog as a whole has turned into a little more than I expected.

No promises here. On reflection, might I have worded some posts slightly differently? Probably, although I can’t think of any that I completely regret posting. Do I consider this blog to be a big deal? As much as I did a year ago, which is to say not all that much–but I’m not inclined to give big-deal status to many other blogs either.

Well, let me modify that: One promise: Assuming continued health and all that, I’ll keep blogging when the spirit moves me, on topics that feel right at the time.

Who knows? I still want to go back and look at some title CD-ROMs, to see how (whether) they run on a contemporary system (mine’s 3.5 years old, but I regard any 1.5GHz+ PC with XP or OS X, at least 512MB RAM, and a decent graphics card as “contemporary”) and whether the stories they told are being told as well or as effectively “elsewhere” these days. I’ve been meaning to start that process for three years. Maybe, if time allows, putting those mini-reviews here rather than in C&I makes sense. Maybe both. Maybe time never will allow: There are so many magazines and books to be read, so much music to listen to, so many DVDs to view, and so many blogs to read…and, when spring finally does arrive, so many walks to take and flowers and trees and people to appreciate.

I’m not going away. It’s fun around here.