Rediscovering Gems: Easter Island

Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes is a novel that contains two parallel stories: one set in the period before and eventually including World War I and a contemporary story.

Elsa Pendleton travels with her husband, who is sent by the Royal Geographical Society, To Easter Island where she finds her passion collecting ethnographic information. Greer Farraday is a botanist who specializes in paleobotany and who goes to Easter Island to try to find out why the forests collapsed on the island.

The novel is filled with rich information about ethnography, epigraphy and paleobotany. Vanderbes shows the dogged, grueling work of a scholar that may be enlivened by discovery. However, this is conveyed through engrossing stories of the women and the island during their respective stays.

Who would enjoy this: This would be an excellent choice for book clubs and for readers who are interested in exotic places, anthropology and even readers of Jared Diamond.

iPhones for Students

This article in the New York Times, Welcome Freshman, Have an iPod, indicates that several universities are giving students iPhones or iPods, as they enter the university. The schools believe that the students can use the devices to research in class,use the devices to prepare presentations or download podcasts of lectures. Predictably, there is some concern that students will not use the devices positively but instead will use the devices in class when they are bored. But, hasn't this always been the case that some students will be bored in class and not pay attention (doodling?) but it seems a high price to pay to deny these devices to everyone.

Stanford has asked a student-run company to develop special applications for the devices including a map and a directory. And, this seems to me the better approach--to use the devices to elicit a program from students and faculty for their best use in education. Computer science students can develop specialized applications, the college newspaper can set up an RSS headline feed, the library can send alerts when new items are available and old ones due. Library students can help organize the podcasts or video downloads available. Professors can produce podcasts or ask their students to make oral presentations via podcasts. In other words, the device can be part of the education experience because mobile devices are part of our world and this is excellent preparation for students.

I am in a distance learning program now and when I was accepted I asked whether an iPod was required. My advisor was taken aback by the question--she said that no one had asked it before. But I had assumed that a distance learning program would take advantage of technology to enrich the experience for students.

We communicate via a bulletin board system and post to that or to some collaborative space such as wiki or Google Documents. I have only had one professor (and I have taken 10 courses) use screencasting with audio. There have been no podcasts, no video lectures, no creative use of existing technology.

Earlier, this year, there was consternation among some in the library community because non-librarians (specifically, people without a Master's) were named in Library Journals annual list of Movers and Shakers. Many people were exercised by the folks upset at the naming of non-librarians because they thought those people were treated with disrespect by the degreed people. And, that is true but is missing the larger point--in my previous field we looked outside our own field to find improvements or new services. This was routine. We actively sought ideas from others that we could use--they did not always work but we tried them and analyzed what worked and what did not so we could learn from that experience.

We have been asked to write about the future of library automation (although I am probaby doing the alternate assignment) but it seems to me that libraries lag behind other industries in implementing new technologies and routinely examining other industries would help libraries adopt technologies quicker and more effectively.

Library Automation Class

I am nearing the end of my Library Automation course (a week and a half to go) and we just got a new assignment. We can either use the data on a specific library site to investigate something or we can write about the future of Library Automation.

So far, I am doing both. I spent a lot of time with the data and there is quite a bit that I am not able to access without a login (which we do not have). I had a number of interesting things in mind to test but I cannot access data that addresses it. I came up some things to test but I am not sure whether they are really appropriate for the assignment.

I am working on the Future of Library Automation essay so that has involved reading about technology trends. I have several lists I am working from and once I identify the trends that I think are relevant to libraries, I am gathering more information on them. Yesterday, I researched more about Service-Oriented Architectures and today is my mobility day.

I will only turn one in--just not sure which one I will submit yet.

Rediscovering Gems: Swimming to Antarctica

The Summer Olympics are going on now and every day the newspapers have more stories about swimming. There are human interest stories about the swimmers, information about new suits and how those affect the swimmers cutting through the water and improved techniques used by swimmers. The focus on swimming made me think of Swimming To Antarctica by Lynne Cox as a book that should be re-discovered.

Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long Distance Swimmer was published in January 2004 and was written by Lynne Cox, a long distance swimmer who broke records by swimming the Cook Strait, the Bering Strait, the Cape of Good Hope and the Magellan Strait. Through her training she realizes that her body is unusually capable of withstanding extreme cold. She decides to swim a mile in the Antarctic Ocean, a swim conducted in 32 degree water, that she finishes but leaves her with some physical damage due to the extreme cold.

It is a story about discipline and sacrifice. Her commitment to long-distance swimming means that she spends much of her time in the water and is able to spend less time on in-land relationships. It reminds us that obsessions and talent have consequences, that the choices we make affect our lives and relationships.

Cox is matter-of-fact about the problems and focuses on the training, the swimming and all the auxiliary activities she needs to complete them. It is a terrific story and Cox is a terrific writer. She helps you understand why long-distance swimming is so important to her and she works to have the swims mean something to the world hoping that the swim through the Bering Strait will remind people how close in distance Russia and the US really are. Writers often say that they write because they have to, and this is a trait that is found throughout the creative professions. Cox shows that her talent and ability for long-distance swimming became something she had to do and in her book, she shares her successes as well as her challenges. Although this is about swimming, it is indeed a universal story.

Who would like this book: You certainly don't have to be a swimmer to enjoy this book. It is also a good tie-in to the Olympics. Further it is a good book to highlight the importance of discipline and the consequences (the good and bad) of following your dreams.

Visualizing Statistics

I always look at the circulation statistics and wonder about the specifics underneath it. Of the fiction, what are the leading authors, or of the broad category, non-fiction, what are the most circulated sections.

I just saw this neat article on "Self Plagarism is in Style about Dewey blobs. Here is the enlarged version. This is a great way of getting more information about what Dewey classifications circulate the most and this would also be a great start to identity areas for weeding.

Rediscovering Gems: The Singular Pilgrim

The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground by Rosemary Mahoney was published in 2003. It was published around the same time as Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and it was not as popular. Mahoney details several pilgrimages, in Spain, in India, in Britain and in Ireland. It is a tale of walking, and more walking but embodies the classic religious or spiritual need to test the body and through that find faith or peace or in today's world, we may view this as a way to find oneself.

Beautifully written Mahoney struggles with her belief and the search for God. It is also a memoir describing the end of a relationship and her life as a writer. A simply wonderful book.

Who should read it: Readers who loved Eat, Pray Love and were drawn by its discussion of spirituality. The Singular Pilgrim focuses mostly on Christian pilgrimages but Mahoney does describe a pilgrimage by the Ganges.

Kindle for Distance Learning

I read John Gapper's column in the Financial Times with great interest. He described the battle between the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle and indicated that he thought that the Kindle had won. The Kindle has built-in wireless capability, it is easy to get content from Amazon for it (now there are over 145,000 items available), you can easily subscribe to newspapers and blogs and of course, it has a keyboard. Although Amazon has not provided sales figures for the Kindle, other groups have estimated that about 240,000 units have been sold.

One of the reasons that I am so fascinated by e-readers and the Kindle, in particular, is that I getting my Master's in Library Science through an online program and I can see what a terrific market the online learning community is for a Kindle or other reader. Of course, now the Kindle can only access what is available through Amazon or books in the public domain and that would have to be expanded.

For my classes,I access a bulletin board in which the professor and the students post and respond. Through this bulletin board, also access my assignments, find papers to be read and access other course tools such as our wiki. A Kindle or Kindle-like device would allow distance students to easily keep in touch with the bulletin board, get their email and research. The wireless capability is the key along with the keyboard because students could use the device not just to read items on the bulletin board but post as well.

A lot of distance students complain about the lack of community and face-to-face interactions. That bothers me less because I managed a development group remotely for several years. What I would like to see to increase satisfaction in distance learning is improved access and a portable device that I can always carry and like the Kindle, is always connected to a wireless network.