Bye Bye Blogger

In a flurry of changes this week I have decided to end Library Ephemeria on the Blogger platform. Please come and check out Library Ephemeria at http://libraryephemeria.wordpress.com

Netflix has changed my life

This may seem like an extreme statement but Netflix along with my Digital Video Recorder (DVR) has changed how I use the medium of television. For Canadians reading this, Netflix is a DVD rental company whereby you select DVD's to watch online and then Netflix will mail them to you with a return envelope. The system works remarkably well although I have noticed they slow down delivery when you use them heavily. One of the main benefits of Netflix is the depth of options for rentals. When you go to a local video store your choices are usually limited to the Hollywood blockbusters and the movies you watched once late at night out of desperation. Being a national company they have the widest selection of not only movies (even Canadian movies!) but old television.

I am a strong believer that excellent television programs must be killed by networks so that we don't realize what crap they are usually feeding us. Smart shows like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly all came out of the same brilliant mind, Joss Whedon. Network television will never understand his vision. In the early 1990's Twin Peaks creator, David Lynch had to deal with not only the network but Twin Peak's audience themselves being confused and disoriented about the show's direction. What wonderful disorientation it was! What Netflix lets me do is watch shows like Homicide: Life on the Street or X-Files again on my own terms without having to buy expensive DVD sets. In some ways it serves as a library for me allowing me to find new directors, new shows, and new stories while revisiting old friends.

Friends

Today I was able to spend time with friends which is an activity I have neglected. It would seem obvious that I have to actually take time away from work to do so. I think that I have always struggled with life-work balance but lately things have tilted heavily to the work side. Not having a supervisor means that many of my work habits require self regulation. I have promised myself that I will only go in to work to pick up files or print out needed materials this long weekend. If I am successful in doing so it will the first weekend in recent memory that I haven't spent time at work. I am not alone and watching others struggle to maintain life-work balance reinforced this for me. Here's to long weekends and more time with friends.

Extreme Weight Loss Cures

I realize that three posts in one day might cause my aunt's head to explode but nonetheless I am feeling inspired by the knowledge that my post won't disappear when Netscape crashes.

I am a random watcher of Oprah, and this week she had a doctor person on the show talking about tapeworms. He even pulled one out of a jar and had Oprah hold it up so that the viewers could see its length. He described one of the symptoms of tapeworms as drastic weight loss as the tapeworm consumes food energy from the human host. Other than the ewwww! factor this wasn't so weird but I was disturbed by Oprah's reaction. A rush of emotions crossed her face when he said this but the dominant one was interest. She did not ask him whether people inflicted themselves with tapeworms to lose weight but it was inferred. I hadn't really thought that people could/would/should go to such extremes but according to Diet Blog this indeed had been a weight loss cure in the early 1900's. The image above is actual advertising for sanitized tapeworms.

Plagiarism?

There was an article in Inside HigherEd today discussing the cultural difficulties in defining plagiarism. We have had this conversation here as well about working with students from other cultures. When you have international students attending college in the United States how explicit are we when the penalties for plagiarism are explained? I know from my own experiences teaching a graduate course that I assume much about my students' understanding of what plagiarism looks like. We in the library are also struggling with our faculty's assumptions about their students' understanding of plagiarism. Many departments, rather than holding a discussion about plagiarism, use plagiarism detection software like turnitin.com. So is it more effective to use the stick rather than the carrot approach? I personally feel that if we are starting from the position that we assume our students will plagiarize and want to punish the offenders that we have no where to go. We need to explore why plagiarism is given such little attention in higher education when our consequences for committing plagiarism are so devastating.

Bye Bye Netscape

I first starting using Netscape as my browser back when IE was the only other option. So I feel a sense of loyalty mostly from the "its better than IE" school of thought. However, I am feeling more and more frustrated with Netscape and its actually crashing more often than I can remember IE ever doing. I don't know what the difference is or if it some nefarious plot by Microsoft to crash Netscape on computers using Windows but in any case I can't continue using it. I know many Firefox converts and I do use it occasionally. The fact is that every single time I have tried to post to this blog on Netscape in the last week it crashes and I lose my posts. Very frustrating. I am writing this in Firefox and I have made the decision to ditch Netscape entirely. IE of course was never an option.

Art Car Food

I can't believe I forgot to mention one of the coolest things I have ever eaten. Amy's Ice Cream had some amazing ice cream at the parade. One of my favorite was Shiner Bock (beer) ice cream. It actually had a bit of a kick (flavor wise that is) to it. Did I mention that the parade people are awesome to their volunteers? I was also sooooo close to the entries which was awesome.

Art Car Craziness

I volunteered for a annual event in Houston, the Art Car Parade. The parade has many vehicles decorated by individuals or groups and usually with a theme. The parade does have a bit of a Mardi Gras vibe to it, The pictures speak for themselves. I will say that they treat their volunteers VERY well and I would encourage others to participate in the future. I kept looking for Duncan on the Disco bus above but I didn't see him.

Accreditation blues

I don't know how many of you have been involved with helping your departments or colleges deal with accreditation site visits but I have now been involved in two for my college. The first time I was greener than Kermit and really no clue about was expected or needed from the library. Thankfully, I had a wonderful person heading up acquisitions and she led me through the process. The document that we created back in 2002 needed updating but when I was again contacted about participating in the 2007 site visit I used much of that previous report.

I was thrilled when my college contacted me to participate in their "Showcase" for their accreditors but was less thrilled when I realized the time frame was less than two weeks. What did I need to know so that the accreditors would believe that the library was responsive and more than meeting the needs of the students? I researched very thorougly the various institutes and centers located within the college. I spent hours analyzing circulation and interlibrary loan statistics. I even created the documentation they used in the display posters at the "Showcase." The accreditors asked me two questions the entire evening and I am not sure precisely what I contributed to their overall understanding and my interview the next day lasted less time than it took me to walk to the college, five minutes.

Through this whole process I realized that it had been too long since I had really taken such a close look at my college. I mourned adjunct faculty who had moved on and realized that there were so many more new faculty that I had not yet met. The "Showcase" was impressive and I think that my college is in a much stronger place than it was five years ago. The best part of the experience was seeing so many of the faculty I have worked over the years and to be greeted with smiles and hugs. Yesterday morning I was passing by the Reference Desk when my colleagues called me over and pointed at a beautiful vase of flowers. The flowers were from my college and have been decorating my office since then. It is said that adversity builds strong bonds and I am happy first of all that the accreditors have left and secondly that I had an opportunity to refresh my relationship with my faculty.

Ambivalence

I subscribe to a blog written by a female computer science professor, See Jane Compute. She captured some of my feelings related to my workplace in a post about her own.

"The "problem", if you can call it that, is that I don't overwhelmingly hate my job. If I did, the decision would be easy. There are certainly days that I hate my job and fantasize about resigning, where the despair is so deep that I can't see my way out of it. But there are things that I love about my job, too, and days where I do literally pinch myself and dance around my office (with my door closed, of course) because I love my job so much.

There are a few central questions that I find myself coming back to again and again:

1. Do the bad days outweigh the good days, and by how much?
2. How much of the love/hate has to do with the institution/department, and how much with the general parameters of a job as "assistant professor"?
3. Would things really be better somewhere else, or would I feel this way pretty much anywhere? (In other words, do the majority of the problems come from individual institutions or the culture of the field?)"

I am not sure if I find it comforting that someone else in academia regularly goes through this process of reflection about leaving but it does speak to a frustration with traditional bureaucratic structures that come along with the academic environment. My own decision making process continues.