Caveat Lector

For lo, it is apparently Blog Day, and we are supposed to recommend some other folks’ blogs. Here’s my five:

Solvitur ambulando, because Bess Sadler knows where the best comics shops are, and can make a BSD server sit up and beg. And hey, Latin blog titles rule!

And We Shall March, because Pam Noles has fire in her soul for all the right reasons. Found her through this epic essay about the mis-adaptation of one of my favorite writers, been reading her blog ever since.

Blogula Rasa, my other alter ego. (Rochelle Mazar is my good twin, of course. But we all knew that.) Again with the Latin titles, of course.

The Liminal Librarian, for Rachel Singer Gordon’s sense of space.

Library Web Chic, because Karen Coombs is always good for a tech tip or some honest musings.

Go. Read. Enjoy.

Is there an ImageMagick guru in the house? Here’s my problem.

I’ve got a boatload of beautiful high-quality TIFF page-scans that I want to shove into a PDF full of lower-quality, smaller JPEGs for web viewing. The JPEGs I got, no problem; one itsy-bitsy shell-script does the job nicely.

When I do a “convert *.jpg test.pdf”, however, the resulting pages have immensely too-large bounding boxes. I can’t figure out whether this is an issue with the JPEGs or the PDF conversion process, and if the latter, how to tell ImageMagick not to pad the images, or even to use a specific page size.

Maybe I should be using Ghostscript directly, instead of through ImageMagick?

If you know how to make this work, would you email me with the secret sauce, please?

I thought the Forbes “response” to last week’s heinously sexist article was actually pretty lame, but I didn’t say so, because that was a fight I just didn’t want to start.

This, however, is much more like it. I do enjoy a good verbal evisceration when it’s merited…

A few months ago I had a shot at an invited speech, with attached honorarium. It fell through, which didn’t surprise or perturb me; the event in question is a high-stakes, high-visibility thing, so why would they take a chance on a newbie librarian with nothing to recommend her but some disreputable blog?

Dance, Ivan Tribble, dance while you can, laddie. I haven’t been pretending that CavLec is my ticket to fame and fortune. I’ve got two conference presentations, a professional-trade magazine article plus sidebar conference review (forthcoming), and at least one book review (book is on its way) to my credit for this calendar year, plus a book chapter (already written) and half a reference-book contract (argh, must get going on that!) to tally for next year. One of my conference presentations is getting a translation into Portuguese (and no, I’m not doing it; my Portuguese is far too rudimentary and rusty for that). I been busy.

Last week, it so happens, lightning struck. Twice. I now have two invited speeches on my calendar, and one of ’em’s even international! And both the folks who invited me, not to mention the person who asked me to write the trade-mag piece, said that they were long-time CavLec readers and that CavLec had had an influence on the decision to approach me.

Let’s be clear once again, I do not intentionally use CavLec as a professional tool. You won’t find it on my CV, not now and not ever. I never ever bring it up with professional acquaintances who don’t already know about it. If somebody comes to my door on account of CavLec, it’s not because I set it up as a red carpet.

And yet it is one, for a few people, all in spite of its style, content, and frankness. That’s something. Still dancing, Ivan boy?

I mean, if CavLec is all you know of me, why on earth would you think I can write something professional? I left an offer out of my tally above, a “wanna write a book?” offer that came about because my book chapter found favor. That’s the way things are supposed to go. I prove I can write right, I get asked to write more. CavLec is, shall we say, not exactly proof I can write right. (Oh, and I declined the offer, with sincere thanks and a “keep me in mind.” What I have to write about right now doesn’t quite fit with the book model of publication. In five years, things may well be different.)

I got a book out of the library the other day that was written in a style not too dissimilar from CavLec’s: Pip Coburn’s The Change Function. I dumped it on my return stack without making it through the introduction; the style was frankly grating, graceless and condescending self-puffery. I expect a little gracelessness in a blog; it even adds spice. In a book? No, thank you.

I can write professionally, even though it’s not my native or my favorite register, and I think the stuff coming out soon will adequately demonstrate that. Those of you who have been paying close and careful attention to CavLec (all three of you) may even have noticed that I have retuned my posts on open access to a much more professional and less, well, CavLeccy pitch. That was a conscious decision, made because I know how often my open-access posts are getting cited on Open Access News, outside those posts’ context of standard CavLec snark, and I feel I have a certain duty to represent the side with a little more than my usual grace.

Still and all, even before most of the professional writing I’ve been doing saw the light of day, CavLec picked me a couple of ripe, juicy plums. Maybe Ivan Tribble’s right, and a blog is a death-sentence for an academic career, but Tribble could never prove that off me.

I got Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment out of the library again, because it’s a book I like with a message I needed just about now. I don’t know how many women in male fields (and no, that’s not a spoiler; it’s clacksed from the very first page, and the title is a dead giveaway too) Pratchett talked to before writing this one. Perhaps no one out of his ordinary acquaintance; the man has a gift for hitting bullseyes about human interaction.

A (minorly spoilery) passage that hit me this read-through:

He looked innocent, so possibly he didn’t understand the raging argument that had just broken out in Polly’s head. A credit to the women of your country. We’re proud of you. Somehow those words locked you away, put you in your place, patted you on the head and dismissed you with a sweetie. On the other hand, you had to start somewhere…

Part of the annoyance of being feminist is having these arguments with myself all the damn time. It’s such an energy drain. Do I call this one out? Did that person mean what was just said, or was it just a brain-fart? If I dig in my heels and howl, am I going to create more heat than light? Will anybody back me up? Why, for heaven’s sake, did that make me so angry? I’m a grownup, and it’s not like I haven’t heard worse before. Why can’t I just let stuff go? How much trouble am I willing to get into over this? Honestly, how much?

Meredith used the word “subtle” to characterize sexism in systems librarianship. I’m going to use the word “insidious” instead, and try to explain why. “Subtle” carries the connotation “intentional” to me, and I don’t believe that’s warranted. I don’t know a single librarian of either gender capable of even thinking anything like that absurd Forbes article (which from me gets no linklove, nuh-uh, no way).

And when I cut loose on CavLec finally, I didn’t get a pile-on in return the way Bess did. Well, I sort of did, actually; I spent a solid month and more answering email with my teeth lacerating my tongue to shreds. But the pile-on wasn’t an outpouring of blatant insult. It was an outpouring of “hey, um, WTF just happened?”

Insidious. The word implies invisible destruction of trust, which to me is just right. I started out, as I think many women of my age started out, honestly trusting that the worst of the struggle for gender equality was over, and that I could and should expect to be treated with courtesy and respect wherever I went. Not because I was a woman, not in spite of being a woman—but just because. Because it had finally been acknowledged that women are, you know, people and stuff.

When you think about it, against the tapestry of history? That’s an amazing trust. The wonder isn’t that it gets broken in some women. The wonder is it’s left intact as often as it is—and not just out of blindness, wilful or otherwise.

The reduction of women’s contributions to sniffed-at footnotes that annoys Pratchett’s Polly is only one insidious way to damage women’s trust in basic fairness. The one I most recently ran into boils down to honorary guyness (and I use the word “guy” rather than “man” intentionally). A woman can be an honorary guy, sure, with all the perquisites and privileges pertaining to that status—as long as she never lets anything disturb the guy façade.

It’s good to be an honorary guy, don’t get me wrong. Guys are fun to be around. Guys know stuff. Guys help out other guys. Guys trust other guys. And in my experience, they don’t treat honorary guys any differently from how they treat regular guys. It’s really great to be an honorary guy.

The only problem is that part of the way that guys distinguish themselves from not-guys is by contrasting themselves with women. Women are the not-guys. It’s an incredibly insidious set-up. When a guy cracks a pr0n joke, he honestly doesn’t have anything against women; he’s just affirming his guyness. Other guys take it so, and don’t think twice about it. It never occurs to the guys that these boundaries are artificial, that there’s nothing intrinsic to women that makes them not-guys, that there are better ways (e.g. group purpose, mutual support) to define a group and the desired characteristics of group members. And since that never occurs to them, pr0n jokes and the like get baked deep into group culture.

Honorary guys, now—some can see the guyness-affirmation for what it is to the guys and let it go. I know some honorary guys who do precisely that. Maybe their trust in fairness remains intact (after all, as honorary guys they’re being treated well); maybe it doesn’t. Maybe some of them come around to the guy point of view, despising women who haven’t become honorary guys. I’ve never quite dared ask.

I’m not that kind of honorary guy, I’m afraid. I’ve paid for it, and I expect I shall again. But at least y’all get to watch me talk through it all.

Mark, then, what happens to temporarily honorary guys who have trouble accepting the typical guy style of group-membership claim. Every guyness-affirmation from every guy erodes their trust, in that specific guy, in the group, in men, in fairness. My $DEITY, do they think about me like that? Heavens, that was disgusting and uncalled-for—do they know how they sound? If they know, do they care? How do these people treat their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, female bosses, female co-workers? Do they laugh at them behind their backs? Do they laugh at me behind mine? If so, what am I doing here? Do I really belong, or am I just the mascot, just the dartboard, just the token?

Insidious. Let me tell you, insidious. Not least because the guys have no intention of causing these reactions, and no idea they’re doing it. I haven’t even touched the question of fear for one’s bodily and professional integrity, but in the worst cases, it’s real. If I’m in a hotel bar with these guys at a conference, am I even safe? If these guys have power, am I toast if I tick them off? Even though most guys would be outright horrified that any woman, especially an honorary guy they honestly like, would distrust them so.

Now mark what happens when a guy, honorary or not, assails the definition of not-guys as women by asking for the pr0n jokes to stop, please, and now would be nice. Every guy in the place has suddenly had his guyness, his group membership, even the very existence of and justification for the group, called into question. Of course the result is unconsidered defensiveness. How could it be anything else?

And that defensiveness is a serious, sometimes fatal, blow to the honorary guy’s trust in the victory over sexism. Not only will guys crack pr0n jokes, they’ll defend the practice, bemoan losing it as a diminution of group culture; I’ve seen ’em do it. Even though (here’s the insidious bit) it’s not really pr0n jokes they’re defending; it’s group cohesion. And when honorary guys have no more trust left? Well, I’m Exhibit A. Come to your own conclusions.

The story doesn’t end there. Groups blow up, feelings are hurt all ’round, everybody yells and screams, friendships are broken, people are blacklisted, nobody understands WTF just happened, the guys suddenly wonder if they trust honorary guys and if they should, and it all sucks amazingly. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, bled (metaphorically) all over it, wish like you wouldn’t believe that things had been different.

Meredith’s comments have a deeply troubling variation on the honorary-guy scenario; it isn’t only “guys” who use this group-cohesion method, and it isn’t only women who are shoved into the not-us group. I saw this same scenario brought up on a different library blog (I forget which, or I’d look it up); the female techie librarian targeted had the courage to dispute the homophobia with “And if I am [lesbian]?” Good for her. I hope her co-workers felt all due shame.

In addition to the homophobia, though, I want to call out the anti-techism in that anecdote, even though as an outrage it pales in comparison. How many librarians are defining librarianship as intrinsically analog? (Shortly after I was hired, I heard a librarian at MPOW angrily insisting that MPOW needed to hire “real librarians.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by the term, but I got the message loud and clear that she didn’t mean me. Was scary at the time, I admit.) How do we change that group definition without threatening those librarians’ self-concept?

I’m not saying anything here that a passel of sociologists haven’t said better than I ever could. That’s the funny thing about all this. It’s not hard to read about these things. There’s lots out there that would help us break these counterproductive patterns of group formation within our profession and in the larger world. We’re librarians. Why do we not read, why do we not research, when patterns like these damage us?

I have suggestions for worthwhile reading, but this post is too long already. You could do worse, though, than start with Monstrous Regiment.

Somewhere there’s a tattoo artist who does “Perpetual Student” with all the appropriate flourishes. I won’t say I don’t deserve it, because come Tuesday I’m starting courses again.

Nobody panic, it’s just nondegree info-systems stuff (and likely pass-fail to save the lecturer some grading), because I’m tired of not having all the clues I ought to. Besides, this clue-gathering is free-as-in-beer because it’s a job perq, so I’d be silly not to let MPOW buy me a clue.

Applying for admission, even for nondegree student status, is as much of a stupid bureaucratic farce as ever, I must say. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a secure electronic transcript request/fulfillment system yet? I’m tired of filling out stupid forms and paying ridiculous amounts of money for something that should be as simple as I web-form a request to OldSkool, OldSkool crypto-signs and sends the transcript to my school, my school decrypts with OldSkool’s public key, end of story. Bah, silly systems. Relying on paper in this day and age.

Serious ideas in this post about the Google Book project (though see Peter Suber’s comments).

Even so, I have to admit I busted a gut laughing at this:

That’s because no sane librarian would outsource their profession to an unaccountable private entity that refuses to disclose the workings of its system […]

BWA-HAHAHAHAHA! Ha-ha. Ha. Hee. Whoo. He don’t know much about the state of library automation systems or journal/database vendors, do he?

I’m still chuckling.

I happened by Timothy Burke’s place and found this post with which I wholeheartedly agree. Go read it. I’ll wait.

As is widely known, I’m an irritable sort, but very little irritates me more than watching people go mindlessly off to graduate school and end up no more fitted for the job market than when they entered, no matter whether they graduate or wash out. I’m not even all that concerned about skills; it’s the sense of entitlement and the cluelessness that make me climb walls. This is the trap New Librarian was in. I wish Dr. Burke had written that post years ago, I do.

Personally, I’ve used Routes 1, 2, and 4. Route 3 isn’t quite my style (and Dr. Burke is right that if it’s not your style, don’t try to fake it), and nothing I’ve ever done has been bad enough to even approach Route 5.

I got yet another email about the grad-school story from a matriculating graduate student who said jubilantly, “Now I don’t feel stupid for having a backup plan!” Seems her adviser had pooh-poohed the effort of creating one.

If I could get to that adviser and fire him or her out on his/her unethical butt, I would so very, very do that. It is not cool to tell impressionable youngsters that Grad School Is All You Need, because that is a flat lie. It is cool to be realistic, as Dr. Burke and some other recent email correspondents from faculty ranks have been.

I spent the day massaging metadata in the repository, and writing up a FAQ in hopes of doing less metadata-massaging in the future.

I am forcibly reminded why I did not go into cataloguing. This stuff is eating my brain, and I’m nowhere near done yet. (Finished basic author cleanup, though when I have round tuits I’m going to do authority searches on the list. Wading through subjects.) And? The Library of Congress’s authority search runs on sessions, lets me know every single time I’ve timed out, and is all clicky-clicky and unclear with the authorized and non-authorized headings. I hate that.

On the plus side, though, I seem to have landed my first invitation to speak professionally. (Um, in my new profession. I have a couple-three invitations to my credit from my conversion-peasant days.) Because I’m paranoid about announcing these things until they are firmly nailed down, no details at present—but I’m excited!

A long time ago, on a balcony far, far away… (cue pompous brass fanfare) HUMMER WARS.

Them little suckers is territorial as all get-out. A friend warned me about that on LiveJournal; now we know she’s right.

We have at least three hummers back there; I just saw two trying to fake out the third, who has our feeder staked out as his personal territory. All your sugar-water are belong to ME, he says. Which is silly, because all three of them combined couldn’t possibly empty it before we have to dump and clean it anyway, but the ways of hummers are unaccountable.

Watching Mr. 0wnz0r standing sentinel (well, perching sentinel) in his jaunty green weskit on the tree a little way from our feeder, David asked me quizzically, “Are you sure that red isn’t the blood of his enemies?”

No. Honestly? No. I’m not. Though it’s darn shiny blood, if it is blood.

It’s nice to come home and watch hummingbirds swooping about like superheroes, though. I hauled twenty-some-odd pounds of interlibrary-loaned Rg Veda concordance home tonight (note to dissertators at a distance: it is advantageous to marry an academic librarian), and now I’m not even grouchy about it.