7 days left. That's all!! Seven days left of this winter quarter. Both classes continue to be interesting, thought provoking, and sometimes plain confusing. =) I have two big projects left to complete so I'll be a busy girl.

On top of that, I'm going to GUATEMALA in two weeks!! Ack! I'm very excited about this and look forward to telling you all all about it.

The day after I return I start the Spring quarter. I know you're all dying to know what I've signed up for, so here it is:

Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials,
Information Systems, Architectures and Retrieval,
Storytelling: Art and Techniques

Sounds exciting, eh? Well I'm looking forward to it!

Back to reading now...I'm getting into classification issues in arrangement and display...whatever that means. =)

I am in doubt. Oh so much doubt. I'm working on the second assignment for my class, Organization of Information and Resources. (I should say that I did quite well on the first assignment - yay!)

Anyway, this one is on subject analysis and indexing. What is this all about you ask? Well, let me tell you (because I feel like procrastinating!).

Let's say you want to find an article all about the controversy between enrollment and achievement status at charter schools versus public schools in the US. Without subject analysis/indexing, here's what you'd have to do: read through every article in the world till you found what you were looking for. That's a slight exaggeration. Obviously you could narrow your search down by only looking in journals about education. And you could narrow it down to all articles written after 2003 (or whatever). But that's still a hefty stack of journals to look through.
And you can't necessarily judge what the article is about by just looking at the title. No siree. What about "Toward a Pragmatic Understanding of Status-Consciousness"? Would you guess from the title that this is about charter schools? I'm thinking not.

So librarians, many, many, many years ago realized that the number of articles (and books) was growing huge and it was getting really difficult to find a document on a specific topic. So now librarians take it upon themselves to look at documents and index them so they can be found more easily.

So first you have to look at a document and decide: what is this about? This is way more difficult than you may think. Why? Because people are different and they see things in different ways. I might read an article and think it's about deer and index it so. But you may think it's about hunting or some other related topic. There are a dozen or more methods describing different ways to do this subject analysis, but in the end, it is "problematic," as our professor keeps saying. But we do the best we can.

Secondly, we take these subjects and turn them into indexing terms. Often a controlled vocabulary is used. (I'm not even going to try to explain that. Sorry.) So let's say I have an article about dogs in movies. I assign it the terms Dogs and Movies. If you're searching in the library database using those terms, you'll find the article.

So, one disadvantage. What happens if you don't use one of those terms? What if you search under 'motion pictures' instead? You wouldn't find anything. Of course there is cross referencing and preferred terms, etc, but this sort of problem does happen from time to time. That's why when you search you should use different keywords to find what you're looking for.

And one advantage... who cares about indexing and whatnot anyway because now we can do fulltext searches and we don't have to read through all the text anyway? Well, say you have an article about Old Yeller (or whatever that movie was). What if that article doesn't have the word 'dog' in it anywhere? It's obviously about a dog, but your search wouldn't bring it up. That's where indexing comes in because that term would be added and you could find the article.

All that said, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, but for some reason this assignment is just not coming together!

So, I pulled out my "When in doubt, put the kettle on!" mug (thanks Anna!) and made a lovely cup of Yorkshire tea.

And then I reminded myself:
1. This teacher grades section by section through all the papers, so you don't really have to write a flowing paper (in fact it could hurt you!)
2. She's looking to see that I understand the concepts, so the actual document I'm indexing and maybe even the terms I pick don't matter so much.
3. I can email her and ask questions and hopefully I'll get an answer that makes sense!
4. And, it's not due till Wednesday. =)

And you thought overdue fines were bad! I came across this quote a couple years ago. I desperately wanted to post it in the library I worked at but my boss would not allow it. =) I did post it in my own little area where my pictures are hanging. No one really sees it, but I think about it as I'm looking daggers at anyone walking around with a book they haven't checked out. (Not that I'm possessive or anything!)

For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.

Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not.

And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

--From an inscription at the library of the San Pedro monastery in Barcelona

I've been poring over course offerings for days. This program is going to go fast and I don't want to miss out on some cool things. Some classes are only offered once a year (or less) so I have to stay on top of this. I've been ranking my interest in different classes and narrowing and narrowing. I have it down to 88 credits I'm interested in (which includes the required courses). The thing is, I only need 63 to graduate! So I narrowed down further and I thought I had it all figured out. But then everything changed.

See, as I said before, I'm interested in the international aspect and what I can do there. My first week here I talked to someone who said this program does not have any international-type offerings so if I want that I'm going to have to find it myself. I might have to go to some other school and take classes elsewhere to get what I want. I was a bit discouraged by that. It took me long enough to get here in the first place! So the other day I attended my second meeting of ASIST's SIG-III. That's The American Society for Information Science and Technology's Special Interest Group in International Information Issues (see? acronyms are good sometimes!).

Anyway, I went to the meeting the other day and got to talking with one of the leaders of the group. (She's the one who told me about PROBIGUA which I'll be doing next month!) She told me about a certificate program she's taking through the Evans School of Public Affairs. It's an International Relief & Development Certificate Program that I could take right here, concurrently with my degree. And some of the classes could even double count for both programs. There is also a 200-hour practicum which could potentially work for my directed field work credits. 200 hours is basically 5 40-hour weeks. I would basically have to take vacation or leave of absence from my current job to do this! I'm still not sure about it, but I'm really intrigued. The application is due April 15th (tax day!) so I have till then to decide. It definitely means staying in school a bit longer. But I already realized I wouldn’t be able to get done in exactly 6 quarters (2 years).

Oh, and there is also the Jackson School of International Studies . I think I can take a class or two there through the Evans School. They have some really interesting classes. Of course it's all up the air and I'm just collecting ideas at this point.

11:54 p.m. I just squeaked by. I had to turn in this huge assignment by 11:59pm today. I've been working on it for the last 5 or 6 days. I've seen too much of my computer, too much of this kitchen table. The assignment was a metadata schema evaluation. Somewhat interesting, but very involved. There were 17 parts!! And there was a huge amount of overlap. So much so that I began to worry if I was really getting it. Metadata is a weird thing.

11:56. Let's see if I can squeak by and get to bed before tomorrow! Then it's on to the next big assignment, a literature review...

I’ve got to post before more fun and exciting class sessions!

For the last week I listened to six online lectures and read countless articles, but I didn’t quite understand my organization class until we had our first actual class yesterday.

One the main things we’re studying is Document Representation. A document representation is a surrogate, a stand-in, for the actual thing. It’s basically a description. There are standards in various places on what this includes, but can include author, title, publisher, date published, brief summary, subject headings, etc. It sounds sort of basic, but it’s really not. (Librarians have to organize the heck out of everything and make it all difficult. =)

But here is the importance of document representations – imagine using a library that doesn’t use document representations. All the books are on the shelves and you have to look through all of them till you find what you want. There is no searchable catalog (those are document representations you’re searching). There is no list of any sort. Luckily you at least have book titles and blurbs on the back covers (all bits of metadata which describe the contents of the book).

It’s the same with articles. If you’re searching for an article in a database, the list of results is made of document representations. And it’s the same with internet search engines. Imagine if Google didn’t return that list of results (which are document representations). Instead you’d go straight to the first website. If that’s not it you click Next to view the next site, and so forth. You don’t get to see all the options at a glance.

Any time you’re looking at a brief description of a book, article, movie, website, audio, etc – and not the item itself – you’re looking at a document representation. These things were created to help you, the public, find what you’re looking for.

And who creates these things? Sometimes they’re automatic (as with internet search engines), but mostly they’re created by people; quite often, librarians. =)

My other class this quarter hasn't met yet. The professor is in Hawaii so the class is listening to online lectures and reading a stack of articles in preparation for the class to start next week. I made it through the three online lectures for this week. So far it's a lot of overview. The professor went on and on about this being a really in-depth, difficult class, hard stuff, confusing, etc, etc. I don't doubt her, but it's on the subject of organization, so I'm pretty excited about it.

In a nutshell, this class is about the process of organizing information. First you decide what you are organizing; then you choose or create techniques, tools, and standards; then you create resource representatives; then you figure out organizing, retrieving, and displaying the resource representations; and lastly you provide access to resources. Sounds a bit dry I suppose, but I'm sure it will be fun.

First Day

Welcome to the first day of Winter quarter! I'm taking two classes this quarter: Information in Social Context and Organization of Information and Resources. I haven't had the organization class yet, so not much to say there.

The first class will be quite interesting though. This covers intellectual freedom, intellectual property, privacy, confidentiality, information liability, censorship, book banning, free speech, surveillance & monitoring, fair use, copyright; little things like that. Yeah, it's going to be quite a class.

We started today by talking about the American Library Association's Code of Ethics. There are a lot of packed sentences in this code, for instance:

We significantly influence or control the selection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information.

We do not advance private interests at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions.

We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.

One thing we talked about: kids in libraries. Some parents look at every book with their kids and know what they're reading. Other parents drop their kids off and have no idea what they're looking at. Sometimes parents get upset about what their kids can find in a library. But are librarians supposed to be parents? Uh, no.

So we can't stop kids (or anyone) from looking at items in the library. But what do we stock in the library? Libraries I think pride themselves on being open to everything. You may not agree with it, but people will need the information and it's your job to provide it. So libraries have books on homosexuality, religion, how to make bombs, etc, etc. There will always be someone who has a problem with some topic in the library.

What about a library that decides not to stock those things they don't agree with? Hmm. I think that would be your own personal library, or perhaps a private corporate library. I think as long as libraries are supported by the public, they will represent the many varied interests of the public.

So as far as a public library goes, librarians aren't going to keep out items that may be deemed offensive by some. And they aren't going to protect anyone from seeing those items or stop people from checking things out. Obviously librarians aren't totally neutral on every subject, but it seems they try to be.

I made it through my first quarter! I'm done now and on break till January 3rd. I don't know if I can drag myself back to the computer to blog more...so you may not hear from me till January.

Until then, happy holidays!

These professors know how to pile everything up at the end of the quarter! I got my paper done on the comparison of IB models. I think it's a decent paper, we'll see what the professor says.

I also recently finished a huge group project and presentation. I'm so glad that is over! We looked at the information behavior of baristas, which ended up being quite interesting. Perhaps we were stretching it a bit at times, but that's only because there wasn't much literature to go on. Not any on baristas and not much on the service industry.

I've got one little assignment in that class and then it's done! Yay!

But the other class is a different story. I have a search assignment due at the end of the week. I've got a number of questions and I have to find the answers for. We've had two search assignments so far and I've done well on them.
I also have to do a research consultation with someone. I've picked my person, but she went out of town and I still don't know what she wants research on! Hopefully it won't take too long to do the research though. I'm interested to see if my new knowledge of searching techniques and resources will be helpful.

I also have another group assignment. For this one we have to pick some particular place and pick 10 reference resources they would need, and our reasoning for that.
This could be interesting. We're looking at a tour boat that goes around the world on educational trips, with lectures, etc. Right now we're trying to see if the trip could be about going to Quaker areas in Latin America. This should be an interesting one.

As you can see, I'm up to my eyes in papers and projects!

I found a new blog today on international libraries. There are only three posts as of today, but I'm intrigued at what this person will find. Here is the link http://globallibraries.blogspot.com/

Check out the second post and related links. It's about a bookmobile service in northeastern Kenya - traveling by way of camel!!

Okay, here are the instructions for a paper I've been working on for several days:

"Compare two models or theories of information behavior. Your paper should demonstrate how well you understand the key concepts, assumptions, contexts, and practice implications of the frameworks that you choose to compare. It should also demonstrate your ability to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and critically reflect on the range of ideas presented by the frameworks chosen."

The instructions go on from there. So how does that sound? Though it was killing me at first, I am having so much fun writing this paper!! Obviously getting a decent grade is a hope of mine, but even more so, I really want to understand the two theories I'm comparing.

I chose to compare Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties and Elfreda Chatman's Information Poverty. In a nutshell, SWT says that people are "tied" to each other by strong ties and weak ties. Strong ties are people you know and trust (close friends, family). Weak ties are people you don't know as well, but have contact with and get information from (possibly co-workers, other acquaintances). Granovetter believes that people who have strong ties are similar to one another and generally have the same information sources. Acquaintances are less likely to be similar and more likely to have a wider variety of beliefs, thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. A community that has no links to "outsiders" is a very insular group and doesn't learn a lot information outside of their own experiences. Granovetter believes ideas and information travel through these weak ties. A lack of weak ties leads to a fragmented society. Very interesting.

Chatman's theory says that some groups of people, because of social norms, lack of ability, etc, choose not to seek information. You see this very often with poor people. It can also happen with people who don't have good technology skills or easy access to information. The idea of information poverty is very interesting.

While researching these theories I came across an excellent article by an 'information professional' in South Africa, Johannes Britz. His article, To know or not to know: a moral reflection on information poverty, was published in 2004 in the Journal of Information Science. Go find it and read it!

A few tidbits from the article:

“Information poverty is not restricted or limited to a technology/digital divide only. The information divide is not limited to the ‘technology insiders’ and ‘technology outsiders’ of cyberspace. It is a much more complex phenomenon including issues such as cultural and language diversity, levels of education and the ability/inability to access and benefit from information. Furthermore, the divide between the information rich and the information poor is not only a divide between societies and countries. It occurs also between individuals who might share the same cultural and physical space."

"It can be concluded that information poverty affects the quality of life of the vast majority of people on this earth. It has considerable social, political, cultural and economic implications, and therefore solutions must be found."

"In Egypt the minimum information standard for its citizens is affordable access to the Internet and a computer for every household. As an outcome of a National Information Project, which was initiated by the Egyption government, it was decided in 2000 that Internet services would be provided free to all Egyptian citizens. The only cost would be the telephone call. This was followed by a so-called 'computer for every home' project according to which the government subsidizes computers for poor households by means of easy instalments. Two other examples are the Netherlands and South Africa. In the Netherlands it was decided to provide the homeless with a permanent e-mail address. As early as 1994 the South African government drew up a policy that it should be possible for each South African to be within walking distance of a telephone."

And we whine when we get lousy cell-phone service while we're on our air-conditioned buses driving through town.

Bonus thought for the day, a quote I saw today:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James Nicoll

We spent time last week talking about the reference interview. What a fascinating subject! Here are a couple of the quotes I've pulled out of the reading:

"The famous dictum, 'Speech was given to man to conceal thought,' is often forcibly brought into mind by the ingenuity with which visitors of the reference-room succeed in hiding their desires behind their questions" (Woodruff, 1897).

The most salient features of the reference interview are "mind-reading and cross examination" (Wyer, 1930).

"You see they will choke to death and die with the secret in them rather than tell you what they want" (Wyer).

Surely this can't be so! When a person goes to a library, don't they want help? Don't they want information? Why are people so difficult?

The problem comes down to 'how one person tries to find out what another person wants to know, when the latter cannot describe his need precisely" (Taylor, 1968). I guess you can think about it like a word. You know when you are trying to think of a word? You practically end up playing charades with people, trying to describe the thought or idea behind this word, trying to define it, but you don't really know or can't remember. And it's hard to describe a vague thought or feeling, and sometimes the descriptions you come up with have nothing to do with what the word really is.

So that's point one: people want information about something they can't even begin to describe.

But there is more than that.

Often, people will have looked everywhere themselves before they come to the librarian. When they come to the librarian to ask for help, they are admitting they failed, they couldn't find the information, they aren't good enough. (A bit exaggerated it would seem, but some people feel this way.) A lot of people hate to ask for help!

People often don't realize that finding information is a librarian's job. So they feel like they can't ask because they'd be bothering the librarian, or asking a dumb question, or it's not worthwhile, etc. (Unfortunately there are some librarians who make you feel this way - they're bad!)

Some people are shy. They are embarrassed about whatever they need to know and they'd rather muddle through on their own than ask someone.

Sometimes people direct their question to the librarian based on what sources of information they think are available. Say a person really wants to find out where Lincoln was born. They figure the answer will be in a book (undoubtedly) so they'll just ask for a book on presidents, or maybe even a book on Lincoln. Then they'll have to skim through the book till they find the answer. There are MUCH BETTER ways to find information that librarians know all about.

So just get over it and tell the librarian what you really want!! Geesh! =)

I found an amazing article today, and an amazing quote. I was flipping through the November issue of American Libraries and came upon their international section. The title of the article was Have MLS, Will Travel. It was an interview of several people working in school libraries around the world: Vietnam, Bolivia, Saudia Arabia, Hong Kong, the Phillippines, etc.

It started off:

Here are four questions that could change your life: Do you like to travel and have a spirit of adventure? Are you interested in learning firsthand about other cultures? Do you enjoy being a librarian but want a change from your current position? Have you considered becoming a librarian in an international school?

Hmm, very interesting... In an interview with one woman, her reason for going abroad was:

“A friend reminded me that I had been interested in mission work years before and maybe this was the time to trust God and make the move,” she says. That “move” eventually guided her to library positions in Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Philippines.

The last paragraph of the article was so touching to me:

Van Brocklin shared this anecdote: “I always think of my first year of working in the Bolivian school and a parent who showed up in tears after the first week of school. They were convinced their kindergarten son had ‘stolen’ a book from the school because the idea of a lending library was just totally new to them. . . . It was that kind of experience that I knew I was in the right place.”

Wow, I can't imagine not knowing what a library is, or not having experience with a library that lends books! This is what it's all about for me. In classes it sometimes seems like it's all going to end. No more books, no more journals, everything online or in some weird form, and everything is crazy. Well it hasn't happened yet. And I think of poorer countries that just don't have the infrastructure for people to have internet in every home. For some people books are the only option; and many are too poor to even afford these.

This is from the Probigua website:

In Guatemala, where 50% of the population cannot read, educational opportunities are severely limited by a lack of access to books and other written material.
Most towns and villages do not have libraries; neither do the public schools, which also do not supply any textbooks. Parents, many of whom earn the minimum wage of only $18 per week, simply cannot afford to buy books for their children.
Instructional methods in the public schools are limited to listening to the teacher and copying what is written on the blackboard. Many children simply do not learn to read and drop out of school after a few years. Many of those who do achieve some literacy begin losing it as they grow older. Only 10% attend school past sixth grade. As adults, most of these children are limited to doing manual labor - when they can find it.

Probigua is a non-profit Spanish language school. They donate all their profits to building libraries in the country.

As of 2004 our project has started, and is maintaining, 23 libraries as well as the first mobile library of Guatemala. For use by the early education reading programs we have established 350 reading corners in school and libraries under the motivation: "Book by book Guatemala will change." Furthermore, we have opened 16 computer centers and installed additional computers in 14 libraries. Our goal is to improve the services in our existing libraries and to provide access to technology to many children and teachers in rural areas. Tuition fees for Academia de Español support the libraries and provide scholarships for youngsters to attend school beyond sixth grade.

This sounds like an excellent program to me and I'm hoping to visit there in March.

One thing public libraries have to deal with is homeless people (wow, I don't like how that was phrased). I found this blog post talking about the library as shelter.

There was an interesting quote in the blog:

Fear in all its forms stands out. It seems to take the shape of a giant circle of mutuality: the shelter staff and other providers are afraid of the homeless and the homeless are afraid of the staff; the citizen on the street, the merchant the householder, and whole communities fear the homeless, and the homeless fear the non-homeless citizens. And to complete the circle, the homeless are afraid of the homeless. Thus, everyone is afraid of the homeless, including the homeless themselves, and what is so terrible and intractable about this situation is that everyone is right to be afraid.

Right to be afraid?!? Why!? Why is it right to be afraid of the homeless? In any interaction with a homeless person are you likely to be mugged? I don't know. I'm not sure what the fear is. Although, I've had it myself wandering through downtown Seattle on my own. What am I afraid of?

I then read an excellent post on a friend's blog. Actually, the part I enjoyed was in the comment. Here is the whole exchange.

But how does this translate to libraries? Sure there can be a Christian (or 'good person') response to homeless or poor people in the library. But can you expect that from librarians or other patrons in the library? I wish. The comment to the first blog entry is quite interesting.

I have no answers. I don't know if I'll be working in public libraries...but I'm interested in this 'problem' of a population that needs information as well and are feared so much in our society (and apparently other parts of the world as well).

It's true, I daydream a lot. In class, on the bus, at work, whenever. I daydream often about different ideas for libraries. And of course now different ideas for projects for my portfolio! So here is one strand of daydream I had in class this last Thursday.

We've been talking about information behavior so I'm not sure exactly where this came from. I was thinking about large public libraries (and most other libraries I suppose) and their collection development policies. They do their best to figure out what the population wants, not just what they want today, but what people will want years down the road. Not an easy job. But you can narrow things down based on the type of library you're in.

So I was thinking about small community libraries. Like a library on an Indian reservation. Or a library in some other sort of under-served population area. It would be cool to get together a representative group of people from the community to pour over all the lists of books available and help select what titles the library should get. I would hope then that the community would be that much more aware of what is in the library and they would also be excited about the resources, because they helped pick them out.
Of course, what is the likelihood of getting people to care? But I like wishful thinking.

So, more wishful thinking... I was daydreaming about putting together some sort of library club where people get together once a month to share "what did you learn this month." People could share as much or little about some particular thing they learned about. There could be a list somewhere of ideas of things to learn about. Sure this wouldn't appeal to everyone, but there are definitely some who are always eager to learn more things. I think it's important to share these things with others (helps give you more of a purpose) and you learn more that way from what other people are sharing.

All right, more on this later...perhaps.

More thoughts on the future of the book. We've been discussing the future of just about everything and I'm still thinking about the book. I don't know if transfering print books to online formats is the best idea, but some people seem to like it. My thought is that it's a whole different creature so why work so hard to make it look like a real book! Why do they have page numbers and margins and paragraphs? For that matter, why do they put one page of text per screen so you have to keep clicking to the next page? That's a bit annoying. This is all structural change though, as I said before. It's not content change. Perhaps this structure change is so huge that content change will be necessary.

I think of my sister and others who play computer games. No simple Tetris, mind you. These seem to be pretty involved and well thought out worlds with players who are joining you from around the world. They're creating a story as they play the game. It's a living, evolving story. Is this the future of books? A story that's interactive and visual and created by more than one person? How can you share a story like this with others? How can you pass it down through the generations?

Perhaps this will just be one recognized genre. It still seems unlikely that a paper-based book you hold in your hands will ever go away.

Wow! Where does the time go!? This has been a busy week. One of my classes has a lot of reading. A LOT! I think there were something like 12 articles/chapters to read, discussion questions, another 16 or so "supplemental" readings, looking things up online, etc, etc. Most of us thought it was for one day, but then it turned out to be for two days worth of class discussion.

And absolutely fascinating discussion, let me tell you! Last week we talked about parts of the book and this week we talked about the history of the book, back to the beginning of time it seems. It was really amazing, I thought. We started with Sumerians making clay balls thousands of years ago to record business transactions. Then they started stamping them with pictures. Then you get pictographys, hieroglyphs, and hieratics from the Egyptians. People were 'writing' things in stone or in wax tablets, but then someone got the bright idea to write things in sheets of papyrus and scrolls were born. It was done that way for a long time and then some time in the second century the book as we know it today was invented.

There were a number of factors in this. First, searching through a scroll for some piece of text you wanted was not easy. Second, Alexandria was the sole producer of papyrus and they decided to put an embargo on it because they were scared Rome was trying to take over the world and their scroll business (which they were). So Rome starts using parchment (which doesn't roll well) and papyrus basically dies after that. Somebody got the idea to cut scrolls up into sheets, sew them together, and bind them between two codicies (those wood and wax slabs people used to write on). Thus the book was born, and it has stayed in basically the same format for almost 2000 years.

Everything that has happened to books since then has had to do with the structure of the book and with making it easier to use. Paragraphs and punctuation and capitals didn't really come into use until the 1400s. Indentations in paragraphs showed up in the 1700s. Copyright started in 1709 and the first dust jacket appeared in 1833. Margins were a medieval invention and the table of contents showed up in the 1400s as well.

Of course up till the mid-1400s all books are made by hand by monks sitting in cold, dark, cramped shacks. Then in 1453 Guttenburg pulls together moveable, reusable type, ink, and a press and the world changes! We can now mass produce books!

The most interesting part of the conversation (which I think I mentioned before) is that all the changes that have happened over 2000 years have been to the structure of the book and not the content. The way we write stories has not changed. Books have always contained words, sentences, paragraphs. Now they also have pictures, graphs, etc.

But with the advent of electronic books, we may see the content of books change. Already ebooks have links to dictionaries, thesaurus, and other resources. Let's say we also throw in animation, sound, video, instant messaging, chat, blog, wiki, podcast, and commentary. The nature of books is totally different. Who is the author? What's authority now and who decides? Editions are pretty much out the door. And can you really call something like this a book?

I don't know but it is absolutenly fascinating.

Side note: This isn't really about grad school, but it was such a great experience!

Last Saturday night I went to the Seattle Symphony. They played three things: Dvorak's Slavonic Dances; Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor."

The guy who set up this trip to the symphony gets student prices or something so we got some cheap tickets. As we were arriving he said that our seats were in the front, so we'd be able to see well. Really well.

I couldn't believe how close we were! We walked down the aisle to the very front row where the seats were about one foot from the stage!

I sat down right in front of the conductor's podium. The stage was over my head so I had to look way up the whole time to see the orchestra. The music was beautiful and I enjoyed sitting so close so I could see all the detail.

But as I sat there, I looked at the conductor's pants. They were wrinkled! I mean, not just from sitting. I started wondering if he'd just picked them up off the floor from the day before - or perhaps he just hadn't ironed them from the day before. I was quite amazed that they were wrinkled.
And then I kept hearing this loud breathing. It was the first violinist, off to my left. He breathed so loud I could hear him each time he breathed in - even while the music was going on.
Every time the conductor really got into it and was bouncing on the podium to get some energy into his baton-waving, the podium would make this thunking noise, like it wasn't quite flat on the floor.
One woman a few seats in kept slipping out of her shoes.
When pieces would end and the audience clapped, a couple of the people looked really grumpy, which surprised me. I would hope playing in an orchestra wouldn't be a boring, ho-hum "job," but I guess a person could feel that way.
Part way through one of the crazier pieces, one of the violinists bows broke a bit. There was a big hunk of it (horse hair?) flying about since it was still attached at the top and bottom of the bow. He kept playing away, which would have driven me crazy. He finally got a few seconds rest and he grabbed hold of the offending broken bits and ripped them out of his bow, then jumped right back into the music.

Anyway, it was quite amazing to be that close. True, the violins were a bit overwhelming and it was hard to hear much else. But I really enjoyed the Dvorak and Beethoven pieces. For the record, Bartok is not one of my favorite composers.