Caveat Lector

I am trapped between writing an article and a work report on the one hand and wanting to do right by Repository Fringe on the other, so blogging is liable to be light for the next few weeks. (Though the Repo Fringe talk is coming together nicely, I will say. All I can say about the article is argh, I hate and loathe and abominate writing.)

However, I did want to point out to CavLec partisans that there is now a commenting venue of sorts: my FriendFeed page, which imports CavLec’s RSS feed.

I’m okay with this, just as I’ve been okay with the LiveJournal feed as a solution to the oft-expressed desire of various CavLec readers to have a public place to shake me until my teeth rattle. Anonymous cowards need not apply; only FriendFeed subscribers can add comments. The comments don’t live in my living room, which I appreciate. Trolls can apparently be banned from further commenting, though I’m not quite sure of the mechanism there, not having had to employ it.

I hopped onto FriendFeed as part of an exodus from Twitter’s FailWhale. It turns out to be rather clever, especially in the design department. If you see something on your FriendFeed friends page that you don’t care to look at, you “hide” it. If you then ask to hide more things like that, AJAX dialog figures out intelligently what classes of things the thing you hid belong to, and offers you the chance to hide all of them. I don’t personally care about people’s Flickr feeds (yeah, sorry, not a visual person by nature), so I told FriendFeed not to show me them, and by gum it doesn’t. Clever and helpful. I like that in an app.

But anyway. You can now indulge your commenting urge. Go to it.

I’ve been tearing through this year’s JCDL proceedings (at speed, because I have an article draft due in three weeks that I, um, haven’t really started yet). I had to chuckle at a wink-wink-nudge-nudge in which the authors mentioned that certain blogs expose certain difficulties and limitations with a certain well-known institutional-repository platform (okay, all right, DSpace)… without a nod to the blogs in question.

Well, as the owner of one of those blogs—thanks for taking better care of my reputation than I do. It’s appreciated.

Roach Motel will appear in Library Trends 57:2 (Fall 2008). I remark upon this for the simple reason that someone asked me, because they want to cite it in something they’re writing.

This is not the first time. It got quoted in a presentation at OR ’08. It’s got thirty-some-odd saves on del.icio.us. A couple quick Googles indicate that it has been recommended reading in high places. A quick look at statistics on the repository I run indicates that it rapidly soared into the top spot on download numbers, beating out a popular journal whose top issue had been there since 2005. (It has since been eclipsed by several articles from an undergrad kinesiology journal. Sic transit gloria mundi.)

The thing ain’t been published yet. Moreover, the preprint version has several embarrassing errors (I fixed the boneheaded mis-citation of Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical, and Economic Aspects, I promise). Nevertheless, it’s out there and it’s making waves. If ever there were a demonstration of the impact of preprint-posting, Roach Motel is it.

From a whuffie perspective, this is jaw-droppingly astounding. From the vastly more important practical-results perspective… well, we’ll see. An extremely common reaction to it is “Yeah, isn’t that awful? But it’s not happening here, oh, no.” No wonder we don’t have a community of practice. We can’t get our heads out of (ahem) the sand long enough to notice each other, or tell the truth.

I admit I’m sort of looking forward to the SPARC IR meeting in November (which I am planning to attend, and present at if possible), because Roach Motel should be out in print by then. I’ll be happy if it informs discussion, happier still if it informs policy, happiest of all if it inspires action. As yet, though, all it’s accomplished in meatspace that I’m aware of is getting several people angry at me that I don’t at all need angry at me, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

No, what I’m really pondering at the moment is the impact I am having on my chosen profession, sometimes intentionally… and sometimes not so much so. Honestly, I’m starting to be—startled? unnerved? weirded out? Something. Not so much by Roach Motel, which I knew all along was something of a Molotov cocktail, as by all the other stuff.

Whenever I check my referrer logs these days, I see a hit or two from a library-student blog or Somebody Else’s Courseware (which of course I can’t get into, thank you, AAP and FERPA). I mean, every time. Warping the minds of the young and impressionable, that’s me, I guess. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does; after all, I taught library school and have every intention of doing so again.

But it does bother me, just as CavLec getting linked to and quoted is sometimes bothersome. It’s that damn context thing again. Grrrr, it’s irksome.

What it boils down to is that very much against my will, I’m finding myself self-censoring on CavLec because like it or not, it’s a large part of my professional face, and as such, it needs to be polished to a brighter sheen than I have heretofore employed. This annoys the living hell out of me. It wasn’t supposed to be this way!

And I don’t have a solution. But, again, I’m thinking about it. It’s a good time for that; I’m six-squared years old today, which invites the yearly navel-gaze.

Well, that was fun, for values of “fun” that mean “no fun at all, really.”

I got all the other yarinareth.net blogs up and running in a jiffy. No sweat. WordPress export, WordPress import, ba-da-bing ba-da-blog. (Li, I can’t remember what the name of your theme was. If you remember, let me know… or feel free to dig up a new theme.)

CavLec? Was a problem. I couldn’t use the WP export, because CavLec is so gargantuan the export command timed out, and I couldn’t convince OldWebHost to help me make it work. So okay, I did the SQL dump, checked it, and lit out for greener pastures.

It’s supposed to be easy to restore a blog from a SQL dump. Change the table names to fit WPMU, import, done. Except not so much. Go to blog, get white screen sans error messages. Well, that’s just great.

After contemplating my rock collection, I picked up the bit-at-a-time SQL rock, playing only with the tables I knew I would need. I suspected the issue was that the wp_options table from the old blog was playing hob with WPMU.

Well, I was wrong, but the tactic did enable me to figure out what the problem was… the wp_posts table in WPMU was missing two fields (post_lat and post_lon, and why I need to geolocate my posts I’m sure I’m not sure) that the SQL dump had. So okay, I add the fields to the table, cut-and-paste the INSERT clauses just to be safe, and what do you know, I seem to have a blog again.

There are issues. Image links from this blog (and all Yarinareth blogs) are umpty-broken. I have the images and will fix when I can. But for now, I’m just happy to have my BLOG BACK.

As often happens, an eddy or two in the biblioblogosphere (no Douglas Adams jokes, please) has given me to ponder about the nebulous and uncertain sense of “place” weblogs offer, where by “place” I mean social context and expectations. I’ve been reading Solove’s new book on the social processes of shaming and gossip and reputation on the Internet, and while I could wish it delved a little deeper (I don’t think I’m its target audience, which is not a criticism of the book), the well-written sections on public and private selves and how the Internet deconstructs that dichotomy inform what follows.

(Incidentally—yes, I have been reading it *gasp* onscreen. Buffle’s screen is a bit small to run Preview in single-page mode, which is frankly what I prefer, but oh well. It does well enough for the purpose.)

Solove spills a lot of ink (or pixels, if you prefer) on misunderstandings of the Internet rooted in the public/private question, from teenagers who think adults have no right (or worse, no ability) to read their blogs to people who find communications they had thought private compromised in the most public and humiliating of fashions.

My question is a little different, though related. It is this: To what extent am I entitled to attach context-dependent social expectations to a corner of the Internet that I control? May I expect that the social context I believe I am writing in will be respected when my writing is discovered in other contexts?

Bleh, this is easier to explain by example. In meatspace, different spaces come with attached social norms. I can put my feet up on my own couch, but not anybody else’s (unless I’m told it’s okay). I don’t pay for dinner in a friend’s home, just as I don’t bring a guest-gift to a restaurant. I say things about my workplace environment in my apartment that I would never say to a colleague at work. (What? Don’t tell me you don’t. I don’t believe you.) Interestingly, my workplace has a social norm that certain conversations take place in local coffeeshops rather than on campus.

To an extent, there are analogues to this segregation-by-space on the internet. LiveJournal norms are not LinkedIn norms are not Ning norms are not Facebook norms are not Twitter norms are not MetaFilter norms. So one option for the individual wanting her written output to be read in a particular way with particular allowances is to find a space whose norms and affordances roughly correspond with the desired reading. This is, I think, partly why I have a LiveJournal.

That doesn’t solve the whole intellectual problem, though. What social norms can be attached to an individual’s own webspace? How can she enforce them? What happens when her work appears outside the context where her norms operate?

Take CavLec. It is written on webspace I pay for. I installed the software, back in the day (though I admit I rely on one-click upgrades these days). I make a point of disclaiming connections between CavLec and my employer, even to refusing to acknowledge CavLec in many professional contexts despite the considerable amount of writing I do here that is relevant to my profession. (I’ve done it, once or twice. I got to Project Bamboo on the strength of it. I do go out of my way to avoid doing so, though.) I even put a warning in its very title, for those overeducated enough to recognize it as such.

How responsible am I for limiting my language to what others will find—not just acceptable, but attractive and persuasive? Am I required not to name names? Not to cuss? How free am I to go beyond the professional persona? I used to be a good deal more personally open on CavLec than I am now. Some of that is that I’ve been specifically asked not to blog about certain things, and I respect that, but some of it is just… damn it, my context seems to have shifted out from under me, and I’m not sure I’m entirely happy about it.

I suppose I’d like CavLec to feel more like my living room than it does these days. I’m not sure what to do about that… but I’ll be thinking about it.

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

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?

A couple-three things happened last week that (combined with another thing that happened some time past) have left me feeling vindicated on some of my less-happy opinions. I’m not exactly schadenfreudish about it; more a sense that finally, maybe, there will be some forward motion. That can only be good.

And I can say in all honesty that at least one such thing wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t possessed a quasi-professional public soapbox firewalled off from my job strictly enough that third parties can’t easily get me in trouble for it. Because, the third parties in question? Have a history of getting people they find bothersome in trouble at work. In my case, they’re coming to the table instead, presumably having evaluated the available opportunity to dunk me in the soup and decided it either wasn’t possible or wasn’t worth the effort.

(Not that I trust them further than I could conveniently throw them, mind you. I’m optimistic, not stupid. Due self-protection measures are being taken.)

Over the last couple years I’ve learned that I can do professional writing, though it takes a hell of a lot out of me and I don’t think I will ever find it easy. Speaking is worlds easier, and whole universes more fun. (Combine Walt Crawford, to whom good writing comes as naturally as breathing, and me and you’d have one frighteningly effective public-figure librarian.)

I’ve also learned, though, that much professional publishing is limited-impact, especially when the goal is to motivate action (as my implicit professional-writing goal usually is). The thing I wrote for Library Journal wasn’t wholly bad, but it sank like a stone, to judge by the lack of reaction. My essay for Information Tomorrow—I was satisfied with it. It was solid if uninspired writing (and “solid but uninspired” is about the best I can do, folks). And when I wrote it, it broke some ground. When it was finally published, though… not so much with the groundbreaking. Kind of unfair.

If I’d waited for Roach Motel to be formally published, I suspect the same thing would have happened. I am not the only person saying some of what’s in Roach Motel (though I do, perhaps over-enthusiastically, think some of its observations and analysis are original). If I’d waited, why would anyone bother to read me? Or believe that I’d come up with this stuff off my own bat rather than reading it elsewhere?

As it is—I’ve laid my claim, with Roach Motel and with the NISO/PALINET talk, and people are listening, and wheels are slowly starting to turn.

There’s a taxonomy in all this, somewhere. (I am such a flippin’ librarian sometimes.) The blog is for open dissent and matters that won’t wait for my agonizingly slow formal-composition process. Speaking is for education and out-on-a-limb assertions. Professional writing is for persuasion, and open access to professional writing is for establishing primacy and expanding reach.

Perhaps it’s a sign of a hopelessly contrary nature that I need that open-dissent safe-space. Can’t imagine doing without it. Moreover, I’m just contrary enough to think that the blog’s helped my chosen profession as much as or more than anything else I’ve written for it. I’m satisfied with that.

In honor of Public Domain Day, I remind everyone that I granted Caveat Lector to the public domain quite some time ago.

When Creative Commons gets CC0 in gear finally, I’ll pop a badge and a license up, something I decided against years ago because CC0 didn’t exist.

Until then, take my word for it. I won’t sue. Honest.

So, not a day after I ask the hypesters to leave my damn blogosphere the hell alone, I get another tout email. Do you morons not read? (Yes, okay, that one answers itself.)

Here’s my new policy. I’m publishing any of those I get. Sans links. With names. Call it my little gesture toward turning over the rock and watching the little grubs squirm.

Hi,

We just posted an article “[article name deleted] “( [article URL deleted] ). I thought I’d bring it to your attention just in case you think your readers would find it interesting.

Either way, thanks for your time! Happy New Year!

Amy S Quinn

Email address was from GMail; headers gave no immediate reason to doubt that provenance.

Bite me, Ms. Quinn.