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Zen and the art of creating iTunes playlists

Please excuse this frivolous post and the slightly misleading title.

I have found that it is very easy to get into a rut with what I’m listening to on iTunes. When it is so easy to play only my most favourite songs or my most played songs, that’s often what I listen to. It’s not a good idea to listen to only favourites for a lengthy period of time – it means that I get bored of these great songs and take them for granted

One solution is to sometimes play only the songs that I’ve rated 3 or 4. The problem is that I haven’t rated systematically rated my entire collection. I do this more on a ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be a huge chore. I never rate a new CD until I’ve had it for at least a month, except for those tracks which really leap out as being particularly good or bad.

Here’s one solution which cures this sort of ennui. Morgan’s eclectic sampler playlist.

I use the word sampler in its traditional sense, that this playlist will give a reminder of the breadth of your collection, remind you of the sorts of things which you have.

This playlist has two main guidelines:
1. The idea is to choose only one track from each album. Each album’s representative should ideally be your second or third favourite track from that album.
2. Never choose your favourite tracks – then this playlist would become a just another favourites variation.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. Maybe you’d like to slightly over-represent newer albums, so you can get to know them better. Sometimes you might choose not to represent one-track wonders at all, if you really regret that one track you purchased from that album and don’t view it as representative at all.

The downside is that this playlist takes a bit of work, especially for selecting the second and third-best tracks of albums you haven’t listened to in a while. But that work can itself be enjoyable and illuminating about your collection and how you yourself have changed since adding particular albums.

The other thing is that this playlist is meant to help you escape from your iTunes ruts, don’t let it become a new rut in itself. If it’s a short list, don’t listen to it for more than a few days at once. Even if it’s a really long list, it will have definitely served its purpose after a week. Then leave it for a while and move on, hopefully to some tracks which the eclectic sampler playlist inspired you to rediscover.

RFID: putting some librarians on the wrong side of a patron privacy debate

There is a very interesting article in Salon.com about a controversy about the usage of RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags in libraries. I'm not going to write too much about the article because I want to encourage people to to get the free day pass to my favourite news source, or even better, subscribe to it.

It is very strange to see some librarians on the opposite side of a privacy debate with the EFF, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the ACLU. I had never heard about RFID in libraries before reading this article. I am as yet undecided about the issue. As a former systems librarian who also did a lot of work in circulation, I can understand just how convenient RFID tags could be. I can also identify with the argument that RFID tags will help protect patron's privacy by making self-check out more effective. On the other hand, it could be very damaging for our profession if there is any question or doubt about our commitment to patron privacy. The idea that we are being slightly hyprocritical would definitely play into the hands of John Ashcroft and supporters of how the USAPATRIOT Act affects libraries.

first impressions of Office 2004 for Mac - get it for the Project Center!

I have mentioned before (in a post which might have been accidentally deleted) that although I am very much into Macs, I don’t instinctively hate all things Microsoft.

This doesn’t mean that I particularly like Microsoft. I use Windows XP at work (I am contemptuously familiar with that operating system) and Panther at home, and there is absolutely no comparison between the two. XP doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Panther. Moreover I despise the way Microsoft won the browser war, and then once it had the most popular browser, it proceeded to neglect it so that it is now the most atrophied browser that is also the most popular browser.

All that said, once in a while Microsoft makes some decent software and it deserves credit when this happens.

I am referring to Office 2004 (the newest version for the Mac).

follow-up on feedback re librarians, cooks and call centre workers post

(a slightly different version of this post has been cross-posted as a comment on LISNews)

I was wondering why my hits were way higher than usual this morning, it was because this post had been mentioned on LISNews.

Because of the feedback there and the insightful and welcome comments accompanying the original post, I thought that I should write a little follow-up post.

I certainly agree that these changes in the information market do not amount to a zero sum game. That was one of my points, that there is room for a lot of different players.

Maybe this is heresy or flamebait, but I don’t think that there is anything sacred or unique about the Reference Interview. Other professions do a similar thing, it just doesn’t have the same name and is usually more unconscious. It doesn’t matter whether you are a librarian, lawyer, doctor or even a call centre worker, you still need to find out what the person you are talking to really wants, as opposed to what he or she is saying.

My concern is that librarians are losing mindshare, especially amongst younger people. While working at an academic law library, it was distressing to see how each new class of students had less of an idea than their predecessors of what libraries did and how they were relevant . Of course we tried to educate our patrons, and once in a while there were those magical moments when a few students realized how powerful these research tools and techniques were (and how helpful librarians could be).

Of course we need to improve how we market the profession to the general public as well to the specific groups and individuals whom we serve. This is a constant need, on the micro and macro level. I am worried that we are giving out the wrong messages which is making our efforts counter-productive.

Most library users (and I dare say, all people who don’t use libraries) don’t like being preached to by librarians. If people like using Google, I worry that we are being kill-joys by pointing out all its short-comings. Sometimes people want to be shown how to do effective research for themselves, but often they just want get the best answer and run with it. This does not make them bad people.

Rather than trying to fight our future and perpetuate the bad old stereotypes about libraries and librarians, we need to accept that many of our patrons have changed irrevocably, and adjust to this.

coming soon to this blog ...

I plan to be writing a few entries about my new library job search. Now that I'm no longer unemployed, it's easier for me to share my job-seeking efforts. My major challenge is that my current job is very draining on me. Working on phones all day, making myself be upbeat and helpful and competent for every single caller is something that I need to recover from, way more so than working in an academic library or corporate research department. That recovery time eats into the time I could be using for my job search, blogging, creative writing and other endeavours.

One thing I am very aware of now: How easy a job is has very little relation to where it fits on the pay and prestige scale. Yes, some high-powered jobs are very difficult and stressful, but if you downshift down the ladder, the stress and difficulty are just as likely to increase than decrease. Now I am more aware that I have it very easy compared to people with the really shitty jobs. Working in fast-food, abbatoirs (the obscenely euphemistic Australian word for slaughterhouse), telemarketing (no, I don't any of that, thank God) etc. Although WorstJob.com is American, it's a relevant reminder that things could be a lot worse.

Anyway, I have started my next job search. Even if it weren't for the whole "I'm really a librarian" thing, Vodafone and I aren't soul-mates. I think I do my job pretty well for someone who's quite new to this sort of work. I am very conscientious to do the best thing for the customers who call me. This is also my weakness - because I am very thorough, my calls (and associated follow-up work) take longer, and so I take fewer calls than other people. Although they're not hassling me about these things right now, still being new, I know it will be a problem further down the track. That's why I'd like to get out before this happens.

My new job search has two components. Firstly, I am resigned to the fact that if I want to work as a librarian in Tasmania, I will have to play the networking game. I have learned that since I returned to Tasmania, there have been a couple good (in terms of what might have been a good fit for me) library jobs which have been filled, which were not advertised at all anywhere. As I've said before, I am very uncomfortable with networking as a job-seeking method, and believe that it is more about nepotism than finding the best qualified person. Nonetheless, Tasmania is a very nice, heart-stoppingly beautiful place to live, and I would like to stay here and work as a librarian. So I'm going to give this a real attempt.

Because I have such little faith in my chances of finding a library job in Tasmania, via networking or any other means, I will also be applying for library jobs on Mainland Australia. Tasmania is lovely, but there are also nice spots on the Mainland - and certainly better jobs! I now realize that this is important.

Both searches will take time and energy. For the Mainland jobs, the usual work of creating and monitoring my automated job searches, tailoring my resume, writing cover letters, addressing selection criteria and travelling to attend interviews, if I get that far. In Tasmania, meeting informally with certain key people to let them know that I'm here, and I'd be very qualified if a vacancy ever arose. Then following up to maintain my visibility.
Which approach will work out first?