Caveat Lector

I’d like to welcome my good colleague Shane Beers to the biblioblogosphere. Shane took over my duties at George Mason, and has done a lot better with them than I ever did. I’m happy to see other repository managers blogging, and thrice happy to see Shane.

He brings up something that I’ve heard from other people as well: annoyance at my insistence on the phrase “repository-rat” to refer to librarians who manage institutional repositories. Some of that is me, and some of it is deliberate and calculated rhetorical strategy. It seems worth picking apart.

The “me” part, I confess, is of a piece with my steadfast refusal to take myself and what I do too seriously. Back in the day, I called myself a conversion peasant. Now I’m a repository-rat. I’m stubborn about this, and I don’t anticipate changing it… but I also recognize that it leaks into how I refer to other repository managers, as well as the specialty as a whole, and I see how that can feel like disdain.

It isn’t. It takes quite a bit of dedication to stick with IRs, and an impressive array of skills to manage one well. (I’m not saying I do, mind. Not for me to say. But I’m steeped in this field, I know whom I respect, and I know what they are capable of.) Moreover, these dedicated, skilled people have to persevere in the face of widespread ignorance, apathy, and even opprobrium directed at them, never mind lousy software and badly-stacked odds.

Which leads me to the rhetorical-strategy bit. I feel like a rat in the wainscoting, ignored and despised and isolated. Why shouldn’t I? Why should I be any prouder of what I do than my employer (which has partially defunded my service), my profession (which barely acknowledges I exist and makes no effort to support me), or the open-access movement (which openly insults me when it doesn’t ignore me)? Why should I pretend to support and respect I don’t actually have?

And why is it uniquely my responsibility to redress these issues? If the institution I work for, the profession I have joined, or the open-access movement I am part of would like me to stop referring to myself as a rodent, howsabout they toss me a bone so I can move up the animal taxonomy a bit?

Like the immortal archy, I see things from the under side. There’s use in that, I maintain, just as there’s use in colleagues such as Shane asserting themselves to raise the profile of our work and the esteem in which it is held. I’m on their side, I truly am—I just approach the work from a different angle.

insects are not always
going to be bullied
by humanity
some day they will revolt
i am already organizing
a revolutionary society to be
known as the worms turnverein

—Don Marquis

So, I promised a look at the latest beating-things-with-rocks project. Voilà tout.

This took me a heck of a lot of time, considerable beating things with rocks, and of course I’m not completely happy with it—but for a first try at video making, it’s not half bad.

Next time, I’ll turn up the gain on the video-camera microphone, figure out why the hell Keynote adds about three seconds of extra time before some slide transitions but not others and make it stop, and figure out why on earth iMovie made my poor little video pixellate at one-second intervals.

If you’re going to do this: Fanfic and vidding have the concept of a “beta,” somebody who looks at what you’ve done and points out the stupid bits so you can fix them before they’re inflicted on the world. YOU WANT ONE. I showed my Twitter friends a preview yesterday. I had managed to fsck up the affiliation of one of my interviewees. One of my Twitter friends noted it, and I was able to fix it and redo the vid before I made a complete jackass of myself. Major thanks to her, and she knows who she is.

Check out the sidebar! It is stylin’, with the new Creative Commons Zero license! That does mean that this design, such as it is, is gankable as well—it’s mine, I did it up from scratch, so it isn’t immediately derivative of anybody else’s. I’m boggled that anyone would want to gank it, because I am so not a design talent, but I’ve seen it written up a few places as an example of good (or at least unusual and interesting) design, so what the hell.

I am hard at work on a little movie for MPOW, to be shown at an arts-and-humanities symposium in (yikes yikes yikes!) two weeks (yikes!). This turns out to be surprisingly simple and even enjoyable, given Keynote, Garage Band, a video camera, a digital audio recorder, lots of neat pictures from MPOW’s collections, and a hell of a lot of time and elbow grease. I have yet to see whether Keynote’s QuickTime export works as advertised, but if it does, I will be a very happy camper.

Come to think of it… I should probably check that on Monday. You think?

Last week was something of a Week. One of those weeks that feels a week and a half long, you know what I’m saying? But worthwhile, all of it.

Les Carr is a gentleman and an amazingly good sport. Some time ago, he emailed me asking about the distance of Madison from Chicago, and setting some dates for a possible visit. Which I promptly double-booked with a System repository meeting in Baraboo. Go me.

Les not only took my husband and me and my colleague Kristin Eschenfelder out to dinner Tuesday night, he drove out with me to Baraboo and contributed significantly to the meeting. (Props also to the other meeting participants for welcoming Les; they didn’t have to, and I appreciate it a lot.) I had a great time (despite the weather), put a couple of cogent edits into Roach Motel based on dinner conversation, and very much look forward to running into Les again. Next year, in Atlanta!

There’s probably some sociology somewhere on the genesis and growth of communities of practice. I can say that Les completely gets that repo-rats (sorry, Les, I know you hate that term) don’t have one and need one badly. With him, me, the REPOMAN folks, and one or two others on the case, maybe something will actually grow this time. (And, Les? I officially forgive you for your name being on this piece of ill-considered ideological smoke-blowing, and I’m sorry for eviscerating it in Roach Motel. Well, no, I’m actually not sorry, but… you know how it is.)

Roach Motel has been hacked on, given a kiss, and sent back to the editors. It’s imperfect. There’s a lot I didn’t say that I probably should have, and some things I beat on that probably didn’t deserve it. So it goes, and I must say I’m relieved to have it gone. Good riddance. Next time I’ll write something cheerful.

I spent most of my Saturday at a Free Culture event sponsored by the library. How cool is it that going to these things is really part of my job? It was a fantastic day, well-planned by people who weren’t me, and I’m honored to have met Nelson Pavlosky and Gavin Baker. I also, you will be glad to know, behaved myself with perfect propriety in front of an ACS editor (which takes fortitude!) and helped get the repository message out to people who hadn’t heard it.

The most valuable part of a valuable day was the after-party, in which Gavin and Nelson passed on immense amounts of wisdom about starting a campus Free Culture group. I know one of the students on the steering committee, and I plan to put as much time and effort into the new chapter as they’ll let me.

One of the things that a community of practice does is restore resolve and enthusiasm when they flag. I feel much better about what I do than I did a week ago today, and here’s my chance to say how much I appreciate the people who came to Madison and helped me feel that way.

I met today with the systemwide committee that’s working out where the repository I run goes in the future. Les Carr was there. He was awesome, and so was the meeting.

This is not, you understand, something I usually say about meetings. Meetings are not awesome. Meetings are for the most part necessary banality. But this? For me (I will not speak for the other attendees), this was a frickin’ awesome meeting. My mind just exploded all over the landscape. It’s a wonder I could drive home at all.

I don’t feel comfortable yet talking about the substance of this awesome meeting. There’s a lot of work and politics yet before the substance of the awesomeness can become reality.

I can, however, comfortably mention that probably the most valuable member of an extraordinarily valuable committee is the committee skeptic, the one who isn’t sure why the committee included them in the first place, the one whose hand goes up first with a question, the one whose questions are always tough and always on-point.

This librarian’s value to the committee is inestimable, and I am hunting for ways I can make that more widely known. Skeptics are often reviled, $DEITY knows. Me, I consider them means for discovering my weak and blind spots before I go making a fool of myself. I love me a good skeptic, and it’s my good fortune that this committee has one of the best.

Watch this space late in the year. I think we might just surprise you.

Completely coincidentally, I received reviewers’ comments back on Roach Motel today. What with those (which were, ahem, rather substantive; further proof that I am not the library world’s next Walt Crawford) and today’s big news out of Harvard, I’m going to have to rewrite the whole enchilada.

I tell you what, though, that’s going to be a much more cheerful and enjoyable task than writing it in the first place was. It’s going to be a completely different article when I’m done… because there’s been a sea change. There’s hope. There’s a pathway to point to. There’s a whole new class of interesting technical problems to suggest solutions to!

People who think I’m a grumpy old bat on the basis of the Roach Motel preprint may be surprised at just how enthusiastic I can be when there’s reason to be…

Last Friday I went up to Eau Claire with a pair of colleagues to say hello and help talk about what the unit I work for has to offer. It was a fun trip; Eau Claire has a new library director who impressed me mightily with his vision, engagement, intelligence, and affability. That last, in a library context, is crucial to making best use of the other three. My lack of it costs me dearly; don’t think I don’t know it.

Still, I have my moments. I heard some of my own desiderata for the IR coming out of my supervisor’s mouth. I hadn’t known anyone had actually heard me until then, to be perfectly honest. Maybe I’m no good at selling my own ideas—but it’s something that they’re good enough to sell themselves in spite of me.

More and more often these days, I’m having that weird cognitive disconnect I get when I see my own thoughts and conclusions coming from other people who have no reason to have gotten them from me. Whatever I’m thinking, I’m not the only one thinking it. A little validation is a wondrous thing, in information policy as well as in markup.

I spent a good deal of this morning catching up on reading. The Bankier/Perciali article actually sounds more like Sarah Shreeves than me: it embodies the realization that IR technology is worthless without a service model founded in real needs. The IR only addresses part of the problem (whatever “the problem” is, be it journal prices or preservation or whatever your favorite hobbyhorse is), so it can only be part of any kind of real solution. Even so, bits and pieces of the article sound quite a lot like the conclusion of Roach Motel.

And then there was this, from which I quote:

1. Scholarship and research are becoming more conversational, with less reliance on formal publications, more on e-mail, preprints, and monitored blogs.
2. Formal publications, as static representations of a research program that often can extend over the lifetime of a scientist or humanist, are seen as an increasingly artificial construct.
3. Most importantly, there is evidence that the once conjoined functions of delivering valuable content to specific academic fields and serving as a means for credentialing authors for the purpose of promotion and tenure are coming uncoupled: the journal article is seen increasingly as a credentialing mechanism, while the intellectually vital contributions to a field are posted elsewhere.
4. Networked technology and the Web are seen as more accurately capturing and recording the research process.

I said much of this over a year ago in London. Maybe it’s even true! (Also, the title of that article made me sporfle. Fluids met keyboard. Bravo! I love me a good article title.)

I sense that I’m sounding triumphalist. I don’t mean to. I don’t feel triumphant. I’ve just been feeling disconnected from my field, shouting uselessly in the waste, and it’s good to see that perhaps I’m not a wild raving lunatic after all.

A librarian of my acquaintance quipped this morning, “Repositories: where content goes to die.”

Y’all just excuse me, please. I have to hide in a corner and whimper.

The bit I bowdlerized out of the Roach Motel preprint? Is on the Web now for all to see. No, I ain’t linkin’, neither.

Oh, well. I said it. If I get called on the carpet for saying it, that’s life.

And no worries, people, okay? I’m not in any personal or professional danger from this.

In addition to the attention I’ve been getting from repository movers-and-shakers lately, which is welcome, I’ve been receiving quite a few emails from other repository-rats with a general tenor of “Thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking!”

Well, okay, you’re welcome. Why was I the first one to say anything?

I’d put this down to the lack of a repository community of practice if I hadn’t been through this before. One of the wise-fool things I do is say things that other people are afraid to. And whenever I do that, I get the behind-the-scenes email from the people who were afraid.

I guess I don’t mind being the kid at the emperor’s parade most of the time. I’m used to making trouble and taking the consequences. It’s not fun exactly, but I can live with it.

What I hate is the slow buildup of frustration that leads to me saying the thing that nobody else will say. Gah, I hate that. Something perfectly damn obvious to me that nobody else will so much as whisper.

I wish people would raise their voices. I really do. C’mon, I’ve lived through it. Can’t you?