Collection Development for My Random Life.

This is a crazy old Sci-Fi book I picked up at a library sale and read awhile back. It is a story about a man with the last name: Cartwright-Chickering. Yeah that is a crazy name, but more importantly it is a crazy LONG name. In the story Cartwright-Chickering gets fired from his job because his name wouldn’t fit on a computer punch-card. Yeah, punch-card, that is how old this book is. Since his name wouldn’t fit, it was easier to fire him than try to re-program the computer.  Anyway, he exacts his revenge and weird eco-terrorism kind of undertaking which eats at the computers big tape reels. It was a some-what interesting read for a lark.  I was drawn to reading about science-fiction that dealt with punch-cards which wasn’t all steam-punky. I don’t think The Man Whose Name Wouldn’t Fit holds up all that well but it did get me thinking about names and what we call things. The idea of having to change your name because a computer requires you to is not that far fetched as the case of Zhao C illustrates via this  blog here . How often do we change our names, logins, passwords, etc. to meet software conventions? I think we do that pretty often these days more for securities sake than character limitations.

I find it interesting that what we call ourselves is fluid but also it also can be tied quite closely to our identity. Even more how some people will fight to keep their name as in the case of Cartwright-Chickering.

From: www.l1brar1an.com of course!

Tags: books, computers, names, review

Since my friends and colleagues in the southern United States seems to be a getting little of the white snowy stuff (and Boise seems not to be of late), I offer up some more winter pictures of the Wishing Tree outside my library.

Tags: foto, libraries, mystery, wishing tree

Attending: ‘Using Technology to Reach More Students in Tough Times’ which has 5 semesters of data regarding teaching information literacy online.

Bibliographic instruction sessions (aka the one-shot) has some challenges. For example, too much info in too little time, what impact does it really have, etc.

At WSU like BSU the only place students are guaranteed to attend one of these is in their early Eng 101/102 courses.

If one-shots are flawed can they act as a doorway to information literacy not necessarily the whole piece.

Wow, WSU has used at least 4 different course management systems (i.e. blackboard). Currently, using Angel. Didn’t know you universities could flipflop around like that with course management systems.

Beginning to talk about using Angel to reach students with info lit information BEFORE they get into the one-shot.

WSU has an Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE) which is homegrown. They used students to code it for them. (Students can build cool stuff like this if we let them) It is not simply a tutorial but a space where students take quizzes/essays after watching particular online materials. ILE flips the script. Instead of building assignments from the content of tutorials, they select tutorials from the web (or elsewhere) to support the class assignment. As you connect tutorials for the assignment it pulls from banks of questions which assess information literacy. (Hopefully I am explaining this correctly).

Pretty cool stuff.

Tags: education, information literacy, libraries, OnlineNW