Planet Code4Lib
July 23, 2008
What is happening with Twitter? A week ago almost 400 people were following LPI_Library and I was following about 1/2 of that. Now both those numbers are less than 1/2 of what they were a week ago. It seems folk are leaving in droves. If it were just my followers going down I might reevaluate how I was posting but the people I follow has also been dropping so I can only assume either 1) Twitter has lost people's accounts or 2) people are leaving Twitter for other services.
I have created an account on FriendFeed. I'm capturing my Facebook, LPI_Library tweets, and postings here. Maybe this is where all the cool kids are hanging? Maybe Pownce or Jaiku or ?
This does raise a problem. Just what is our attention span with new tech tools? Twitter is not yet old enough to have been mentioned in any books and already it is passe. How can anyone keep up with this? How far ahead of the curve are we going to be? If all our users are a year or two behind us, are we serving them by continuing to move on?
by noreply@blogger.com (David) at July 23, 2008 09:55 PM
This is so sad - they wait til I get hooked and then everything dies!
Technorati Tags: twitter
by Nicole at July 23, 2008 08:00 PM
Chalon, Patrice X. and Di Pretoro, Emmanuel and Kohn, Laurence (2008) OPAC 2.0: Opportunities, development and analysis. In Proceedings 11th European Conference of Medical and Health Libraries, Helsinki (Finland).
Web 2.0 has raised new expectations from the library users : after reading a book, they wish to rate it, provide some comments or review about it and tag it for themselves or for others. They also expect to discover other interesting books thanks to the contribution of other people. Those functions, summarized under OPAC 2.0, are now provided by several Integrated Library Systems (ILS), at least partially. But, due to the slow development of some products, other paths were also explored: Content Management Systems (CMS) or specific software. CMS does provide the required functionalities like tagging and commenting. Some pioneers thus decided to develop a new Web OPAC based on CMS. Another approach was to build an OPAC that is independent from any ILS and which offers the required functionalities. In this paper, we propose to review the options available for the librarians wishing to offer Web 2.0 functionalities to their users. We also provide a synthesis of our own experience in implementing an OPAC 2.0 into our Library.
by noreply@blogger.com (David) at July 23, 2008 06:58 PM
One of my work responsibilities is to maintain the Voyager integrated library system from Ex Libris. A new release (7.0) is now available and one of the features that is getting the most publicity is the new web interface to the catalog. It features dramatic architectural and feature improvements from its predecessor, as well as adding new features that weren’t possible before. The Voyager product manager and folks from Ex Libris customer support have posted several enthusiastic reports on new features to come on the Voyager discussion list (closed to customers only), and I think they are doing a fairly good job of trying to build excitement. Except that all that I’ve heard and seen so far leaves me cold.
Why? Well, although I definitely agree that there is much to like about the new interface, it’s not really that new. During my last stint at what was then Endeavor Information Systems three years ago, I participated in user studies at some existing Voyager customer sites that were based this same interface. The functionality and changes I see in the Voyager 7.0 web interface (a.k.a. WebVoyage) were all designed and finalized, as far as I can tell, three years ago. That’s light years in technology time.
Worse still, the things that are so “exciting” about this new interface (persistent URLs! WHoooHeee! — different “skins”! Oh my! — a truly simple, Google-like basic search! Isn’t that original!) are features that have been available and taken for granted in other systems for years. And they are ones that in some cases have been implemented better than what I have seen so far in Ex Libris’s Voyager offering.
Sorry, but this is just a new flavor of lipstick applied to an old pig. It would take a lot more than this to get me excited about this particular product again.
by FamManLib at July 23, 2008 06:38 PM
There is an alternative way to access MBooks other than through UM's online catalog Mirlyn. You can harvest the MBooks records directly via our OAI interface. The University of Chicago has done just that, and integrated these records into their library catalog.
Excluding serials, as they were more problematic to integrate, they provided access for users to MBooks and Google Books links from the catalog, for books they held.
As an example, go to http://lens.lib.uchicago.edu/ and search for "An historical sketch of the native states of India in subsidiary alliance with the British government". The second record provides the link to the MBooks full text of that book.
We're very interested in hearing from other libraries that are using MBooks records in their online catalogs.
Only records for MBooks available in the public domain are exposed through OAI. We have split these into sets containing public domain items according to U.S. copyright law, and public domain items worldwide. There are currently over 121,000 records available for harvesting. We anticipate having 1 million records available when the entire UM collection has been digitized by Google.
For more information, see http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/info/OAI.html.
by khage (khage@umich.edu) at July 23, 2008 04:16 PM
Read our recent article in D-Lib Magazine:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/july2008-hagedorn.
This report is a follow-up to the McCown et al. article in IEEE Internet Computing two years ago [1], in which the researchers investigated the percentage of URLs from OAI records in Google, Yahoo and MSN search indexes. We were interested in whether Google in particular had increased the number of OAI-based resources in its search index.
Google's indexing does not seem to have retrieved more of the hidden web since the publication of the McCown, et al. article in 2006. We would venture to conclude that Google has not endeavoured to increase their support and access to OAI materials. Even taking into account the caveats in our report, we would also conclude that aggregations of OAI records are as valuable for user research purposes as they were at least two years ago.
[1] McCown, F., Liu, X., Nelson, M. L., and Zubair, M. "Search engine coverage of the OAI-PMH corpus." IEEE Internet Computing 10:2 (March/April 2006) pp. 66-73.
by khage (khage@umich.edu) at July 23, 2008 04:16 PM
At the beginning of 2007 we funded a small podcasting project called PsychoPod, undertaken jointly by Nigel Holt and Jim Crawley (Bath Spa University) and Ian Walker (University of Bath). The intention was to develop a series of podcasts aimed at undergraduates on similar course modules in cognitive psychology at the two institutions and to undertake some survey work looking at how successful they were at augmenting a more traditional approach to course delivery.
The final report and copies of the resulting podcasts were delivered to us some time ago but I have just got round to doing something with them :-). Four podcasts were produced, as follows:
I'm not sure how these were originally distributed to the students on the psychology courses but they were delivered to us as MP3 files on a CD-ROM. So, what to do to make them available? I asked around (using Twitter) for suggestions of a podcasting equivalent to Slideshare - i.e. a social network through which I could upload, host and share the podcasts. Several people suggested Odeo, a service which turns out to be more like Technorati than Slideshare in the sense that it aggregates podcasting feeds from other sources rather than hosting the content directly itself.
So, I uploaded the MP3 files to the Eduserv Web server, created a simple RSS feed for the four podcasts and submitted it to Odeo. I then waited a few days while the content got agreggated into an Odeo channel. It was easy enough to do and seems to have worked fine. I'm not sure how much 'educational' (by which I mean 'academic'... by which I mean 'university level') content there is on Odeo and it is possible that I could have made a better choice of service but the point really was to see how easy it was to make the stuff available so it doesn't matter too much.
As an alternative approach, I could also have added the content to iTunes or iTunes U I guess? I didn't do so largely because I felt it was more appropriate for the universities concerned to do that directly themselves, rather than me doing it as a funder on their behalf (though one might make the same argument about my use of Odeo).
Suggestions for alternative (perhaps more overtly academic) podcast hosting and/or aggregating services are very welcome.
by Andy Powell at July 23, 2008 03:47 PM
This certainly breaks the stereotype, if she really is a librarian. My Spanish is not good enough to know if it is serious or meant to be ironic. Is there a Metal Librarian blog yet?
by noreply@blogger.com (David) at July 23, 2008 02:08 PM
I really liked this protoype as it crossed the eLearning and eResearch boundary, by providing a systematic overview of how a Research paper is written. Think timlapse of how a research paper is written from inception (versions), and then add the ancillary information like twitters and blog posts that feed into the creation of the research paper.
by Wisdom of CRIG (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 03:05 PM
I've had a couple people ask me 'what is a developer lounge', other than my explanation here I thought I would post a sample of partially what goes on in the lounge. As an event at the conference it is nothing else other than a room where developers will come to sit down and do what they do on a day to day basis (email, surf, code, etc); the only difference is that every now and again they break out into spontaneous discussion.
The key really, is having a place where the developer can feel free to talk tech: a space for active discussion (not presentation). The average lounge experiences ebbs and tides of developers being in the lounge and discussing everything from their local systems to how they are managed.
It is these kinds of open events that allow developers to not only learn what others dveloper are doing, but to also ask questions that they would never ask in front of their peers if it was a presentation that was being given.
On the whole it is a far better method of informaiton dissimination. Frutehrmore, as more and more of the conference proceedings are recorded, streamed, blogged, posted, etc; it almost makes going to the event redundant because you can wait for people to tell you which presentation were good and then you can go back and watch them after the conference. Meanwhile you can be networking and having syncronous conversation with your peers, whcih is surely what conference were originally about in the first place.
by Wisdom of CRIG (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 02:54 PM
What are the difficult challenges that federated search vendors are facing? How are they meeting these challenges? Miriam Drake, Professor Emerita at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and one of the judges of the federated search writing contest, asks a number of industry leaders some difficult questions. Drake’s article appears in the July/August edition of Searcher Magazine. The article is not freely available; only this short description appears on the publisher’s site for the current edition:
Miriam Drake talked to a number of federated search developers to get their perspective on issues such as scalability, common names, and reliability and how these areas affect federated search technology and user satisfaction.
(more…)
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by Sol at July 23, 2008 01:53 PM
Just a reminder to those who are interested that there’s only a week left to get your application in for the potential National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Center for History and New Media. This is a terrific program that NEH has set up, and a real opportunity for fellows to learn from our experience and vice versa.
by Dan Cohen at July 23, 2008 01:36 PM
An interesting idea around providing a video service specific to Academia that would in the first instance handle video conversion to multiple formats and then set up the cloud storage services (in this case EC2 and S3) for other institutions.
by Wisdom of CRIG (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 02:02 PM
The EduWeb Awards had the University of Chicago as the winning web site (CMS). It was aclaimed for its minamalistic design, but we thought it could even take it a step further by utilising the Google minamalist search approach.
We also thought it might be worth looking into Google SiteMaps to provide a common way of presenting University web sites to the user which could be optimised via the kinds of searches that took place on the local search engine.
Point being that better search facilities (analytics) should be put into the institutional search engine so as to guaratee that the user is getting back what they want.
by Wisdom of CRIG (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 01:46 PM
We discovered a very real need by both the CMS and Repository community for not repeating ourselves in trying to get the same information into both systems.
by Wisdom of CRIG (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 01:15 PM
Yesterday a colleague was chatting with me about what make up a repository. Have we been overthinking what is needed? Can we simplify the tools we use? Recombine lightweight tools in a new way?
This was very timely because I'd seen a posting that JISC's Information Environment team is experimenting with IdeaScale to have a discussion about defining repositories to feed into JISC work on repository architecture.
First -- about IdeaScale:
It begins with an idea posted to your IdeaScale community by a user. Each idea can be expanded through comments by the community. The ultimate measure of an idea is determined by a voting system. Any idea can be voted to the top or buried back down to the bottom. It combines the "wisdom of the crowds" concept with Web 2.0 models like Digg.
I think it's interesting that JISC is trying this approach -- have discussants set out a series of statements about repositories, allow comments, and let members of the community sign up to vote +1 or -1 on the positions.
I have a love/hate relationship with the word "repository." It's next to impossible to define or describe, but I haven't been able to come up with anything better. I'm not sure this activity will produce any solid definitions, but it is generating a very interesting public discussion.
by Leslie Johnston (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 09:36 AM
I'm a long-time vi/vim user and occasionally kick myself for not knowing it better. In a way it dates back to my first UNIX days when the dozen or so basic vi commands were your bread and butter across *NIX variants, which varied so widely that knowing more vi than that could bite you at the one moment when you were trying to recover partitions or whatnot on a strange box where they only had the wrong kind of vi (or am I making that up?). In the past year I've become an all-day-all-the-time vim user and finally started forcing myself to use more features and to begin to tune a vimrc. I know it's started to take because the first thing I do when I set up a new machine or account anywhere is to scp down my vimrc from other hosts.
Today I learned about the '*' command and omni completion with ctrl-n. Tomorrow they will be indispensable. Why on earth did I not find these sooner? If you use Vim and don't know about them, go learn them. If you use Vim and do know about them, how come you didn't tell me sooner? If you don't use Vim, well, I love you, too.
Omni completion details found via amik.dk while watching Bram Moolenaar's 7 Habits talk which I found via TWID #30.
by dchud at July 23, 2008 04:32 AM
July 22, 2008
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US Patent Office is changing its rules to disallow patenting of processes unless they “result in a physical transformation of an article” or are “tied to a particular machine”
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An Amazon-S3 Clone in Ruby. Clones the API but stores the data on your own machine
by Ian Davis at July 22, 2008 11:33 PM
I was pleased to read about a list of the 25 most modern libraries in the world via LISNews. One of the criteria for selecting these libraries was their architecture and I clicked on several of the links to library homepages hoping for a way to see what the physical environment looked like. I was disappointed. Why don’t libraries, especially those with distinctive and/or award-winning architectural details, provide an easier way for virtual visitors like me to see them in photographs and/or video clips? Maybe such information is readily available on many of these library website and I simply overlooked it, but I don’t think so. I think libraries should spend more time thinking about advertising themselves in this way to their virtual visitors (who, in many cases, far outnumber physical visitors).
by FamManLib at July 22, 2008 09:11 PM
I’m lucky to own an iPod Touch but I can’t help longing for an iPhone 3G too 
The main difference between them, for me, is that the iPhone 3G can truly be an “always on” device in terms of Internet access because of its dual wifi/cell capabilities. The iPod Touch can only connect via wifi, and I find that aspect of its functionality too limiting. On the other hand, I don’t want the additional service costs that an iPhone would require.
Just about every iPhone application also works on an iPod Touch, but with sometimes significant limitations. For instance, all of that cool location-based functionality that iPhone users get to have isn’t available for the iPod Touch since it is wifi only. When I’m at work, for example, there is no wifi access that I can use. Well, there is wifi access but I’m prohibited from using it. (Oh how I wish for ubiquitous, free wifi wherever I go!)
I’ve tried quite a few of the free apps in the Apple App store and like most of them, but I was particularly excited to read this a.m. of the availability of a WordPress app. This app is free and it works quite well from what I can tell so far. If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch owner and also manage a WordPress blog then this software is a must-have.
Other apps that I particularly like so far include the Facebook app, Twitterific, WeatherBug, and Stanza (a free ebook reader that I think is quite functional). Another free app that I think is really cool but is more of a geeky showpiece than something practical and useful at this point, is PangeaVR.
Some other library bloggers have pointed out the lack of library-oriented applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. I agree that this is unfortunate and I look forward to reading about new developments in this space soon. I wish I was smart enough to develop something myself, but I’m not.
by FamManLib at July 22, 2008 08:17 PM
At Equinox, we have about 30 migrations to Evergreen currently scheduled for the rest of the year. We are doing many, we are working with our partner, Alpha-G Consulting, LLC, so that it will be doing migrations, too, with its customers, and, of course, the University of Prince Edward Island blazed yet another migration trail by moving from its legacy system to Evergreen largely on its own and in one month. We have hired our first migration specialist and have developed a number of techniques to cut down the migration time.
Five public libraries and one academic migrated to Evergreen in June. Each migration takes up-front work of data mapping, and finding out what the library wants its installation of Evergreen to do. Then there is a short but intense migration that takes on average two days that is something to behold. One key goal is that there be minimum disruption for the staff and no downtime for the catalog so the migration takes place largely out of sight of the libraries’ users.
US Public library systems running Evergreen
Table 1 (pdf) presents changes in the libraries using Evergreen. The July figure is 51, up 3 from March. The summary data, however, do not show concomitant increases in other data because one’s data are already included in the system it split from and the other, Catoosa County, although it is new to PINES, does not have disaggregated data in the national-level data used here. The increase in the summary figures is for Kent County alone.
The average population served at these libraries is 93,000 which is higher than the U.S. average. However, this fact reflects the result of how PINES is organized: the many small libraries in Georgia are combined into larger systems for resource sharing; and, in turn, this fact reflects on how Evergreen is designed, that is, as a Consortial Library System.
Not just big, but strong
Another interesting figure is that PINES has on several recent occasions had 100,000 circulations per day—a respectable transaction load typical of large systems and institutions. I earlier discussed the nature and effect of the distribution of libraries by size in a Riff on Big and a Riff on Small.
Looking forward
In past analysis of the adoption of open source OPACs, I have found that about one percent of U.S. public libraries are running an open source OPAC. The number of non-PINES libraries adopting Evergreen and their heterogeneous characteristics show that a broad base of libraries has chosen Evergreen and more signing up. We are arriving at the inflection point of open source adoption.
Bob Molyneux
by drdata at July 22, 2008 06:18 PM
As I often do, I'm working on a presentation I must give tomorrow morning. Actually, I'm a bit ahead of myself. I mean, I like have hours left. But...
July 22, 2008 05:46 PM
Finally! Talk about being behind the times! Ask has had walking directions for a long time now, but today I found Google Maps’ Walking Directions:
Technorati Tags: google
by Nicole at July 22, 2008 04:38 PM
Are there any other libraries, other than here at the LPI, that would like to be an OCLC member but just don't have the funds?
How about OCLC services or products that you desire, but are out of reach? For instance, I want to access the authority files, then we could become NACO participants.
I'm asking because OCLC has a task force on small libraries and would like to hear from anyone in the same situation as we are. We would love to share our collection on WorldCat and Open WorldCat but find the set-up fees too large a hurdle. Too much of our cataloging is original, so the copy cataloging only option is not for us. There are no Groups we are able to join, anyone want to start a space science group or Houston group? In the end, our very rich unique collection is not visible via OCLC.
Now seems to be a good time to voice concerns to the Task Force or the folks at OCLC, since they are looking at small libraries.
by noreply@blogger.com (David) at July 22, 2008 02:57 PM
The Code4Lib Journal exists to foster community and share information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future.
by midnightmind at July 22, 2008 02:39 PM
OCLC has a Facebook app for those needing to create citations, CiteMe.
Get formatted citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian style. Start by searching for an item in WorldCat, the world's largest network of library content and services. Find your title in the results, select your favorite format, and you're done.
It also allows you to find other editions and find in a local library. I've added it to my Facebook account.
by noreply@blogger.com (David) at July 22, 2008 02:11 PM
Over the past few days, I’ve been listening to Tech Therapy. Tech Therapy is a series of podcasts in which “Scott Carlson, a Chronicle reporter, and Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, talk about the headaches, anxieties, and general problems you might be having with technology on your college campus.” In through the archives, I listened to an interview with William Shell, director of academic technology and computing services at Eastern Michigan University, who asks: “How can a university make faculty members aware of copyright law?” Obvious, copyright is a big issue for libraries, and I really like that the conversation brought in the idea that the IT department partner with librarians who are familiar with, and interested in, copyright and fair use issues. They also brought in some other ideas about how to educate faculty about the issues involved without being seen as “the copyright police.” All of the Tech Therapy podcasts I listened to are interesting, but this one stood out for the librarian in me since they said things like “your best friends [on this issue] are in the library.” Probably not a lot of new information with people who deal with this, but still it was nice to see these non-librarian techies advocating for the librarians on this issue.
by ecorrado at July 22, 2008 12:11 PM
In an effort to get a better understanding of PREMIS after reading about the v2.0 release, I dug around for 5 minutes looking for a way to convert an XML Schema to RelaxNG. The theory being that the compact syntax of RelaxNG would be easier to read than the XSD.
I ended up with a little hack suggested here to chain together the rngconv from the Multi-Schema Validator and James Clarke’s Trang, which oddly can’t read an XSD as input.
#!/bin/bash
for i in $*
do
BN=$(basename $i .xsd)
java -jar /opt/rngconv/rngconv.jar ${i} > /tmp/${BN}.rng
java -jar /opt/trang/trang.jar -I rng -O rnc /tmp/${BN}.rng ${BN}.rnc
doneThe resulting RelaxNG can be seen here. As you can see I’m not sure it helps much…but it’s a start I guess. I’m interested in looking at what it might take to sublimate an PREMIS RDF vocabulary (hopefully just RDFS?) out of the XSD, mainly because I *think* parts of the vocabulary could prove useful in OAI-ORE resource maps.
by ed at July 22, 2008 02:14 AM
July 21, 2008
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Explanation from Google of why they dropped XMPP support in Android. Cost of session initiation is too high, bandwidth usage is too high (and compression eats more battery power), massive variety of carrier network issues.
by Ian Davis at July 21, 2008 11:32 PM
Tonight marks the second-to-last live session I will have with my students in the graduate library course I’m currently teaching. Time has flown by. As always, I learn things during the course that I can hopefully use in future teaching. One lesson I learned long ago is that an online curriculum is only as good as the technical infrastructure and support that is offered to it by the school. LEEP at the University of Illinois has a fantastic, dedicated, service-oriented support team and I am thankful for their help and responsiveness. There have been a few glitches here and there but they have been quickly addressed.
I’ll miss interacting with this group of students but at the same time — and I think they would agree — there’s something nice about hitting the home stretch. An awful lot of stuff has been compacted into a very short timeframe (eight weeks) during summer session.
I’m also looking forward to a faculty retreat to be hosted by the school at Allerton Park, a fabulous estate owned by the University of Illinois that is located near Monticello. It’s worth a visit just to see the gardens and the grounds, especially the sculpture scattered throughout. The retreat will be held over the course of two days in August and I have been asked to facilitate one of the sessions, a technology “show and tell.” I’m really looking forward to that.
by FamManLib at July 21, 2008 10:21 PM
Three weeks after it was launched, we can say a little bit about MBooks collection builder usage. Right now, there are 47 public collections (more than half were created by LIT staff) and 170 personal collections.
I've done a little bit of rough assessment, and can report on the ten most-used MBooks collections (they are all public collections). Collection usage includes viewing the collection page, searching the collection, sorting the books in the collection, and copying items to another collection. It does not include searching or viewing the items within that collection -- tracking use of a book from a collection vs. from Mirlyn vs. from links from blogs was outside the scope of my quick-and-dirty analysis. Usage from our network range was not included in this assessment.
Here they are:
- Abraham Lincoln: Fact and Fable
- Great Britain
- Ann Arbor History
- How to be a Domestic Goddess
- Gothic literature
- Historical Bicycling
- Adventure Novels: G.A. Henty
- What It Was, Was Football
- Patents
- French Texts
Abraham Lincoln: Fact and Fable is twice as popular as the next-most popular collection, Great Britain, which is almost twice as popular as Ann Arbor History. As far as I can tell, none of these collections is linked from anywhere else except for the G. A. Henty Adventure Novels, which is included as a link in Henty's Wikipedia entry. Even with the minimal metadata presently available on the Public Collections page, people are finding and using collections that are interesting to them.
by sooty (sooty@umich.edu) at July 21, 2008 08:45 PM
[ Editor’s note: This review of one of the chapters from Christopher Cox’s collection of federated search articles is by Susan Fingerman. Susan is on the staff of the R.E. Gibson Library, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, MD.
Susan, like other reviewers, selected three articles to read and comment on. Susan picked the theme of user expectations for all three of her articles. Below is her second review. The review articulates six challenges to federated search, including “disaggregation,” a term I have to admit, is new to me.
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by Sol at July 21, 2008 08:02 PM
My desire to reconcile OpenURL jargon with the rest of the world led me to make an awkward assertion in an earlier blog entry.
An OpenURL identifies a set of assertions.
I just read the Uniform Resource Identifiers section of the HTTP/1.1 spec, and it occurs to me that this statement is unnecessarily warped. To quote HTTP/1.1,
As far as HTTP is concerned, Uniform Resource Identifiers are simply formatted strings which identify--via name, location, or any other characteristic--a resource.
It occurs to me now that OpenURL falls into this "other characteristics" category.
I am fortunate that my colleague Stu Weibel broke me of the misconception that identity and resolution are synonymous many years ago. In my mind, I conquered this riddle by imagining that every URI, no matter how complicated, was a name and that resolution was orthogonal to this. In effect, the concept of "location" is factored out. Any common identity behind these names, meanwhile, exists only in our imaginations unless aided by some, possibly unknown, resolution mechanism(s).
If you can live with ambiguous identities, treating all URIs as names with orthogonal resolution mechanisms helps clarify some troublesome issues. And this trick works pretty well as long as you believe that URIs fall into two categories: names and locations. When you throw in the possibility of "other characteristics", though, the model where "every URI is a name" gets tortured and you say insightful, to me at least, but weird things like "an OpenURL identifies a set of assertions". Yeah, this is a true statement if you don't mind thinking in terms of absurdly complicated names, but it is so much easier when you think about OpenURL as a formatted string that identifies a resource via "other characteristics'.
So the question remains, what are these "other characteristics" that OpenURL reveals as being usefully represented as URIs? The answer is Q6: who, what, where, why, when, and how.
by Jeff Young at July 21, 2008 05:16 PM
In my last post, I questioned the trustworthiness of the assertions being tunneled in OpenURLs and suggested that HTTP/1.1 provided more reliable and agent-friendly alternatives for some of them. While this is true, it misses a vital point. Many assertions related to the OpenURL domain model, which I claim can account for everything that happens on the Internet, deserve and need to have unique identifiers. These identifiers can be most conveniently formulated as an absolute or relative URI. The same can be said of a given set of assertions. Identifying a set of assertions is the essential and valuable purpose of OpenURLs. The question of the trustworthiness of these assertions is orthogonal to OpenURL. Generally speaking, the inclusion of Descriptors that are better served natively using HTTP/1.1 tend to pollute the identity of the essential assertions.
[2008-07-21] Please see this updated entry for more information.
by Jeff Young at July 21, 2008 05:16 PM
CrossTech is two years old (less one month) and we have now seen some 145 posts. Breaking the posts down by poster we arrive at the following chart:
Note this is not any real attempt at vainglory, more a simple excuse to play with the wonderful Google Chart API. Also, above I've taken the liberty of putting up an image (.png), although the chart could have been generated on the fly from this link (or tinyurl here).
What is of interest in the chart is that approximately 3/4 of the posts are by CrossRef members (TH, EN, RK) and 1/4 by CrossRef staff (EP, GB, AT, CK). Certainly CrossRef staffers are doing their bit for this blog. There's also way too many posts from me. It would be really interesting to see some others' views or observations per the CrossTech logo legend ("..., collaboration, ...").
I guess the real impediment is that one needs to request an account before posting. (Certainly there's no reason for any member to be shy about requesting an account and posting.) Note that I haven't considered the number of commentators to the blog which is larger than the number of posters. Also a number of CrossRef members are very active with their own blogs. Those blogs with a tech focus could (should?) be scooped up by a Planet style aggregator if there would be sufficient interest in maintaining a publishing technology hub.
One can only hope that the numbers will continue to grow (by direct posts or by aggregations) and that there will be a wider info share over the next couple of years.
July 21, 2008 03:17 PM
At the Top Technology Trends I seconded that we need to get library services on handhelds, and I said that I'd like to be able to walk through the stacks and have the same access to the library's online services as I do when I'm at home. If your handheld device is especially nifty, you probably can browse the library web site and catalog, but for those with really small screens, it might be best to have a "mobile view." Here's an interesting example from BibliotecaLudwig Von Mises in Guatemala.
by Karen Coyle (noreply@blogger.com) at July 21, 2008 02:54 PM
I read with interest the call for papers for the 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009). What caught my eye was the sentence of the conference focus which reads “Well-presented negative results from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn are also sought.” I’d like to see more reporting of well presented negative results at library-related conferences. Sometimes we here about negative results on e-mail lists when some asks the question “Has any tried this?” but very rarely do we have sessions that report on things that didn’t work out at conferences or read them in articles. This leads to different people try their same thing and also failing whereas if the negative results were public they could either decide to go in a different direction, or the can look at what didn’t work in the previous project and figure out a way to modify the approach so it will work.
by ecorrado at July 21, 2008 01:13 PM
If FUDBuster #1 is completely over-the-top, FUDBuster #2–open source software isn’t ready for prime time–is subtler and more pervasive. I’ve heard this phrase so often—”open source software isn’t ready for prime time”–and with so little justification, that it reminds me a little of those moments on the Daily Show when Jon Stewart presents clips from cable news shows in which newscasters are obviously parroting the same press release.
The ace card for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt is that it distracts us from facts and data and even from some obvious contradictions through the seduction of the emotional appeal. A whisper campaign can make someone start thinking, “Oh my goodness, if I select open source software, I’m going to look bad”–even though the FUD itself is nonsensical.
First of all, what does it mean for software to not be “ready for prime time?” If it means short on features and functionality, that’s a gross generalization about OSS that could be as true, or untrue, of any software. In fact, the great, long-lived OSS programs such as Apache and Linux are not only ready for prime time but run circles around their competition in terms of features, functionality, and strength.
FUD is intentionally diversionary, so it’s not surprising that this bit of FUD obscures some other facts. Evergreen was invented because no existing product could meet the needs of PINES, the sharing network of over 270 libraries provided by the Georgia Public Library Service. Most of the library automation software on the market at the time was hampered not by its lack of maturity but by its age. Products that were marginally innovative twenty years ago had become legacy software, as useful to the modern library as my old copy of WordStar would be to me today.
Legacy software is often burdened by legacy code, legacy languages, and even–as a librarian of a certain age, it pains me to say this, but I must–legacy developers. This is in its own slant way an OSS issue as well.
Newer library software such as Evergreen, Libraryfind, and Vufind often include features and capabilities older software isn’t capable of, and are written in languages and architectures that weren’t available when Katherine Hepburn was out-performing a computer in Desk Set.
Furthermore, in the commercial world, particularly in the world of library software development, where revenue margins can be vanishingly slender, there is less financial incentive or even ability to rewrite software from the ground up… and in fact, attempts to do so have become the Hindenburg disaster for some companies. Some of the more spectacular vendor-abandonment scenarios are at least partly due to a chronic lack of R&D (research and development) funding in a market that is both highly specific and chronically underfunded. We’re gorgeous, but we’re poor.
Meanwhile, after spending some time observing library software developers in the wild–how quaint their customs and native costumes!–one conclusion I make is that they are inherently flexible and adaptive, and their actions typically flow along paths to the best software and most appropriate architectures. Their stakes are too high to be otherwise. The better projects are able to marshal other developers to get on board and provide incentives to maintain their activity, and because it is open source development–where by definition, development happens in the open–there is no limit to the number of people who could theoretically participate in a project. Linux had over 3,500 developers participate in its latest version. We can do that in LibraryLand–we really can.
(This gets back to something else I will later discuss: why we need more developers in LibraryLand–my “boots on the ground” argument–and why we should liberate those library-based developers now chained to painfully dysfunctional legacy software so they can help build the systems of our future.)
Finally, the writer/journalist in me asks this of you. When someone says, “Open source software isn’t ready for prime time!” start poking–hard. Ask this person what he or she means by that. Is this in reference to a particular product? To a missing feature or functionality? To something someone said? Or is the not-ready-for-prime-timer even able to clarify what he or she means?
No software is perfect, and the best software is mutable and adaptive. Also, some software may not have the features you want now–though if you look closely, those features may be emerging. And some software is bad software. But “not ready for prime time” is that sort of FUDdy word-pudding we need to excise from our vocabulary if we are to be the judicious decisionmakers LibraryLand needs.
The open source software model serves our community well in many ways, not the least of which is that individually we may not be able to afford caviar, but if enough libraries bring developers to the potluck, all of us may dine quite well indeed. Beware the FUD that claims we cannot produce the software we need to run our libraries. There’s only one reason for that FUD: because increasingly, we know we can.
by K.G. Schneider at July 21, 2008 01:08 PM
Andy Powell has published on Slideshare this talk about metadata - see his eFoundations post for notes. It's 130 slides long and aims
"to cover a broad sweep of history from library cataloguing, thru the Dublin Core, Web search engines, IEEE LOM, the Semantic Web, arXiv, institutional repositories and more."
Don't be fooled by the length though. This is a flip through and is a readily accessible overview on the importance of metadata. Slides 86-91 might be of interest here. ;)
July 21, 2008 11:42 AM
Roy Tennant in a post to XML4Lib announces a new list of library APIs hosted at
http://techessence.info/apis/
A useful rough guide for us publishers to consider as we begin cultivating the multiple access routes into our own content platforms and tending to the "alphabet soup" that taken together comprises our public interfaces.
July 21, 2008 10:52 AM
Going a little off topic for this weekend message. Put aside your prejudices about the poet. Eavan Boland (poet and Stanford professor) writes about the 'skills' modern poets require if they are to thrive. Perhaps an opportunity for business schools to diversify into professional development courses for poets?
Whether we like it or not, the contemporary poet is increasingly skill-based. Or expected to be. He or she can — or should — lecture, lead a workshop, run an introductory class, teach composition, write a review, give a conference paper. In pursuit of all this, they are also expected to travel neatly, punctually, and soberly. [Poetry]
Once I thought there was a broad tolerance for this. Now I’m not so sure. In Ireland, or the us or the uk, the tilt is towards the poet who can navigate the worlds of the university, the institution, the community, the reading series, the community workshop, the literary festival. There has been a gradual, perhaps calcifying professionalism which requires of a poet a standard of behavior and communality which poets were once exempted from. I was never uncritical of that exemption. But now, somehow, I wish I saw more of it. [Poetry]
In the picture, our children Eavan and Eoghan outside the British Library a few years ago.
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July 21, 2008 03:46 AM
July 20, 2008
On The Move With The Mobile Web by Ellyssa Kroski provides a nice overview of mobile technology and what it presently means for libraries.
What is in the Report
In my most recent list of top technology trends I mentioned mobile devices. Because of this Kroski had a copy of the Library Technology Report she authored, above, sent to me. Its forty-eight pages essentially consists of six chapters (articles) on the topic of the Mobile Web:
- What is the Mobile Web? - An overview of Web technology and its use on hand-held, portable devices. I liked the enumeration of Mobile Web benefits such as: constant connectivity, location-aware services, limitless access, and interactive capabilities. Also, texting was described here as a significant use of the Mobile Web. Ironically, I sent my first text message just prior to the 2008 ALA Annual Meeting.
- Mobile devices - A listing and description of the hardware, software (operating systems as well as applications), networks, and companies working in the sphere of the Mobile Web. Apparently three companies (Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint Nextel) have 70% of the market share in terms of network accessibility in the United States.
- What can you do with the Mobile Web? - Another list and description but this time of application types: email, text messaging, ringtones & wallpaper, music & radio, software & games, instant messaging, social networking, ebooks, social mapping networks (sort of scary if you ask me), search, mapping, audiobooks, television, travel, browsers, news, blogging, food ordering, and widgets.
- Library mobile initiatives - A listing and description of what some libraries are doing with the Mobile Web. Ball State University’s Mobile Web presence seems to be out in front in this regard, and PubMed seems pretty innovative as well. For some commentary regarding iPhone-specific applications for libraries see Peter Brantley’s “The Show Room Library“.
- How to create a mobile experience - This is more or less a set of guidelines for implementing Mobile Web services. Some of the salient points include: it is about providing information to people who don’t have a computer, think a lot about location-based services, understand the strengths & weaknesses of the technology. I found this chapter to be the most useful.
- Getting started with the Mobile Web - A list of fun things to do to educate yourself on what the Mobile Web can do.
Each chapter is complete with quite a number of links and citations for further reading.
Cellphone barcodes
Through my reading of this Report my knowledge of the Mobile Web increased. The most interesting thing I learned was the existence of Semapedia, a project that “strives to tag real-world objects with 2D barcodes that can be read by camera phones.” Go to Semapedia. Enter a Wikipedia URL. Get back a PDF document containing “barcodes” that your cellphone should be able to read (with the appropriate application). Label real-world things with the barcode. Scan the code with your cellphone. See a Wikipedia article describing the thing. Interesting. Below is one of these barcodes for the word “blog” which links to the Mobile Web-ready Wikipedia entry on blogs:
Read the report
I still believe the Mobile Web is going to play larger role in people’s everyday lives. (Duh!) By extension, I believe it is going to play a larger role in libraries. Ellyssa Kroski’s On The Move With The Mobile Web will give you a leg up on the technology.
by Eric Lease Morgan at July 20, 2008 11:26 PM
I've been fascinated by data visualisation for a year or two now, and I've recently been chatting to my good friend Iman about doing something with our circulation data. In particular, something that will be visually interesting to look at, whilst also giving you a feel for the data.
I've tried a few different things, but the Dewey Blobs are currently my favourite…
(items borrowed on 23rd June)
The transactions are placed on a 32×32 grid based on their Dewey classification (000-999). Each transaction is shown as a semi-transparent circle with two attributes:
1) colour — based on the School the student making the transaction studies in
2) size — based on the popularity of the book (the larger the circle, the more times it's been borrowed before)
Where many students from the same school borrow from the same Dewey classification on the same day, the colour is reinforced. If the borrowing is from multiple schools, then the colours begin to blend to create new hues.
For example, on this day the vast majority of transactions in the 300s were by Human & Health students (green)…
…but a couple of days later, the borrowing in the 300s is more complex, with students from several schools appearing (Business students are red and Music & Humanities students are blue)…
You can browse through a few of the blobs on Flickr.
by Dave Pattern at July 20, 2008 09:15 PM
I learned a new acronym a few weeks ago — TPM — which stands for “technological protection measures”, and in the May 2008 issue of College & Research Libraries Kristin R. Eschenfelder wrote an article called “Every library’s nightmare?” and enumerated various types of protection measures employed by publishers to impede the use of electronic scholarly material.
Types of restrictions
In today’s environment, where digital information is increasingly bought, sold, and/or licensed, publishers feel the need to protect their product from duplication. As described by Eschenfelder, these protections — restrictions — come in two forms: soft and hard.
Soft restrictions are “configurations of hardware or software that make certain uses such as printing, saving, copy/pasting, or e-mailing more difficult — but not impossible — to achieve.” The soft restrictions have been divided into the following subtypes:
- extent of use - page print limits; PDF download limits; data export limits; suspicious use tracking
- obfuscation - need to select items before options become available
- omission - not providing buttons or links to enact users
- decomposition - saving document results in many files, making recreating or e-mailing the document difficult
- frustration - page chunking in e-books
- warning - copyright warnings; end-user licenses on startup
Hard restrictions are “configurations of software or hardware that strictly prevent certain uses.” The hard restrictions have been divided into the following subtypes:
- restricted copy and paste OCR - OCR exposed for searching, but not for copying and pasting of text
- secure container TPM - use rights vary by resource
To investigate what types of restricts were put into everyday practice Eschenfelder studied a total of about seventy-five resources from three different disciplines (engineering, history, art history) and tallied the types of restrictions employed.
Salient quotes
A few salient quotes from the article exemplify Eschenfelder’s position on TPM:
- “This paper suggests that the soft restrictions that are present in licensed products may haver already changed user’s and librarian’s expectations about what the use rights they ought to expect from vendors and their products.” (Page 207)
- “One concern is that the library community has already accepted many of the soft use restrictions identified in this paper.” (Page 219)
- “[Librarians] should also advocate for removal of use restrictions, or encourage new vendors to offer competing restriction-free products.” (Page 219)
- “A more realistic solution might be a shared knowledge base of vendor interfaces and known use restrictions.” (Page 219)
- “The paper argues that soft use restrictions deserve more attention from the library community, and that librarians should not accept these restrictions as the natural order of things.” (Page 220)
My commentary
I agree with Eschenfelder.
Many people who work in libraries seem to be there because of the values libraries portray. Examples include but are not limited to: intellectual freedom, education, diversity, equal access to information, preservation of the historical record for future generations, etc. Heaven know, people who work in libraries are not in it for the money! I fall into the equal access to information camp, and that is why I advocate things like open access publishing and open source software development.
TPM inhibits the free and equal access of information, and I think Eschenfelder makes a good point when she says the “library community has already accepted many of the soft use restrictions.” Why do we accept them? Librarians are not required to purchase and/or license these materials. We have choice. If much of the scholarly publishing industry is driven by the marketplace — supply & demand — then why don’t/can’t we just say, “No”. Nobody is forcing us spend our money this way. If vendors don’t provide the sort of products and services we desire, then the marketplace will change. Right?
In any event, consider educating yourself on the types of TPM and read Eschenfelder’s article.
by Eric Lease Morgan at July 20, 2008 06:55 PM
The Nicholas Carr article in the Atlantic - Does Google make us stupid? - has generated a lot of commentary. Carr himself has just pointed to an Edge discussion and an Encyclopedia Britannica discussion.
I have commented on the perils of distraction a couple of times recently. Once when talking about the ease with which you can be distracted by the 'time-saving' integration ability of the Flock browser (which I still use, I fear) and again when pointing to Fred Stutzman's attempts to resist the encroachment of the network into the productive time in which he codes, writes, creates.
I have been interested in the discussion around the Carr article. The focus has tended to be on consumption, on the apparent difficulty people have with immersive reading.
I confess I find this less of an issue than immersive writing. I still read books, maybe not as many as at some other times of my life. However, I am beginning to find it more difficult to write in a sustained way (no great harm there, I hear some of you say ;-). No doubt one reason for this is that I typically write on the laptop, which is also where I intersect with the network. Most of my sustained reading happens away from the network.
Recently, when trying to write something I find that I am turning off the network on the laptop and relying on the Blackberry for email. At home this poses a difficulty though: despite living in a well covered area - inside the city of Columbus - I find that coverage fades if I am not near a window, and even then will sometimes give up. So even though I am not distracted by email, or by my RSS aggregator, or by looking at Facebook statuses go past, I end up walking around with the Blackberry trying to grab some network to synch up!
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July 20, 2008 06:22 PM
… but broken for much longer.
This blog, Off the Mark, is 2 years old today. I shall refrain from calling it an anniversary, as such, since last year we sort of decided that my blogging anniversary ought to be from the start of my 1st public blog, …the thoughts are broken…, which debuted in January 2005. It was “decided” that this is really a continuation of the first and I cannot really disagree, even if I could employ serials cataloging and FRBR terminology to show otherwise. 
Here’s what I wrote on my 3rd blogging anniversary back in January of this year.
There appear to have been 157 published posts here in the last year. Forty-seven of those were “Some things read this week …” posts, while there were another 8-10 that commented on that “column.” I posted 2 of the 3 poems that I wrote; “fallen” and “Stargazing.” Wow, what vastly different views of the world!
In the larger scheme of both blogs and my blogging overall, I have 961 posts, 5 in draft, and I’m remembering 3 specific ones that were published and then pulled at some point [not a light decision]. Will I reach a thousand posts by the end of the calendar year, or perhaps my 4th blogging anniversary in January? Who can say? Based on historical statistics I will easily. Based on current output and current thinking I would say no. We’ll see.
Things have been somewhat quiet around here lately and I expect them to stay that way for several reasons for a while, at least. I am doing some serious thinking about and work on my communication styles. I want to change a fair bit about how I say some things. Topics will probably stay much the same, although much of the personal productiveness and questioning of personal narrative will (has) generated some “new” topics for me; i.e., new for the blog.
So, while I really do not want to mark this as an official anniversary I do want to take this moment to note some of this and to say “Thank you” to any who read, comment, and critique. I take feedback here quite seriously. I simply cannot grow without the voice and help of others.
Quick shout-out to LISHost for hosting and support for the past 2 years.
by Mark at July 20, 2008 01:39 PM
In a number of different settings, both at work and while talking to librarians from other institutions, the subject of library statistics have come up. While all types of library statistics are always an item for discussion, in particular statistics about the size of various library collections have come up recently. While counts of traditional print materials are troublesome enough, counts of electronic resources are even more of an issue. There are just so many variables that make comparing these counts from library to library very difficult. One library may count a collection of databases as one database, while another may count each individual database separately. This is not to mention that the amount and quality of items in different databases can vary greatly.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about recently with respect to library statistics lately is what do we count that is available electronically? Specifically, should we count things that we provide access to that are freely available on the Web. For instance, if we provide a record for the Code4Lib Journal, or the dLIST (Digital Library of Information Science of Technology) should we count them as a serial or database holding respectively. How about if we add MARC records for freely available government documents from a vendor such as MARCIVE to our catalog? Does each record count as a government document although we didn’t purchase or physically possess the document. I’m not sure how many libraries count these items, but I know from talking to librarians many libraries only count items they directly pay for. I don’t think this is the correct approach. I think, especially with the high quality of many Open Access journals and other documents, the should be counted. If a librarian has taken the time and effort to evaluate a resource or collection of resources and to add it to the collection, I think it should count. Academic libraries no longer are just about physical collections of information, they are about providing access to quality information. Thus, if the library takes even minimal actions to provide access to a resource, it should be included in these counts (flawed as the are).
by ecorrado at July 20, 2008 01:16 PM
I’ve been getting my sea-legs at my new job and staying very, very busy — blogging is just the tip of the iceberg. I got back from Norcross Friday night, and this morning, I’m off to Boise to talk about open source, and then to WilsWorld to just be there and I don’t know, let the goodness of open source ooze from my pores, and then back next Friday to scurry through piled-up work.
But before I forget, on Saturday, August 9 from 1-4 p.m. I’m leading a creative nonfiction workshop at Leon County Public Library, through the aegis of the Tallahassee Writers Association. Three hours is actually a fun length for a local “taste of CNF” workshop. I can read a little from my own work and the work of others, we can do a couple of fun exercises… we’ll have a good ol’ time.
I am going to brag more loudly next week, but The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2 (Lee Gutkind, ed.) is due out July 28, and my essay, “Range of Desire,” is in it.
What really humbles me is the list of authors in this volume. They’re like, you know, real authors. I can’t wait to read their essays.
By the way, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this, but Michael, the editor at Nerve who worked on “Range of Desire,” was the perfect balance of good judgment and restraint. If I did say it, I’m saying it again. I like editors.
No, I haven’t bought a car. I have been Away. Carmax’s suggestions have not been right, and the local Honda guy has so far been mum. Still waiting for the gummint to issue me a car.
Now that I’m car-shopping I’m noticing that maybe it’s not such a terrible predicament to be in… my car leaks inside when it rains, it looks worn-out, and it is mildewy. I love my old Honda, but perhaps it is not so bad to be downgrading it to the Family Beater. A hard acknowledgment, like realizing a pet is getting old. (Or that we are getting old.)
by K.G. Schneider at July 20, 2008 11:36 AM
Regular readers will probably know that I used to be in a band ("The Headmen") in the early 1990s. Thanks to Facebook, I'm back in touch with Simon, the singer/songwriter, and we've been busy converting all of our old cassette tapes to MP3.
I'm so used to "digital" now that's it strange to think that all of our studio recordings were done on reel-to-reel magnetic tape. The only time the word "digital" was ever mentioned was when the final studio mixes were sent off on a tiny DAT (Digital Audio Tape) to get pressed onto vinyl.
(L-R: Dave, Matthew, and Simon)
Anyway, back in 1991 we recorded what was going to be the follow-up EP single to the "Reach the Sky" EP — "Bridge to the Stars". "Reach the Sky" had got good airplay during the summer, even sneaking onto Radio One's playlists…
Sadly, "Bridge to the Stars" never got released. Not too long after the tracks got their initial mix, Beaumont Street Studios in Huddersfield was destroyed in a fire and all of our master tapes went up in smoke. The following year we parted company from Positive Records and, a couple of years later, played our final gig as part of Bradford Festival 1994.
Only 3 people were present for that initial mix — Steve Whitfield, our drummer Matthew, and myself. At the end of the evening, Matthew and I walked away with a cassette tape each of the mixes. Within a couple of weeks, I'd lent my copy to someone and never saw it again.
Fortunately, Matthew was a little more careful with his copy and, only 17 years too late, I'm proud to give the EP a semi-official release!
1. Bridge to the Stars
2. We All Fall Down
3. Weird
4. Song 52
The tracks are also available on Last.FM.
Listening to the tape, it blew away a serious amount of cobwebbage — I had to listen to "We All Fall Down" 3 times before I could even remember playing bass on it!
When we went into the studio, "Song 52" was a new song to me and one that I really struggled to get to grips with quickly. In the end, Simon had to stand next to a flipchart and guide me through the song whilst I played the (fairly minimal) bassline — "V C 8" standing for "verse", "chorus", and "middle 8"…
(Simon's telling me to play the chorus!)
"We All Fall Down" features some "more cowbell" ;-) The cowbell, which I think was clamped to a chair in the studio, kept coming loose, so I ended up risking life and limb by holding it steady for Matthew to thwack…
(sadly, the cowbell was just out of shot in this photo)
I remember there was even talk about filming a cheesy video for "Bridge to the Stars", with cardboard cutout spaceships and tinfoil spacesuits.
At the time, both Simon and I worked at the Tesco supermarket in Brighouse and, one lunchtime in the staff canteen, Simon doodled the artwork for the EP. As you can see, I then managed to spill my coffee over half of it!!!
Curiously, the artwork doesn't mention "We All Fall Down" and I'm guessing "Wish Time" was the official title for "Song 52"?
If you've stumbled across this blog post looking for information about "The Headmen", then here's some links…
- Flickr photo set
- Last.FM
- Facebook
by Dave Pattern at July 20, 2008 09:07 AM
I went back through my posts of the last two months and there isn’t much explicit mention of the best distraction a boy could ask for. I think the first (and one of 2, maybe 3) explicit reference is in the post “Living room talk.” There are certainly several other references that were mostly for her that one or two of you might get a hint from, but not much more.
I also notice I didn’t actually post very often. There were frequently week-long gaps and, I believe, 2 13-day gaps. Not unheard of for me, but rare. My previous post addresses this quietude a bit. Let me just say here that it has not been mostly due to my having a girlfriend.
But wait. I do not have a girfriend.
Today [Friday] would have been our 2-month anniversary. It was to be our full moon anniversary. Sorry, relevant to us, no details for you. On Monday she told me she needs to go back to just being friends.
While this is clearly not my 1st choice of realities—like I or anyone else gets a choice of realities—and it hit pretty hard, I am doing pretty well with this development. [This has been one amazingly interesting and personally productive summer, let me tell you!]
The first day or two I really was just kind of in a state of shock. I wasn’t doing much active processing of this. And that, I think, was a very good thing.
Since Monday we’ve been talking and have even seen each other a few times, e.g., watched a free movie at the public library together, shared a bag of popcorn, and had salad together after the movie. Again, not so much on the overt processing. What I have been doing is listening to a lot of music. But here’s the kicker. It’s mostly been just a few songs, on repeat, and sometimes repeatedly.
Monday evening and Tuesday both remain kind of hazy in my mind.
Wednesday morning began with Not A Pretty Girl and quickly morphed into multiple replays of “hour follows hour” and “asking too much.”
i just hope it was o.k., i know it wasn’t perfect
i hope in the end we can laugh and say
it was all worth it
…
too much is how i love you
but too well is how i know you
i’ve got nothing to prove this time
just something to show you
i guess i just wanted you to see
that it was all worth it to me
hour follows hour
i want somebody who
sees the pointlessness
and still keeps their purpose in mind
i want somebody who
has a tortured soul some of the time
i want somebody who
will either put out for me
or put me out of my misery
or maybe just put it all to words and make me go
you know, i never heard it put that way
make me go what did you just say!?
asking too much
Wednesday evening I was on my way to Crane Alley and I appropriated Poe’s “Spanish Doll” from Haunted for my own purposes.
This place feels so unfamiliar
And yet I know it well
I think I used to belong here
But the only way I can tell
Is that I miss you still
And I cannot find you here
You left me tattered and torn
Just like that Spanish doll
(Sweet Spanish sweet Spanish… doll)
I went down to the alley way
(Sierra la Bonita)
And found that you were gone …
Except for she wasn’t gone and actually joined me there for a couple hours.
Thursday AM began with
