FYI, I'll be attending the annual
Innovative Users Group meeting so I'll be in Washington, D.C. from the evening of 4/26 through 5/1. I'll be at the Hilton, the alternative conference hotel. If anybody wants to hang out over coffee or beer or whatnot feel free to email or tweet.
Speaking of tweets, I'm finding I'm liking twitter more than I anticipated. I'm still not convinced it's not a waste of time. While it's great fun, I haven't yet found anything of work-related value there beyond locating people I follow via blog anyway.
Labels: IUG, metadata
A pic of M. and me at the Grilled Cheese Invitational. Isn't my wife gorgeous? The event was a blast, as usual, and we're getting geared up for competing again next year.
Congrats to Shady et al. for the awesomeness of it all. And
congrats to all who won.
We've obviously got our work cut out for us.
Labels: GCI
The Metadata Services Group continues its Monday morning meeting ritual of watching metadata related movies while enjoying home-baked muffins!
Today's muffin: Blueberry
Today's movies:Tim Berners-Lee waxes enthusiastic about the Semantic WebMetadata Standards and Applications Trainer Screencasts: Part 2:
Approaches to Models of Metadata Creation, Storage, and ManagementLabels: 4M, metadata
I got me a
twitter account. Whoo. You can follow me at infod1va if you're so inclined. I do this with great hesitation as I'm the type who can get sucked into bulletin boards or groups or lists to the detriment of my work. I took the plunge so I can follow the folks participating on the
semanticlibrary wiki, which was created by
Fiona Bradley of semanticlibrary.net. If you haven't caught this blog yet, you should. Only up since 11/2007 and already it's a "must read" in my aggregator.
The wiki exists to support the goal of putting together an online learning program for librarians who are interested in learning more about semantic web technologies. One of my big goals for 2008 is to gain more hands-on experience with the relevant technologies. Yes I can read XML but transforming it is beyond me. Most of my professional development in things technical is project-based. Meaning, I think of a useful application and then set out to build it. For example, I taught myself javascript back in the '90s by
creating an interactive tutorial on patent searching (please forgive the color scheme. It was the 90s, I was hanging out with ravers, what can I say?). I read a lot but it's not the same as doing something yourself.
There's a good story as to why I have to use infod1va rather than infodiva. I'll tell it when my lawyers give me the go-ahead.
Labels: metadata, semantic web, what i did today
Chris Rusbridge of Digital Curation Blog wishes for the
submission of an open x open x open x open paper to the
4th International Digital Curation Conference. Open as in open authorship, open data-input, open metadata-output, and open access, but not explicitly open source. But, I think it's pretty safe to presume that open source would be desirable too. The conference is, after all, about digital curation. Open source code is in the best interests of digital curationists. And "Radical Sharing" is a key topic of the conference.
It will be fun to watch this one develop should anybody choose to run with it. I wonder what tool one would use to do what Rusbridge suggests. I haven't had much time to play with such tools myself. I've had
Sophie installed on my Mac since the first release and have yet to write something with it. And then there is
CommentPress. My WordPress skills are so sad that I created this blog with Blogger (and yes, I know I could have used wordpress.com) It's too bad
OCS and
OJS don't seem to have any co-authoring tools, near as I can tell from skimming their executive summary documentation. I wonder how well a Sophie or CommentPress authored document would integrate with an OCS or OJS? If it were me writing, I'd probably have everybody use GoogleDocs. It's probably got the lowest barrier of entry in terms of needing tech-savvy to collaborate.
I also begin to wonder which tools are being used by researchers in subject disciplines to create collaboratively authored papers. I suspect that its still MS Word or Adobe Acrobat and their commenting features or, for more technical disciplines, TeX and LaTeX or some other PostScript derived thingamabob. It would be interesting to do a local inventory of what people use at MPOW -- especially as we migrate to ePrints3 and try to figure out new services to develop in support of our researchers here.
Labels: dcc-2008, metadata, open access, open data, open scholarship, open source
It's time again for me to plug the
Grilled Cheese Invitational. I won't be competing this year nor will I be
tending bar as in years past (yes, that is me in the fab orange dress). That dress got left in New Orleans and the matching coat went MIA during a desert camping trip. I simply cannot tarbend sans orange dress! M. and I plan on going but I probably will not eat as I do have fairly strong vegan tendencies.
Since my friend Shady started this event it has grown by leaps and bounds. There have been regionals in San Francisco and Austin, TX. Rumors fly about a possible regional in Toronto. New event categories have been added, but don't ask me why they're
calling the latest one "Spoons." It's a hella lot of work putting this on. I'm sure I'll end up getting recruited to help with something before the night is out. The data entry for the judging can get backed up.
I do know that it's the funnest time
evah. Next year I do plan on becoming "a f***ing Grill Cheese Champion"
tm. The competition is fearsome. But I shall reign supreme bwahahahahahaha!
Labels: GCI
I dislike meetings without a purpose. I'm also of the opinion that meetings which take longer than an hour are probably wasting time. That said, I also think that meetings should happen with more regularity than they are sometimes scheduled. Frequent informal interaction may help us (a) build collegiality and (b) get regular opportunities to share information and (c) learn a few new things. My colleagues within the Metadata Services Group and I have decided to experiment a bit to find which meeting model works best for us.
To that end, we've started meeting weekly, for roughly half an hour, to discuss department business and to do some shared professional development. That means movies! We interpret "movies" loosely and include podcasts/videocasts/screencasts etc. The common thread is that the subject needs to be related to our current or future work. We kicked off this meeting format last week by watching Arlington Heights Memorial Library's
Behind The Scenes - Technical Services (part of their awesome
LibVlog on youtube).
This week we begin exploring technology and filling in gaps in our knowledge about computing and networking
by looking at the inside of a computer. We also begin viewing Diane Hillmann's screen casts from the
LC Metadata Standards and Applications workshops.
After 6 months, we'll evaluate and figure out if we want to keep doing this.
Labels: 4M, metadata, what i did today
My new gig is still at the overwhelming-but-in-a-good way phase. I've
got jobs open, btw, if you want to work with me. Once I'm a bit less short-staffed I'll be able to blog a bit more as previously promised. I've set myself a goal of posting at least once per week.
I've got a few ideas percolating plus a few longish posts which have been in draft since (eep!) last summer. I've been holding in my snarks about RDA. I've got long ignored notes from DCC to discuss. I've got a few stories about online identity management. And so on....
The big but is that I've been experiencing a lot of health issues. I've recently learned that my heart murmur may be getting worse and I've also got some thyroid funny business happening. Nothing to worry about most likely. It does mean a slew of tests and doctors appointments, however. All my promises above are predicated on my ability to stay well.
Labels: dcc-2007, life1.0, metadata, RDA
