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reflections on cataloging

  • Jul. 9th, 2009 at 12:13 AM
Librarian
Since I'm still just doing copy cataloging, the worst part of my job is trying to assign a usable call number to the books I find OCLC records for, which is harder than it sounds.

One of the functions of a classification system -- be it Dewey or LC -- is to colocate similar materials. The criteria are different from one to the other, of course, but the principle is still there. The reason for this is because classification systems are designed to aid research.

If all you're doing is single-item searching, it doesn't matter what a book's call number is, you could put it anywhere in the library, next to any other books, and not worry about it. Problem is, your typical library patron isn't simply looking for a single book, he or she's looking for books on $SUBJECT. So nonfiction is classified to try and bring all the books on a given $SUBJECT together on the shelves. This allows the patron (assuming said patron has a clue...) to browse the shelves around a given book and find related stuff on the topic. Clever, no?

If only the books were so simple to classify. Take one I did last week, a commentary on a portion of a late-medieval manuscript in Middle English teaching the Christian Morals of living the good life (or more to the point, how to die a good Christian). The subject heading was simple enough -- Devotional literature -- English (middle). But where to put it? In 091, for manuscripts? 232 for doctrinal theology? 248[.482] for Christian life and practice [specifically Catholic}? Somewhere in the 820s for Middle English lit? Somewhere in the 940s for European history? The job of a good cataloger, copy or original, is to get into the minds of the prospective users of a given book, determine why they'd be looking for it, and then place it accordingly.

It ain't easy. Fun and challenging, but ain't easy.

(the book, for those curious, went into 248.482, since it seemed most about instructing how to live a proper Catholic life [and death].)

and there was Music Thing

  • Jul. 5th, 2009 at 8:05 PM
music
I had a different Music Thing ready to go this week, but hadn't noticed the date on the calendar, so the planned Thing will be postponed til next week in favor of this one which I thought might be more appropos.

(If you want to watch the whole video including President Carter's introductory speech, you can do so below:)

This date in history

  • Jul. 4th, 2009 at 2:22 PM
ninja
It seemed appropriate to post this today, especially considering that a nearly pristine copy was just unearthed in the British archives:

(with thanks to [info]lwj2)

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

 
 

a few thoughts

  • Jul. 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 PM
ninja
I like the informational content of my class -- I've been wanting to learn more about computer hardware and networking technology for 15-ish years now. I'm not as enamored by the packaging of the course. I know there is a need to reach out to underserviced and low-income areas to build better channels of information and effective organization, but that's not why I entered LIS. I am not a community informaticist. Not. I'll happily support the community informatics initiatives around me from my library, but I am not the sort to dive into the community centers and build them up myself. The whole service-learning-by-doing ethic of the class is nice, but I can do without the implicit "you should be using your skills for something worthwhile, like this" in the background. I also wish there weren't so much of an appeal to emotion for the cause -- I know guilt is a good motivator, but can't you back the guilt up with logical argument as well? *sigh* Just give me a cataloging station and a backlog of obscure texts to classify.

Though it does bring up a side point, based on a comment by one of my classmates in tuesday's discussion of our weekend trip out to East St Louis that "because capitalism means some people to have more and others less, it is evil."

Pardon me while I put on my robe and ranting hat. )
science
so this summer, I'm taking a class on networking technology and the professor, quite naturally, is using the class as a source of free labor for his ongoing projects.

My final project will be to help design a system to run as a GIS server on the island of Sao Tome, Africa. On the one side, UIUC has a partnership with ESRI software, meaning we can get a full copy of the ArcGIS Server suite for free. On the further plus side, ArcGIS Server has been ported to Linux.

On the mixed side, ESRI says that ArcGIS Server will only work on RedHat Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise, two of the pay-for distributions of linux.

On the other hand, we've found that CentOS is almost identical to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so ArcGIS should work on it as well. Should.

To this muddle, we find out that some community-technology development group had been working on Sao Tome previous,and left behind a legacy of 500 One Laptop Per Child XO laptops. And on hearing this news, I had the brilliance to suggest "take a handful of them and run them as a beowulf cluster to be the GIS server".

On the other hand of THAT, the OLPC laptops are distributed with a stripped-down version of the Fedora linux core, a 1GB flash drive for storage, and NO OPTICAL MEDIA DRIVE; meaning the Sao Tome team will have to bring at the very least a linux distro on USB drive to lobotomize/re-install a functional OS on the laptops, install the clustering software (if feasible), and install ArcGIS.

So now I get to figure out if this is possible, or will the Sao Tome group still have to ship out a pre-built/configured GIS server to the island.

...why can't I have a simple task, like memorizing the Dewey Decimal System, or the Library of Congress classification schedules?

The triumphant return of Music Thing!

  • Jun. 28th, 2009 at 1:20 PM
music
...or "I aten't ded yet"

What with spending pretty much every weekend the past month visiting the Interesting Girl up Chicago-way, I've been rather remiss in posting Music Thingery. Fear not, friends, I am back with a healthy dose of musical oddness for you.

Today's Iron Music Thing secret ingredient is: HARMONICA! )

an early Music Thing? hey, it can happen

  • May. 31st, 2009 at 12:29 PM
music
This week's video appeals to my senses of classical music, amusing, nift, and odd. Enjoy this unique performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in Dm on the giant piano at FAO Schwartz in NYC:



Sure beats another rehash of the "Heart and Soul" Scene from the movie "Big", don't it?

another week, another Music Thing

  • May. 24th, 2009 at 7:51 PM
music
this week, we explore the adage "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" We start in early Baroque Italy, where Antonio Vivaldi wrote this concerto for four violins:



and then a few decades later, JS Bach liked it so much up in Germany, he arranged it as a concerto for four keyboards (likely harpsichords in his day, but here played on four pianos):



Enjoy, till next time

I have not forgotten your Music Thing...

  • May. 18th, 2009 at 10:22 PM
music
.....I just got occupied with my research for the Journal of Interesting Girl Research this weekend, instead. When an Interesting Girl decides to spend a long weekend with a given researcher, even a dedicated senior Music Thing Editor at Unheimlich Maneuvers must make adjustments to his priorities.

Anywho, courtesy the suggestion of [info]infintysquared, one of my primary suppliers of oddstuffs, I give you this interesting creation:

bureaucracy-in-action

  • May. 13th, 2009 at 5:07 PM
ninja
The more I pay attention to the political goings-on in the world, the more I'm convinced that there's something in governmental water supplies that drains all politicians of every stripe and nationality of all semblance of common sense.

The latest insult to my faith in government? The FDA's declaration that Cheerios are now a drug. Yes, those toasted oat rings that've been a mainstay of the breakfast table for decades is coming under fire for its current labeling.

Since General Mills has decided to publicize clinical studies showing how Cheerios, as part of a low-cholesterol diet, help reduce cholesterol levels, the FDA has decided that General Mills is making a claim of medical function for the cereal, which makes it a drug. Furthermore, since this new drug has not been approved for cholesterol treatments, it must be submitted to FDA testing and approval before sales are allowed to continue.

Leaving aside the question of who General Mills offended to get this sort of treatment, conversation with [info]scyllacat pointed out that this only happened because General Mills chose to label the cereal as a [potential] drug, which prompted the following list of drug-like labeling:
SUGAR! Shown to cause increased A1c in diabetics!
Vegetables! Shown to improve colonic absorption!
Meat! Improve your iron count!
Ooh-ooh! FOOD! Decreases chance of starvation with regular diet and exercise!


On the one hand, I can understand intellectually how this happened. The FDA is a product of the Pure Food and Drug act of 1904, set up to make sure that the various medical tonics being bandied about were actually healthy and suitable for use in their claimed applications, so once Cheerios began making claims about health benefits, it came under their purview. But it still is ludicrous taken as a whole. It's not enough that the agency's rules make it impossible to introduce certain types of treatments (articles I've read about stem-cell research comes to mind but nothing I can cite offhand), but to waste time and money on something as seemingly trivial as a cereal box's labeling (*sigh*, I know it could very well be non-trivial depending on the product) just irritates me to no end.

Is it too late to disband the FDA, with prejudice if necessary, and replace it with a functional regulatory agency?
ninja
And I did all this without any help from the Interesting Girl (who is an anthropological linguist by schooling....)


Your result for Basic Knowledge of Linguistics Test...

Linguist in Training

95% knowledge!

You would have passed a linguistics final easily, may know a second language or two and probably have a strong interest in language.




Take Basic Knowledge of Linguistics Test
at HelloQuizzy

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at the movies

  • May. 12th, 2009 at 12:50 AM
science

WARNING: the links I'm posting today will very likely contain plot spoilers. click through and read them at your own risk.


went to see Star Trek sunday.

for a mindless adventure-ride Sci-fantasy movie, it was a great bit of fun.

For a realistic portrayal of military (or even paramilitary) function and organization, it failed miserably (as [info]ratseal gripes in a f-locked post). (that said, I've yet to hear any of the servicepeople I know have one bad word to say about the actions taken by the captain in the opening "prologue" scene.)

As a vehicle retelling the hero-archetype of Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces fame, it either succeeds or fails, take your critical pick.

Others have griped about the cinematographic effects in the movie (ubiquitous lensflare; f-stop diaphragm effects in CGI scenes, perpetual swooping camera, cuts between camera angles measured in fractions of a second), or the characterizations of the villains. Others have written at length that JJ Abrams has produced a non-Star Trek movie.

Me? I thought the movie was fun. I wasn't watching it all that critically or attentively, just enough to enjoy the action, drool slightly over the pretty young women (and obligatory hot, mostly-naked green chick -- this is Star Trek we're talking about, after all...) and notice the nods to previous canon. Is it worth seeing? I think so. Does it mesh with Star Trek canon and continuity? I'm not sure if it does or not, but I've never been enough of a Trekkie to care all that much.

more Music Thing

  • May. 10th, 2009 at 1:19 PM
music
with the Interesting-Girl counter at D-5, this seemed like a highly appropriate choice.

a special mid-week Music Thing

  • May. 8th, 2009 at 5:31 PM
music
as pointed out (on facebook) by [info]onyxhawke, it was 185 years ago yesterday that the face of symphonic music changed forever as Beethoven's Ninth symphony premiered in Vienna.

Enjoy Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Phil in the first part of the famous choral fourth movement:

I can haz new job!

  • May. 7th, 2009 at 7:22 PM
Librarian
Interviewed today with Cataloging, and once my current bosses approve it, I'll start picking up hours at my new position in CAM. That's right, I'll be in ur library, lolcataloging ur bookz.



Wild rumpus to commence in 3...2...
science
Michael O'Muircheartaigh's quote is highly appropriate for (yesterday's) Astronomy Picture of the Day:



The Cassini spaceprobe took this shot of Saturn's rings with cloud-shrouded Titan in the background and Epimetheus floating past in the foreground. Enjoy.

another international Music Thing

  • May. 4th, 2009 at 1:01 AM
music
This time, some K-pop using Mozart's 40th ("Jupiter") symphony for the base melody. Enjoy:

this day in Mad Science

  • Apr. 28th, 2009 at 3:28 PM
science
82 years ago today, Erwin Schrödinger may (or may not) have proposed the concept of quantum wave mechanics in a letter to Albert Einstein.



Schrödinger may or may not have owned a cat at the time.

a belated Music Thing

  • Apr. 27th, 2009 at 9:07 AM
music
That should have been posted last night, but my laptop decided to stop playing nice with me.

This week's Music Thing is inspired by one of my colleagues at the UIUC Hillel, even if she doesn't read my LJ. You all get to enjoy full-on nerdcore as brought to you by Schaffer the Darklord on her behalf. Enjoy:

a PSA from elsewhere in my Flist

  • Apr. 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 PM
ninja
While reading through my Flist this afternoon, I ran across this post by [info]demiurgent and felt it worth reposting for all on my readership to see as well:


When you make a statement like "if we allow homosexuals to marry -- what's to stop the broadening of marriage laws further? What's to prevent people from marrying their animals?" You're equating homosexuals to subhuman status.

You are saying that their happiness, their relationships and their lives are bestial.

You're not just being offensive when you do that. You're taking human beings and reducing them to chattel.

If there is a Heaven and there is a Hell? Doing that shit should be what sends you to Hell.

If you're right and you get to go to Heaven? I would rather go to Hell.


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