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Independent senator Nick Xenophon says the Federal Government needs to come clean about whether it has decided to scale back the number of new submarines Australia will buy.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, defence-and-aerospace-industries, government-and-politics, federal-government, australia, sa, adelaide-5000
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Japan, France and Germany will compete to build Australia's next submarines as the Federal Government continues its search for a potential partner, the Defence Minister says.
Topics: federal-government, government-and-politics, defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, defence-industry, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
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The head of Australian shipbuilder ASC admits he is yet to ask the Government what its recently announced "competitive evaluation process" for submarines means.
Topics: defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, federal-government, abbott-tony, adelaide-5000
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There is no national security imperative driving the demand that Australia's future submarines be built domestically, only an "emotive" one, the Defence Force Chief says.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-and-national-security, federal-government, unrest-conflict-and-war, federal-parliament, australia, sa
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Adelaide's submarine makers are yet to receive details from the Federal Government on how to bid for a contract to build the nation's next fleet of submarines, a defence expert says.
Topics: defence-forces, abbott-tony, federal-government, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, adelaide-5000, australia, sa
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Defence Minister Kevin Andrews says tenders will open shortly for a $10 billion project replacing the Army's ground fleet.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, defence-and-aerospace-industries, geelong-3220, vic, australia, adelaide-5000, sa
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The Hunter is poised to capitalise on Joint Strike Fighter maintenance opportunities after new facilities were officially opened at Williamtown today.
Topics: defence-and-aerospace-industries, defence-forces, defence-industry, williamtown-2318, newcastle-2300
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The reputation of Australian-made submarines has been "trashed" overseas by the Government organisation responsible for securing the country's next fleet, independent senator Nick Xenophon says.
Topics: defence-forces, abbott-tony, federal-government, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, adelaide-5000, australia, sa
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Tony Abbott apologises for using the term "holocaust" in response to a question in parliament about the future of Australia's multi-billion-dollar submarines contract.
Topics: federal-parliament, parliament, federal-government, defence-industry, defence-and-national-security, abbott-tony, australia
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South Australia's Defence Industries Minister says Tony Abbott's jest that Australia's next fleet of submarines could built by Russia or North Korea left him "scratching his head".
Topics: defence-forces, abbott-tony, federal-government, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, adelaide-5000, sa
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Prime Minister Tony Abbott mocks suggestions the Government should have an open tender process for Australia's next fleet of submarines, saying that could result in "Kim Jong-il-class submarines" or "Vladimir Putin submarines".
Topics: defence-forces, abbott-tony, federal-government, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, australia
Hunter Valley shipbuilding and engineering firms are likely to benefit if the federal government awards its submarine construction contract to an Australian shipbuilder.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-and-aerospace-industries, manufacturing, newcastle-2300, carrington-2294
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Shipyard workers are in Canberra to warn Liberal MPs against dumping their election promise to build 12 new submarines in Adelaide.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-and-aerospace-industries, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, federal-government, adelaide-5000, sa
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It's only the Second Day of Good Government. But already, a barnacle-encrusted monster from the deep has surfaced.
Did the Prime Minister promise mutinous South Australian Senator Sean Edwards that ASC could tender openly for the job of building the nation's new submarine fleet?
And will Mr Abbott's colleagues overlook the possibility that, even as their chastened leader promised to make no further bungles, he'd already made another that was about to blow?
Topics: defence-industry, defence-and-national-security, abbott-tony, federal-government
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SA political reporter Nick Harmsen asks Premier Jay Weatherill what he thinks the Federal Government is planning with regards to replacing Australia's submarines with a new fleet.
Topics: government-and-politics, defence-industry, adelaide-5000
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A Sydney judge says he doubts a former soldier who was the central figure in the so-called Jedi Council sex ring feels genuine remorse for his actions.
Topics: defence-industry, defence-forces, sexual-offences, law-crime-and-justice, nsw, sydney-2000, canberra-2600
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A shift to an open tender process to decide who will build the nation's next fleet of submarines falls short of the Federal Government's promise to build them in Adelaide, the state's Defence Industries Minister says.
Topics: defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, government-and-politics, federal-government, states-and-territories, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
Posted| Updated
The United Arab Emirates says it will send a squadron of F-16 jets to Jordan to join the strikes on IS targets.
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, terrorism, united-arab-emirates, jordan
Posted| Updated
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie says building the next generation of submarines overseas would be "un-Australian" after touring Adelaide shipbuilder ASC.
Topics: navy, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, federal-government, defence-and-aerospace-industries, osborne-5017, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
Defence Minister Kevin Andrews is adamant no decision has been made on where the future submarine fleet will be built after touring shipbuilding facilities in Adelaide.
Topics: defence-forces, navy, defence-industry, states-and-territories, federal---state-issues, sa, adelaide-5000, osborne-5017
Lisa Chesters, the federal Member for Bendigo, in central Victoria, has begun lobbying the new Defence Minister to secure further manufacturing work on Army vehicles.
Topics: defence-industry, activism-and-lobbying, federal-government, bendigo-3550
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Defence Minister Kevin Andrews will make his first official tour of the ASC site at Port Adelaide tomorrow to be briefed on the submarine project.
Topics: defence-and-aerospace-industries, defence-industry, adelaide-5000, sa
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Terror suspects should be forced to wear tracking devices for at least two years if they return to Australia from known extremist hotspots, leading security expert Clive Williams says.
Topics: terrorism, security-intelligence, defence-industry, canberra-2600, act, macquarie-university-2109
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Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is seeking urgent discussions with the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister over hundreds of jobs facing the axe in the state's ship-building industry.
Topics: state-parliament, parliament, federal---state-issues, government-and-politics, defence-and-aerospace-industries, defence-industry, melbourne-3000, williamstown-3016
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The Defence Force Welfare Association expresses doubts over whether Kevin Andrews will be the sort of "energetic, capable, and competent" minister the Defence Department needs.
Topics: defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, defence-industry, government-and-politics, liberals, federal-government, australia


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Magic Millions Lot 212 - Snitzel/Fashion Rocks filly Purchased for $400,000
"It is no secret that I'm a huge fan of the SNITZEL progeny, and why wouldn't I be? I'm the second most successful trainer of the SNITZEL breed and this filly will add beautifully to my increasing number. She's a very special filly & she impressed me in every way possible at the sale."
Magic Millions Lot 162 - Snitzel/Donnica filly Purchased for $180,000
"I've had huge success with the progeny of SNITZEL including Group 1 winners, SWEET IDEA & WANDJINA who took me all the way to Royal Ascot. Out of a half sister to Group 2 winner BIRD OF FIRE and Group 1 placegetter, ABEAUTIFULRED. She is an athletic filly with a lovely, loose walk and good bone for bulk. She really caught my attention at the sale."
Inglis Easter Lot 110 - Sebring/Tigress Lily Colt Purchased for $200,000
"Out of a four time winning SNITZEL mare who has already produced a Stakes performer with only one foal of racing age. This colt is from the family of Horse of the Year, TYCOON LIL."
Inglis Easter Lot 300 - High Chaparral/Fiction Colt Purchased for $300,000
"This colt is typical of his sire. He's big, strong, has an excellent shoulder, deep girth & a good hindquarter. Out of a REDOUTE'S CHOICE mare who's dam is Group 1 Golden Slipper winner, POLAR SUCCESS. I absolutely loved him at the sale & I wasn't leaving without him."

subset: commoncrawl


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There are two games that I think a lot of people are looking forward to this year and they're games that have come a long way. In this episode of GotGame, I talk about Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 3. Keep it right here!
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Injustice: Gods Among Us - PS3 (Ultimate Edition)
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- A unique addition to the fighting genre in which an intriguing storyline pits the heroes -- and villains -- of the DC universe against each otherA powerful and diverse array of over 20 playable characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Nightwing, Catwoman, Cyborg, Harley Quinn, Solomon Grundy, and others
- A variety of play areas based in the mythologies of each character franchise
- An accessible attack system broken down into light, medium and heavy attack, with each character having their own specific attacks
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This Ultimate Edition includes all 6 new characters (Martian Manhunter, Zatanna, Batgirl, Lobo, General Zod and Scorpio) and all skin packs (iOS and Android exclusive skin packs NOT included), all content is unlocked from the start.
Interesting story, tons of charachters each one with powers that fits perfectly with their persona.
And on top of that I can use SCORPION FROM MORTAL KOMBAT!!!
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I love the DC universe and once I found out this game was out I knew I had to buy it. I may not be the best at 1V1 fighting games but playing this game made it enjoyable for me... Read morePublished 15 days ago by Robert Velilla
This is game came in as I expected it would and it works great and it's a really fun game to playPublished 28 days ago by jesus
Unless u are die hard fan of these heroes u r better off buyin some other game which will last more and has things other than just combatPublished 29 days ago by viraj
This is the best super hero video game I have ever owned. It if fun but a little hard. Takes a lot of practicePublished 3 months ago by andy olson
It's a great game. Good missions. Really fun. My favorite character is The Arrow. And I think that you should add metahuman flash, and reverse flash on this.. Read morePublished 3 months ago by Bob


text:
When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.
But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
-From "The Veteran," by Dorothy Parker
As someone who has been active on social media for the entirety of my professional life and who wrote a book on social media for libraries, things have to be pretty bad for me to be considering taking a hiatus from social media. But I feel like the vitriol, nastiness, and lack of compassion is getting worse and worse and I want no part of it.
My Facebook feed right now is full of (armchair primatologist and parenting expert) friends expressing outrage over the mother of the child who climbed into the gorilla enclosure in Cincinnati and the staffers who decided to kill the gorilla. The glee with which people I think of as compassionate are going after the parents and looking into their lives and background is disturbing. I feel like they must have access to much more information than I do, because I don't know that the mother was negligent, and having experienced my nephew who was "a runner" when he was little, I know how kids can get away from you in the blink of an eye.
When bad things happen, society always seems to look for someone to blame. Someone to look down on. Someone to judge. Why do we do it? Because it makes us feel better about ourselves. I would never _____. Those people are less [careful, caring, moral, human, etc.] than me. Therefore, nothing bad like that could ever happen to [me/people I love]. And, instead of looking at how this thing can be prevented from happening again, we just want punishment. We want to see someone burned at the stake. That short-term vitriol never seems to lead to long-term improvements that would keep the same thing from happening again.
Were I just seeing it in the larger society, I could maybe just write it off, but I also see it happening in my profession, a profession full of brilliant critical thinkers who sometimes engage in mob mentality online. I have witnessed so many social media take-downs of people in our profession — some small, some quite large and public. More often than not, we are not privy to all the facts, but still blame and shame in ways that cause real damage to people.
I also saw this vitriol come out recently against American Libraries when some content had been changed in an article (without the author's permission) that was favorable to a partner vendor. Admittedly, this was a bad situation that was not handled well by ALA Publishing, but it spurred on the usual "blame and shame" Twitter cycle that, as usual, did not lead to any meaningful change. What happened as a result? Did their policies or practices change? Is there a committee looking at this? Does anyone know?
What makes me craziest about the "blame and shame" Twitter cycle is that it never seem to lead to meaningful change. The people who are expressing outrage only seem to care for a short time, and not enough to ensure that positive and constructive change comes from all of it. The people who've been social media shamed either do everything in their power to disappear from the world or otherwise write off the people on social media as lunatics who can't be taken seriously. Either way, again, no meaningful change or learning comes from it.
I used to see the world more in black and white and get riled up over things that now seem inconsequential. I used to be more judgmental. I am ashamed of some of my blog posts from long ago. As you see people in your life struggle, and as you struggle, you realize that nothing is quite that simple. An action you may have judged in the past rarely happens in isolation, and there may be some very good reasons why what happened did that you are unaware of.
Now, instead of rushing to judge, I try to understand. I try to put myself in their shoes. I remind myself that I'm not perfect; that I'm not immune from making mistakes or from bad things happening. In his recent post on ACRLog, Ian McCullough talks about having a "generous heart" when it comes to other people's failings. I really like that. At one point, my friend, Josh Neff, called it "charitable reading," but it applies to our physical lives as much as our digital. When we jump on the Twitter rage train against someone, we are forgetting that they are fully-formed human beings with complicated lives and emotions and desires who are not all bad or all good. And when we do that to people in our profession (which sometimes seems very small), it feels particularly egregious and short-sighted.
I've made mistakes. I've made bad decisions. I've been the "bad guy." I've done things in my life that I never thought I'd do, and a big part of that is because I'd never anticipated being in the situations I was in. Life is unpredictable. People who go through terrible things are usually blindsided by them. And you don't really know how you will respond until you're in the situation. There isn't a roadmap. To me, the key is learning and growing from the experience. And I think it's hard to learn or reflect when you are in fight-or-flight mode because you're being excoriated by people around you who probably don't know the whole story.
But when you fall down, you see who your real friends are. You see who judges you, who stands back and holds you at arm's length, and who is there for you. You find out who sees you as the sum of your parts instead of just one thing you did or said. I've been through several difficult chapters in my life that have made it clear to me who I can count on, and it is a powerful lesson. I only hope I can be there for those people in the same way when they need me.
Embracing nuance is hard sometimes. It's so much easier to say "vendors are evil" than to admit that the people working at those companies are human beings, some of whom actually want to do (or are doing) good things for libraries. It's so much easier to destroy an editor at ALA who made a poor decision than to work with ALA to make sure that never happens again. It's so much easier to jump on the rage train when someone on Twitter is getting flogged for a comment they'd thought innocuous than to try and be kind and constructive.
Letting go of all that piss and vinegar and moral superiority feels good, at least for me. It's freeing to recognize our own humanity and the humanity of those around us. We're all flawed human beings trying to make our way through the world with (mostly) good intentions. We don't all value the same things. We all sometimes feel schadenfreude; it's an inescapable part of our reality TV-loving society. But assuming the best in people and helping them when they fall down feels a lot better than tearing them down… well, at least in the long term.
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I have been very fortunate to address librarians nationally and internationally as a speaker. I love sharing my ideas, experiences, and things I've learned and meeting other librarians. I have gotten research ideas, column ideas, and made friends through my travels. I have visited places I'd always wanted to visit. I am not nearly as prolific as some library speakers and my productivity dropped precipitously in 2009 when I had my son, but I still get great pleasure out of sharing knowledge and contributing to the profession.
I've had many wonderful experiences as a speaker in terms of how I was treated by conference organizers. We tend to focus so much on the negative that I wanted to highlight some of the amazingly warm and considerate experiences I've had where people extended themselves to make me feel welcome. In Puerto Rico, I was taken around the country, taken on hikes, and taken to dinner by some amazingly kind librarians. In New Zealand, with my son tagging along, my family was invited to dinner at the house of one of the librarians who brought out toys for Reed and gave him two books (that we still read and treasure). There was an amazing Haka to kick off the conference and at the end of my keynote, the whole audience SANG to me! In Hawaii, I was given a beautiful lei after each of my talks and the conference organizers took my family out to breakfast. In Iceland, I came to my hotel room to find a giant basket of yummies from the conference organizers.
Those definitely stand out as the most wonderful acts of kindness I have experienced as a speaker. I keep those people and experiences in my heart and would speak again for any of those organizations without hesitation. There were also many other conference experiences where I was treated with consideration by the conference organizers and received a speaker's gift, was invited out for a meal, got a thank-you card, or received some other recognition of their gratitude for my giving my time to their organization.
Then there are the not-so-nice experiences. Like when I was dropped off at my motel after giving a half-day workshop only to find that there was nowhere to eat within walking distance and I had to eat my dinner from a vending machine. Or the countless state/provincial library conferences I've attended (that are not my own) where I ate lonely meals by myself because no one considered the fact that I wouldn't know anyone (and, FYI, not all speakers are extroverts). Or the ones where I was told at the last minute that the technology I was using won't work because they never provided me with any information, leaving me to stress needlessly in the minutes before I gave my presentation.
Conference speakers are likely spending a significant amount of time creating content and traveling to be at your conference. Whether you pay them or not, there are certain common courtesies you should extend to speakers who are not a part of your organization:
1. Give the speaker all of the relevant background on the conference – let them know who will be there (what sorts of positions, from what types of libraries, etc.), what the organization does, and anything else that will give the speaker a sense of how to tailor their presentation.
2. Let the speaker know how long they will have to speak – this seems obvious, but I once was told I had an hour and a half to present and take questions and designed my talk around that. Five minutes before I was to start my keynote, I was told that they were going to take 20 minutes or so to do introductions. I took it in stride because I'm an instruction librarian and this happens to us all the time, but it was no less insensitive.
3. Ask the speaker about their technological needs/preferences and any limitations on your side – Some presenters are really particular about using their computer or have to play videos or show stuff from the Internet. Ask them about their needs and preferences beforehand. And let them know about any limitations on your side: if you need them to use your computer, if they have to use PowerPoint, etc. I often make PDFs of my Keynote presentations so that if I can't use my own computer, I can just use the PDF version (the conversion from Keynote to PowerPoint is not always smooth). One time, I was told 15 minutes before my presentation that I had to use the organizers' computer and have my presentation in PPT format because they were using some fancy recording software. I was completely flummoxed and stressed and, in my hasty conversion of my slides, the formatting got screwed up. If the computer is not going to be at the podium, provide the speaker with a clicker. The speaker should not have to worry about any of this just before they speak – it's your job as the organizer to smooth the way for them. The incomparable Jenica Rogers wrote about this issue as well.
4. Invite them out for a meal – they may or may not want to go, especially if they've had a long flight, but extending the invitation shows a level of consideration for their needs and the fact that they traveled all this way to be with you.
5. Give them all of the information they need about travel logistics and reimbursement – There shouldn't be any guesswork on the part of the speaker. I once showed up at the conference hotel where the organizer was supposed to have made me a hotel reservation only to find that I didn't have one. I had to frantically call them and get it sorted out, spending an hour sitting in the lobby fretting. Turns out they'd made the reservation, but in their own name, and I was supposed to have psychically known that. I once had to argue about my honorarium with an organizer 10 minutes before my keynote. She said that I'd agreed to accept $x for my keynote and that it included my travel reimbursement. Luckily I had the emails to prove that she'd agreed to $x + travel expenses, because $x didn't even cover my travel expenses! The kicker with that one was that I'd more than halved my keynote speaking fees because I had a soft spot for the consortium (I'd used my first dial-up internet through them back in the day).
All that brings up another point –
6. Give them your cell number or the number of someone who can help them if something comes up – shit happens. Flights get delayed or canceled. Hotel reservations may not exist. Speakers get sick. The speaker might need to contact you and they should not have to do that via email.
7. Tell them about the area – if a person is coming from out of town, they more than likely aren't familiar with the area in which they're staying. Tell them about local restaurants you like, attractions they might be interested in, hotel amenities, etc. Yes, we live in the age of Yelp and Google Maps, but it's still nice to get personal recommendations. And if you have a car and they don't, see if there's anything they need. I recently had to walk through a really sketchy neighborhood early in the morning to get to a drug store to buy decongestants. It would have been really nice if someone could have just picked them up for me (or warned me about what I'd have to walk through to get there!).
8. Give them a gift – it doesn't have to be much – some chocolates, a pen, some stationery, even just a thank-you card. Spending $10 on a speaker will make them feel significantly more appreciated than if you do nothing and it's such a small effort. I periodically am asked to speak to LIS school students in the Portland cohort of Emporia University. They always give me a little tchotchke, and though it's not much, it illustrates the fact that they have thought of me and appreciate my time. They also always send me a thank-you card signed by all the students in the class. That means even more. Even at a large-scale conference like Internet Librarian, speakers were given a speaker's gift to show their appreciation .
9. Make them feel welcome – not all speakers are extroverts. I'm not at all, and going to a place where I don't know anyone can be intimidating. A good organizer should introduce the speaker to people and make sure they have folks to talk to.
A lot of these things are small things that take just a little effort or a tiny bit of money, but what they do is say to the speaker "I appreciate you and your effort." You notice I didn't put "pay them" here, though I do believe that speakers should be paid as what we do provides value. There are all sorts of reasons to accept or not to accept money for a talk (some may have to do with the policies of the institution where you work) and I think it's up to each person to do that calculus on their own. Whether you are paid or not, most of these things are still common courtesies worth following. They don't always scale up at a massive conference, but they're worth keeping in mind.
I don't think people who treat speakers badly or indifferently are doing so out of malice. I think it has more to do with a lack of consideration and empathy, but the impact on the speaker is the same. I once spent at least 18 hours preparing for a keynote presentation, missing time with my family to do so. I missed work and had to take three flights to get there and back from a conference I had no connection to. I was not invited out for a meal. I was not given basic information I needed to give a solid presentation and had to stress about tech before the talk instead of eating lunch. I was not given a gift or thank-you card of any kind nor any recognition other than "thanks, have a good flight." I felt used. I felt angry. And I felt stupid for saying yes in the first place. When I have experiences like that, I honestly feel like I never want to speak at another conference again. But then I remember the wonderful experiences I've had. The trouble is that you rarely know which kind of experience you're going to have before you say yes.
Speakers are the lifeblood of any conference. Without them, what do you have? If they are investing their time in traveling and providing content for your conference, the least you can do is treat them with consideration. This summer, I'm doing a preconference workshop for the Association of Christian Librarians, a group I presented for back in 2008. I remember the organizers and attendees being so gracious and easy to work with last time that I was happy to do it again. If you treat your speakers badly, eventually word will spread about it. The library community isn't as big as you think and a lot of people who give talks around the country know and talk to each other.
But don't do it just because of that. Do it because you appreciate your speakers.
If you're interested in reading other librarian speakers' perspectives, check out this 2007 Cites and Insights article by Walt Crawford that summarizes posts from a number of blogs with advice for both conference speakers and organizers.
Photo credit: Mike McDermott]]>
I know a lot of librarians who've suffered with depression or anxiety, take psychotropics, or who go to therapy. It makes me wonder if people with mental illness are drawn to librarianship in greater numbers than other professions. I was very happy — and a little trepidatious — when I saw that two fantastic librarians were organizing an LIS Mental Health Week. I think it's great that we stamp out the stigma surrounding mental illness. Many of the most creative, brilliant, and productive people in our society have suffered from mental illness, yet admitting to being a fellow-sufferer can feel like career suicide. But it shouldn't be, not just because it's illegal to discriminate against people with a mental illness, but because many of the most talented and productive librarians I know suffer from mental illness. Myself included. I wonder if we're so productive because of the tendency among the depressed and anxious to feel like we're never doing enough. We're never good enough. My boss recently reminded me that "this isn't the tenure track" and that I really didn't have to worry about getting continuous appointment. But that's not why I work so hard. I do it because of what I might think of myself if I don't.
I've never felt comfortable talking about my depression (or admitting to it) when I'm experiencing it. It's only after I've clawed my way out of that hole that I can admit it ever happened. And the funny thing is that once you're out of it, it's hard to really make sense of the experience. A big part of depression for me involves shame. Deep, viscerally painful shame at my weakness; my inability to man up and either fix myself or seek help. Intellectually I understand that this is brain chemistry and illness and not a failure on my part, but it doesn't change how I feel. And that's the problem with depression. It doesn't matter what you think and what you know, because this other irrational part of your brain is now in control of you. You make self-destructive choices that you'd never make under any other circumstances and its all driven by the fact that you feel unworthy of even feeling better.
I've had four bouts of major depression in my life and suffer from social anxiety (the latter of which I'm sure many who know me would find surprising). I've found ways to cope with the social anxiety and even to overcome it in some situations, but depression is much more problematic. I have a hard time remembering when I first started feeling depressed, but I think it was in 9th grade. I had lots of friends and fit in well and loved the arts school I was attending, but I felt alone, apart from everyone. I felt unloveable. That was when I started cutting myself, something I did on-and-off until age 20, and the scars criss-crossing my left arm are a constant visual reminder of how I tried to turn my pain inward and make it physical because that was somehow easier to process. I don't think I really understood what depression was at the time, and at some point, I came out of it naturally and had wonderful experiences with people I'm lucky to still call my friends.
Major depression again settled on me like a shroud towards the end of my Freshman year of college, but now I had the self-awareness to know that something was wrong. By the middle of my Sophomore year, I was sleeping 12 hours a day, barely eating, and, in my waking moments, fantasized endlessly about different ways I would kill myself. That was when I called my dad and begged him to institutionalize me. He got me therapy and medication, which didn't help, and I spent another 6 months spiraling out of control on the inside while playing the part of a successful college student on the outside. My grades never dropped. Maybe it was for the best that I stayed in school and toughed it out, but it was the most painful experience in my life and all I wanted was to take a vacation from myself. I came out of my depression the summer before my Junior year and feeling ordinary again was the most extraordinary feeling in the world.
I didn't have another issue with depression for a decade until I had my son. I have a Masters degree in Social Work and have actually diagnosed and provided therapy to people with depression, but I still couldn't do anything for myself. I just made myself and my husband (and probably my baby in some way) completely miserable for six months. Again, I didn't seek help until things were so bad that I didn't think I could be in my life anymore. This time, though, a low dose of Zoloft actually did the trick within days, and I felt like the biggest idiot in the world for spending six months suffering so horribly when a little pill could fix it for me. But that's depression. It pulls you away from your loved ones and from your rational brain.
My last episode of depression was actually related to something that happened at Portland State. I won't go into details, but the experience made it very clear to me that 1) allowing my work to define me was a huge problem and 2) I really needed to leave my job. 6 months later, I heard about the opening at PCC and my depression lifted as soon as I knew I had a way out. Here, I feel so supported by my colleagues and part of a team that's doing great work for students. I also struck a healthier work-life balance when I got off the tenure track. 1.5 years in and I couldn't be happier. This was the only depressive episode I had that was caused by a specific situational event (I suppose you could argue postpartum depression was too, but that's really chemical/hormonal). I was ok one day and then I wasn't. My world was full of possibilities and then it wasn't. There was no slow ramping up to major depression; the trauma happened and BAM. I truly thought at the time that my career was over… even as I was winning the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award.
I don't think I'll ever let myself get to a place where a work-specific trauma (save an actual disaster) could cause depression again, but that doesn't mean I'll never be depressed again. I've done what I can to depression-proof my life, but none of us can control everything. I just hope I'll have the strength to seek help earlier if it does happen to me again.
When my depression is at its worst, I immerse myself in work even more, so it can sometimes be difficult for colleagues to know that something is wrong. I'm super-productive, which isn't very different from what I normally am at work. I guess the bright side of this is that I don't inconvenience colleagues, but, while I'm getting everything done (and sometimes more), I feel even more isolated from everyone around me. It almost feels like I'm acting, playing the role of a good employee. I think I'm pretty good at it, because no one outside ever seemed to notice that I was falling apart; not when I had postpartum depression at Norwich, nor when I was at PSU. I was completely empty on the inside, but somehow still managed to look like me on the outside. What a trick.
When I'm depressed, work is almost a gift; something I absolutely have to do that keeps my mind from spinning out of control. It's the unscheduled moments that are the worst. The evenings. The weekends. Those moments when you don't have anything you absolutely have to do, so instead you sit and essentially bask in your pain. I have terrible memories of sitting in the dark in college staring at nothing for hours as my mind spun and spun. Being depressed is so much more difficult when you have children, because you have to try and keep things together, even at home. I think that was the hardest part with my last experience of depression; that my son knew something was up. Shame upon shame.
If people learn anything from this, I hope it's that not seeking help when you're starting to be depressed is the worst thing you can do. It's easy to ignore depression as it slowly creeps in or to think it's something you can just power your way out of. Often it's not until things are really bad that you realize you need help, and by then, you're often at a place that is both dangerous and hard to come back from. I have a hard time asking for help even when I'm not depressed and this is a character flaw of which I've been trying to cure myself. There is no shame in seeking help; in fact, it takes great strength to do so. Don't let shame or denial or negative self-talk keep you from things that could help you get out of depression.
To those who aren't depressed, you should know that people manifest depression in many different ways. Not everyone fits the stereotype of the weepy zombie who can't get out of bed. Depression can look like anger, insecurity, numbness, overcompensation, extreme sadness, etc. We all cope (or try to cope) with it in our own ways. Also, don't assume that a colleague who is depressed is a liability, though, yes, some people may not perform at 100% when they're depressed, like anyone with a physical illness. You may be surprised that some of the most productive librarians you know and maybe admire are suffering from depression, and that relentless productivity is just a symptom. Your best bet: 1) don't make assumptions and 2) if you see a colleague's behavior changing in a way that seems concerning, talk to them. I would have been so grateful if someone (other than my husband who is a saint) had reached out to me.
To everyone suffering from depression right now: you are not alone. Get help.
Some other great blog posts from this week so far:
And follow (and participate if so inclined) in the Twitter discussion: #LISMentalHealth.
Image credit: Depression by B Gilmour, on Flickr.]]>
First, full disclosure: I am a columnist for American Libraries. They pay me to write columns every other month in which I state my opinion on various things relating somewhat to technology. What I'm writing here is my own opinion and represents me alone.
As a professional librarian and a writer, I take my credibility very seriously. I have made every effort to be ethical and true to myself, even when doing so has bitten me in the ass. I have never wanted anyone to doubt that what I am saying or writing is motivated by anything other than my desire to serve the profession. I've said no to sponsorship offers on my blog, to paid blogging gigs, and to an offer to buy the Library Success Wiki. I turned down a lucrative job offer at a certain vendor many years ago because I knew that the second I took the job, I would lose some of my professional credibility and I honestly valued it more than money. I really don't believe that makes me a better person than anyone else. Maybe a more vain one?
Because of that though, I completely understand why Patricia Hswe and Stewart Varner were not happy about the fact that their American Libraries article had been edited to include quotes from a specific vendor: Gale Cengage. We are only as good as our reputations; our credibility. Everything in an article reflects upon its author(s); the work of the editor is invisible to the reader. So without the context provided by Varner in his blog post (and good for them for sticking up for themselves), we might assume that the authors were perfectly comfortable with promoting one specific vendor in their efforts to serve library digital humanities efforts. And I'm sure neither of them wanted to look like Gale Cengage shills, especially not for what one gets paid to write an article in our profession. If any one one of us feels they can be bought by a vendor, he or she should hold out for more than t-shirts, swag, a nice dinner, or a few bucks (and I've written about our problematic relationships librarians have with vendors in the past, so I won't rehash that here).
When I wrote an article for The New Republic, the title was changed to "The Next Librarian of Congress Should Be an Actual Librarian." I didn't even make that argument in the article! The minute I saw the title, I knew people would have issues with it because "actual librarian" is a rather loaded term (that a magazine editor would not know about). While I got some crap about it, it wasn't anything that might impact the way I am seen by others. So I really do feel for Patricia and Stewart, because something like this (without their explanation) could impact their reputations.
My experiences with the ALA Publishing Staff have always been positive. Only once or twice did I ever receive pushback on a column, and that was a very long time ago. Only once did anything get changed without first reviewing it with me, and that was just the title. After talking with my editor (who was new to working with me at the time), it never happened again. They have let me publish what I want, even when it's not pro-vendor (case in point). Yes, a column is different than a journalistic article, because I am speaking my opinions as me, but when the person writing the journalistic article is a professional in our field, their reputation is also on the line with that article.
If you actually read the article, I think you'll find that the two quotes from a Gale Cengage rep are not particularly incendiary nor that they promote Gale Cengage particularly strongly, but I also understand that's not the point. This whole thing brings up two important issues for me:
1. They added content to the article that misrepresented the authors without checking with them.
2. In adding that content, they are promoting a particular vendor in what is supposed to be a journalistic article. It reeks of sponsored content.
I think if the magazine wants to publish articles that are favorable toward a particular vendor, it should not use librarians to do it as it compromises their integrity (frankly, I think it compromises journalistic integrity too, but I'm just going to worry about my fellow librarians right now). But really, it just shouldn't do that at all. If this is supposed to be a real publication, sponsored content (or anything biased favorably toward a particular vendor) should be clearly marked as such and should not look exactly like a regular article. If American Libraries or ALA gained materially in some way in exchange for the inclusion of this article (and I have no idea if they did), it should be clearly stated. This is basic journalistic ethics. David Weinberger wrote an interesting piece for HBR.com (a site which I hate to link to on moral grounds) on the ethics of sponsored content and the Poynter Center has some good information on the ethics of the phenonenon as well. As Weinberger says, lots of media outlets (even our professional ones) are desperate for revenue and need vendor support to stay afloat, but it's still important for sponsored content to adhere to certain ethical standards. And one of them certainly is that it should be made crystal clear that it is sponsored content.
I'm not going to demand that anyone at American Libraries be nailed to a cross, nor do I think anyone else should. They are good people who I believe really are motivated to do a good job and made a regrettably poor decision in this case. I see the mob mentality on social media and the enjoyment people seem to have when they've found someone who has misbehaved and it makes me queasy. I do think we need to be clear and rational in our criticisms so that they actually take what we're saying seriously. I get the sense that the folks at American Libraries don't understand why what they did was wrong and I think saying terrible things about them or their publication (which is insulting to everyone else who writes for it) will not make that clear. I'm glad this has received attention from those bodies within ALA who oversee ALA publications, and I really hope action will be taken. I hope that American Libraries will review its editorial policies and practices.
I've enjoyed writing for American Libraries and have enjoyed the conversations that have been sparked from my columns. I know lots of people in our profession don't read blogs and I'm honored to have a platform to share things I passionately believe in to a whole other audience. My friend Lisa Hinchliffe (who is running for ALA President — cue the shameless but uncompensated plug) made a comment on Twitter that made me realize how something like this could potentially reflect poorly on me and other American Libraries authors:
@joejanes @librarianmer I trust what you say but …your readers may not trust that any more … really big prob for all AL authors now.
— Lisa Hinchliffe (@lisalibrarian) January 5, 2016
That does worry me a bit. But I think highly of the people who work at American Libraries I hope they will take steps to make sure that the entire publication reflects strong ethical standards and safeguards the credibility of its authors.]]>
I've learned over time that work/life balance not only looks different for every person, but looks very different for an individual from one moment to the next. The needs you and your loved ones have and the things that give you the most pleasure can radically change over time. This year, I really tried to make more time in my life for reading. While reading helped transport me to other places when I was dealing with horrible work stress that no longer exists in my current (wonderful) job, I've found the practice of reading every evening psychologically beneficial. Reading centers me… puts me in a good mental space. I still have some nights when I'm so worn out I just want to watch guilty pleasure TV (and do), but I've found myself turning to books more often than not this year.
Here's a list of books I've read in 2015. The books noted with an asterisk were ones I couldn't get through. Ones in bold, were books I REALLY enjoyed or found particularly moving (it's hard to say you enjoyed a book that emotionally put you through the ringer). I put what I'd probably say was my favorite book read this year as the featured image for this post.
This year, I've included some books that I read to my son, though only the long ones and only those we've read since summer. We are pretty religious about our approximately one hour of reading to our son each night (though now he has to do 15-20 minutes of reading to us as well), so we've covered a lot of territory over time. Getting into the Harry Potter books this Fall has been such a great pleasure for me (I'm the only one allowed to read those because my husband can't do a British accent). It's so fun to see the books through his eyes this time around.
The Martian: A Novel – Andy Weir – a rare case where the movie was better than the book. Great story, but badly written IMHO.
The Residue Years* – Mitchell Jackson
Yes, Please – Amy Poehler
Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – I wanted to keep following the compelling story of the two Nigerian protagonists long after the book ended.
Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng – about growing up under the weight of parental expectations. A tragedy.
Department of Speculation – Jenny Ofill – a book that defies description. Almost stream of consciousness, but not in an artsy pretentious way.
Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War – Karl Marlantes – this book shook me to my core.
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr – simply beautiful
The Invisible Circus – Jennifer Egan
Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo – a bit dogmatic, but my house is so much less cluttered and better organized now!!!
The Book of Unknown Americans – Cristina Henríquez
Find Me – Laura Van Den Berg
Lean In – Sheryl Sandberg – I liked this much more than I'd expected to given that I don't feel I really lean in.
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
So You've Been Publicly Shamed – Jon Ronson
The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
Our Souls at Night – Kent Haruf – I was so sad for it to end, knowing I'd never read another new book by one of my very favorite authors. RIP.
Funny Girl – Nick Hornby
The Phantom Bully (Star Wars – Jedi Academy 3) – Jeffrey Brown
Last Things – Jenny Ofill
Euphoria – Lily King – easily the most overrated book of the past year IMHO
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J. K. Rowling
Ramona the Pest – Beverly Cleary
The Children Act – Ian McEwan
Disclaimer – Renée Knight
A Spool of Blue Thread* – Ann Tyler
Henry and Ribsy – Beverly Cleary
Attachments: A Novel – Rainbow Rowell
Henry and Bezus – Beverly Cleary
I don't Know Where You Know Me From: My Life as a Co-Star* – Judy Greer
The Narrow Road to the Deep North* – Richard Flanagan – I was surprised I couldn't get into this book
Annihilation: A Novel – Jeff VanderMeer – I'd expected to like this, but it was a real disappointment
In the Unlikely Event – Judy Blume
Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari
Paper Towns – John Green
A Window Opens – Elisabeth Egan
Mothers, Tell Your Daughters – Bonnie Jo Campbell – female characters so vulnerable, real, and raw it's painful to read. But also such compelling short stories]]>
I felt really sad when I read Kyle Shockey's post on the Librarian Burnout blog about feeling burnout after library school and being in the midst of the job hunt. By all indications, he is one of those rare recent grads who followed the advice so many of us give to LIS students — don't rely solely your LIS program to prepare you for the profession. He published, presented, worked, volunteered, and even won awards while still in library school! How many of you did all that?? And yet he found that not only was it all mentally and physically exhausting and not encouraged by his LIS program (shame on you LIS faculty!), but he's discovered that it didn't lead to the job he thought he'd get if he did all the right things. Horrible.
I remember my own first library job search like it was yesterday. A lot of it was chronicled on this blog, but I tried to stay upbeat in my writing because I didn't want to hurt my chances of getting a job by being negative. By Spring of 2005 (I graduated in December 2004), I was starting to think that I needed to look for jobs back in my previous field (social work) because I was clearly not seen as a promising librarian by anyone. Thinking about that time in my life even now gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was really that traumatic. So I feel viscerally bad for anyone going through that.
Unlike Kyle, I didn't find library school exhausting (probably because, with a few small exceptions, I did rely on my LIS program to prepare me for the profession), but I found the job hunt isolating and demoralizing. The whole process feels like is designed to make people feel like there is something inherently wrong with them, and some have suggested that the system supports the idea that you're out of work and searching for a job because you are flawed. For folks who already have depressive tendencies, it is all too easy to believe that the problem is you and that the problem is unfixable.
It's easy to just say "wow, that sucks" and move on with your professional life, but there are things each and every one of us can do to make library school and/or the first professional job hunt less of a soul-crushing experience for others:
Individually we probably can't change these big systemic problems, but anyone can help individual librarians and I'm proof that little things people do to help do matter. It doesn't take much to be kind, share our experiences, be encouraging, and be helpful to a new librarian. That the first job hunt is demoralizing and painful shouldn't be seen as a normal rite-of-passage for librarians. We can make things better.
And Kyle, where you are now sucks epically, but things usually do get better. And, given what I've seen from you on Twitter, you are absolutely meant to be a professional librarian.]]>
Late last week, I received an email from the culture editor at the New Republic about writing an article on the next Librarian of Congress. It was the first offer I've ever had to write for a non-library-centric publication and the New Republic has a political bent I really respect, so it was an offer I couldn't refuse. It ended up being a really fun exercise in positive thinking and in articulating why regular people should actually care at all about who the next Librarian of Congress is.
What could a truly great Librarian of Congress do in the 21st century? Maybe one who uses technologies beyond the fax machine? Maybe one who shares the values of librarians (or maybe even IS a librarian). Maybe one who knows how to run a complex organization and doesn't berate their employees. Maybe one who knows that the best way forward in digitization and preservation of our nation's history is all about collaboration. Maybe one who understands that the DMCA is ridiculously restrictive and needs to strike a better balance on the side of end-users, creatives involved in remix culture, and people who just want to tinker with the technologies they've legally purchased.
Clearly I could not be this snarky in the article, but I'm still pretty proud of it and you can read it here.
The Next Librarian of Congress Should Be an Actual Librarian
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the next Librarian of Congress! And if you're interested in this issue, check out Jessamyn West's amazing article on Medium, her terrific website Librarian of Progress, and the #nextLoC hashtag on Twitter.
I will not suggest that you read (not will I link to) Siva Vaidyanathan's Slate article, where he wrote "but the library needs more than a respected scholar or librarian. It needs a visionary who can leverage the position to lead us through some essential upgrades and debates that could push this vital institution into public consciousness." Silly me. I thought librarians could be visionaries and leaders too.
Thanks so much to Jessamyn, my husband Adam, and my parents for reading over my draft this weekend and helping me make sure I didn't write anything too stupid.]]>
Organizational culture is a very real and a very powerful force in every organization. I have worked in a variety of different organizations and each had had its own rituals, norms, values, and assumptions that influenced the way people worked together, shared information, and got things done. Culture is this weird, powerful, unspoken thing that both impacts and is impacted by the people within it. While organizational culture can change over time, it is usually because of major staff turnovers as culture is notoriously difficult to change.
Organizational culture can be positive and healthy or seriously maladaptive, but I think most cultures have a little from column A and a little from column B. Healthy cultures incorporate and adapt to new people and ideas. Maladaptive cultures are notoriously difficult for newcomers to feel welcome in and tend to force them to conform or leave. It's in organizations with maladptive cultures where I think the issue of cultural fit can be most problematic.
I know what it feels like to work at a place where you don't fit. You feel like a second class citizen in just about every interaction. You go from participating in meetings to avoiding speaking at all costs. You feel like your perspective is not taken seriously and the projects you're involved in are marginalized. There were a few of us at that job to whom it was made painfully clear that we were the odd men out. These were not slackers who did a crappy job, but folks who were passionate about and devoted to their work. Not fitting was torture for my psyche and made me question whether there was something inherently wrong with me.
Based on my experience, you might think I'd be suggesting that people carefully screen their applicants for "fit." That couldn't be further from the truth. Screening for cultural fit tends to lead to monocultures that don't embrace diversity of any kind — racial, gender, perspective, experience, etc. Monocultures are toxic and have difficulty adapting to change. Hiring people in your own image leads to an organization that can't see clearly beyond its navel. As expressed in the article "Is Cultural Fit a Qualification for Hiring or a Disguise for Bias?" in Knowledge @ Wharton —
Diversity in the workplace has long been valued as a way to introduce new ideas, but researchers have found other reasons for cultivating heterogeneity. Information was processed more carefully in heterogeneous groups than homogenous groups, according to "Is the Pain Worth the Gain? The Advantages and Liabilities of Agreeing With Socially Distinct Newcomers," by Katherine W. Phillips, Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Social awkwardness creates tension, and this is beneficial, the study found. "The mere presence of socially distinct newcomers and the social concerns their presence stimulates among old-timers motivates behavior that can convert affective pains into cognitive gains" — or, in other words, better group problem solving.
So perhaps bringing people in who aren't such a perfect fit, and maybe even challenge the current structure a bit, is very good for the organization. Any time I have worked with someone who has a very different perspective and lived experience than I have, I have learned so much. I remember when we hired an instructional designer at the PSU Library who came from outside of libraries, I found that it was much more difficult to get on the same page, but the ideas he brought to our work more than compensated for any difficulties I had as a manager. He allowed us to see beyond our myopic librarian view. I think hiring people with different cultural, racial, gender, socioeconomic, etc. backgrounds provide similar benefits to the organization.
Whether it is conscious or unconscious, hiring people who are "like you" is bias, and it tends to result in organizations that are less diverse; not only in terms of perspectives, but in terms of race/gender/religion/etc. When you're on a hiring committee, how often do you find yourself judging candidates based on qualities you value in a colleague rather than the stated qualifications? It probably happens more than we'd all like to admit.
It's easy to fall into the trap of considering fit without even thinking about it. I remember when I was on my first hiring committee, once we'd weeded out those candidates who didn't meet the minimum qualifications, I felt myself basing my evaluation of the rest on whether or not they had the traits I value in a colleague. The person we hired ended up becoming a good friend and while he did a fantastic job in his role, part of me wishes I had put my personal biases aside when making that decision. I may still have championed him, but I would have done it for the right reasons.
One thing I feel strongly that we should hire for is shared values. It is critical that the person one hires doesn't hold values antithetical to the work of the organization. I don't care anymore if a candidate seems like they could be a friend, but I do care if they evidence and support the goals and values of my library and community college. Just having the required qualifications isn't enough; being a community college librarian isn't for everyone.
Unfortunately, in reading this New York Times article, "Guess Who Doesn't Fit In at Work", and from my own experiences, people are judged by much more than shared values, which unintentionally biases people doing hiring against folks who have different lived experiences and interests. This is discrimination, plain and simple. When I was looking for an image to use for this post, I found this blog post about how people doing hiring should look at candidates' social media profiles to scan for cultural fit. That we should look at what restaurants candidates visit and what things they favorite on Twitter frankly scares the crap out of me. Because in doing that, you're saying that people with different views or outside-of-work activities are not welcome in your organization.
What we need is to embrace diversity in its many forms and value contributions from everyone, but that is easier said than done. I like the suggestions theNew York Times article has regarding hiring for fit without bias:
First, communicate a clear and consistent idea of what the organization's culture is (and is not) to potential employees. Second, make sure the definition of cultural fit is closely aligned with business goals. Ideally, fit should be based on data-driven analysis of what types of values, traits and behaviors actually predict on-the-job success. Third, create formal procedures like checklists for measuring fit, so that assessment is not left up to the eyes (and extracurriculars) of the beholder.
Finally, consider putting concrete limits on how much fit can sway hiring. Many organizations tell interviewers what to look for but provide little guidance about how to weigh these different qualities. Left to their own devices, interviewers often define merit in their own image.
Clearly, the more structured the process and the less leeway there is for making decisions based on aspects of a candidates personality, interests and background, the less likely the bias.
And what of those cultures that may hire for diversity but then treat people with different ideas and experiences like pariahs? Unfortunately, I get the sense that changing culture is nearly impossible without a decent amount of staff turnover. I witnessed a culture shift in my first library job, but it was because my boss had hired over half the staff over a period of about six years and was able to cultivate the right mix of values and diverse characters. I've also seen new administrators come into organizations with really strong, entrenched cultures and fail spectacularly at creating any kind of culture change. Fixing the problem of bias in hiring is only half the problem. We also need to embrace diversity in our organizations so that people of color or people with divergent ideas feel valued by the organization.
I feel very lucky that I work at a library that values diversity and diverse perspectives. We have a group of librarians who have different passions, different viewpoints, and very different personalities. Yet I don't see anyone marginalizing anyone else. I don't see anyone whose opinions are taken less seriously than anyone else's. I don't see people playing favorites or being cliquish. What I see is an diverse group of people who value each other's opinions and also value consensus-building. We don't always come to complete agreement, but we accept and respect the way things go. We have a functional adhocracy, where we feel empowered to act and where we alternate taking and sharing leadership roles organically. I feel like everyone is valued for what they bring to the group and everyone brings something very different. Even after one year, it still feels like heaven to me and it's certainly not because everyone is like me.
We have a long way to go in building diverse libraries, but becoming keenly aware of how our unconscious preferences in hiring and our organizational cultures can help or harm diversity is a good step in the right direction.
Image credit]]>
When I graduated from library school, I worried about anti-online-degree bias. I worried that people would think my degree was somehow "less than" because I'd done it fully online. I remember being asked some questions about it at one interview that made the search committee's biases pretty clear, but the people who eventually hired me seemed to see it as an asset rather than a weakness (mind you, it was for a distance learning librarian position).
That was in 2004. I assumed that 11 years later, people had gotten the message that online courses and online degrees are not necessarily less than, and that the people who go through them can be just as (and in some cases more) qualified as students who did on-site programs. That was until I read this article by Angela Galvan from In the Library With the Lead Pipe:
Hiring Librarians has documented responses from hiring managers claiming students in online programs cannot work in teams or learn effectively, when many students choose online programs for the exact opposite reasons. As with myths about poverty which overshadow the well-established resourcefulness of poor students, online MLIS students are dismissed as asocial and not "team players"… Suggesting online programs lack rigor or cannot result in "real" learning is harmful, technophobic, and helps maintain the whiteness of academic libraries. This attitude favors applicants with the wealth and time to enroll in face to face programs, even though very little of their development as librarians occurs in lecture style, classroom settings.
After reading this, I went down the rabbit hole into the Hiring Librarians site, which interviews people who hire librarians. I think I'd seen some appalling interview on the site a while back in which an interviewee said they wouldn't hire a woman who didn't wear makeup. That is beyond deranged and discriminatory in my opinion. Bfut I hadn't really delved into the site since then. So I saw comments like this:
"I am reluctant to hire online only students. There is an important dynamic missing when one does not have to interact in person with other students and the instructor. I consider those who are currently working in a library as usually a better hire."
Are there any library schools whose alumni you would be reluctant to hire?
"If program was purely online courses."
"I feel graduates from online only schools suffer from lack of camaraderie and group study experiences. They do too much learning in a personal vacuum."
Which library schools give candidates an edge (you prefer candidates from these schools)?
"University of Texas at Austin and other schools who do not rely entirely in online coursework."
"Prefer someone who attended graduate school in person over and online degree."
" I will say, and it pains me to say this, but exclusively online programs don't graduate the same caliber students as those who have at least some on-site matriculation. There's no substitute for creating relationships in the classroom that you'll carry with you your entire career."
"I don't trust completely online programs."
"'Most' librarians work with people. It is odd to get a degree for that kind of job online…I believe that many folks are graduating that should not…"
I'm amazed that there is this much ignorance in our profession.
I chose to do my degree online at FSU, in spite of getting offered a nearly full-ride to the University of Maryland, for love. I was in a new relationship with a guy I was crazy about, and while I knew it was silly to give up such an offer, I followed my heart. That guy ended up becoming my husband and I shudder to think of what I'd have missed had I chosen the other path. There are all sorts of reasons people choose to do their degree online and it rarely has anything to do with being lazy. People have spouses, kids, infirm parents, jobs, financial limitations, and myriad other things that tie them to a specific place. For the straight-out-of-college student, it is easier to move for school because they usually have fewer things tying them down. I moved to Tallahassee for social work school when I was 22, and it was a great experience. But, for a degree like ours, I really don't feel like someone will be irreparably harmed by not taking classes face-to-face. So much of what we learn is on-the-job, and I think a library school does a greater disservice to students by not requiring an internship or some sort of work experience in libraries than they do in not requiring face-to-face class attendance.
Like Angela Galvan, I also feel like by saying that you would not want to hire someone with an online degree you are expressing a bias against people who do not have the means or privilege to move to a place with a library school. That feels really wrong to me.
I've been teaching for San Jose State University's online iSchool program for about 7 1/2 years. When I first started teaching in the program it was not all online and most of the students in my online classes came from California. Soon, the program became 100% online and I started teaching students from all over the country, North America, and the world. Another shift was that I found that most of my students were working in libraries and some had more experience than I did. At Portland State, our Access Services Manager was going through the program and, in my current job, our serials librarian is doing it. Both women are amazing, full-of-energy, and experienced in the field. That said, I've had a lot of less experienced students in my classes who knocked my socks off and have gone on to do amazing work in libraries.
I've been nothing less than blown away by the caliber of students graduating from San Jose State's program. Yes, in every class I teach there are a few slackers who do the minimum amount of work to make it through the class (or less), but the majority are thoughtful and deeply engaged with what they're learning. I require blogging in my class, so students do a lot of reflective learning and then have discussions in the blog comments around those reflections. These really become thoughtful asynchronous conversations in many cases. I also usually require group work. (I'm not sure where this assumption that online programs don't require group work comes from. It was required in my program in the age before collaborative tools like Google Docs.) This semester, I'm requiring more group work than I ever have before (for a three-part, scaffolded project), which I really think is valuable. In our jobs, we do projects with other people with diverse skill sets and levels of motivation and have to make things work. Often a lot of our collaboration happens online, even if we work in the same building (it's even more challenging at PCC with four campuses/libraries). It seems like a good idea to prepare students for that reality.
I've heard lots of negative things over the years about San Jose State's program from people who have no experience with it. The assumption is that if it's big, it must be bad. It must be just a diploma mill — churning out degrees willy nilly to unqualified new librarians. While I agree that library schools are churning out too many degreed students vis a vis the job market, this is an across-the-board problem not just limited to one school. I've been so impressed with the quality of San Jose State's program, which is heads and shoulders above my experience with the online program at FSU (keep in mind that I got my degree 11 years ago and probably their online program isn't as dismal as it was then). There is a considerable focus on getting students practical experience and educating them about career options beyond just working in libraries. As an instructor, I've been impressed with the level of training and support they offer their instructors (even lowly lecturers like me). I was allowed to dump the LMS and use blogs for my course instead. I use a hosted-by-the-iSchool WordPress Multiuser platform for the class and have been totally supported in that. My course, like all courses, was assessed by a full-time member of the faculty. We're offered all sorts of professional development and training and, now, each person teaching for the iSchool (even part-timers like me) are required to attend or watch some professional development programming that the iSchool offers each year. The administration is deeply devoted to quality and supporting faculty in supporting students. I have been nothing but impressed and that's why I continue to teach for them after all these years.
It's true that it's more difficult to develop bonds with instructors and other students through fully online programs, though it's not impossible. I stay in touch with some of my former students and one of my best students ended up getting a job at Portland State! But I don't have a network of friends from library school nor do I think any of my instructors from FSU remember me. By doing an online program, you also lose out on the ability to work in the library located at that library school, which I know was an important experience for many of my friends who went to schools like UW and UNC. Yes, those are all benefits of face-to-face programs, but are they worth going into substantial debt to quit one's job and/or uproot one's family? Probably not for most people who do not have wealth and/or privilege. Do I feel like I've been irreparably harmed by not having those connections and experiences? Not at all. I developed a strong network of professional friends through work, online networking, blogging, and service.
My online program was pretty crappy in 2003-2004, but I learned like crazy on the job and was able to achieve a great deal professionally over the past decade. Unlike many of my students, my experience in libraries was extremely limited — 6 months in circulation at a public library and an internship in a university archive — but I was given an opportunity by my colleagues at Norwich who didn't see my online degree as an indictment of my potential. Whether someone graduated from an online program or a face-to-face one means nothing in the long-run. What matters is the skills and passion they bring to their work.
Image credit: Student with an Online Degree by bluefieldphotos bp, on Flickr.]]>
I hate one-dimensional characters in movies and TV. I love complex characters who have good qualities and bad. I like that "The Good Wife" actually isn't really such a paragon of moral virtue at all. That she has made questionable decisions and struggles with things, just like we all do. I like how many of the "villains" on that show do monstrous things, but still have likable qualities and people they love and who love them in turn. I'm glad we're seeing more and more shows like that, where characters are as flawed and three-dimensional as we all are.
Yet there seems to be something in us that likes to simplify things when it comes to judging real people. Someone is either good or bad. On the side of right or on the side of evil. And there's a tendency to either vilify people or put them on a pedestal. But the world is not so black-and-white.
I think few things have made that tendency to simplify as clear to me as the whole Joe Murphy vs. #Teamharpy lawsuit and social media debacle. It seemed like the dominant narrative either had to be that Lisa Rabey and nina de jesus were heroes and saints and Joe Murphy was a monster, or that Joe Murphy was a saint and poor innocent victim and Lisa Rabey and nina de jesus were monsters. I personally don't believe either is true. Joe Murphy is not a saint, but he has had his reputation damaged (maybe fatally in our profession) for something there may be no evidence of him having done. Calling someone a sexual predator without first-hand knowledge or evidence that they are one (and I'm not saying that victims need to have evidence) seems like a shitty thing to do. But, given the number of negative things I'd heard about Joe from other librarians prior to all this, I'm assuming (and hoping) that Lisa thought she was doing something good in warning people about him.
I'm writing this knowing that I will probably be trolled by someone for it, but c'est la vie. I'm disturbed by the fact that, after all of the petitions, and Facebook drama, and blog posts, and tweets about this no one seems to be talking about this (other than right-wing feminist-hating nut-jobs) since the lawsuit was settled and Lisa and nina published retractions. We shouldn't let right-wing feminist-hating nut-jobs control the narrative. And we also should be willing to admit when we were wrong and/or stand up for our beliefs if we feel we are right.
When I first wrote a post about all this, social media had been relatively quiet about it. I think there had been a couple of blog posts and the Team Harpy WordPress site was up, but nothing with a lot of vitriol had come out. Most of the rhetoric seemed focused generally on how common sexual harassment is — even in our female-dominated profession — and how important it is that there are whistleblowers who speak out about that behavior. There were posts about the importance of believing victims and supporting whistleblowers. I'd say that people were generally supportive of Lisa and nina, but were not necessarily assuming that Joe was what they said he was.
Soon after, the discussion took a turn for the bizarre, at least to me. The conversation around Joe on Facebook and Twitter became intensely vitriolic, with plenty of people arguing his guilt as if they had inside information. Respected library administrators who have never met Joe were calling him a "douchebag" on Twitter. There was a change.org petition asking him to drop his lawsuit, apologize to nina and Lisa, and compensate them. It was signed by over 1,000 people, including many people I like and respect. I did not sign it. I found it really odd that no one was considering the fact that he might be the victim in this. Instead, Lisa and nina were treated like victims, which, if they did harm his career without any evidence of a crime, they were very much in the wrong. I find it difficult to believe that over 1,000 other people knew for a fact that he actually was a sexual predator.
It seemed more like people thought he was wrong to have sued them. If someone publicly accused me of a terrible crime with no evidence and damaged my career, wouldn't I be the injured party and shouldn't I be able to seek damages in a court of law? The idea that he was squashing their free speech rights was ridiculous. If it's not true that Joe is a sexual predator, it is slander. It's one thing to say Joe Murphy is a jerk. That is opinion. But stating that someone is factually something that they don't know is true is not protected speech. Destroying someone's reputation is a tremendous and personal violation of another human being. But maybe he deserved it because he was a player and a flirt? How is that any different than "slut-shaming?" I found it disturbing that none of the people I like and respect seemed to be acknowledging this. But maybe everyone but me knew for a fact that it was true?
I don't like Joe Murphy. I still feel about him exactly the way I did when I wrote my first post. But, as I mentioned then, I think the fact that he was disliked by so many people made it easy for folks to believe him to have done it (and he might consider why so many people were saying awful things about him behind his back, because it's not just "haters gonna hate"). We've all seen the delight people feel when someone powerful (or someone who is perceived of as being privileged) is taken down. I've been reading a lot about Jon Ronson's new book So You've Been Publicly Shamed and am looking forward to reading it and learning more about this strange and all-too-common social phenomenon.
In addition to the fact that plenty of people wanted to see him taken down a peg, this was happening at a time when things like gamergate and the recent conversations, articles, and presentations about sexual harassment in librarianship were shining a pretty bright light on this issue. I think people wanted to show their support for women who have been the victims of sexual harassment and this lawsuit gave our community an opportunity to come together to do that.
But let's remember something here: nina and Lisa were not sexually harassed by Joe Murphy. That was never what anyone was claiming. But many people behaved like Joe was suing the victims of harassment. No. He was suing people who were reporting something they said they'd heard. This wasn't about believing the victims of sexual harassment. They may have believed they were doing the right thing, but they weren't harassed by Joe prior to posting what they did.
Now the tide has shifted and the trolls are attacking nina, Lisa, and their supporters (including me, though I wasn't actually a supporter). I can't even blame Joe much for engaging in a bit of schadenfreude now (I've seen him favoriting some of the trolling tweets his lawyers have been shooting out to me and others) I can't fathom the suffering he must have endured through all this. I can't imagine how demoralizing it must have been to have more than 1,000 people in our profession signing a change.org petition against him. But sadly, because he's put on the mantle of the innocent victim and good-guy, I doubt very much that he is going to examine the behavior that got him here (and I don't mean the lawsuit).
And that's the rub. How do we call people like Joe on their shit in a way that might actually create change? Calling them a sexual predator on Twitter without evidence is clearly not it. I believe in the power of social media for good, but I haven't seen a lot of good come out of it when it comes to calling out powerful men for bad behavior, because many then just position themselves as victims. Has public shaming really ever worked to meaningfully change people's behavior (again, gotta read Ronson's book)? But the "whisper network" doesn't work either. People were saying lots of things about Joe, but the information wasn't getting to people in power or maybe even Joe himself. Maybe he didn't know how a lot of people felt about him. I have no idea.
Still the greatest tragedy here, in my opinion is that so many women suffer sexual harassment and most of the time the perpetrators get away with it. And this whole sordid affair did little to help the cause of encouraging women to come forward. I've been sexually harassed and stalked and never reported any of it. But it was when a faculty member at a former job who used to stand too close to me and would put his arm around my waist sometimes later escalated to grabbing a colleagues breasts that I realized my silence was hurting other women. Because men who do things like this don't just do it once. If they get away with something that you consider too minor to report, they may escalate to doing something much worse to someone else. We have to find more ways to help women feel safe reporting harassment. I'm happy that more conferences now have codes of conduct and discernible methods of reporting inappropriate behavior, and that will help, but it's not enough.
I don't have anything positive to end with here, so I'll close with an excerpt from an interview with Jon Ronson where he talks about a situation where guy at a conference was social media shamed after a woman tweeted about an off-color joke he made and then she was horribly trolled after he said he lost his job because of it. See any parallels?
The strange thing is the impulse to shame often comes from a good place. Like the desire to confront sexism, say. A good example is the tech conference incident: Hank whispers a naff joke about 'big dongles' to his friend, Adria hears it and takes offence, posts something on Twitter and the whole thing snowballs.
Ronson: Yeah, everybody involved in that shaming is doing it for social justice reasons. So Adria feels that in calling out Hank she's a calling out a greater truth: that privileged white men don't know the effect they have on other people. The trolls think they're doing the right thing because they feel Adria robbed Hank of his employment – so they wanted to get back at her. Everybody involved in that story feels the urge to be a good person – and it's carnage all round. Everyone is broken by the experience; especially Adria, she has it worse than anybody. I mean, I'm on Hank's side. Nobody wants to live in a world where you can't make a dongle joke! But by the end of the story, Hank's okay, he's got a new job, but Adria's unemployed and subjected to death threats. So Adria's view of the world feels vindicated.
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Shows in New York City Message Board › INDUSTRY - Where Fashion Meets Talent
user 13162785
Group Organizer
New York, NY
I've updated this Meetup. For more details, see the full listing:
When: Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:00 PM
Where: Sea Meatpacking
835 Washington St
New York, NY 10014
What: A Networking Party where Fashion meets Talent. Join us for a night of entertainment and presentations at the Sea Lounge in NYC's trendy Meatpacking District, Thursday, 4/28 from 7-11pm. FREE Admission. Thai Fusion Cuisine, alcohol and soft beverages are available for purchase. Dress to impress, (no caps or sneakers). Models, photographers, designers, agents, entertainers, DJ's, actors, artists and Media/Press are welcome. Music by DJ TEK NIC. Email for advance reservations
RSVP limit: 30 "Yes" RSVPs
If the changes affect your plans to attend, please take a moment to update your RSVP. (You can RSVP "No" or "Yes".)
You can always get in touch with me through the Contact Us link on Meetup.
Meetup members, Log in
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Friendship Ends in Murder When Teens Kill Best Friend
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I'm running WordPress 2.9.2 at the moment and use Google XML Sitemaps 3.2.2 now for quite some time.
My problem is that the images I upload and attach to the blogs are not indexed by Google.
I use the standard settings of XML Sitemaps and have no robots.txt in the root. The images are shown on the blog by Lightbox 2.9.2, but I guess that shouldn't matter anything.
All the media are in the folder: /wp-content/uploads/
Which are automatically sort into: /wp-content/uploads/year/month/
Does someone has the same problem or am I alone and does someone know how to solve this problem?


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32 Advisors' Principals have successfully structured over 50 billion USD in project financing. We help clients to structure key projects and access international financing for their growth.
We help companies access P3 and infrastructure opportunities and financing as well as provide lifecycle project management and operations services.
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Asa Alger
This is the first project I worked on with Luxurious Animals.
It was designed, developed, and construced for Lufthansa and the 2010 Esquire Ultimate Bachelor Pad. I acted as the Lead Code and Technology Developer and saw this project through from concept to working installation
The 3D sensor used was developed by Panasonic and the event happened in October 2010 through November.
This is not related to the Kinect in anyway, although the technology is similar, it was developed and released month before the Kinect was available.


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After the Bell
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Jim Cramer's Daily Booyah
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Winners & Losers
Beverage giant PepsiCo has finally entered a surging space -- cold-pressed juices.
Wal-Mart's first-quarter sales and earnings let down Wall Street, and they shed light on several challenges facing the retail giant.
Competitors have seriously undercut Whole Foods on price, but the high-end grocer is preparing to respond in a major way.
Target's grocery aisles, once dominated by processed, packaged foods, are seeing a big influx of healthy and organic fare. Here are the companies that could benefit from that major shift.
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BYTE Magazine
Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computerby Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine
View All Available Formats & Editions
First released in 1984, Fire in the Valley remains one of the most sought-after and widely revered testaments to the dynamic visionaries of the PC era. Now updated and expanded, the second edition contains more photos and new chapters, revealing how the PC came to transform the world today and will shape the century ahead. The authors look at recent developments at Apple, Microsoft, and IBM and convey the exciting development of other companies such as Sun, Netscape, Lotus, and Oracle in the Internet age. Itself a milestone in the fascinating history of the personal computer, Fire in the Valley is the definitive account of how it all happened and why.
Editorial Reviews
BYTE Magazine
Product Details
- 9780071358927
- Publisher:
- McGraw-Hill Companies, The
- Publication date:
- 11/29/1999
- Edition description:
- Pages:
- 463
- Product dimensions:
- 7.38(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.62(d)
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 4: Homebrew
Are you building your own computer? Terminal? TV Typewriter? I/O device? Or some other digital black box? Or are you buying time on a time-sharing service? If so, you might like to come to a gathering of people with like-minded interests. Exchange information, swap ideas, talk shop, help work on a project, whatever.
Flyer promoting the Homebrew Computer Club, 1975
It had its genetic coding in the '60s . . . antiestablishment, antiwar, pro-freedom, antidiscipline attitudes.
Jim Warren
Microcomputer industry pioneer
Power to the People
Why did the Altair and IMSAI computers generate such excitement among engineers and electronics enthusiasts? Not because they were technological breakthroughs - they weren't. To understand the wild enthusiasm with which these machines were greeted, you have to get inside the minds of the people who bought them, and who soon thereafter founded computer companies of their own. And you have to remember the social and political milieu into which these first microcomputers emerged. Although the Altair was released in 1975, it was largely a product of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Lee Felsenstein had dropped out of engineering school at the end of the '60s and had gone to work for a company called Ampex as a junior engineer. Ampex didn't require him to work with computers, and that was fine with Felsenstein, who had been cool toward computers ever since an overly ambitious attempt in high school to build one of his own. But while Felsenstein enjoyed the work, as a true child of the '60s he rebelled at pouring his efforts into projects for the benefit of corporate America. He left Ampex in 1969 towrite for the Berkeley Barb, a famous and influential counterculture publication, where for a time he was listed on the masthead as "Friday," as in Robinson Crusoe's man Friday.
When internal politics split the Barb staff, Felsenstein went to another underground publication, The Tribe, where he was employed for his "technical knowledge." That was vague enough to leave his job definition flexible: he functioned as a combination business manager and layout artist. Eventually, coming to see The Tribe as "an exercise in applied adolescence," Felsenstein cut back to part-time and returned to Ampex. There, in 1970, he designed an interface for a Data General Nova computer and began to think that maybe computers weren't so bad after all. Felsenstein saved his money and in 1971 reenrolled at UC Berkeley, where he completed his engineering degree. In 1972, he gathered up his engineering degree and counterculture credentials and went to work for Resource One.
Resource One was an attempt to unify - via computer - the switchboards in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was run by people from the San Francisco Switchboard, a volunteer referral agency, along with other computer junkies who had left UC Berkeley in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia. Many of these people lived in an urban commune in a factory building in San Francisco, which was a magnet for counterculture engineers, including Felsenstein.
Resource One had a computer - a large, $120,000 XDS 940, a remnant of Xerox Corporation's abortive attempt to enter the mainframe computer industry. Resource One had inherited it from the Stanford Research Institute, where it had seen service running Shakey, one of the first computer-controlled robots. Felsenstein moved in as part of the second generation at Resource One, signing on as chief engineer to run the computer, a job that paid "$350 a month and all the recrimination you can eat." It was a frustrating job, but he believed in the project, and would later recall being annoyed when two UC Berkeley graduate students, Chuck Grant and Mark Greenberg, refused to get off the system so he could do maintenance on it.
Resource One put Felsenstein in touch with Cal students and faculty, as well as researchers at other sites. He visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and saw innovations that dazzled him. However, Felsenstein's sympathies lay less with technological dazzle than with a growing, grass-roots, computer-power-to-the-people movement.
That movement was developing in the San Francisco Bay Area out of the spirit of the times and the frustration of those who, like Felsenstein, knew something of the power of computers. Resenting that such immense power resided in the hands of a few and was so jealously guarded, those technological revolutionaries were actively working to overthrow the computer industry hegemony of IBM and other companies, and to defrock the "computer priesthood" of programmers, engineers, and computer operators who controlled access to these machines.
Ironically, many of those technological revolutionaries had themselves been part of the priesthood. Bob Albrecht had left Control Data Corporation in the '60s because of its reluctance to consider the idea of a personal computer, and had, with friends, started a nonprofit alternative education organization called the Portola Institute. From Portola sprang The Whole Earth Catalog, under the orchestration of Stewart Brand, with its emphasis on access to tools. This in turn inspired actress Celeste Holm's son Ted Nelson to write a book similar in spirit, but about access to computers. Nelson's Computer Lib proclaimed, well before the Altair was announced, "You can and must understand computers now!" Nelson was the Tom Paine and his book the Common Sense of this revolution...
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