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kristin buxton › Likes
kristin buxton, Laura Norvig, barbara fister and 2 other people liked this
from a bunch of journals. I've added some that I like, let me know what other feeds you would like to have added.
- Just Joe
Kirsten, Mark Kille, Hedgehog and 11 other people liked this
no kidding.
- DJF
I have always said (since the day I went to library school myself) that they need to be teaching writing in library school. And believe me, as the blogger who "reads a lot of the library literature so you don't have to," I read a lot of articles that make me want to stab my eyes out.
- Angel R. Rivera
I've just read an article where the author was clearly an ESL speaker and I kept wondering why no-one had edited for basic English grammar somewhere along the line. Other than that it was good and well-written; it would have been relatively easy to fix.
- Deborah Fitchett
Considering I just read a draft library school SOP that includes "Her lectures were truly a delectable thing to go to. She would spin multifaceted tales of theological and political philosophy enveloped in radiant hues..." I think the writing instruction needs to come along much earlier than library school.
- Nikki D.
My library school profs talked a lot about writing, which made me seethe. First of all, I don't think they were qualified to teach writing. Second of all, I wanted them to keep that remedial crap out of my professional school.
- Your Neighbor Steve
In my MLIS program part of one class session was devoted to the use of it's/its. This wasn't the intro to library science class, either.
- Elizabeth Brown
The professional writing thing seems entirely appropriate. The basic grammar and usage stuff is not. Fail 'em.
- Your Neighbor Steve
i had technical writing as a junior - but i still can't write for crap. I wouldn't minimize the effort it takes to go from writing in trade pubs to academic pubs - it's difficult... for me, at least.
- Christina Pikas
I haven't taught at the graduate level (whew!) but I often read people's stuff and make recommendations about how to make it more effective. That's fun; being faced with serious basic writing problems is not, it's a real head-banger. Where do you even start? To go by cover letters, a lot of people missed class the days writing was taught. Wow, they had a lot of grandmothers die during college.
- barbara fister
Dorothea: if you don't already, it might be good to include a plug for the writing center in your syllabus. Grad students don't always know that they're welcome to use it, assuming it's for undergrads. Plus, if you have a student who really need remedial-level help, the writing center's a better place to get them that than spending class time on it.
- Kirsten
Oh, and in lib school I once was placed in a group with someone who was enamored of Russian literature and her papers reflected that love. Unfortunately, she didn't have the writing chops to carry it off and they were horribly painful to wade through.
- Kirsten
I have the same sort of reaction to this comment that I have had for those posts lamenting over how bad many librarian presentations are. Developing skill as a writer or presenter takes much practice, execution and willingness to submit your work to a hard but helpful critic. Most librarians may find a worthy topic to research and write about just once every year or few years. Without...
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- steven bell
We should be exposing our students to excellent writing and presenting through the texts we set as readings or through our own communication and teaching. I would hope they take the opportunity to learn from this without being given a "how to" remedial lesson... I'm idealistic, but I would hope the exposure would help them understand what is well structured, easy to understand writing...
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- Kathryn says love n peace
Heh. 75% not-incompetent is still a C. :D
- Your Neighbor Steve
I think I'd rather see all the library journals just die ugly deaths. That would solve things to my liking.
- Your Neighbor Steve
"If the editors don't take the time to provide advice on how to improve the writing, and maintain low standards, you'll get lousy articles." - yes, this.
- Rachel Walden
Dorothea, I think that smacks of going after people you *know* are good writers, rather than staring at another depressing pile of boring manuscripts/proposals all screaming "GIVE ME TENURE!"
- Your Neighbor Steve
Ah, you are just playing into my argument (which is to say, confirming my prejudices). Because if most librarians can't write well, and if part of the problem is that they don't have enough practice writing, who better to get write for your journal than a snarky-ass blogger?
- Your Neighbor Steve
"journals scaring up whatever writing they can get" - those are the journals that should go away asap. I don't want to comment too directly on what I saw helping out the editorial team for JMLA for a few years, but I did do a pres at MLA this year that was essentially "not everything needs to be a journal article" [edited to add that I feel like I'm underselling my own talk here. I'm sure it was very interesting! :) ]
- Rachel Walden
Without getting into Lawson's "nuke 'em all" stance, I have an innocent question: What constitutes "excellent" writing, as opposed to, say, reasonably competent hack writing? It's an honest question, as I place my own writing in the latter category.
- Walt Crawford
For me, RCHW is an article that is written clearly, where you are thinking more about the subject matter under consideration than you are about a possible fork-eyeball rendezvous. Excellent writing is actually enjoyable to read, the kind of thing I might read more than once because it is so insightful, clear, funny, or creative. Excellent writing is writing that I tell people they must read, or quote/cite from memory. [Heh. Can't remember the last time I edited a comment this much.]
- Your Neighbor Steve
Ok, so asking library school to take responsibility for creating good writers is asking them to take on both the chicken and the egg, and it's not a solution I'd jump to with any great enthusiasm (despite my frustrated initial post). However, I use the communication skills I learned in my previous English degrees more often than I use any particular skill I learned in library school, so...
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- lris
Journal editors have no responsibility to teach writing or to massively rework submitted work. (Book editors frequently do, but that's another matter.) Reviewers can point out what would improve a submission in terms of organization or emphasis and copy-editors can catch goofs, but anything that is badly written should not be accepted. Perhaps there should be, as a category just below reject: "fork-eyeball rendezvous."
- barbara fister
No, they have no responsibility to teach writing. But they do have a responsibility to reject bad writing.
- lris
Yes! I marked a few assignments in the last lot where it was obvious that students had been let down by a whole team with their writing in the past, before it got to me. I designed an assignment using Zotero/citation for next semester, then cut it right down when I realised that 1) I was trying to take responsibility for filling in all the gaps that may have been missed earlier - in...
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- Kathryn says love n peace
I certainly agree (a) that journal editors should reject writing that's actually bad and (b) clearly, many of them don't--even in a couple of journal/magazines in the field that I consider well-done, I'm seeing some really ugly prose. As for copy editors: I've come to assume that they're all either dead, drunk or both, given what I'm seeing almost everywhere these days.
- Walt Crawford
[That's partly a fiscal reality. I just noticed that one journal/magazine I thought had very wide circulation is now down to under 2,000 circ. Hard to pay for much in the way of staff with numbers like that, and very few people really want to be volunteer copy editors.]
- Walt Crawford
And so we come back to the idea of having fewer journals, each with higher circulation and standards.
- lris
And since that's unlikely to happen any time soon, I think I'll return to my habit of not reading articles unless they've been vetted by someone else I trust first. Oh, and yes, I'm cranky today. Why do you ask? ;-)
- lris
I'm still holding out for zero journals, crowdsourced vetting. AKA the blogosphere.
- Your Neighbor Steve
I wouldn't go that far. Seems like a couple of really high-quality journals could do the profession a world of good.
- lris
Well, maybe I'm not "holding out" for that, I'm just describing my actual practice. :)
- Your Neighbor Steve
So, when is The Journal of the Library Society of the World going to debut?
- Andy
Andy, to some degree, you are soaking in it. To another degree, I would love to see a more formal thing.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Psst. Lawson just contradicted himself. :-)
- lris
So, form our own editorial/peer review board (4-5 people), ask for article submissions, review 'em, picks a handful that pass muster, bind it in a PDF, and make it a free download on Lulu. Sound good?
- Andy
I think I proposed that to a couple friends just last month, Andy. I'd LOVE to see that happen.
- lris
I like the idea of a LWS journal - will the cod be on the cover?
- Elizabeth Brown
Ha, Iris. I was just thinking that and racing back to preserve an illusion of consistency: I'd like to see something like a quarterly anthology of library writing, most of it drawn from blogs or from writers who had the good fortune and luck to preserve enough rights to enable them to publish in such a forum. I think that just starting another damn journal would result in just another damn journal.
- Your Neighbor Steve
However, let me hasten to add that if Andy or someone else DOES want to start something like an LSW journal, I would support it as best as I could.
- Your Neighbor Steve
FWIW, my writing skills are the product of my highschool. They had a floating writing lab every five days in which I would not go to an elective or lunch and instead have an intensive writing period. I can slap out a 5 paragraph persuasive essay in my sleep (intro, point1, 2, 3, conclusion). We did creative writing as well. Four years of this kind of writing practice makes a difference....
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- Andy
Then I would like to suggest the name "The Cod Piece".
- Andy
Kathryn (upthread somewhere) I don't think soaking LIS students in good literature is sufficient though it's certainly necessary. I think students need to a) read good literature, b) understand *why* it's good literature, and at some point c) apply those lessons to their own writing.
- Deborah Fitchett
Also, a LSW journal would be awesome and I'd be interested in working with it somehow.
- Deborah Fitchett
Second thoughts: part 'best of the blogosphere', part 'original content'
- Andy
Sliding back upthread a bit: I've read plenty of good information in awfully-written containers. I have to force myself, and have external evidence that it's worth doing, but if it's solid research and/or inventive and useful new ways of doing things - my literary snobbiness seems beside the point. I'm fine with RCHW.
- Marianne
Third thoughts: 5 stories from each (blog & original content) 'best of the blogosphere' done by link submission via google form. 5 pieces by this breakdown: MLS/MLIS student, academic lib, public lib, school lib, and special lib. Academic researched or opinion pieces equally welcome.
- Andy
I like the idea, but I also worry that it sounds a little like the now-dead Carnival of the InfoSciences, which died from lack of submission more than from lack of content.
- lris
Or just 5 of the best from each, no matter what.
- Andy
What would put it a step above the dear departed Carnival would be some marker of editorial oversight that was enough like a journal's editorial board for publications in this to count as formally published material. I'd like to help out the crowd that needs tenure (since otherwise they'd just publish elsewhere) but do so without sacrificing standards.
- lris
I think inviting people to revise a blog post appeals to me. Like, "you did a great job on this in 700 words. Do you think you could revise it into something a bit longer, incorporating what you have learned since you write this a few months ago?"
- Your Neighbor Steve
Steve, I am a fan of that idea and that's something I talked about on a panel - i.e., "here's an example of a good blog post about a practical matter that the author was able to share right away with people who could immediately benefit from that info. it didn't need to be a journal article. but a good editor would see this and contact this person about submitting something to their journal."
- Rachel Walden
I'm wondering if we can streamline this into something a bit more finessed for current/'real time' issues or stories. The only way I can describe it is something akin to a Delicious tag and having people subscribe to the tag's RSS feed. Is there something in Diigo that has that?
- Andy
Ok, that's a separate issue. Hrm.
- Andy
This all sounds interesting, but I doubt that I'd personally take any active part in it...since I'm already in the 11th year of my own absurd little library literature experiment. But more power to y'all: It could be a contender.
- Walt Crawford
I'd also like to see something that crosses diff types of librarianship - medlibs tend to read a medlib journal, and I think I would benefit from seeing more about what people elsewhere are doing.
- Rachel Walden
Agree with Rachel. I mean, I wrote an article talking about 'big tent librarianship', the idea that we are bound by a common cause. Something like this could be a means of introducing people to the other library types and start working on creating those kinds of connections within the community. (Although, I am biased on this one. I like to think that my vantage on the library community...
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- Andy
That would be a great way to look at the journal. I'd submit an editorial for the first issue about how the whoe "big tent" idea underlying the journal is a lot of bunk.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Really? You're going to John Berry it before it goes anywhere? :P
- Andy
:D No, I'd just be giving you an opportunity to show that your tent is so big, it even included jerks like me.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Steve, are you saying that I can pitch a very large tent? #andnowwehavearrivedatthejuvenilehumorendofthethread
- Andy
Diigo has RSS feeds for everything by a given user; for everything with a given tag; and for everything with a given tag by a given user.
- Deborah Fitchett
My 2-year-old, toilet-training son, insisted that my librarian action figure also needed to pee this afternoon: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh.... (Disclaimer: no disrespect of Nancy Pearl was intended in documenting this event.)
rochelle rochelle, Kirsten, kristin buxton and 3 other people liked this
Classic. And I'm certain she must need to pee occasionally.
- marthalib
Nancy isn't shushing, she's indicating which number is going on.
- Andy
hahaha! :D
- holly #ravingfangirl
LOL! And I'm sure that Ms. Pearl herself would approve.
- Catherine Pellegrino
I'm always amused by the so-called "shushing action." To me and a friend at MPOW, it looks more like "nose-picking action."
- Betsy
Andy -- maybe Nancy's been holding it for a really long time. Good thing my son is paying attention.
- Galadriel C.
Part of her "One City One Toilet" initiative....
- Andy
LOL!!! and to think I was just impressed with her ability to stand and deliver.
- Galadriel C.
I much prefer that to our Potty Elmo. http://www.fisher-price.com/us...
- Stephen Francoeur
Holy cow, we need a social software app for reference/public service transactions. Where you unlock badges and stuff like that.
Laura H., Michael R. Bernstein, Bobbi Newman and 12 other people liked this
after 25 "Where's the bathroom" questions answered you unlock the "Toilet Attendant" badge.
- Your Neighbor Steve
When you find something precisely right with a seemingly off-the-cuff search, you get the Libris Ex Machina badge.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Someone get Dave Pattern to code this mofo.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Find information in a language which you do not understand: "Searching in Tongues"
- Your Neighbor Steve
"searching in tongues" I totally need that badge :-D
- lris
Drawing a map for a patron (http://friendfeed.com/skeskal...) gets you the "Lewis and Clark" badge.
- LB so u no it's real
This needs a catchy name.
- Andy
...That would actually be an awesome ap. I can see it being useful in departments where people otherwise forget to note down statistics and then a couple of years later discover that TPTB are going to fire people based on the fact that statistics are dropping.
- Deborah Fitchett
"Signpost" badge, for after you answer 10 questions by pointing. (Not because you are lazy, but you can point out the answer without getting up.)
- Andy
"A little help from my friends" when you phone, text, or email to get an answer from a colleague.
- Andy
"Information Wants to be Free" badge for getting a user past a paywall on Google Scholar.
- Jason P
"Circulation Intervention" badger for unscrewing a circulation screwup
- Andy
A badge for the fifth time each day you unjam the photocopier/printer.
- Deborah Fitchett
"Invisible College" for calling upon the powers of the internet to get an article faster than would otherwise be possible.
- DJF
"Keeping up appearances" badge, for pushing in those chairs under tables and desks for the 10000000000th time
- Andy
Does "searching in tongues" come into play when you have to read a citation published in a non-roman script to see if we have the translation journal? (yes, I used to be the mathematics librarian)
- DJF
"Helpmeet" badge for the fifteenth time just showing up at the patron's computer and/or hearing them talk through their question magically fixes the problem or provides the desired answer.
- Marianne
Reference Correction: for heady circulation staff correcting something misspoken by reference staff.
- ♫410 I Coach 'em Up♫
from iPod
The "share because we care" badge for letting a patron use the stapler.
- Jenny Levine
Haiti: I'm matching funds up to $10,000. Plz give! http://clifflandis.net/2010...
Hedgehog, Mo Kargas, kristin buxton and 8 other people liked this
Asking LSW about professional library organizations is like asking the Unitarian Universalists about organized religion.
barbara fister, Jezmynne Dene, kristin buxton and 6 other people liked this
I think it's more like asking the Church of the Subgenius about organized religion.
- Jason Griffey
Hehehehe. Or asking the patrons of the Cabaret Voltaire what they think about still life painting.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Oh yes. I was hoping it didn't sound like I wanted to squelch discussion. Just that there will be some skepticism. And that this "society" is on another wavelength entirely.
- Your Neighbor Steve
doesn't LSW want to place members in other organizations to promote their ideals throughout the entire system? Of course barring that maybe LSW needs subgenre orgs? p.s. I would totally ask Bob if he thought their was a good Universalist church in my area. His wisdom is all knowing and ultra perceptive
- Jason (not an Argonaut)
I don't know that the LSW wants anything. There are too many of us to have any specific agenda. And I wasn't trying to say that LSW people are anti-organization any more than Unitarians are anti-organized religion. It's just that the what Unitarians and LSW members think is an "organization" may not be what other people think it is.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Me too, Jill!
- Your Neighbor Steve
truetrue. I thought for example that code4lib was a great response to my thread. I never thought of it as an organization, more of a conference. Just the kind of suggestion I would expect from the LSW
- Jason (not an Argonaut)
Not that it really matters, but my former UU church minister (JUC) is now the UUA prez. JUC also has a buncha librarians, including the former state Librarian, but I still need to convert them to the LSW faith.
- Just Joe
First installment ready to mail to Louisville Public Library. Thanks, everyone! We only need ~$2,000 more to reach our goal!
kristin buxton, Greg Schwartz, Becca and 18 other people liked this
Someone donated 44 cents?
- Jason P
Heh. PayPal takes a small cut of each PayPal contribution. So at some point I just cleaned out my PayPal account, and this is how much it was.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Hey Steve, looks like your site is down?
- Jason P
It was having trouble for a bit--OK for you now?
- Your Neighbor Steve
I am still wrestling with my paypal issues, but hope to have a contribution coming soon! :)
- Connie Crosby
Connie, several people have sent checks, so if you'd rather do that it's no big deal.
- Your Neighbor Steve
Steve Lawson, you rock!
- tab
Jo Alcock, kristin buxton, Connie Crosby and Sir Shuping is just sir liked this
Martha- we have a team blog, aimed at faculty. We use tags to help them find discipline specific items.
- Pete
we are not academic (large national research org) but similar issues. Just about (next week) to launch blogs. Have divided by discipline which also reflects org structure. 1 main blog then 5 subject areas with sub disciplines covered by categories. Using WordpressMU.
- suelibrarian
I'm not a liaison, but.... we have one main library blog and several blogs for individual disciplines. http://homer.gsu.edu/blogs...
- Jason P
We're not doing any blogs at present because of issues with legal. Hope that will be changing soon.
- Rachel Walden
We have one main library blog and blogs for different colleges. (More or less.) But not every college has a blog. We also use categories for different subjects within a college. I think it largely depends on how many people / how much time you've got to maintain the blog(s).
- Deborah Fitchett
I have about 7 different departments. I tend to tag the entries according to the various liaison areas, such as: http://sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com/search...
- Just Joe
we're about to start one out at the biz library for our faculty as a pilot project. i proposed them at the branch level to a) make sure we aren't just syndicating our "events & announcements" stuff from the library home page, and b) to make it easier to know what content to add. plus i see it as more of a tool for reaching our faculty over our students - so i'm going to try and showcase faculty research (deep linking into our resources) as well as giving them the headsup about other biz programs.
- jambina
Subsidiary questions for those that do have subject blogs and a main blog. Do you pipe the posts from your main blog to the subject blogs? I am in two minds about this. It would save the time of the reader and remove the issue of expecting them to subscribe to two places but for those that have cross subject interests they would get those posts multiple times.
- suelibrarian
We don't. I suspect it'd be tricky with our software. If something's important enough we'll copy and paste (or copy and edit if I want it to suit the style of our particular users). One thing for ours is that we have php set up to pull snippets of the most recent blog entries onto library webpages - eg main blog shows on library homepage (http://library.canterbury.ac.nz) and subject...
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- Deborah Fitchett
I am using WordpressMU so I was just going to use the feed plugin to pull from the main blog to each of the others. It would take a bit to set up which is why I havent done it yet.Thks for the examples. Unfortunately our main library are part of our intranet and static only ATM.
- suelibrarian
We have one main blog and pull feeds into various pages based on categories. I thought that librarians would be excited about having such a quick and easy way to push news/information out to users, but only our electronic resources librarian is using it. I think I'm going to start an informal brown bag series to communicate these ideas better. I get it, but not sure my colleagues even have it on their radar.
- Jen
One main blog (Wordpress) with multiple categories representing different departments/campus libraries. This way posts can be assigned to multiple categories, if relevant. We also use a little Javascript/PHP to display the headlines on the main library site and campus sites. We basically treat each category as a separate blog with it's own RSS, but it's nice to let librarians cross-post items.
- jönαthaη
Rachel--I'm curious to know why legal is holding up blogs?
- Connie Crosby
Connie, they just haven't really gotten it and are nervous about the whole thing. For example, there is a med center blog, but you have to log in with med center ID and password to view it and comments always have that identifying information attached. Not allowed to have public blogs. They say the only way around this currently is if no comments are allowed, which sort of defeats the purpose. (added: and that med center blog hasn't been updated since Feb)
- Rachel Walden
That's what I was told last time I checked anyway - I think there have been some personnel changes in a position to shake it up a bit, though. There are some existing blogs on the univ side, but my understanding is that there's a freeze on new ones. *sigh*
- Rachel Walden
Unfortunately counsel often don't understand Web 2.0. Their whole purpose is to mitigate risk, so it is easier for them to just say no. What kind of organization are you in?
- Connie Crosby
We started out with all comments pre-screened. Once we got authentication working we got to give the choice so people can comment with their name attached and it appears immediately, or anonymously and it's pre-screened. Once long ago people had to log in just to view, but fortunately that was rapidly seen as Sub-Optimal.
- Deborah Fitchett
Connie, I'm at the med library at an academic medical center.
- Rachel Walden
A tricky area, Rachel. It will take some work to educate them that you are using blogs to facilitate communication, not to say anything confidential or give out medical advice. Too bad they can't see blogs as just a quick-to-edit website news page, or a newsletter. I think it is the word "blog" that gets people tied up into knots. I like the idea of moderated comments with a comment policy posted. Could they live with that??
- Connie Crosby
Connie, I think that's a possibility - I'm hoping we can move things along in the near future. Thanks for your thoughts on this!
- Rachel Walden
Never write anything on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see written on your grave. - http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2009...
kristin buxton liked this
Sci-Tech Bunching of the LSW? - http://www.nuthingbut.net/2008...
kristin buxton and John Dupuis liked this
Did Joshua Neff start the LSW, or was it a group based decision?
- Just Joe
Awesome dude. I still owe you a better hug, so this is a virtual hug.
- Just Joe
Count me it. 2010 in Denver. (BTW, there's likely to be another library unconference in Toronto in spring 2009.)
- John Dupuis
not sure about making it to Denver - please consider lots of online versions - also if it could be a different date than the scienceblogging thingy, if that will happen again in '10
- Christina Pikas
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