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Digital Culture

ZOMG! I has a n3w j0b!

After a lot (and I mean a LOT…probably far too much) soul searching, I’ve decided to try out a different position here at UTC Lupton Library. I was offered and I have accepted the position of Head of Library Information Technology.

This means a transition out of doing tons of reference and instruction work…but I’m planning on keeping my nose in that realm as much as possible. It’s just too good for tracking what the patrons are actually concerned with to not stay involved. At the same time, I’ll be taking on the huge burden of all tech in the library…all wires, systems, applications, and boxen are to be my purview. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a bit nervous about the whole thing.

The big concern? We use the VTLS library system…and byzantine wouldn’t begin to describe my feelings about ILS’s. Add in that we’re one of less than a dozen academic libraries that use it, and my circle of assistance is pretty low.

The big opportunity? Pretty much everything. Digital repository, ticketing system for patron issues, getting our archives online…tons to keep me busy. I’m really excited about the opportunity.

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Digital Culture

9 ways we’ll know that Heroes has jumped the shark

I am absolutely addicted to the new NBC show Heroes. It has everything I want in a serial TV show…good characters, interesting unknowns, and superpowers!

But, in looking to the future, I thought I’d capture for posterity 9 ways that we’ll know that Heroes has jumped the shark.

1. Claire decides that it would be better if everyone has matching uniforms that say “Team Heroes!” on them.

2. It is discovered that the “evolutionary leap” isn’t limited to just humans, and they are joined by Sparky the Dog (power: runs at supersonic speeds and leave a trail of sparks in his wake) and Mongo the Super Intelligent Spider Monkey.

3. Ando wakes up in The Matrix.

4. Horn-Rimmed-Glasses wakes up one morning, rolls over to discover Suzanne Pleshette, and declares that he just had the oddest dream…

5. We discover that all of the Heroes are actually aliens, sent by a galactic invasion team.

6. Pete and Mysterious Black Man end up in the same room, and the whole universe explodes from the interaction of their powers.

7. Claire and Pete continue their verbal flirtation, making it completely aware to everyone around them that they want each other. Then they give in to temptation.

8. Hiro spends an entire episode running towards Radioactive Guy, all the while screaming “KENADAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!” He never gets any closer.

9. It is revealed that the “evolutionary leap” will happen to everyone on Earth soon, and as we know, when everyone is special, it just means no one is.

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Digital Culture

Texas?

So a friend from Immersion wrote it up for CRL News.

He asked to use a couple of my photos.

After a few back and forths with CRL because my photos are Creative Commons licensed, we came to an agreement to use them.

They asked how they wanted my credit given, and I sent them this blurb:

Photo by Jason Griffey, www.jasongriffey.net, reference and instructional technology librarian, UT-Chattanooga.

So they publish it, and guess what gets printed?

CRL News

*sigh*

I’ve asked for a correction, but haven’t heard anything yet.

EDIT: Still no word from ACRL about how this can be fixed. Anyone have a name I should contact?
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Digital Culture

Giving it all away

Cory Doctorow has an amazing essay in Forbes, called Giving It Away. Concerned with how giving away electronic copies of books drives sales of printed copies, it’s a clear and amazing set of thoughts on the current publishing world.

I’m particularly caught up in publishing issues right now, given that I’m negotiating with a publisher for publication of a book. I wonder if I sent them a copy of this essay it could possibly make a difference….

from the essay:

The thing about an e-book is that it’s a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation–when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were “My friend suggested I pick up….” The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

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Digital Culture

Back from Thanksgiving

And there’s a bevy of stuff happening at MPOW. We’ve launched the official beta of our new website, and I’ve signed to write an article for Library Journal.

Yeah, yeah…let the stoning commence!

To be fair, I did request and get the “better” publication agreement from Reed, as well as request and receive permission for a clarifying line of text to be added to the agreement (the clarification was in the realm of the term of the contract, and what rights reverted to me after 6 months). I will be able to self-archive the work, which was a big deal. I feel like I was treated fairly in the negotiations, now I just have to write.

So what am I writing about? There’s a great opportunity at MPOW revolving around our instruction section and podcasts/vidcasts/netcasts/whatever the cool kids are calling it these days. I wrote a grant proposal for 30 ipods and supporting equipment (including everything we need to produce nearly professional level videos), and we’ll be moving forward with integrating podcasts into our new instruction/outreach efforts. So my work for LJ will be chronicling that process, as well as looking at ways that libraries can leverage this technology to greatly enhance their efforts towards patron education.

I’ll be blogging some of the process…it’s exciting, because it’s a completely new feature for MPOW, plus it will involve a lot of integration with the new website and the instructional team.

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Digital Culture

Gobble Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone…it’s been an interesting year thus far (both good and bad) and as we head towards 2007, here’s hoping that everyone is healthy and happy.

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Digital Culture

What????

So who here is surprised that the officer from the UCLA student tasering has been in trouble for excessive force before?

Duren said Monday that he joined the UCLA police force after being fired from the Long Beach Police Department in the late 1980s. He said he was a probationary officer at the time and was let go because of poor report-writing skills and geographical knowledge.

In May 1990, he was accused of using his nightstick to choke someone who was hanging out on a Saturday in front of a UCLA fraternity. Kente S. Scott alleged that Duren confronted him while he was walking on the street outside the Theta Xi fraternity house.

…

In October 2003, Duren shot and wounded a homeless man he encountered in Kerckhoff Hall. Duren chased the man into a bathroom, where they struggled and he fired two shots.

The homeless man, Willie Davis Frazier, was later convicted of assaulting an officer. Duren said Frasier had tried to grab his gun during the struggle. But Frazier’s attorney, John Raphling, said his client was mentally ill and didn’t do anything to provoke the shooting.

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Digital Culture

Security strikes again

I just helped a student at the desk with a problem that is, after analysis, laughable. But the student was frustrated beyond words at it…here’s the situation.

The student bought a Lexar Secure Jumpdrive (not this specific model, but a similar one), and used it to save a bunch of papers off of their desktop to bring in to the library and print. Except that the software that the Secure Jumpdrive uses requires Administrative rights on the computer system to run…which means that none of the computers on campus could read her files.

I walked her through how to save the files to her desktop, put them on her university webspace, and then format the drive to get rid off the offending software. I get the thought behind the security on a thumbdrive…but trying to explain that to a student who only sees that she can’t use the tool she bought is like explaining DRM to someone for the first time. Yes, you bought it. Yes, you should be able to do that. No, you can’t actually do that. Such fun!

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Digital Culture

UCLA Student Tasered in Library

Police tasered a student at UCLA yesterday after he was unable to produce his Student ID card. The video above is raw but powerful, especially the reactions of the other students. Throughout the recording the audio is the most jarring part, with a female in the background screaming in fear while the police repeatedly ask the male student to “stand up” after they tased him. At 6:35 in the video, a student in a white tshirt is asking the police for an explanation while other officers are removing the tasered student from the building, and a police officer tells him to “Move over there.” After the student challenges him to explain why, the cops response is “Move back over there or you’re going to get tased too…”.

Wow.

From The Daily Bruin:

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell “get off me,” repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

What I’m interested in, though, is…where are the librarians? All of the reaction shots and voices appear to be students…where is the librarian asking WTF the police are doing to their patron? That’s what I’d like to know. Anyone at UCLA have an answer?

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Digital Culture

Pan’s Labyrinth

Wow. I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard of this film until today, but it looks like a Terry Gilliam film, and that’s a huge compliment from me. Guillermo does great stuff as well (Hellboy was great fun) and this looks like it could put him over the top for fantasy fanboys like myself. Add in that it’s set during Franco’s Spain, and this could be a favorite film of 2006. We’ll see in December.

Again: High Def trailer at Apple.