The Logical Operator

Speaking of Neo-Luddism and resistance to technological change, consider this article from a couple days ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog. Here’s an excerpt:

North Carolina State University is one of a handful of colleges to set up virtual computer labs, where users enter it remotely, from their own computers in dormitory rooms or libraries. So if they need to use a 3-D modeling program for an engineering course, they can log into the virtual lab (a bank of servers in some room they’ll never see) from their laptop and use the program without even coming to campus. A free article in this week’s Chronicle outlines the university’s model, which is being emulated at other colleges.

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t what they are describing the way it used to be, lo these many years? Back before my time, when you connected to the mainframe from a dumb terminal and used the Large Box to conduct your work? Back in the days of the BOFH and root and while (1) fork();, when the jargon that fills the Jargon File was being coined?

Perhaps this is a good idea, of course - NCSU’s administrators seem to think so, and from personal experience expanding the capacity of any computer lab is a tremendous boon to students and faculty. Looks like what’s old is new again. It is not really a new idea - many things run remotely now. Consider any of the golden child social networking apps: where once social networking was based on chatrooms using AIM or IRC, it’s now a remotely hosted system that provides extensive interconnection, with no local overhead beyond that of a web browser.

I’m still amused, of course. Such things amuse me.

Uncategorized

Over at the The Shifted Librarian, a blog about technology and libraries and all the delightful interactions betwixt same, Jenny (the author*) posted this post, about technology as a source of guilt, rather than a tool for life balance. I came across the entry by way of Walt Crawford at Walt at Random, and no I’m not actually trying to name-drop (but I’m doing a good job!).

The post at The Shifted Librarian hit on something that’s puzzled/bothered me for a while now. It used to be that I was well out on the “early adopter” leading edge - I was probably the first kid at my college to actually figure out how to get onto the newly installed network (and do so several weeks before they’d planned the rollout); I bought computer equipment, palmtops, and cell phones as quickly as I could; I was happily engaged in email correspondence and web fora as soon as I learned what they were.

But lately, I seem to be wishing more and more that some of the new technologies would just git offa my lawn. In all seriousness, I’ve made a point of avoiding a number of the new social networking tools available, because frankly I couldn’t actually see a reason for them - what, for instance, does Facebook do? Why would I Twitter? And if you try to run a seminar in Second Life, please don’t invite me.

Upon reflection, a lot of my latent resistance to new things started after I became a Iibrarian, and began seeing how Things Are Done(TM) in libraryland. There’s a sense of traditionalism that is instilled, and it seemed to obstruct my interest in new technology gizmos for a while. I’ve felt a tremendous amount of guilt about not being well-versed in these tools, and a definite sense that I was therefore being a bad librarian.** I will also say that part of my resistance probably comes from no longer being the cool guy (or techno-nerd) with an inside line on how things work. Now that Twitter is for grandmas and housecats have blogs it’s hard to maintain my elite status.

Fixing it is easy, of course - just try them out. I’m using Facebook (as soon as the University approves the move, at least) to open another online avenue to our library, as well as connect with fellow faculty and colleagues. I’ve got blogs and wikis and such firmly in hand, and I…

…well, okay, I still haven’t figured out Twitter. It’s like short-attention span theater, or something.

* She says her name is Jenny, right there on the blog!

** No cookie!

Uncategorized facebook, guilt, librarianship, library, second life, social networks, tech, twitter

There was this post. Welcome to the Logical Operator, a blog about academic library stuff from the point of view of a librarian ex nihilo, so to speak. I graduated from library school with approximately zero idea what it meant to work in a library or even be a librarian, except for two notions: one, libraries were an objective good, though that notion was unexamined and basically just an operating parameter, and two, that libraries were never cold enough and always made me sweaty.

My first day of being an actual, honest-to-FSM librarian involved walking into the building, being shown my desk, and given a handshake and instructions to “do good work.” It was somewhat different than my previous jobs in corporate America.

Heh. That’s putting it mildly. It was vastly unstructured, ideal for the self-motivator, an area where my personal development had lagged a bit, and it was a hell of an adjustment. It was also a far cry from the theory and deep pontification of library school, where dwelt the minutiae of RDF and semantic payload and content representation. Instead, being a librarian had less to do with library theory (though a thorough steeping in such theory made it possible to understand what was going on) and a lot more to do with making friends, marketing services, and developing practical solutions to immediate problems. Theory is for the downtime.

Now, four years in, I have a handle on being a librarian. There are so many areas where I still want to - and work to - improve, but the job has a familiar rhythm and swing to it.

Careers academia, academic library, librarian, librarian ex nihilo