Caveat Lector

Perdóndaris is interviewing their other candidate today. I’m sure I’m a big fat wuss for how much my stomach hurts right now.

New resolution: Always ask to look over anything written about myself before it goes out.

The entrepreneurial award I won carries the price prize of a press release and web profile from the organization that funds the award. I just got copy for the profile, and… yikes. Phrases like “extremely adept at all the technologies that…” just set my teeth on edge. (Not that I’m not good at what I do; I am. But nobody’s adept at “all” technologies in any sphere.)

I’m busily whittling down the go-me rhetoric to what I hope is a reasonably tasteful minimum while adding a concrete accomplishment or two. I’ve no notion what’ll get put back in by the time this thing hits the photons, though.

And, as usual, I’m finding the whole deal horribly, horribly embarrassing.

I haven’t had time to comment on all the excellent writing lately about library-resource usability. I had some thoughts I wanted to kick back to Lorcan Dempsey (mostly about how having data locked up by for-profit vendors pretty much guarantees no APIs into it, so how can libraries fix the usability problems?), but they’re nothing other people can’t say better.

One question did bubble up to the top, though, and I’m as qualified as anyone else to ask it: Why is the typography and layout of library-search results so wretched?

Type a search into your favorite OPAC. What you get back is more than likely to be an HTML table, gray borders and all, with every piece of information in the same typeface, with the same font weight, at the same size, in the same color. The labels are probably boldfaced. That’s all. (Endeavor Voyager, I am so staring right at you. I was looking at a Voyager results page while I wrote this.)

My local library’s Dynix installation appears to have followed A-a-z-n.c-m in its general approach to layout and typography of individual book-metadata pages: cover thumbnail, title larger than author, which is larger than the rest of the text, and so on. It’s a start, but frankly, A-a-z-n.c-m hasn’t done much pioneering in this area either. I’m betting that if we set our minds to it, we could do better.

Labeled tables are how computers manage metadata: label, content, label, content, label, content. Let’s face it, this is not how human beings best absorb information. Human beings use good old-fashioned typography and layout. Positioning. Font choices. Color, sometimes. Pick up the five books closest to you. Look at their covers and title pages. Imagine plunking that information into boring old HTML tables. See what I’m saying? It takes longer to absorb the very same information in tabular format, because we humans pick up typography cues a lot faster than we associate labels with data.

To be fair, layout and typography aren’t all we use. The closest that human beings get to a computer-like method of metadata control is with bibliographic citations, which are ordered and rule-driven within an inch of their lives. Even so, how stupid is the idea of a Works Cited section laid out as a table, with every part of every citation labeled? What a waste of space! What a waste of the reader’s patience! Yet that’s not far from what some OPACs and databases do, and it’s exactly what every DSpace installation in creation does.

So, no, OPACs aren’t the only villains here, not by a long shot. It’s not really surprising that libraries haven’t incorporated human-oriented typography and layout into their search tools, either; ISBD came about precisely because one couldn’t professionally typeset one’s catalogue cards! Nor could one do anything much with the typography of a Telnet-based command-line tool (ask any DIALOG user).

The Web is different. Typography is all but free, and so is layout; design it right once, and every single search result benefits.

Certainly if I get my hands on a DSpace installation (which I may, one of these fine days), this will be something I look into. Save the time of the reader, said Ranganathan—which means designing our information around how that reader best absorbs it, which in turn means layout and typography.

The whole idea behind SGML and XML markup is that humans are smart about typography, whereas computers are so dumb about it that they need explicit labeling. The converse is true about tables and suchlike labeled data, which computers love and humans hate.

It’s past time we stopped designing our search-results pages for computers.

So I spent half my day working on WordPress upgrades for myself and others, and lo! I have more work to do now than I did at the beginning of the day.

Roon is completely down; I don’t know why. (Possibly something to do with mod_rewrite weirdness; it borked with HTTP 500s after I visited the permalinks options page.) Shark Tank, Textual Deviant, and Beyond 360 are up, but I have to redo all their templates as WP themes. I’ve got the WP install on TAG working, but have yet to move any content into it. (Never mind that much of that content needs major rewriting.)

And I haven’t dared touch poor CavLec, because I’d be most upset if I borked it. (Roon I can live without for a bit, if I have to.)

Sigh. On the plus side, I did find the predecessor to the pro bono conversion job in my archives, so I won’t have to recreate the regexes or the markup from scratch. That’s a good thing. And I billed the Montreal trip, and took care of some job-search courtesies.

Days like this could turn Nicholas Negroponte into a Luddite, I swear.

ETA: Fixed Roon. For others’ reference, the problem was that WordPress was kindly editing .htaccess for me such that I had two sets of (apparently conflicting) URL rewrite rules. The fix, as far as I can tell, is to let WP do its thing, grab the resulting .htaccess file, kill the original rewrite rules from it, and reupload the result. But don’t touch the comments #Begin WordPress and #End WordPress! If you do, WP will stick yet another set of rewrite rules in, and you’ll bork your site.

If you asked to see my graduation pictures and I haven’t sent you an email, ping me again, because they’re up.

That plus giving my library-renovation talk for the third bloody time (and much as I love that project and hope it flies, I am not doing that talk again unless there’s money involved) was pretty much all I accomplished today. Well, and returning the magisterial regalia.

Spent the rest of the day watching Firefly DVDs, because I’ve earned a little relaxation. (Definitely looking forward to Serenity, and anybody who’s been to one of the advance screenings and spoils it for me will get beaten to death with the proverbial shovel, because a vague… you know the drill.)

Lest anyone think I have nothing to do but cause trouble, I assure you I’ve got a lengthy to-do list. More job applications and other job-related tidbits, TAG’s long-overdue website revamp (look for the site to go down sometime this week; all other sites I own should be unaffected, but who knows? I’ve screwed things up before), WordPress 1.5 installs, a quick pro bono conversion job, billing for the Montreal trip (yes, I suck for not having done it sooner), and maybe a little yardwork before the dandelions eat the house entire.

Ed Cortez, for all he like to killed me when I told him he’d won the student vote for faculty speaker (I ran the survey), was his usual charming, articulate self when he got up to give his address. I value the two courses I took with Ed, and UW-SLIS is assuredly going to miss him.

I got David to pin my little “librarian” pin on me after the SLIS ceremony, and wore it proudly all day. I’m looking at it on my desk now and grinning another of those lunatical grins. Watching the long, long parade of new bachelor’s degrees cross that stage, I was drawn to people with grins like mine—utterly thrilled with their accomplishment, and not ashamed or afraid to show it. I thought about all my Spanish students from back in the day (they’re long graduated by now, all of ’em) and wished them well.

The weather behaved itself with notable courtesy, staying bright and cheerful for the entire SLIS ceremony. It clouded up over lunch, but waited to rain until all of us last-half Letters and Science graduates were safely ensconced in the Kohl Center. By the time we got out, the rain was over. Seeing as how I had been braced for a thoroughly dismal day, I’m grateful.

The Kohl Center ceremony started with a fanfare from six music students on those great long heraldic trumpets, played in tune and in perfect time. Very, very cool. Weepy moment for me, because wow, fanfare! (I’ve played fanfares on recorder before, but I have to admit that brass fanfares are far more authoritative.)

Our little troupe of new librarians sitting in a row at the Kohl Center sported just about the only red-and-white MA hoods there. Journalism was out in force, as were Social Work and Music, but the professional MSes are yellow-and-red, and poor Music is stuck with pink-and-red. This is, of course, because we librarians get just about the only professional, terminal MAs that the UW offers. For almost everybody else, the MA is just a steppingstone on the way to a Ph.D.

(Or not, of course. But people leaving with a “consolation master’s” don’t generally feel they’ve accomplished anything much, and don’t go to graduation. I don’t need to tell you what I think of a system that inculcates that kind of thinking, do I? Right, didn’t think so.)

The scarcity of red and white did give rise to another thought, though. We academic librarians pretty much have to have a second master’s in another discipline to progress in our field. (So, yes, this means that some of the sweat, blood, and tears I gave the Department from Hell is now redeemed, and yes, that’s meaningful to me.) Part of what a department is saying when it says “We don’t grant a terminal master’s” is “Go away, you librarians. We aren’t interested in you; you have nothing to offer us.”

Wow, what utter arrogant wank that is.

I hear through the grapevine (okay, okay, at the Beta Phi Mu dinner) that the local Latin American and Iberian Studies bibliographer position is opening up shortly. (Liaison librarian. Area-studies librarian. Whatever they’re calling it these days.) I won’t be applying, even if Perdóndaris doesn’t come through with an offer (and I still hope they do, I still hope they do!). Aside from not much liking collection development, I just can’t imagine starting out my career working with some of the same folks who broke me into a million shards of uselessness.

Don’t let that stop you from applying, though, if you’ve got the stuff. My trauma is my trauma, and hasn’t got anything to do with you. I do wonder, though, whether they’d be able to respect one of their own rejects as a skilled and talented professional in her own right. Sorta doubt it, frankly.

But that’s all right. You know what? That’s all right. They’ll find someone, and me—I’ll find a place to respect me.

I duly graduated from the University of Wisconsin’s School of Library and Information Studies this morning at approximately 10 am—and just to make sure no minds had changed about letting me out, I attended the Letters and Science graduation ceremony this afternoon, too.

Longtime CavLec readers know that I hate having pictures taken and never post pictures of myself on CavLec. I am not planning to break the streak now. However, I offer you Still Life with Diploma Cover (42K JPEG), which contains (clockwise from carnation): the white carnation handed to us at the SLIS ceremony in lieu of an actual diploma, the gorgeous flower arrangement sent to me by the good-hearted SLIS student from Chicago I’ve been hosting on Wednesday nights, my C. Berger award certificate, my Beta Phi Mu certificate, my Valmai Fenster award certificate (from last year), an index card with a chunk of Augustine’s Sermon 169 on it, the diploma cover handed to us at the Letters and Science ceremony in lieu of an actual diploma, and (suspended from the diploma cover) my tassel.

David got some good pictures of the Bibliomedusa in her magisterial attire this morning, which was bright and sunny and beautiful despite the weatherfolks’ gloomy prognostications. I’ll post ’em, but they’re going into a password-protected directory with a very short shelf-life. If you want the directory location and login, email me.

Magisterial attire, for those of you who don’t know, involves a black gown with calf-length squared-off sleeve ends that practically beg you to sit on them, thus binding yourself into your chair because your hands can’t reach the chair-arms to help lever you up. (I did this twice at the SLIS ceremony and once in the afternoon. Bibliomedusae are obviously not known for grace.) These sleeves make great pockets, however; mine held my St. Augustine index card, the class-gift check, bobby pins, and a couple of pennies at various times through the day.

You also get a hood that in our case was spiffy white velvet with a red satin stripe on a black ground. (Pity the poor master’s graduates of the Music School, who got stuck with pink velvet and the aforementioned red stripe—yuck.) It looks silly going on—one feels rather like Santa Claus—but once in place it’s quite, well, magisterial, as long as it doesn’t cut off your air supply in front. And we Beta Phi Muers got to wear our purple and white honors cords.

Don’t make the mistake, by the way, of trying to wear the hood as a hood. Emperor Palpatine doesn’t have a master’s degree. And your hat is the traditional mortarboard, cap slightly too small (so bring bobby pins; I made a special trip to the store to pick some up last night, and I’m glad I did!), back corner just the right distance from your head for everyone who passes behind you to run into it.

I spent the day alternating between lunatical grins and slight weepiness. I didn’t actually break down in tears, though I was quite close when I got up to give my little spiel for David and Professor Flanigan. But Professor Flanigan would kick my sorry magisterial butt if I lost the ability to pronounce my Latin, so I didn’t. (I did cut the Augustine in half, in deference to my classmates’ patience for dead languages. You CavLec readers get the whole thing.)

David took me to Caspian Café for lunch after the SLIS reception, and promenaded me around the Terrace until it was time to line up for the Letters and Science ceremony. This proceeded with admirable dispatch considering the number of people who had to walk across that stage. (Master’s graduates are lumped in with the bachelor’s folks, though the Ph.Ds get their own ceremony. We master’s grads sit up front, go onstage first, and look cooler.) Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin shook an unbelievable number of hands (including mine, and I am genuinely proud to have shared a stage with her even for thirty seconds), the speeches and the music were great, and I’m glad I went, seeing as how it’s my third college degree but the only mass graduation I’ve ever been to.

A lovely day, and I will never as long as I live forget it. But I haven’t mentioned the coolest part. You know what the coolest part is?

I AM A LIBRARIAN. No matter where I go, what I do, or who pays me to do it, from this day onward, I AM A LIBRARIAN.

And that, my blog-friends all, who have watched this process from the day I had the idea and to whom I am eternally grateful for congratulations, behind-the-scenes support when I needed it, and a warm welcome to the profession—that, my friends, is cool.

(The title of this post is a reference to this earlier one. Bloglines users may not be seeing the <del> tags; trust me, they’re there.)

When I went looking for something to read at graduation, someone (I forget who) asked me for a translation, but it became one of those things that meanders into the back of my head as something I really ought to do one of these days when I have a free minute…

But tomorrow’s graduation, so it’s now or never. Keep in mind that my Latin is incredibly rusty, and was never all that great to begin with. (As many times as I took beginning Latin, you’d think it would have stuck better.) Here’s the bit I mean to read:

Proficite, fratres mei, discutite vos semper sine dolo, sine adulatione, sine palpatione. Non enim aliquis est intus tecum, cui erubescas, et iactes te. Est ibi, sed cui placet humilitas, ipse te probet. Proba et te ipsum tu ipse. Semper tibi displiceat quod es, si vis pervenire ad id quod nondum es. Nam ubi tibi placuisti, ibi remansisti. Si autem dixeris: Sufficit; et peristi. Semper adde, semper ambula, semper profice; noli in via remanere, noli retro redire, noli deviare.

And, roughly, the translation:

Go forward, my brothers; look at yourselves without self-deceit, without pride, without flattery. There’s really nobody in you to make you blush, nobody you have to brag to. But the person inside who’s humble, let him test you. And test yourself, too. Always be a little unhappy with what you are, if you want to be something you’re not, yet, quite. Because if you get too pleased with yourself, there you’ll stay. If you say “hey, that’s enough,” you’re dead. Always keep growing, keep walking, keep moving forward; don’t stop by the side of the road, don’t retrace your steps, don’t turn aside.

(There’s another translation here if you don’t like mine.)

In memoriam Dr. C. Clifford Flanigan, with my best love… because I want to believe he would be proud of me, even though I did go off the road for a while.

(I am running out of Pythonic ways to do this. Probably a sign that the joke has run its course, yes?)

Beta Phi Mu purports to stand for a Greek phrase meaning “Librarians are the guardians of knowledge.” Of course David (dutifully watching me twiddle my purple-and-white honor cords against my purple dress, and I swear I didn’t harmonize with my honor cords on purpose!) couldn’t resist trying to back-translate that one. What he came up with was ????????????? ?????????? ????????. “Or, in your case,” he whispered, pointing to another Greek word he’d written, “????????.”

“I’m a medusa?” I squeal-whispered back. “Rockin’!”

So then he got to doodling:

Which, if TAG didn’t already have a brilliant logo, would itself be a brilliant logo.

I picked up my cap and gown between Ed Cortez’s farewell shindig and the Beta Phi Mu shindig. When I got home from the latter, I put the whole rig on to figure out how to do it (those hoods aren’t easy to manage). I look something like a cross between a frigate and a funeral dais, but so be it; I earned it and I’m bloody well going to wear it.

I lucked out with regard to the whole air travel thing this time. All of my flights were on time. My layovers were short, but long enough for me to get where I was going. (Long walks, yes, but that’s par for the course these days, airports have gotten so big.) I hate those little Embraer jets, though. They have the worst-designed seats anywhere.

The security people at Perdóndaris airport were astoundingly rude, even by large-airport standards. I managed to escape any targeted wrath because I’ve been doing this so often lately I know the routine like the back of my hand (off with the shoes and coat, out with the laptop, on with the bags, through the metal detector, hand over the boarding pass…), but I could surely have done without the general shoutiness of the entire ordeal.

That paled to insignificance, however, beside the woman I ended up sitting next to on the plane to Detroit. (Again, “Detroit” tells you nothing about where Perdóndaris is except that it’s somewhere east of Madison. And lots of places are that.) I don’t mind a little plane chat, especially on a plane that’s crowded (as this one was) and therefore uncomfortable. Ice-breaking is a good thing.

But this woman nattered on endlessly. About her last five surgeries. Her husband’s last five surgeries. Their finances. Her elder daughter’s travails with school, boys, and suicide attempts (!!!). Her work. Her younger daughter’s travails with school, and success in overcoming same (said daughter scowling in the window seat, helpless to put a stop to her mother’s oversharing). Her fights with her daughters’ teachers, principals, and school district.

Nothing would make her stop. Looking away was not a sufficient cue. When I turned my book over in my lap and began to read during a brief pause in the ceaseless flood of inappropriate disclosure (and I haven’t given you all of it by any means; just the merest taste), she actually touched my shoulder twice to get me to pay attention again. I breathed a covert sigh of relief when the plane touched down, anticipating blessed release, only to be disappointed because we’d arrived early and our gate wasn’t free and we had to sit out on the tarmac while the woman nattered on and I was ready to claw myself out of my skin to escape by the time the plane finally nudged in to the gate.

I’ve never pushed my way out of a plane so fast.

I wanted to say something to the daughter, though, because I surely did recognize the expression on her face. I also noticed the way the daughter half-shamefacedly, half-lovingly put her mother back together with her stuff to get ready to debark.

It’s okay, I wanted to say. I mean, it’s not okay, it’s living hell. I know. But it’ll be okay. A few more years and you’re free, and despite everything, you’ll be fine. I was you, kid, and I’m basically okay. You will be, too.

I still wish I’d said that. But I couldn’t have got past her mother long enough. Always something, with air travel. Always something.