Worth Reading or Visiting

“Literacy Privilege: How I learned to check mine instead of making fun of people’s grammar on the Internet” by Painting the Grey Area. This is definitely worth a read. The writer speaks very clearly about the need to stop policing others’ grammar on the internet, pointing to issues of privilege and ignorant assumptions. Her points are all valid and worthwhile and I’ve mentioned this post before  in a similar discussion about the merits and pitfalls of grammar use and abuse. Much of the editing/proofreading work I do, however, is academic, and this does require the sort of language that is undeniably of a privileged sort; this is what is suitable for its audience. It’s not fair, and it may be changing, today’s academic writing has to be a more “elite” (if that’s the right word) English.

“The Riddle of Rape-by-Deception and the Myth of Sexual Autonomy” By Jed Rubenfeld, Yale Law Review. Professor Rubenfeld argues that rape-by-deception is inadequate and that sexual autonomy is a myth that should not be used as the foundation for defining rape, then argues that self-possession is a better foundation for legally defining rape while still admitting that this conception also has its limitations. He includes history and background on the concepts behind rape (including “traditional” notions of women’s “purity” and other ideas) to thoroughly explain his ideas.

“Survey Suggests Politicians Overstate Public’s Desire for Vocational View of Higher Education” from Inside Higher Ed.  “But an even larger majority – 89 percent — agreed that “college should be where students learn the ability to think critically by studying a rich curriculum that includes history, art and literature, government, economics and philosophy.” And two-thirds supported the idea that colleges should play a significant role in teaching young people to be more socially concerned and responsible.”

Worth Reading or Visiting

Barack Obama delivered this year’s State of the Union address this week

Lynn Sillipigni Connaway, Timothy J. Dickey, Marie L. Radford. “If it is too inconvenient I’m not going after it:” Convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking behaviors. Library & Information Science Research, Volume 33, Issue 3, July 2011, Pages 179–190http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2010.12.002. It’s what I think most teachers and librarians suspect: If information is not convenient to access and consume, it is ignored. From the abstract: “…convenience is a factor for making choices in a variety of situations, including both academic information seeking and everyday-life information seeking, although it plays different roles in different situations… This holds true across all demographic categories,” not just students and “millenials.” [paywall]

“What Drives Success?” Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, from New York Times. In the same way that her publisher generated publicity for her most successful book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy and her husband have published an essay that illustrates the basic points of their upcoming and predictably controversial new book.  “It turns out that for all their diversity, the strikingly successful groups in America today share three traits that, together, propel success. The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done is not good enough. The third is impulse control.” I’m excited to read this book, despite the fact that this essay and much of Battle Hymn read as lectures by a woman desperate for approval and validation and who knows she’s right and can’t stand that others don’t understand her.

“Confessions of a Tiger Couple” from the New York Times. Jennifer Szalai spent a few days with Chua and Rubenfeld and wrote a brief article about their dynamic as a couple. The article restates some of their past as it was explained in “Battle Hymn” but is an interesting read. ““The Triple Package” conveys a message familiar from self-help books: Adopt these values and you too can take control of your life. But you have only to step outside of Yale’s campus to see that the world doesn’t operate according to the same principles of effort and reward. For most Americans, especially now, striving and insecurity are likely to be rewarded with more striving and insecurity; you can do everything right and still have little to show for it. Kicking away that ladder will sound like a fantasy when you’re clinging to it for dear life.”

{DISCUSS: I’m interested to hear some feedback and analysis of the first two combined: People are more likely to abandon information searches if the search gets difficult, and Chua two most recent books argue that this would be a lack of discipline and follow-through that is contributing to the downfall of individuals, cultural groups, and countries. What’s the more complex or useful and productive analysis of this?}

“2014 State of the Union Address” by Barack Obama, posted from http://www.WhiteHouse.gov.  “Here are the results of your efforts:  The lowest unemployment rate in over five years.  A rebounding housing market.  A manufacturing sector that’s adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.  More oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world – the first time that’s happened in nearly twenty years.  Our deficits – cut by more than half.  And for the first time in over a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest; America is.”

Worth Reading or Visiting

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

“So You Want to Be a Judge” from MN Bench & Bar. Written by a judge, this begins with a list of the great things you can do on the bench, but, in keeping with the caution the article opens with, goes on to articulate some of the reasons not to be a judge. “The image most have of a judge is overwhelmingly positive: stately, respected, wise, thoughtful, and powerful. To be sure, there are many reasons why you should at least consider becoming a judge—but there are also considerations that may give you pause.”

“Hand Quilting for Beginners” by QuiltCrafts (YouTube video). This is a good introduction to quilting by hand. Decent videography and clear instructions plus a few repetitions of the process with clear narrative make this a good tutorial. The first seven minutes or so go over basic quilting techniques and show off (encourage the viewer to buy) some quilting products, such as an automatic needle threader and a lightweight lamp that hangs from the quilter’s neck like hideous but practical jewelry.

“MyColortopia” by Glidden Paint. This site lets you upload pictures of a room you want to paint and try out colors in the space.  It generally works well, but it’s frustrating that you’re only allowed to try five colors at a time or have to start over. It takes a little while to figure out, but is worth the effort. Users can also upload “inspiration” pictures and the site finds the colors in the picture that match their paint selection. This could be a good resources for the public library reference librarian with a patron looking for home decorating information.

“Why Personalized Internet Ads are Kind of Creepy” by Tania Lombrozo from NPR. “The data-mining tools that glean our interests and choose our ads don’t fit into the complex flow of information we’ve spent our lives charting and mastering. We don’t have a map that tells us how a particular bit of information made it from Point A to Point B, nor the social context that gives us insight into why.” Source amnesia (not remembering where we got our information from) is nothing new, but it’s what makes personalized ads so creepy.

“Why Bother Knitting a Scarf?” from Treehugger. Katherine Martinko explains some of the reasons she picked up knitting after a yearlong hiatus, including an interest in the “slow clothes” movement, independence, pride in the product, supporting local business, and other things. This could be interesting reading for a library (such as the one where I did my practicum) that offers knitting classes for the community. Why bother with knitting or the class? Here are some good reasons!

Worth Reading or Visiting

Who Owns Sherlock Holmes?

“How the Humanities Compute in the Classroom” from The Chronicle of Higher Education. A few schools are creating “digital humanities” programs that bring together computer skills such as programming, database creation and management, and new and emerging technologies with traditional studies of the classics. This is an opportunity I wish I’d had. Short list of resources for teaching digital humanities follows the article.

“Quantifying the Continued Relevance of America’s Public Libraries” from Library Journal. A Pew Research Center study asked a very small sampling of Americans about how much they and their communities use and value their public libraries. The response was overwhelming: A great deal, on both counts. The author of this article says that this information needs to get into the hands and minds of policy and budget makers. He’s right. My only qualm with this article is that the Pew survey only asked 6,224 people, which doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

“Who Owns Sherlock Holmes?” from The Economist. A federal judge issued a ruling earlier this week reinforcing that Sherlock Holmes … remains part of the public domain.” All but ten of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories were published before 1923, and all but those ten are in public domain. The remaining ten remain the property of the Doyle estate and those wishing to use those stories must pay the estate. Economist article gives a good summary of the facts of the case and current and past/relevant copyright issues.

“What Happens to all the Salt We Dump on the Roads?” from Smithsonian Magazine. I grew up in northern Iowa, went to grad school near Cleveland, and live in the Twin Cities (Minnesota), and every year our roads are salted more than an order of McDonald’s fries, so I’ve wondered about this for a long time. Consequences can include saltiness of drinking water (though because it takes so much, this is quite rare), decreased water flow, desert conditions in runoff areas, and increased roadkill when deer and other animals lick the salt off the sides of the roads.

Worth Reading or Visiting

 

I played with the Ngram generator to see what the relationship is between the occurrence of the words “responsibility” and “consequences” and the results are disturbing.

Google’s NGram Viewer shows you how frequently certain words or phrases are found in written English over a certain period of time. I haven’t done any looking into it yet, but I’m curious how reliable, useful, and limited this is. I suspect that as Google Books gets larger, it will become more useful. For now, it’s an interesting tool and toy.

The Three Core Needs of Happiness: “Deci and Ryan found that at the root of human aspiration, there are three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (the need for social connection and intimacy…” It’s a little over simplified, but a good place to begin. Gladwell addresses this idea a few times in Outliers.

Here’s another book review of Outliers by Jennie, a friend of mine from college. Hers provides a much better analysis and summary and is definitely worth the read. While you’re there, check out some of her other excellent posts on money management, teaching, getting healthy, and other topics.

Worth Reading or Visiting

Taksim Square Book Club.  A protest in Turkey where people stand and read silently. Go here to see some lovely pictures of people reading carefully chosen books.

Where Typhoid Mary Lived Her Last Years. We don’t often think of photographers as information professionals, but they are. A photographer with a fascination for forgotten places got permission to visit the island and take pictures several times. Fascinating, sad, and beautiful. Click the first link to visit his blog for a history of the island and click here to see some of his photos.

Databases and Investigative Reporting. Rob Barry’s presentations on how he uses databases to gather and analyze large quantities of information and turn it into compelling narratives.

Paula Deen Is Not Okay.  While my opinion on the situation is not necessarily important, as an information professional wanting to engage with the community in general and be informed about what’s going on, it is important to be informed. This article is not just facts, but it does convey my analysis and interpretation better than I could.

Worth Reading or Visiting

Can I Put That On My Resume? An interesting article on I Need A Library Job about stay-at-home mothers returning to work after a long hiatus to raise children.

Leave of Absence Series on HiringLibrarians.com.  Several librarians wrote in to describe how they stayed relevant while taking time out of the workforce (many to raise children) and what they did to get jobs when they decided to go back.

Information Literacy: Standards, skills, and virtues. An article on the need for new information literacy standards from the ACRL.

2012 Supreme Court Term Opinions. The Supreme Court publishes their term opinions regularly and they are easily accessible on the Supreme Court’s web site.

Everybody Gets a Pass.  A brief essay from the author of “Our Babies, Ourselves” on the entitlement of today’s students. Good teachers write down the grade you earn; they don’t assign the one you beg for.

A sample APA paper with a sense of humor from Radford University in Virgina.