hall of shame: ALA and NJASL

As an LIS student, I rely on professional library organizations for information for papers and online discussions. So, I was quite annoyed to find, for the 2nd time this month, a library organization has taken formerly free information on their website and moved it to a (paid) members-only section.

Hello? I thought:
library = free = access to information
Right?

I mean, I'm willing to pay for a hard copy. I realize these documents take money and effort (albiet from VOLUNTEERS) to produce. But, get with the 21st century already and throw up a free pdf on your site. Actually, in these cases, KEEP the free pdf that you ALREADY HAD (for FREE) on your site for months (or YEARS). Why move it to a member-restricted section of your site NOW? (i.e., A few weeks before the end of MY semester?!)

ALA, NJASL? You know what documents I'm referring to. I'll be waiting for your reply while I find a friend to email me a copy she wisely downloaded before you went all Amazon on me.

from Easter eggs to Amazon

Just last week, my family & I were discussing Easter eggs in video games and DVDs. Somehow, the conversation turned to Google bombs like Find Chuck Norris, French military victories,
and the now defunct miserable failure.

So, when Amazon laid another kind of egg this Easter weekend, I wasn't surprised when the following Google bomb had immediate and huge success: Amazon Rank. [Enjoy! Kudos to the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. And don't forget to vote for their definition of amazon rank at Urbandictionary.com, and use it in your everyday speech. As in, "My principal amazon ranked me and removed the copy of And Tango Makes Three from my library."]

So, anyway, now they're blaming it on catalogers?! [No wonder RU removed the word library from one of its top-ranked programs! But I digress.] Nice try, but ahem, and #glitchmyass.

Aside from my moral outrage [and, yeah, my growing annoyance with the garbage showing up in my #Amazonfail clogged Twitter stream], I am ticked that now I can't keep up with my gadget girl neighbor and get a Kindle. How can they do this do me. Darn you evil corporations!

dissed

disenfranchised [dis-en-fran-chihyzd] - MLIS students and alumni of the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies who discovered--in a brief post to a listserv--that their new dean and faculty had approved a proposal to drop "Library" from the school name, without prior notice of the vote (or even that a name change was under consideration), and without sufficient (any) opportunity for input.

disillusioned [dis'i-loo-zhənd] - (1) This student, who has heard the importance of advocacy for libraries, librarians and librarianship emphasized in every week of every semester of graduate study in a school that suddenly devalues library science to the point that it is willing to spend untold dollars--in this economy--to rebrand itself to eliminate the term "library" from its name.
(2) This student, who has heard nothing public (or otherwise) on this issue from the same professors who have been drilling the need for library advocacy into her head for two years.

disappointed [dis-uh-poin-tid] - This soon-to-be graduating MLIS candidate, who has been looking forward to graduating from the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, but may now graduate from the School of Communication and Information.

See also: Library Journal news item and NJSLA blog

teaching online (or not)

A few tips for truly ineffectual teaching in the online environment:

1. Create lectures by reading lengthy stretches of text in monotone with complicated sentence structure (sans pauses).
2. Upload lengthy ppt presentations with walls of text to accompany #1.
3. Don't forget to make some complicated flowcharts and diagrams using ppt, because drawing in ppt is so much easier to use than any real illustration programs - nevermind that it is indecipherable and looks like crap.
4. Post related information randomly in multiple places in the course shell - online students are computer savvy (especially LIS student), they'll find it.
5. Be intentionally vague in stating your objectives for the discussion, and let the conversation flow where it may.
6. Berate the class when the discussions in #5 don't go where you intended.