Metablogging

Biologically Inspired Jewelry

cagapakis — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:48:23 +0000

Biologically Inspired Jewelry

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven't been blogging very much lately. Probably not, which is why I don't ever do these "sorry for not posting" posts, but I'm making an exception this time because it is a very special occasion. So, apologies for my recent lack of posts, but I got married last weekend! Of course, my wedding was not without biologically inspired design appropriate for mention on this blog. On my special day I wore Nervous System's algae inspired Filament Necklace.

Nervous System is a small and awesome company that combines background in biology, architecture, math, and computer science to design biologically inspired jewelry and housewares. Many of these designs are algorithmically generated, based on the fundamental processes that control the self-assembly of biological shapes and patterns in algae, dendrites, hyphae, radiolaria, and xylem.

They describe their work in a recent Fast Company article about biomimicry providing a fascinating perspective that can be useful for art and design, but also for science and engineering:

Our work is not simply about mimicking biological forms but trying to understand the processes by which those forms come about. We then abstract those processes into a distinctly non-biological context to create designed objects.

Go check out their work, follow them on twitter, buy their cool things!

And I promise that I'll never make excuses for not posting again and I'll be back to more regular blogging after graduation!

cagapakis Fri, 04/01/2011 - 13:48

Tags

Art

biomimicry

design

Metablogging

plug

arts and crafts

jewelry

Congratulations on the wedding & beautiful piece around ur neck. Nothing like the beauty of nature to inspire:-)

Some very nice work on that site. Spent a while browsing their archives.

I am reminded of this necklace inspired by microscopic fossils:
http://discomedusa.deviantart.com/art/diatomaceous-neckpiece-12543823

Your "buy" link is broken but thanks for sharing!

Oops! Thanks, it should be fixed now!

Congrats on the marriage! I got married the Saturday before last :D I'm just catching up on all the blogging I missed, and it was awesome to find out that someone else had been busy getting married as well.

Everyone's talking about it

cagapakis — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:29:53 +0000

Everyone's talking about it

All the science blogs are talking about it. Where are all the female science bloggers? The question itself and the long lists of great bloggers who happen to be female bring up a lot of interesting questions about what makes a good blog, what is best for blog (self-)promotion, who is in what science blogging clique, what it means to write about "women's issues," and what it means to be a woman in science. But what these lists (and the blogs that they're on) highlight even more is just how homogeneous the community can be: Where are the non-white science bloggers? Where are the LGBTIQ science bloggers? Where are the science bloggers with disabilities? Where are the non-western science bloggers? What would such different voices bring to the culture of science and science communication? How different would science, science education, and science blogs be if we all were more aware of our positions of privilege, whether based on gender, race, orientation, age, ability, economic status, or whatever else? I know these questions have been asked many times before, but maybe it's time to ask again.

cagapakis Sun, 01/30/2011 - 04:29

Tags

If we could change this into a "diversity in blogging" rather than a "Women in blogging" thing I would be SO HAPPY. I have spent the last few days hyper-aware of being female and bloggy, and working my way through comment sections with the required degree of caution. It is a good thing to have out once in a while I guess, but there are a lot bigger diversity issues out there and I just want to get back to science-ness really.

I couldn't agree with you more... I tried to do exactly this in my post on Friday about the MLK Jr session at #scio11: http://professorkateclancy.blogspot.com/2011/01/science-online-2011-und…

It is a good thing to have out once in a while I guess, but there are a lot bigger diversity issues out there and I just want to get back to science-ness really.

I imagine a great deal of internet social interaction, including interaction about science, is not immediately available to native English speakers with limited knowledge of other languages. If most of the science blogging you know about is done in English, it shouldn't be that surprising that it's also being done mostly by white people. How many Hindi science blogs are there? Korean? I bet you there are quite a few, but they're basically off the radar, and it's not just for language reasons-there are systematic divisions in the structure of many internet services that break up the world into distinct geographic regions in ways that increase the odds of developing local connections while decreasing the odds of developing more distant ones.

I wish I could read the awesome Hindi and Korean science blogs out there, but there is a huge amount of diversity within the group of native English speakers (and to a lesser extent, scientists who speak english) so there's no reason we should be satisfied with an overwhelming majority of any one group.

We're moving!

dsalo — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0000

We're moving!

Looking for us? We're happy to say that we're part of the new Scientopia blogging collective. Come see us there!

dsalo Tue, 08/03/2010 - 03:00

Tags

Metablogging

Small fry, blogging networks, and reputation

dsalo — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:30:56 +0000

Small fry, blogging networks, and reputation

So, the PepsiCo blog thing. Right.

Advance disclaimer: this is me talking, not either of my illustrious co-bloggers. We have not yet made a decision about what to do; one co-blogger is across the pond at a conference and the other is vacationing, so that discussion will have to wait a bit. This is just my take.

Book of Trogool is very small fry at ScienceBlogs. Very small. SB was a bit dubious about it at the start, to tell the truth, and if their info-science stable had been better-established I doubt they'd have taken it on. I'm very grateful that they did, because I needed them.

One of the reasons SB's info-sci stable isn't larger is that librarianship is a very difficult profession to blog in. It doesn't like blogs or bloggers, or social media generally, much less trust them or those who engage with each other and the world using them. Because libraries and librarians feel beleaguered, they especially don't like discourse critical of libraries or librarianship in social media coming from one of their own. Library vendors aren't fond of critical discourse in librarian blogs either. For individual librarian bloggers or public social-media figures, this has absolutely meant trouble at work. I'm one example, but very far from the only one—and I earned my problems more than most folks I know in similar straits.

This leaves the beleaguered library blogger who wishes to continue to blog with a few options. One is to be part of a group blog to create strength in numbers; In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a sterling example (and a fabulous blog; if you're interested in libraries from the inside, this is not one to miss). Another is to adopt some of the trappings of the formal library professional literature, such as length, exclusivity, and beta-reading-oops-I-meant-peer-review. ItLwtLP does this as well. A third option is to find a blog home with enough accumulated strength of character and good reputation as to afford some protection—and now you know why I chose ScienceBlogs.

Insofar as letting PepsiCo cadge cachet from SB's stable of bloggers damages SB's reputation (never mind strength of character) it causes me pressing difficulty. I'm not happy about that, because my sense watching events unfold is that SB has seriously damaged its reputation, both by casting its processes into doubt and by losing quite a few talented, brilliant bloggers. Moreover, based on the trajectory of other sellout properties like LiveJournal, unless Adam Bly learns a lot from this experience—and signs point to "not so much with the learning" at this juncture—he will likely err seriously again. And again. Until SB is not only not a shield, but an actual stain on a blogger's escutcheon.

These are petty, selfish concerns, to be sure. They are the tiny concerns of a small-fry blogger. Given that SB is rapidly alienating its big-fish bloggers, however, SB would be advised to heed these concerns, if it wishes to rebuild any sort of a stable.

To be perfectly clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an individual industry scientist or big-pig-publisher employee coming to ScienceBlogs to blog on his or her own initiative. (Me vs. big-pig-publisher employee could be amusing!) I would hope that SB would provide such individuals the exact protections (from their workplaces not least) they have afforded me and other SB bloggers. What's wrong is selling a corporation the chance to trade on the collective cachet accumulated by SB's blogging stable by emitting corporate newspeak under the SB label—and I don't credit for an instant that Dr. Khan or Dr. Mensah or anyone else from PepsiCo will be blogging freely and uninterfered-with. I don't believe all the "advertorial" drapery fixes that basic wrongness.

So I labor under a dilemma. SB has been unique; there are other science-blogging stables, but none of them quite fits Book of Trogool. (Catch me blogging at Nature Networks! Not in this lifetime.) I sincerely doubt any of the group library blogs would take me on; I'm a bit Tabasco for this profession. I can't go back to solo blogging. If SB folds (a possibility, the way things are going), if my co-bloggers are too affronted to continue here, if I decide that I am too affronted to continue here—well, chances are I just hang it up, retreating to the slow, ponderous library literature to get my licks in.

That's not what I want. (Ask my writer's block why. I have named it George...) I hope, instead, that SB can get its managerial act together.

dsalo Thu, 07/08/2010 - 02:30

Tags

How Libraries Work

Metablogging

It is certainly possible to do a group blog with your current co-authors without being hosted by some "collection of blogs". You can just set up a group blog on wordpress.org or blogger.com or what have you.

What would be the plusses/minuses of that?

I'd also encourage you to consider blogging anonymously, if you think the net effect on your career of blogging is negative. Although I guess maybe people would still be able to tell it was you if they tried, so that's no solution.

I'm still curious as to what reasons blogging seems to have had only a positive impact on my career, as opposed to your experience/impression. Gender issues? Differences in how/what we write (I think I'm at least as blunt and prickly as you, if not more so). It really is causing me harm but I haven't noticed? That I work in "Systems" (programming), as opposed to other departments? That your place of work is more political than mine (or at least my little corner of it).

I certainly do get in hot water by being insufficiently circumspect (to put a nice spin on it) sometimes, but it's usually in person rather than due to the blog. So far as I know. While I know that my blogging (and online communciations in general) has made me enemies, it has also resulted in a (generally good) reputation much wider then I ever would have had without it, occasional job offers, etc. I have no doubt that for me my blogging has been a net positive to my professional reputation.

A group blog in Elsewheresville would be fine with me. I would just have to hope that a co-blog suffices to protect me from further issues at work.

Anonyblogging—I'd be outed in a flash. I've been doing this too long and too prominently for that. I could try to change my voice, but that turns blogging into exactly the kind of writing chore that feeds my @#$%^&$#@ writer's block.

I've had much the same experience as you: outside my specific workplace, blogging has been a major plus for my career. There's no way I'd be doing keynotes and major plenary sessions if I hadn't gotten my name out there through CavLec. Just no way.

Workplace issues (you'll understand that I don't want to say too much): I think it's some of all of those. Gender is definitely a Thing; I'm a woman not blogging like a lady. Differences in what we write: I took some potshots at MPOW back in the day that I absolutely shouldn't have, and as far as I know, you've never made that mistake.

Systems librarianship tends toward the blunter technology culture, which though it has its pluses and minuses, is generally friendlier to my sort of online expression. It's also firewalled off from the "collegiality culture" of librarianship in general, which gives library techbloggers more leeway than I have.

The main thing that divides us, though, is that I've been called on the carpet and you haven't. ;) It does color one's reactions.

WordPress works great and is a snap to get up and running. Your readers would follow you. Many surely do not even notice the SB context. Many surely read via RSS feed and/or learn of posts via the OATP, Twitter, etc. It would be great to not have all the distracting ads too.

My current experience trying to be an ever-better reference librarian in a 'It really should be called a College' Small University Library gives me some clues as to how a librarian blogger might fall afoul of non-blogging librarians....but I am curious about what _kinds_ of problems you have encountered (not the gritty details obviously).

As it is, perhaps the most utterly surprising thing about working where I work is to find out that asking questions and making suggestions about (how?) to do things (better?) is often viewed as being reprehensibly critical....it is as if only Reference Librarians know how to say "I don't know, let's figure it out". The next most surprising thing are the number of librarians who think that communicating changes and the reasons for changes (or the reasons for preserving the status quo) is unnecessary.

Jason, I blogged on WordPress for many years; you don't need to sell me on it!

Prof.Pedant (may I call you Prof?): Argh. You're trying to make me say things I really, really don't feel comfortable saying in public. Hit up my GMail if you like, but I suspect you'll be disappointed in my answers. There's a lot about the whole affair I simply don't even know.

A quote borrowed (provenance unclear): "Different is not always better -- but better is ALWAYS different."

So if blogging is good for one's (just the hypothetical 'one', certainly not talking about any particular person or workplace) career in the general wider world among colleagues and such, but potentially bad for one's career at a particular local workplace... one possibility is simply accepting that if it doesn't work out for one at one's current place of employment (do to blogging or something else), one's blogging is going to make it MUCH more likely and easier to move on to a job at some other place, ideally one that suits one better and/or one that welcomes publicly outspoken librarians.

While I have generally avoided taking any public potshots at at my place of work, I have on occasion STILL been told colleagues that they thought a blog post (which didn't mention any place of work and which I didn't really mean to target at any place of work) made them look bad, and they didn't appreciate it. For every once or twice someone has actually told me this, presumably there are many more times they've thought it but haven't. But I've never been 'called on the carpet' by a superior, just told informally by colleagues.

Nevertheless, while I try to react to this feedback by writing more carefully, I don't get too worried about my 'career' because of it -- precisely because I know the _net_ effect of my blogging is WAY positive for my career, and will make it significantly easier to get a job elsewhere in what would otherwise be a difficult market, if required. Not that I'm looking, I'm happy where I am.

A question, Jonathan: do you know who precisely objected to what you blogged? Not who told you, who objected.

Because I don't. Give that a think for a bit.

I think there's also a structural difference in what you do versus what I do. Conscientious Z. Objector at YPOW, unless s/he is in your management chain, can't really do much to hinder your work, aside from the usual committee noise that is the price of working in academic librarianship. You're a techie. You're not going to find a Trojan in your IDE because you ticked somebody off.

I work in scholarly communication. I'm one of four librarians on an immense campus who does (going by job titles; obviously it's a leetle more complicated than that). It doesn't take much to derail what I can accomplish. Simple non-cooperation will do it, never mind whisper campaigns or the like.

So, you know, it's not exactly my career I worry for. I could move on, though I don't want to; I love where I live, and I also love that library-school teaching is becoming part of my job. That wouldn't happen just any old where.

I worry a lot about how what I say off the clock affects what I can get done on the clock. And I also worry that were I to decide to move on, the reputation my less-than-temperate comments have given me among the rank-and-file librarians I would still depend on to get work done would both damage my chances of securing other employment and make success in that employment a significantly dicier proposition.

"[Academic libraries] that welcome publicly outspoken librarians." Name me three. I suspect there's a reason a lot of our best bloggery comes out of places like OCLC. I also suspect that this same worry fuels editorial columnists at publications like Library Journal. (Which is not, I hasten to add, a bad thing!)

Introducing co-bloggers!

dsalo — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:06:02 +0000

Introducing co-bloggers!

I am bursting with pride to introduce Sarah Shreeves and Elizabeth Brown as co-bloggers here on Book of Trogool!

(You'll have to excuse me if I go over my exclamation-point quota. I'm just so excited about this!)

I will let them tell you about themselves; I'll just say that Sarah works for the University of Illinois, and Elizabeth works for Binghamton University, and they're both fabulous librarians I'm very proud to know.

Please expect some dust over the next few days or weeks as I fiddle with the templates to make them co-blogger-friendly and ensure that it's clear who's written what. And please welcome Sarah and Elizabeth in the comments!

dsalo Thu, 06/24/2010 - 11:06

Tags

Metablogging

Welcome, Sarah and Elizabeth!

Yay! Long form content lives!

w00t! Welcome!

Welcome to you both!

Hey Sarah!!! Hi! and hi to Elizabeth too, even though I don't know her yet...

"It's quietâtoo quiet;" with a digression into online social media

dsalo — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:01:11 +0000

"It's quietâtoo quiet;" with a digression into online social media

Other people are doing NPG vs. CDL link roundups better than I am, so I'll limit myself to a few links:

Think this is a one-off moment of insanity on NPG's part? Bernd-Christoph Kaemper demonstrates the pattern.
Steve Lawson of Colorado College shares text of an email he sent to faculty at his institution. He is graciously allowing the rest of us to plunder his wording. Go ye and spread the signal!
The next domino? How many more will there be?
Have you read Bethany Nowviskie's Fight Club Soap post yet? If you haven't, do. If you have, you might want to check back for the comments, some of which are astonishingly good. (I wish Twitter widgets for blogs dropped retweets of the blogger's own tweets on the floor; it would cut down on the noise.)
MetaFilter takes on the question. Once again, we see that NPG has few friends.
Library Journal has a straightforward summary, useful if you need to get someone up to speed quickly.

Official press-release salvos have ceased for now; I can only assume that heavy-duty negotiation is going on behind the scenes. I'm well content with the last public word being CDL's. It's quiet—very quiet.

In the meantime, NPG is leaving boilerplate comments on blogs that have discussed the matter. Two such comments have appeared here on Book of Trogool, apparently left by different NPG employees. Their substance is identical.

Boilerplate comment shellack is a poor substitute for genuine engagement with online critics. (I note with raised eyebrow that even NPG's official Twitter news outlet is avoiding this contretemps aside from bare news tweets.) Fair warning, NPG: any more boilerplate comments, like or unlike the previous two, will be deleted as spam as soon as I see them. Also, I have removed the link to your press release that your second commenter left as your URL, not wishing to give it any more Googlejuice, and I recommend that my fellow bloggers do likewise. If your employees wish to engage here, responsively, as human individuals with human rather than corporate voices, I welcome that.

Now, this is not the worst reaction NPG could have, not by a long shot. At last count, I know three library/higher-ed bloggers who have had their work supervisors contacted by vendors over posts critical of the vendors on non-work blogs. (Just to eliminate any potential confusion, I myself am not one of the three. Also, I will not identify or link to any of them; one wrote me via a private Twitter feed, and given the sensitivity of this issue, I don't feel comfortable identifying the others.) I shouldn't wonder if the count were much higher. I congratulate NPG for not being stupid enough to do this… and I hereby leave NPG be for the nonce, to talk more about vendors and online social media generally.

I shan't argue that going up a blogger's chain-of-command behind the scenes is meanly vindictive, though it is; vendettas are anything but unusual either online or in the Just Bidness crowd. I argue, as I did at UKSG 2010, that doing it is bad tactics, liable to backfire.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this isn't a blogger easily ignored—not rabid, not penny-ante—and the issue at hand is substantive, not contentless. Let's also leave the "who's right?" question off the table; disagreements are normal, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, and all that good philosophy and sociology stuff. Let's just follow what happens when our vendor goes up the chain.

The first thing that happens is that word gets around. Perhaps the blogger is too intimidated to blog the contretemps himself; that doesn't mean he doesn't tell ten, a hundred, or a thousand of his closest professional friends via Twitter or Facebook. That's a lot of people who now have a personal bone to pick with our vendor.

The next thing that may happen is that someone who isn't the original blogger blogs the contretemps—I've seen this! How many more people are now angry at our vendor, over and above those who are upset over whatever was being blogged about? Was it worth it? Truly?

The next thing that happens at most workplaces (and all intelligent workplaces) in libraryland and higher-ed-land is that the supervisor does nothing to her blogger employee. No reprimand on file, no punitive action, nothing. Leaving aside that libraries are vendors' clients and usually not under any obligation to hush a problem up for a vendor's sole benefit, libraries and universities are not run as straitly as businesses. For most, freedom of expression (especially off the clock) is a major professional value; others recognize the tactical outreach value of bloggers saying openly what the strictures on official institutional communication organs might otherwise forbid. In many cases, in fact, the supervisor (who may wield budget power, let's not forget) will herself become displeased with the vendor: for trying to scare her employee, for wasting her time, and for whatever the problem is, as likely as not. How's this tactic looking now?

And finally, if this happens often enough (and it may only take once), the vendor attaches the adjectives "secretive," "manipulative," and "retaliatory" to its brand in the general consciousness. I'm guessing this is not ideal, especially if negotiation and reputation for fair dealing are a major aspect of sales.

Note what does not happen in most (though admittedly not all) cases of vendor-blogger conflict I know of: the critical blog post does not come down. Vendors, you do not and cannot control the conversation about you any more, if you ever did, and you cannot stop that conversation going public on the Web, as many conversations have. You can, if you choose, participate in the conversation, but note well that this is an open conversation. There's no way I'm aware of to participate in an open conversation privately. This doesn't stop people from trying, of course, but I don't know of any successes.

Well, but look, says our vendor, I'm only trying to repair a troubled client relationship here! Fine, but you're going about it the wrong way. The gold standard is public participation in the conversation, but if you can't bring yourself to do that, the way to proceed is to contact the blogger out-of-band first. If you and the blogger can reach a mutually beneficial arrangement, the blogger will rehabilitate your brand all by himself by posting something about your fantastic service. If the blogger isn't the right person to resolve the problem, he will (if he thinks it worthwhile) point you to the right person himself, and will not think any the worse of you for it.

Finally, if you don't have any way to resolve the problem, and you are pretty sure you'll lose if you engage about it publicly, the right thing to do is clam up. Anything else makes the black eye you're suffering worse.

My advice is worth what you're paying for it. As for NPG, comment spam is the least of their worries just now, but that doesn't at all mean they are improving their situation by engaging in it.

dsalo Tue, 06/15/2010 - 10:01

Tags

Metablogging

Tactics

Serious apologies, and a proposition

dsalo — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:33:35 +0000

Serious apologies, and a proposition

Another reason it's been quiet around here is that comments haven't been appearing.

This was my fault (though I am innocent of any ill intent), and I apologize with all my heart. What happened was this: I was getting quite a bit of the particularly obnoxious kind of spam that copies other comments to appear legitimate. I cranked up the behind-the-scenes spam filter, which cheerfully snaffled every single comment and then bitbucketed them after a few days.

I didn't notice this (except to wonder why nobody was commenting! I figured it was me…) until one gentleman asked me in gmail today whether I'd seen a comment he'd left here. I hadn't, so I investigated. I rescued the comments still in the queue and shut off the auto-delete, but I'm sure some comments have been lost—and again, I'm so very sorry.

I'm reading everything, comments and email. I may not manage to respond to it all; I'm finding it a little overwhelming. I am deeply grateful for the wisdom so freely offered. I am sometimes very stupid. I rely on people who aren't.

I do have a proposition. One way to shake the sense I have of feeling alone and exposed here would be not to be alone. I'm therefore opening up the possibility of making Book of Trogool a group blog. If you think you might be interested in penning some words here (in several senses of the verb), comment here or drop me an email and let's talk about it.

Librarians, researchers, IT folk, or others with a stake in the scholarly-communication or data-curation spaces would be welcome. I do ask that you have a basic knowledge of the problem-space (seekers are fine; clueless newbies are not, sorry) and generally like-minded. In particular, anti-open-access FUD is unwelcome in the extreme, though (as anyone who's read my writing a while knows well) grounded criticism of the movement's ideology and practices is fine. I also ask that you assent to BoT's continuance under a CC-BY-US license.

You may remain pseudonymous onblog if you like, but I need to know who you are, and you'll probably have to sign an agreement with ScienceBlogs. I will of course guard that information carefully; I'm a librarian, after all! We believe (I'm told) in freedom of information exchange. As for ScienceBlogs, they've successfully guarded the identities of other pseudonymous bloggers, such as the Reveres of the erstwhile Effect Measure blog; I believe (but of course cannot guarantee) they are trustworthy.

One last stricture: I can't accept a co-blogger from MPOW, not even pseudonymously. This is because of my own weaknesses, not anything else. It's too easy for me to imagine behind-the-scenes discussions with a close colleague tempting me to say things here that I really ought not.

I would hope that even if you're as much an enfant terrible as I (and honestly, almost no one is that!), you'd try to blog here with integrity. Blog for good, not ill. Own your mistakes; I have. Own the harm you cause, should you cause harm, and try not to cause harm in the first place. You'll make mistakes; I have, many of them. That's okay. What I don't need, though, is a soapbox zealot deaf to all argument but her own, or a namecaller, or a coward, or a bully.

Book of Trogool, like all ScienceBlogs, has a revenue-sharing agreement with the mothership. I don't even understand the details, as I don't want money from BoT and even if I did I've never been anywhere near the traffic it takes to be paid. If your involvement ends up wildly remunerative (or indeed remunerative at all), the proceeds are yours. Should you (or ScienceBlogs) insist on a split, my share will go to Creative Commons. I've never been in this game for money, and I don't intend to start now.

So. How 'bout it?

dsalo Fri, 06/04/2010 - 14:33

Tags

Metablogging

Yes, I do find comments make one feel less isolated. So do other blog posts linking to and commenting on one's own thoughts.

I have been seeing less of those inter-blog links lately (and I think I've been doing less of it myself). Part of this is due to the decreased frequency of many liblogs, my own included. In my case, other tasks often end up taking priority; and when I do get some time to blog, I somehow feel like I should be saying something big and fully-formed, instead of something small and derivative or half-worked-out. I also wonder how other social environments like Twitter (where I see lots of folks now making the quick "read this; it's interesting" posts) have changed how we tend to use blogs.

There are some interesting "virtual group blogs" out there; we're both in Planet Code4lib, for instance. But they don't have the same sort of social interweaving as either group blogs or individual blogs that do a lot of interlinking. I don't know if I want to get involved in a group blog myself right now, but I do plan to at least make more effort to support inter-blogger conversations when I do post. I do value what you write, however you see fit and prudent to do it, and am quite happy to say that in public.

If you'd like, I could contribute occasional, short posts on what's happening at Distributed Proofreaders (the main supplier of free ebooks to Project Gutenberg and thence to many other free ebook sites -- closing on our 18,000th book). Or I could ask the DP general manager if she could post occasional *official* updates.

Being discussed right now: the *possibility* of a DP "premium ebook" repository, containing only ebooks that have been proofed and formatted to our latest standards. Standards have been improving since DP started in 2001. Our earliest books aren't all that good -- though they are usually better than the earlier PG books, which were done by individuals. Some of the individuals were conscientious, some less so.

Of library relevance: if such a repository is established (which is far from certain), it would probably need a librarian or librarians to make sure that the cataloging was done correctly, from the very beginning. PG is hopeless in that regard.

Zora, you'd be welcome as a guestblogger, if that suits you.

John, yes, the connection is happening elsewhere these days. That doesn't bother me, generally; I never had all that much invested in blog comments!

Personally I'm not sure about group blogs. Some seem to work (O'Reilly Radar, for instance). But when "we" (that was the DCC) tried it, we struggled. The Digital Curation Blog worked reasonably well being mostly me. I think that's because a blog needs a voice, an opinion, at its heart. Multiple voices mean multiple opinions, and that can be disconcerting.

I full intended to keep on posting to the Digital Curation Blog after retiring from the DCC, but in practice I haven't felt strongly enough that I should; I've felt that I wanted to feel more free to express things that weren't quite consistent with what the DCC might want to say (there were other things like partly implemented plans to move the blog on-site under Drupal as well). I think this feeling harks back to your own feelings of disquiet about CavLec and BoT in an odd way.

But guest blogging is different than group blogging, somehow. Guest blogging doesn't mean a confusion of voices, rather that you've asked your friend Zora to write a view on something you're both interested in...

But whatever, however, what I wanted to say in the lost comment was to find a way of keeping this up. You may need to temper the tone a little, as one does with a conversation in a public place (cf a library coffee room). Maybe put some posts in the buffer for decision tomorrow. But I think you've shown your voice is career-building as much as (or perhaps more than) it's career-disabling. Power to your elbow!

Excuses, excuses

dsalo — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:42:35 +0000

Excuses, excuses

*blows off the dust*

It's been quiet around here. Sorry about that. Morphing jobs is chaotic, as is moving offices. I've missed a writing deadline, made another, and have a third coming up. I don't have a proper desk in my new office yet (I will soon), and my current makeshift is making my good old RSI flare up, which disinclines me to type more in the evenings.

I'm also still thinking about things. I'm grateful for the out-of-band comments I've received. Mostly (and my apologies if I traduce anyone) the themes are these:

My writings are still useful to people, and
I don't seem to be making the same tone and protocol mistakes I made on my previous blog, but
what I'm doing here still endangers my job and perhaps career, in the estimation of every single person who emailed me.

It makes me sad. It's demoralizing, the idea that a blog is both a valuable service to the profession and a serious professional liability. No matter how buttoned-down. No matter how careful. Because I am who I am, this doesn't just make me wonder about blogging—it makes me wonder about my profession, and what its practitioners are and aren't willing to hear, or defend the saying of.

Part of the reason I shut down CavLec, honestly, was that I was becoming a whipping-post; people who shared my opinions but weren't as career-suicidal as I apparently am were hiding behind me. This is not fair to me. My correspondents on the topic of shutting down Book of Trogool all hinted pretty strongly that the same thing is happening again.

It's still not fair… and I'm once bitten twice shy. Why should my blogging continue to serve professionals who demonstrably will not defend my blogging practices in any way, shape, or form?

So, you know, I'm still thinking. I'm sad. I'm demoralized. But I'm still thinking. There may be purposes blogging can still serve for me. I'm just not quite sure what they are, or whether they justify the effort.

I welcome additional efforts to help me think, in the comments here or via my gmail.

dsalo Thu, 06/03/2010 - 11:42

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I wonder how I manage to be so (intentionally) blunt about the failings of our, um, industry, and sometimes (unintentionally) asshole-ish, and still keep from damaging my career, and as far as I can tell only helping it with my online persona.

Is it a gender thing? Am I just lucky? Have I actually harmed my career prospects without realizing it?

From the outside-looking-in, I've always found your posts to be smart, thoughtful and important even. What has me scratching my head reading this is why a) some people would be threatened by what you write, and b) why other people would be scared to publicly support you. That, it seems to me, says more about the library profession than it does about you.

I'm sorry you're in such a dilemma - I don't really know much about the trouble the blog has got you into, but I did just want to say how much I've enjoyed reading it. What you have to say is always sensible and thought-provoking and I can't understand why it's causing so much trouble!

What's the new job?

I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the privilege of being a safe gadfly is traditionally reserved for, well, the privileged. In academia, that tends to be tenured male professors, male department directors, deans. I don't know how to fight that accept by both being and supporting gadflies that come from less privileged groups.

On the other hand, you have personal choices you need to make. I actually disagree with all of your commenters that your blogging is endangering your career, but I agree that it is probably limiting some of the jobs you will be offered and your advancement in some of those jobs. That is to say, it's making it more difficult for you to advance your career, but not impossible.

When I decided to go public as somebody who is angry about accessibility in the workplace (perforce incidentally going public as a professional with disabilities), I stressed about it for a good long time. I know that my public, professional presence is a somebody who not only has disabilities but is going to be cranky about inadequate efforts to provide accessibility. I know I'll never be made director of anything, and there are jobs I won't be given. But it's a choice I'm making.

I think whichever way you go, it's a legitimate choice. Pick what's more important to you.

While I can't advise you on career strategies, I'd like to thank you for what I have seen your blogging do as a contribution beyond a single profession. You have helped people across various professions understand what's up and what's at stake in concrete terms in a number of areas ranging from repositories to digital preservation to scholarly communication. The straightforward personal voice you have contributed goes a long way to bridging the kinds of cross-professional misunderstandings that can make outsiders uncertain how to choose between blindly trusting that experts in another domain have it all figured out, and blindly mistrusting that everything we don't understand must be founded in charlatanism. When people across professions face uncomfortable open questions that require collaboration in making things up as we go, a grounded voice can be indispensable in navigating unfamiliar terrain.

I think it says something that the people who feel this way sent you email, as opposed to commenting here. Perhaps they're just wrong? There are people in science who say that blogging is a waste of time and damaging to a scientists career, and they're wrong. They also, without exception, have neither blogged not regularly read them.

FWIW, I've always found your posts to be enlightening and useful.

I confess to being somewhat baffled. Have your commenters explained HOW this blog might endanger your job or career? Is there any real evidence for that? I understand the timidity and paranoia that many of our colleagues seem to exhibit, but are they really persuasive?

Deborah's comment that your blogging is probably limiting some of the jobs you will be offered might be true -- but it seems to me that you wouldn't want to work for an organization that felt that way anyway. The advice that I always give job seekers going on interviews is that you should be as open and honest about who you are as possible, because if you're not and they think they're hiring somebody other than who you really are, it's going to be a bad fit and you're not going to be happy in the long run.

Certainly you would want to further your career by working in organizations that appreciate and respect thoughtful and considered comment on issues of importance to the profession -- and there are plenty of places like that out there.

Yes, it's important to be professional and responsible and considered with what one says, and I have my own reasons for never discussing the specifics of my workplace on my own job, but if you do too much self-censoring, you're sacrificing parts of your life in the service of some imagined career path and that's a bad bargain.

I'm confused - maybe it's the difference between being in a special library and an academic library? Maybe my management is really that different from other library managers? I just don't get this at all - and no one has ever suggested that my blog could/would be harmful to my career. Granted, I don't write as well as you do so it could be that I keep my audience confused so they don't know what I'm saying ... I guess my topics are different - you and I disagree about a few things... but still. Maybe librarians should have tenure after all?
I wish there was something I could do to help you.

Jonathan, Christina, I don't know and wish I did. I thought for a long time that I was okay -- until I suddenly wasn't. I found the whole episode distressing; of course, to some extent I deserved to!

Bruce, Rachel, Douglas, Mr. Gunn, thank you. I have some sense of what I did that hurt people, and I own it and am sorry for it. The tricky bit is that given my earlier mistakes, I believe I need to watch myself more than do people who haven't tripped up in this fashion. I find that wearisome, to be perfectly honest.

Ed, the new job is still coming into focus, but scholarly communication more broadly (as opposed to just running an IR) is in the cards.

Deborah, I think you are right. I have heretofore erred on the side of trying to goad the profession and the world into advancing, believing that I wasn't doing myself too much damage. I've found myself reconsidering that position over the last year or so. I have duties to MPOW too, and I believe I owe it to MPOW and to myself not to put up roadblocks that hinder locally the very agenda I'm trying to move the larger world toward!

T Scott, I'm honored that you commented here, and I agree with the substance of your comment. What I hope to work toward is the middle ground between causing offense and excessive self-censoring that you occupy very successfully. I'm not finding it easy to get there, as I noted above... but the lesson is, I think, a salutary one for me.

Decisions

dsalo — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:09:19 +0000

Decisions

I need to lift the iron curtain between this blog and my workplace. I beg your indulgence for one post.

As those who read Bora's interview with me know, I discontinued my previous blog Caveat Lector because I was informed that it was causing significant distress to individuals in my workplace. In my best judgment, I could not continue to blog there in any capacity without it appearing that I had simply brushed off the problems I caused. I took those problems very seriously indeed, as the closure of CavLec bears witness.

When I came to ScienceBlogs, I intentionally structured Book of Trogool such that potential conflict would arise as seldom as possible—preferably never. That was simple enough as long as my data-curation responsibilities were limited to membership on exploratory committees, and my scholarly-communication responsibilities were limited to keeping an IR running.

The latter is no longer the case; my position is being revised to include broader responsibility for scholarly-communication issues. While I'm pleased about the change and hopeful that I will serve well in this new capacity, it does bring back the spectre of additional blog-related trouble.

I'm still deciding what to do (and to be clear, this decision is mine alone, just as the decision to shutter CavLec was). My experience last year led me to agree with Jenica Rogers's assertion that libraries, broadly speaking, are not comfortable with online professional identities, and I accept her conclusion that there's little choice but to adapt one's online identity management accordingly.

I invite your thoughts in the comments here, but be aware that comments critical of my workplace are liable to be ruthlessly edited or deleted. (Criticism of me personally, or my approach to blogging, is fair game as long as it doesn't veer into the usual delete-bait.) My gmail (dorothea.salo) is also at your service. As always, I am very grateful for the thoughtful and intelligent nature of my readership.

dsalo Mon, 05/17/2010 - 11:09

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Hi Dorothea!
I used to follow your Caveat Lector Blog, and since it was visible though not updated I decided to put a link to it (and to some posts) from my own blog. I checked out few days ago, and I saw that it's not visible anymore.
I can't understand if in this post you're talking about the "closing" of CL (closed as it is closed now) or the "not-updating-anymore" (as it was last time I checked).
There were some posts I liked there, and it's sad I can't get them ;-)
all the best
Enrico

Hi, Enrico,

Yes, Caveat Lector has gone dark. On balance, I have no choice but to consider it a professional liability I can no longer afford. I'm sorry about that too, but the profession is what it is, and it has standards that don't allow something like Caveat Lector to survive.

Hiatus continues, and an onion

dsalo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:12:21 +0000

Hiatus continues, and an onion

My husband and I have been stranded by the ash cloud from Iceland. We are well-housed thanks to good friends and the strength of weak ties, so there is no need to worry about us. With luck, we'll be able to get home Tuesday the 27th.

Blogging will continue to be sporadic until we're home.

I couldn't let Yale's shortsighted decision to free-ride on open access pass without comment, however. This has always been a danger for gold open access: that libraries would protect their toll-access collection budgets by choosing to free-ride on others' support of open-access journals.

It is wrong for any library considering itself a major research library to free-ride. Choose your publishers, yes, certainly; it's hard to impossible to participate in every worthy open-access membership program. But Yale isn't doing this; it's just dropping every membership it can, offering stunningly weak rationalizations, and not replacing those memberships with anything by way of other open-access support that I can see.

It would be nice if accreditors and library organizations took up the burden of naming and shaming free riders: ARL and ACRL could include open-access support in their library rankings, and I strongly believe they should. Until that day, however, the only weapon open-access advocates have against free-riders is public opprobrium, as best I can tell.

Therefore I say to the Yale University Library: this was a foolish, shortsighted, and unworthy decision. I think considerably less of you because of it. Please see fit to support the best hope we have of escaping the serials crisis.

I suggest that my Yale-affiliated readers contact the Yale University Library directly to express their opinions about this decision.

dsalo Thu, 04/22/2010 - 20:12

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Open Access