IRLS 675: Unit 1: A Forming Digital Collection

Although the assignment says that we should use "15-20" objects as the core of our experimental digital collection, I am hoping to make a collection of nine paintings by Austin G. Ohm as photographed/digitized by R.P. Murphy. Both of these artists are friends of mine and Ohm's work appears as the permanent picture at the top of this blog (though this painting is not one of the nine, though it occurs to me that it could be the tenth!).

As these artists are relatively unknown, alive and still producing, I am hoping to make an accessible online database that the artists themselves can add to, refer others to, and allow the artists themselves to see the ease and power such an online presence can have on them and their audience.

I hope to make the work searchable by artist, size, value and title. It occurs to me that, as these are works new to the world for the most part, that searching will prove difficult unless I can think of something that the potential user might require. Perhaps there will be a manner in which I can allow users to tag the paintings? As the collection is so small, it seems obvious that one could simply click through all nine in a few seconds. Hmm, is this going to be the right collection? I could add other art works by the same artist but within other genres of art, i.e. he also makes sculptures and I know of a video or two that he has authored.

Unit 10 SQL!!

I am still having trouble with SQL and in some ways this has been where the course stopped for me and I lingered far too long. As I write this I am still working on writing my query assignment (like this blog, very late) for the Unit 10 drop box and I have taken far too long to ask for help.

Unfortunately for me, the two components remaining that I really needed to move along with the class on were SQL and PHP and I have been forced by my own situation to proceed on these without the course in some sense. It has taken me a long time to amass the resources that work for me concerning SQL. I found Mostafa difficult to understand on SQL but wonderfully lucid concerning PHP, for example.

Writing SQL queries is much easier for me I find if I sit for hours and enter them at the command line rather than sit for hours listening to Mostafa, writing down a query and then attempting to enter the query. I find that simply sitting and spinning the wheels as one would on a combination lock one has no idea the number of would do. I am learning about my style of learning. I am unsure sometimes within this course what I can and cannot neglect.

I feel as though I would rather have had more time and assignment concerning the command line instead of the planning units. One planning unit and then perhaps an extra week to try to get our PHP to work may have suited me better. But I loved the course and would not change a thing except that I could not change things in my own life that have been scheduled long ago.

Strangely, I studied SQL in IRLS515 and quite liked it. I was looking forward to having another go at it in this class and, as I read the syllabus as the beginning of this course, I thought this time might serve as a much valued second exposure to this obviously central topic to those creating or searching databases. But, ironically for me, the SQL portion of this course is where I fell of the horse and have been dragged by the stirrup ever since.

Unit 11 Learning Styles

If my undergrad was learning to learn, my master’s seems to have become learning to learn online, or learning to learn 2.0.

I am astonished to find in 672 that I am drawn to the practical so strongly in opposition to the theoretical, if I may toss these fuzzy terms into opposition for the sake of simple communication.

At the beginning of this course I had one week's exposure to HTML and MySQL, zero knowledge of the CLI and Linux, no knowledge of what the words "open source" really meant nor what a server was exactly, and, last but not least, was extremely nervous in general concerning technology. So, one can imagine what attempting to set up a demo system implementing the LAMP architecture has meant to some one like me, or can you?

Well, that is why I mention the practical in opposition to the theoretical above. I have been keeping learning style notes during this class and all was going well until some outside factors overwhelmed my life for a few weeks. I describe the learning flow previous to this as laminar and the result turbulence (hydrology metaphors concerning flows).

Laminar works great for the course style with me but any turbulence creates a situation where I feel as though I need to tweak the course to my personal circumstances. I was pleased by the sudden appearance of the last 4 or 5 units all at once in the final weeks of the course. This allowed me to attempt to recover from turbulence by adjustments, troubleshooting my learning methods and study habits ...

As I write this I am woefully behind so one can judge the success of my learning style in this course, but for delving into a topic I am so new to I feel that this course has been a success for me personally. Academically, I would be happy with a passing grade but I knew that my grades would probably take a hit by immersing myself in my own digital summer but I am very gratified by the results. I know, as Marisa Hudspeth mentioned today in one of the final discussion posts of the course when she referred to knowing what a "LAMP stack" was when one was mentioned at a meeting, that I have come such a long way. I can now ask even better questions at the 24/7 support center here on the U of A campus, for instance!

Unit 12 Value!

This is my post for Unit 12, the final unit of IRLS Applied Technology. I was struck during the reading concerning (technology) project planning this week by the difficulty of measuring what I have heard some economists refer to as "economic opportunity" cost (see Unit 8 blog post for more on this). That is, weighing into your calculations the cost of the opportunities occluded by implementing one plan path as opposed to another. In the reading for this Unit I was pleased to see librarians taking opportunity cost seriously in regards to digital collections. This seems especially important in light of the overwhelming need and the equally overwhelming lack of funding and resources to "get everything online" as fast and as best as we can. It should only take a couple decades or centuries or ... ?

In one article I read this week, I was impressed by the attempts to measure such intangibles as "significance" of a given collection of materials in an archive, though I know librarians and archivists do this all the time I had know idea the study of such processes could be refined so. The idea that planning must be transparent within a library setting and especially as concerns technology coincides nicely with my new understanding of open source protocols for development and implementation and why that is such a successful model, or why democracy is such a stable political system as opposed to others.

My own planning within this course has faltered of late and I am in the unusual position (for me) of playing catch up and I am afraid I am not so good at this. But, as we do in institutional and personal settings, we make plans and then--in the fog of life--we begin again and push forward.

Planning For?

The photo I've included with this week's post (I am late) is of the skeleton near the Information Services desk at the Arizona Health Sciences Library in Tucson, Arizona. It is real and is described in the catalog as an "Afro-Asiatic male approximately 40-50 years of age." This skeleton, frozen as it were in this glass case with a cable lock indecorously protecting it from necromaniacs against science, seems to me an apt analogy for the technology plans of libraries and other like public institutions.

Robert Dugan's article struck me this week (Dugan, R. E. (January 01, 2002). Information technology plans. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28, 3, 152.). As I mentioned in class discussion, I lived through the great changes academic libraries have experienced in regards to the digital during the last decade or so and the rapid adoption of rather corporate positions on the part of management and administrations within my ken lingers in my memory. I was thrilled to see Dugan ask bluntly, "Has the acquisition and application of information technologies improved learning? " Too often have I seen and/or been a party to making technology decisions or planning with only staff and faculty work flows taken into account and the needs of users or students never considered. Budget restrictions lead to the underfunding of previous decisions, rendering the acumen of the past redundant, and Dugan asks "Have the costs associated with the technology been worth it? How do we know?"

Economists refer to something called "opportunity cost;" that is to say, what is the cost of doing something in terms of the lost opportunities to do something else. This hidden opportunity cost, seemingly inherent even within the best of technology plans, is the elusive measure of which Dugan speaks. If planning for technology is not done well failure of the attempted system is not likely the only or even the most harmful result. The waste, as alluded to in Eric Chabrow's article (Chabrow, E. (November 28, 2005). State of the Union it seems as if government IT projects are cleaned to fail.Information Week Manhasset-, 1066, 40-47.), can become so great and the obviously missed opportunities so egregious that fundamental confidence in an institution and its mission may be called into question by stakeholders. For institutions dependent upon public confidence such as libraries missed opportunities are missed chances to reinvigorate supporters, identify stakeholders and move forward with technology informing and informed by end users.

After examining technology plans this week such as the American Library Association's and that of the Nevada State Library, as examples, I have come to see the best technology plans as skeletal frameworks that provide both solidity and flexibility. A plan must be clear enough to work as a guide to action but not too rigid. The plan cannot be uselessly vague but too many particulars and we run the risk of running an entire institution down a technological cul de sac. I feel more empowered than ever before, by this class and others I have taken during my studies in librarianship, to speak up concerning issues of technology planning within institutions I am a member of. I feel that I have a better understanding, a better vocabulary and more wisdom than I did ten or twenty years ago. Although I have always been a stakeholder, I was not always able to perceive this and assert myself in an appropriate manner. I now feel better able to represent myself and others where libraries and technology planning are concerned.

B.A.W.

B.A.T.