Waste of Space?

As vested as we in the DigIn program are in digital collection management, I, for one, really don't want to see this become a trend: Cushing Academy's Library Without Books

Are we really heading that way??

“Books are not a waste of space, and they won’t be until a digital book can tolerate as much sand, survive a coffee spill, and have unlimited power. When that happens, there will be next to no difference between that and a book.’’ ~~ Keith Michael Fiels, ALA Exec. Dir.

Needle Arts: A Journal Archive

For over 20 years I have belonged to a non-profit organization, The Embroiderer's Guild of America, Inc. “The mission of EGA is to stimulate appreciation for and celebrate the heritage of embroidery by advancing the highest standards of excellence in its practice through education, exhibition, preservation, collection and research.” For at least the last 40 years, the EGA has published a quarterly journal for its membership,

Last year I approached the executive director with the idea to digitize and index an archive of the publication. She and the organization president were very receptive. They suggested I prepare an application for a grant from the organization for the project. When DigIn came along, I felt that waiting until after or during the program would provide the best information and opportunity to plan and execute the project.

It is unlikely that the collection would be accessed by any one except the membership of the organization, but that would be up to the Executive Board to decide. Although subscription to the journal is a benefit of membership, the archive might be determined to be of value to researchers and other similar organizations. The archived collection might be made freely available, or available at an per issue or per article rate.

In each issue of the journal there is a variety of content, including official reports, historical articles, designer/artist profiles, embroidery project instructions, exhibit photo layouts, advertising. Access terms would include these broad article types; the types of embroidery involved; designer/author names; issue date, number, and volume. Learning how to properly index something like this project is perhaps the greatest challenge facing me, as well as determining the best system to use as a repository.

The Shirky essay most certainly prompts a different way of thinking about classification and cataloguing, or tagging. A large portion of my job lately has involved updating our ILS database of authorized Library of Congress subject headings. I found the background illustrations about Yahoo and Google particularly interesting and helpful in understanding how more is less (?).

Plans & Planning

A fellow student mentioned the complexity of technology planning in her blog post for the "Planning for Technology" unit. I certainly agree. As a worker-bee, my only involvement in planning, be it technological, budget, or strategic is rather after-the-fact. Or in that management effort to include the staff as 'stakeholders.'

Be all that as it may, planning of this complexity is not my nature. I hope to be eased into planning responsibilities of librarianship, and that the theory I've learned isn't lost in the politics or special interests of those at the helm. I'm encouraged that there is a wealth of information and assistance for technology planning.

Now nearly four weeks after I read the articles, I recall being amused, amazed, and overwhelmed at various readings. I randomly reopened a couple tonight to refresh my memory. In these latest days with talks of deep budget cut scenarios, Stephens' words, "Meet the Mission" echo loudly in my head. If there was ever a time and place for technolust it is long past, far away, or never to be seen again. Even though his quote from Sandra Nelson's book is now a decade old, her advice to review monthly is almost too close to semi-annual budget reductions for comfort.

Perhaps the reading I liked best was Gerding & MacKellar's very practical Applying for Technology Grants (Computers in Libraries, Jul/Aug 2006, pp. 7-8, 545-60). The advice seems sound, echos similar comments from other readings, crosses types of libraries, and provides additional resource recommendations that I thought would be quited helpful in actually producing technology plans and pursuing grant or other funding.

what's the word?

Surely there's a specific (sailing) term for the phrase having the wind knocked out of your sails, but I can't find or recall what it might be.

Regardless, I hope I'm the only one struggling with finding the enthusiasm to complete the coursework...

"If it's not one thing, it's your mother."

It's been great meeting and interacting with all of you this summer. My entire MLIS was taken in online courses, and this was the most enjoyable of any online course I've ever taken, with regard to the interaction for the assignments, with all of you, and with Dr. Fulton. I have been praising the program and the setup to whomever will listen all summer.

Hope to "see" you all again someday.

Reflection on the Path Traveled

When I began this course, I was familiar with Linux only as an alternative to Windows as an operating system. Having become comfortable with the Microsoft product line over many years, and not having suffered too many problems with it, I have always been content to stay put, as it were, and not bother learning something (else) new… on my own (which is pretty much how I learned what I know about computers, operating systems and software).

In beginning this program in digital information management, I’m not sure I realized I would be ‘elbow-deep’ in the command-line interfaces again, but it was a comfortable feeling based on my past success with MS-DOS. I have also been motivated by the hope that learning to function in the SQL and PHP environment will help me finally know how to better utilize the platforms associated with the hosting service for my own website(s). All I need now is that elusive factor, time, to experiment with SQL & PHP on my own.

My perspective of digital information has been expanded through the past 11 weeks of this course. I have always been, and continue to be, amazed at the information that is available via the Internet and the World Wide Web. So much of this content is collaborative and donated and circulated… truly mind-boggling. And yet, the average user is completely unaware of the vastness, and the usefulness of it all.

I love books. I love the idea of being a librarian and all that entails, from reader’s advisory to technical researcher to data quality management – however, I do like the term “information specialist” for its connotation that my knowledge and expertise will be beyond the shelf list, beyond the building, and beyond Google.

SQL !=

ETA (7:14PM) So, the reason the queries did not return the results I expected is that I did not correctly identify the columns which needed to be used by MySQL.

Queries should have been:

SELECT collection_title, image_title FROM collection LEFT JOIN image ON collection.collection_id = image.collection_id;

SELECT image_title, collection_title FROM image LEFT JOIN collection ON image.collection_id=collection.collection_id;

The exercises for the last two units using SQL have been relatively easy to learn and use. However, I know I do not completely understand JOIN because although I was able to create queries which produce results, they were not the results I expected, and I'm not yet sure why. I'll be looking at it again later today in order to have queries to submit for the assignment, but I'll post here the ones I first did, then follow with the query which gave me the results I was looking for (which was not a JOIN query).

SELECT collection_title, image_title FROM collection LEFT JOIN image ON collection.collection_id = image.image_id;




SELECT image_title, collection_title FROM image LEFT JOIN collection ON image.image_id=collection.collection_id;




Here's what I was trying to get:




And here is the query used:

SELECT image_title , collection_title FROM image , collection WHERE image.collection_id = collection.collection_id ORDER BY collection_title;

So, as I said, I haven't quite got the idea of JOIN yet.

Dazed and Confused

Unfortunately, as I struggle to find time to get all the reading and assignments completed, the material is (for me) becoming more difficult to fully understand.
In the current unit (9), it isn't the command-line tasks, but the modeling, normalization and ERD that are the problem this week. Basics of each area are fairly clear. The more complex ideas, like "concectivity" and "cardinality," how to follow the directionality of the ERD, the resolution of the many-to-many relatioship, concatenated primary keys.... I'm feeling rather lost.
I think that continued exposure to the material, review of the tutorials, and some hands-on experience with the practical use of the concepts will help clarify my understanding. At least, I hope so!

More Alphabet Soup

And now I'm feeling a bit out of my depth.

XML is not an unfamiliar acronym, neither is its meaning, or what it looks like; but what it does and where/how it works isn't yet particularly clear. However, I know that we are being taken logically, step-by-step through a process -- as I've read how others have struggled with things that have been easier for me, I've known that they will 'get it' in time and are just expecting to understand all at once.

So, even though I understand the syntax presented in the tutorials on XML and don't know yet how to apply it to the management of digital collections.... I know that all will (should?) become clear in time. One step at a time, just like Linux, just like HTML.

Following the glowing remarks by classmates about the VTC tutorial by Mark Long, I chose to work through the beginning sections of that first. Thorough, understandable, and more than sufficient to create the XML document for the assignment -- at least I hope so! Never one to try to reinvent the wheel, I took a stroll through the digital collections webpages of my home university library. Within the Advanced Search options was a drop-down menu of all the fields. I selected the subelements for my data elements from these fields (which somewhat correspond to MARC fields).

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Holding type can also be identified by first portion of id, e.g., "0001" are documents; "0002" are illustrations; "0003" are sound recordings. -->
<images>
<holding id="00001-379">
<title>The Birth of Venus</title>
<creator>Botticelli, Sandro</creator>
<type>Lithograph</type>
<subject>Goddesses, Roman</subject>
<time_period>15th Century</time_period>
<collection>Art Education</collection>
</holding>
<holding id="00002-115">
<title>Los Gatos Black</title>
<creator>Morales, Yuyi</creator>
<type>Illustration</type>
<language>Spanish</language>
<source>Los Gatos Black on Halloween</source>
<collection>Children's Literature</collection>
</holding>
<holding id="00003-411">
<title>French Resistance: a Diary</title>
<creator>Girard, Marie</creator>
<type>Sound recording</type>
<language>French</language>
<subject>World War II</subject>
<time_period>20th Century</time_period>
<collection>Oral Histories</collection>
</holding>
</images>

HTML &me;

I've pretty much learned HTML on my own, though not taking a formal class wasn't for lack of trying. I approached my local community college about 10 years ago and -- believe it or not -- the respsonse was, "What???"

Between friends and online assistance, like WebMonkey, and checking out source code, I've usually been able to make my pages look how I want them to look. I started with Geocities in 1996, using their online text editor and also Netscape 3.04 Gold's editor off-line. Guess I'll be moving all that to another server sometime soon; I see Yahoo! is going to shut down GeoCities.

I finally jumped on the blog-wagon in late 2003 with Blogger. Though I never learned any scripting, or how to create CSS, I could use the templates and then edit to my heart's (and the extent of my knowledge or trial-and-error) content. The most frustrating thing now is that I do not have enough knowledge to work in the new templates, so I'm stuck (for now) with the widget templates.

About two years ago I set up a domain, installed the free WordPress, but unfortunately have not had time to really learn all I need to know to work easily in that environment. I hope to have time soon to do that. Having it does provide me space for photos and files... and actually, I think I remember I have already copied all the GeoCities files there -- but the work up updating all the links will take *SO* much time!

I'm glad to have the links to more advanced coding tutorials provided in the unit lecture and assignments this week. Even paging through the basics, I learned things (like in the future certain tags will require closing tags that haven't needed them in the past -- so I'm closing my paragraph tags in this post), so I plan to keep working through the tutorials.

I like to work in code rather than WYSIWYG. It's like knowing a secret, akin to working on the command line versus working with the GUI.

Learning Styles

I consider myself fortunate that I am able to learn from the written word, and might go so far as to say I learn that way best, except that I also learn well by class lectures. I do *not* like to work in groups in artificial situations, such as group projects for classes! In real-life, working in groups is fine with me, though I prefer my responsibilities to be clearly outlined.

What confuses me about the way learning styles are most often defined is that to me, learning by reading is a visual style -- it is my eyes doing the work, not my ears, not my hands, and not someone's mouth. I think Felder & Solomon rather than to identify "learners" actually identified elements of learning. How people learn is a fascinating subject to me; Psychology of Learning was one of my favorite courses as an undergraduate.

The variety of presentations in this course keeps the material interesting, and provides materials at different levels of interest/ability to the students. If one wants to pursue more in-depth look at the topic, the source is readily available.
I probably use the tutorial videos least -- to this point -- as said, I prefer reading text.

Pick Your Style

Creating the new users in the server and desktop platforms of Ubuntu this week went smoothly, following the instructions in the class assigments. I forged ahead to the assignments only lightly reading the class lecture and readings, planning to do in-depth reading/reviewing during an upcoming road trip.

It was so quick to do create the user by CLI, I think it would be my preferred method. However, one has to remember the correct command and syntax. With the GUI formats of the Ubuntu desktop and the Webmin interface with the server, it is a much simpler, albeit longer, process using menus and dialog boxes.

The most frustrating aspect of using the server interface so far is the "hiccup" -- something which doesn't appear to work one moment and miraculously works at the next use.

Playing catch-up

Nothing like three days being sick and a weekend out-of-town without (unexpectedly) Internet access to put one way behind...

I have had no luck at all, despite several reinstalls of the VM server, at reaching the VIM tutor. However, I managed all the Nano edits with no problems (other than typos). Following the last re-install, the sudo aptitude install vim-runtime appeared to execute successfully, but not the sudo aptitude install vim-full. I am anxious to know if the other student, having the exact problem as I, has had any further success.

The question was posed, "why don't you need the sudo command [to reconfigure the .bashrc file]?" The .bashrc file is located in my home directory, so I have permission to edit the file. No one else can edit the file without employing the sudo command, however -- unless the permissions are changed (I think).

It has been so long since I have edited files with MS-DOS, I really do not have any memory of exactly how it compares to Nano. I do recall writing and editing .bat or batch files, for results much like the alias command used in Assignment 2 of Unit 3 -- i.e., using one command to reach another.

Using batch files, I was able to create a text menu in DOS that presented upon boot-up, and the batch files corresponded to numbers on the menu. Selecting a number ran the batch file, which generally executed the steps necessary to begin a process or program. Somewhere, I actually still have that stuff on a floppy!

As noted in the lecture, I've used Notepad extensively within Windows to edit (or peruse) source files for internet documents, either my own or those of others.

I feel a bit like a wallflower. Invited to the party, but Vim Tutor won't dance with me.

VM Installs

I was reminded Thurday night how much slower my old little (as in tech specs) Averatec laptop is than my new little (as in overall size) Asus EeePC netbook. It took about two hours for the VM install of the Ubuntu desktop on the Averatec (working from the ISO file on the hard drive). Friday morning (working from the ISO file on a flash drive), in 35 minutes I was logging in to my VM Ubuntu desktop and accessing a terminal window.

There is, of course, a great difference in hard drive space between the two laptops (40Gb vs. 160Gb), as well as RAM (1Gb vs. 2Gb), though little in processor speed (1.53GHz Mobile AMD Athlon vs. 1.6GHz Intel Atom). So, I have to wonder how much “thrashing” was going on the night of the Averatec install.

My next query was, with the installation of Ubuntu as a VM taking even 35 minutes -- that’s a lot of "evening" time to someone who works full-time and spends nearly 2 hours commuting each day -- can one leave the VM running? And if so, for how long? The answer is that is installations can be suspended or powered off, waiting to be rebooted as required. In just a few minutes, the Ubuntu desktop or server is ready to go.

Tutorials

A variety of tutorials was provided for the "Command Line" unit this week, including print and audio/video. Having audio and PowerPoint like presentation video is a nice change from long readings and class chatrooms of my previous on-line courses. It was more like being in a classroom/lecture environment, which I do miss from face-to-face classes as an undergraduate.

I am fortunate that I learn almost as well with print materials as I do with audio/visual materials. Still, having both types available for tutorials is beneficial. Employing multiple resources reinforces the content, but also provides various means to understanding.

In particular, I appreciated the DOS to Unix summary page link provided in the unit assignment text.

Live CD

My effort to boot Ubuntu using a Live CD was halted by an error. So I posted on the class activity board for the unit:

Color me disappointed.... it was all going so well... and fairly familiar from the 'old' days with DOS... Here's what came up on the GNOME interface when I tried to boot the LiveCD:

b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.tm" not found or load failed

You must go to http://linuxwireless.org/en/user/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the correct firmware (version 4)

So.... I'm heading there to look around, but probably won't do anything until I check back in here.

That location was "not yet created" page, but there were links on to information about the b43 (which has to do with Broadcom wireless firmware). Unfortunately, even though the content on the FAQ page was rather technical, it was obvious that their instructions would have to take place from within Ubuntu.

Google (and Ubuntu forums) to the rescue! The first hit from searching Google with "b43/ucode5.fw" provided a link to a Ubuntu thread and from that first post, I visited the recommended site, Broadcom Wireless Firmware . The file and simple (too simple???) instructions are there, but again, this is something to be added into the files, and doesn't help when running a LiveCD.

Just about the time I was finding all this information, the instructor confirmed the association of the error with the wireless system, and suggested I try to disable the WiFi in the BIOS. Ufortunately (again), there is no option in the BIOS to disable the Wifi (that I could find; and my manuals for the laptop are who-knows-where). His other suggestion was to just do a VM install... which is what I did.

Ubuntu for Eee PC

I feel right at home at the Ubuntu User Forums' "Absolute Beginner Talk" for that is certainly what I am!

As there were so many threads, I chose to use the filtering options at the bottom of the page to limit the threads to those with Ubuntu as the prefix, sorted in descending order by the number of replies, and the time period to the past month. This still provided over 200 pages of threads. To say the Absolute Beginner Talk forum is prolific would obviously be a understatement.

Following comments in our DigIn class discussion posts and also on the Ubuntu forums about laptops, I made another search for "Eee PC" -- the type of netbook I am currently using -- and even then found a several hundred threads. Choosing one, titled "Issues with Asus Eee," I learned that running Ubuntu within Windows using Wubi would be slow and prone to some problems. [Wubi is not a virtual machine like we will be running, but "creates a stand-alone installation" (Wikipedia)].

In the fourth response, a forum moderator suggested that the original poster use an SD install, and also advised that there were Eee specific versions available (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks). Another poster pointed to a utility which would allow Ubuntu to be installed to external and flash drives (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/). The remaining dozen or so posts in the thread are supportive and indicate high user satisfaction when the appropriate version is in use. I plan to read up on the options for future use, and to revisit this list if problems surface with my Eee.

What I really found helpful at this portion of the forums were the "sticky" threads, which provide a multitude of links to resources to help a beginner learn and understand more about Ubuntu. For example, 14 of the 20 posts in the "New to Ubuntu? Start here..." thread contained links to helpful information -- most contributed by a forum staffer -- while others are long texts of informative information for beginnners. There are links to material specifically to help Windows users, too; documents which are part of the Ubuntu community documentation:

Official guide to switching from Windows to Ubuntu 8.04LTS

Switching from windowss

and another labeled, "Ubunto for non-geeks" -- which is actually a book/PDF to purchase (there is a sample chapter available to download). However, there is a free beginner's guide offered as a PDF in the first sticky thread of the forum.

I have been using Windows for so long, I am sure I will be making good use of these resources.

Back in Command

Oh, boy!

 Tonight my head is spinning -- not just from a pollen-induced headache, but with unfamiliar and semi-familiar concepts and terminology. Today was the first day of my first course in the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science Digital Information Management Graduate Certification Program, Introduction to Applied Technology (nevermind that it is second in numerical order; this is the first course).

 I think I was fine until I decided to read chapter one of Linux Administration Handbook (Nemeth, Snyder, & Hein, 2006; 2000). Linux, UNIX, and GNU (among others) are familiar words, yes, but I've been using Microsoft products since 1996, at least. So knowing the words was about the extent of it.

 Still, even with Microsoft, and before Windows, there was DOS -- which I loved. There's nothing like a command line to put one in, well, command!

 Today, the OSes; tomorrow, VMs & distros!