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the writing games

This may have happened when I was in my high school’s badminton team. We were a bunch of friends playing together and badminton was a good excuse to hang out, but we weren’t exactly a great team. I think the only times we ever received any points was when the other side forfeited. One day we booked the gym for some badly needed practice. We showed up and found that there'd been a mixup with the booking and our court had been double-booked with the volleyball team. My badminton team wasn’t exactly super-dedicated, we may have walked away if it wasn’t for the volleyball team’s superior attitude, just assuming we’d defer to them. We ended up both stubbornly playing in the space. The two games shared a similar net and similar sized court - the different sets of lines were already drawn into floor. Having two different games being played on the same court was not an ideal situation. One of my friends had a volleyball pelted into his shoulder. But I guess that it's not nice to be hit on the face with a badminton shuttle or hit on the elbow with a badminton racquet. The joint practice was not a success. After that the two teams generally loathed each other.

This is not a real allegory where every little detail has meaning. The chaotic image of two different games happening in the same space recently came to mind when I was thinking about the relationship between blogging and other writing forms – particularly academic writing and journalism.

No analogy is ideal. This writing as a game analogy may suggest that writing is a trivial activity, that it's just a game. But I think games are important microcosms of reality. Each game has its own distinct ways of winning and losing and participation. The different games require different skills and attract different sorts of players. Some people play to win, others do it for the money, some just like to show off their skills. Some people play simply to have fun or because the game is a group activity and they like the camaraderie with the other players.

Each game regards itself as more important and interesting than the other games. Often the players of one game may have a negative view of the other games. For example, a blogger may view academic writing as anachronistic and elitist. An academic writer may view blogging as a meaningless low-brow game or a hideously bastardized version of their own game.

One way of looking at these different forms of writing is to be relativistic – each of these games serves different functions and attracts different sorts of people. Actually I’d better stop right now. In the next part of this post ["why I choose blogging", written on 15 August 2007], I’ll explore the non-relativistic path.

chaos and order in libraries - initial musings

Does chaos have any place in a library – other than as a negative or entropic force which must be subdued by the librarian?

The traditional view is that libraries are places of order, where we organize information and hence give it meaning and make it more usable. I vaguely remember the days before the internet and each library was its own closed system. Then it was obvious that each library had to apply order to its collection, otherwise, what was it for?

With the internet and online databases and search engines, all that changed. There is still a need for order in libraries, there always will be. Even if there were no books or physical items, online information still needs to be interacted with in some shape or form.

But now there’s another need. It’s not a need for chaos, that would just cancel out the need for order. It’s the ability to work with chaotic systems, which requires some tolerance and ease with chaos.

Please indulge me with this little allegory. Once upon a time, all libraries existed on solid orderly land. With the internet, there has been a thawing and now chaotic waters are encroaching on our space. I can only think of 3 ways of responding to this. One way is the flight response – accept the loss of our territory. Retreat to the mountain tops where the flood will never reach. Another way is to fight the flood. Using whatever tools available, build dikes to protect the traditional library from the chaotic waters which are an anathema to us.

Flight is a defeatist response which will leave librarians a diminished shadow of what we used to be. There will still be some librarians, in the same way that there are still some stonemasons and blacksmiths. Fight is even more dangerous. It may seem to work for a time, but there is no way of controlling the flood. Should the strategy fail, should the dikes be breached, we will all be swept away.

The third way, the only viable response is learn how to swim, build boats and navigate the chaotic waters. This is the other need, the ability to navigate chaotic systems.

open mic blogging

Last Sunday afternoon I attended a poetry reading at the Republic Bar & Cafe in North Hobart. On Sunday there was a formal programme consisting of four female Tasmanian poets, in observance of International Women's Day. Then there was an open mic session.

It struck me that blogging is like an open mic session. It's done in public usually by a particular group of amateurs interested in language, playing with it, pushing it. Although anyone is allowed to attend, much of the time only a small self-selected group participates in the venture. Although writing is a solitary activity, these activities give writers a chance to share their work with each other, and encourage each other.

The uploaded word is different from the printed word and different from the spoken word. It will be a long long time before blogging is accepted as a respectable form of writing, just ask photographers. Photography has been around for over a century, but sometimes photographs are still not considered to be real art by those who paint or draw or sculpt. I have realized that it is a waste of time to struggle against this directly. Better to ignore it entirely and keep moving forward.

That last sentence was about the medium. When it comes to content, struggle is just fine.

beyond purple cows in blogging

Purple cow was an apt metaphor for the first wave of blogging. Many of the first bloggers were purple cows.

Now that there are so many blogs, purple cow isn't so helpful. After all, we can't all be purple cows - not unless purple is the new brown.

Yes, every blog and blogger is unique in the same meaningless way that every person is unique.

What does it mean then? For me, the blog is not meant to help me do or achieve anything, rather the blog helps me to exist/be in this other place, the blogosphere. Could it be that one day,  we all might be expected to exist in this way to fully participate in life? It's impossible to know the answer. All I know is that I like this form and that's good enough for now.

asymmetric information in libraries

“My research on the economics of information showed that whenever information is imperfect, in particular when there are information asymmetries—where some individuals know something that others do not (in other words, always)—the reason that the invisible hand seems invisible is that it is not there. Without appropriate government regulation and intervention, markets do not lead to economic efficiency.” Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work, W. W. Norton, 2006, quoted by Andrew Leonard, "The perfect imperfection of markets", How the World Works.

This quotation and the rest of that post got me thinking about how asymmetric information might apply in libraries - seeing that the exchange of information is what libraries are about.

1. When the librarian has information which the library user lacks

This is both commonplace and normally a no brainer - in this situation the librarian's job is to make sure that information flows freely to the user. When somebody asks how to use a particular database or how to find a book in the library catalogue, the correct answer is not "that's for me to know and for you to find out."

But sometimes there are complicating factors. For example, if a student comes to me wanting all the answers for a research assignment, I am not going to spoon-feed the answers. I will give appropriate information and advice about how to find the information required by the assignment. Still sometimes it's a murky area because I would like students to learn that librarians can help them find things, but I don't want librarians to be expected to all their work for them (undermining the whole point of the research exercise) and be everybody's underpaid uncredited research assistants.

2. When the library user has information which the librarian lacks

Librarians are trained about their role in the reference interview, but library users are not. Sometimes people only want to provide the bare minimum information, which they think will be enough for the librarian to work with. Sometimes this can work, but other times it can waste everybody's time.

What seems most relevant to the user is not always what is most helpful to the librarian in developing a strategy for finding any given information. This is the reason why librarians need all those extra questions, which sometimes may seem nosey or even judgmental. It is not meant to be an intimidating process - but I can understand how people think that it is. If a librarian asks whether you know a particular piece of information about your search topic, and you don't have this information - remember that we ask these questions not to form opinions about you but to simply do our job, of helping to locate the information.

This aspect of asymmetric information is more acute with faculty, who might have extensive, amazing knowledge of a particular subject area, but only scant knowledge of current research processes. One way around this problem is for the librarian to obtain more knowledge of the actual subject, but that will only alleviate, not remove this knowledge differential. Another option would be for the information to flow in the other way - the general research skills from the librarian to the subject specialist, but this is often complicated by the fact that there is usually a power  differential between the librarian and the member of faculty.

3. When a library vendor has information which the librarian lacks

This may shed some light on the seemingly irrational outcomes which happen in the library services marketplace. In my work, I don't have much direct contact with vendors, so I can only think of two examples of this.

When a database vendor knows more about a how library uses its database than the library. If the usage is low, the vendor will be reluctant to reveal this information. But I am guessing that if the usage is high, the vendor will look into ways of getting more value out of the library - whether by raising prices, reducing services or cross-selling or up-selling additional products.

When libraries are shopping for an ILS (integrated library system), they can never know for sure what they are buying. An ILS is not car which you can take out for a test drive. Even if vendors allowed libraries to have a real test of their software (wait, I imagine that Koha would), I can imagine that those test drives would be so traumatic that after a few of these, the library would have had 90% staff turnover and lost 50% of its users. So basically, the information which the libraries have access to is the marketing from the vendor and word of mouth. This is not a vendor bashing post, but no ILS vendor would be so stupid as to provide information which libraries really need to know - what sucks about your product and what sort of customers are not suited to it. Sometimes word of mouth can be effective and I hope that blogs can have a role here, described as "word of mouth of steroids". But sometimes I wonder how many people would be open about saying that their ILS is a total lemon, that they felt they were conned by the slick sales presentations and that their ILS is holding back their library like a ball and chain. Ranting like that is not going to to solve many problems, it's providing the details which is one way of removing this aspect of asymmetric information in libraries.

On Vox: the accidental

   
   

It is the most natural and comfortable thing in life to sink into a rut. Our routines aren't usually just blind habit, they usually develop that way for very good reasons. I don't think that ruts are bad per se, but that it is good to be aware of them. Sometimes the only way to know that you've been in a rut is the intense feeling of oddness which occurs when for whatever reason, you step out of the rut.

» Read more on Vox

blogospheres

Although the term "blogosphere" is used as if it means the entire blogging universe, I think that this is true only in the most exceptional of circumstances. Usually "blogosphere" is a contextual word, as in the political blogosphere, the libr* blogosphere, the legal blogosphere, a.k.a. blawgosphere. Usually when the media talks about a particular meme or scandal sweeping the blogosphere, they are referring to the political blogosphere.

I have travelled through different blogospheres during the four years of my blogging life. I started out in libraries and law. I have also spent some time in the US (left) political blogosphere (via Salon.com), and the Sydney local blogosphere. I have found that although a subject may diminish in importance, it is never truly left behind.

The amazing thing about blogging is that finding a new blogosphere is like travelling to a new country. This week I have started investigating the business school blogosphere - the blogs of business school faculty and MBA students. Maybe I haven't yet found the movers & shakers in this area, but it seems to me that the business school blogosphere is not as developed as say the blawgosphere is.

Proportionally, there don’t seem to be as many academic blogs as in the blawgosphere. Many of the student blogs that exist seem more personal with the MBA experience in the background rather than being about business school. Which is fine - I'm just noting the difference.

And being so new in this subject area, maybe I haven't yet found the best ones. If any of my readers follow any business school blogs worth recommending, please let me know ...

Expect to read my travel notes soon.

the ugliness of certain crowds

I have at times thought that flash mobs were more about people desperately trying to find a use for new technology than anything else. Now I wonder how long the innocent random chaos of the flash mob phenomenon will persist, now that there's been a foreshadowing of what a flash mob with a passionate purpose can cause.

Yesterday's race riots in Cronulla, Sydney - which spread to other suburbs such as Maroubra (close to where I work), Brighton le Sands and Rockdale and Tempe  (close to where I live) were fuelled partly by broadcast sms messages, emails and discussions on electronic forums. Of course, the role of this technology is very minor compared with the mainstream media, particularly the Daily Telegraph and talk back radio, the influence of alcohol and the usually buried but ever-simmering racial tensions in Australian society (in saying  this, I am in disagreement with our Prime Minister). I think that Australia has real racial problems, but then I think most places in the world do, it's just the problems aren't as obvious where the population is more homogenous.

A mob of 5000 is very substantial, but bear in mind that the population of Sydney is over 4 million. It looked huge on the TV, and it has shocked me and everybody else whom I've spoken to about it - but nobody has been very surprised that it happened. I wonder if there were many people who just wanted to make a non-violent but assertive stand to "reclaim the beach", as it seemed to be at the beginning, before it got out out of hand and the crowd took on an ugly life of its own. I don't excuse them, I'm sure that most knew that there was an extremely high likelihood that such a mass gathering could degenerate into violence, even if they weren't planning on throwing the first punch.

Given how much people like to talk about the wisdom of crowds, and the power of folksomonies, it's interesting to see such a graphic illustration that sometimes crowds are very destructive things. This isn't to attack the legitimacy of the whole concept, just to point out that it is not an absolute. Sometimes the crowds are wrong and sometimes they should be avoided.

Currently playing in iTunes: Jets by Decoder Ring

MPOW and other linguistic atrocities

A couple of weeks back, Steven at Library Stuff wondered why some librarian bloggers refer to their place of work as MPOW.

I think it's interesting how language develops in little subcultures. Bloggers are so used throwing around terms like blogs, RSS, XML, feeds etc - terms which we all know about and understand, but can be confusing and alienating to outsiders.

That said, so bloggers may have their own jargon, but does this mean that anything goes and that we'll all going to end up writing in leet (a.k.a. l337 and l33t)?

New words and terms and acronyms will always be flowing in and out of our vocabulary. I can imagine that sometimes the new words might be good and welcome, and other times, the word might appear stupid and contrived and designed to exclude outsiders (which was my initial opinion of the word "blog"). But generally there's little one individual can do to stop an annoying new word from taking - a group of individuals, that's another matter. And once the word has taken, give up on that lost battle. Focus your energy on repelling the next linguistic atrocity.

Like many of the commentors on Steven's post, I think that sometimes MPOW serves a useful purpose for people who want to blog about their work and workplace issues without naming their workplace. Why would people want to do this? The main reason would be if the blogger knows or senses that the her/his workplace would not appreciate being named.

Read the extended version of this post.

Currently playing in iTunes: Four seasons in one day by New Buffalo

stress and the cold

Despite its recent glorious weather (speaking as a former Tasmanian and Minnesotan, I can say that winter in Sydney isn't worthy of the name, it's just a welcome respite from the hot weather), it seems like Sydney is stuck in the worst weeks of the flu season. This morning at work I had an eye of the storm moment where I briefly glimpsed this insight amongst all the busy-ness of the morning. We can’t control the stress and problems belonging to other people – but it helps to understand them. When somebody else’s stress or problems or pain spills over onto me, it doesn’t have to infect me and cause me to do the same unto somebody else. Sometimes it will happen, just as once in a while I will catch a cold, but other times I can resist it, especially if I’m aware of what’s happening.